5.3.22 (edited)

So ends the testimony of a one, “William Fallon”, not indefinitely but most assuredly his mindless years of ignorant wandering amid the backside of wilderness in search of a city made without hands, his decade-long “dark night of the soul”, his “Father, why have you forsaken me?” — of which he took it upon himself to willingly forsake the things of God, his internal confusion and existential chaos which nearly compelled him to sell his entire spiritual inheritance for a measly bowl of red beans, or something equally as worthless. His wilderness which is also my wilderness – me, the writer of William Fallon – my own ten year futility which saw me, among much wandering and pleading, scourging and lamentation, produce seven works – three novels and four books of philosophy on the subject – those which I intend to compile into a single work entitled “Fallon”; not that I was in any way aware that I was in the wilderness nor conscientiously creating out of the literary desert a protagonist that in every way seeks to imitate the best our civilization has produced – William Fallon: my Achilles, my Odysseus, my Oedipus, Aeneas, King Arthur; my Dante, Don Quixote, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear; my Faust, my Zarathustra, my Socrates who is in every way me but not at all me; William Fallon who, because he was composed in, from, and by the subconscious naivete by which all great characters are etched and, because they were never intended to so, will thus live long after this current iteration of Western Civilization has been heaped upon the rubbish pile of history; my William Fallon who lost his faith in God and took that loss perhaps as far as he could without his soul being ripped asunder entirely; William Fallon who, as one yet chosen by Him who saves and is mightily to save as long as a Spirit remains on the earth to rescue men from their vanity, was indeed saved twice from vanity; William Fallon who had no idea the Spirit was still in Him and He in him while we produced this unfolding “desert song”, not in the supine years long after the events and through the hazy lens of recollection and apology, but as it happened, nearly day by day and event by event. And, because it was penned in ignorance and also “as it happened and was happening”, I dare say that a work of this nature will never again be produced.

Indeed, lightning cannot strike twice.

The happy ignorance of what I, as Writer, was doing and yet kept on doing despite the fact that none of my work has ever been seriously read by another living soul will never again be captured on the page as long as man seeks to capture anything; for anyone who comes after me in hopes of imitating me will do so with the foreknowledge of their imitation and by it will destroy the sense of wonder, discovery, confusion, incoherence, passion, and pain that can only be emoted when one is utterly ignorant not only of where it might end but of the spiritual state of the one who composed it.

Praise, above all, be to God who ensured this work and kept me true to it and sent the furies to harass me whenever my resolve slackened, or inspiration dried. To Fallon’s God, to my God, to the God who is both the beginning and end go all the glory that might be due One so deserving such a lofty name as His.

– The Writer, Summer 2022, Alabama Gulf Coast