Robert Butler: Mr. Spaceman

I am. Still. I am more than ever. I sent the ship back to where it came from. I told my species to stay away for a century or two, at the very least. My wife Edna Bradshaw and I have taken a little place in an old slave house in a courtyard full of jasmine and bougainvillea in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Edna does hairdressing. People talk to her. She talks to them. She is happy about that, though I will be forever grateful to her for her willingness to give up those things to be my wife, when we could never have expected this outcome. Eddie the yellow cat likes our little place, too, though I sometimes must rescue a gecko from his grasp.

I feel at home here. I work in Jackson Square. My colleagues are the fire-eaters and the jugglers and the painters and the fortune-tellers. I sit at a little table and my sign says, TALK WITH A SPACEMAN. I do what I have always done. I listen to the voices of this planet, one at a time. I am a good listener. Some people think I really am a spaceman, an incarnate glimpse into the infinite and mysterious elaboration of the universe. Some people think I am just one of them in costume, an Earthbound creature caught in time and yearning his way along. Look around. Listen to each other. I am both, and so are you. So let’s go around the corner, you and I, and get a flaming dessert together. Lately I’ve been thinking there’s a revelation to be had from a sweetly burning banana.