Last night I checked inside, looked into the goo that resides at the bottom of the well. Nuclear winds reduced me to a crouching corpse, transformed me into a lump of ash, yet I breathed, a short, gasping breath, once in a while. Someone spoke and I was encouraged by the recognition that it was myself. The man possesses a remarkable memory for data, such as how tall the fence posts were at home, or the exact dimensions of a boat he constructed. I must admit that as he went on and on I sank into a numbing despair which helped to pass the time.
Days slide underfoot, pass from front to back like buck ets of debris in a rescue brigade.
My days are wasted in the knowledge of the Gothic cathedral and its chain of souls, the apex of daring among men and women who imagined heaven as an experience. Love comes to me in remembrances of traveling stones and anchored sagebrush, of red-leaved grasses nodding below boiling clouds. On the morning that I didn't leave my father's house for the 5th, 6th, 7th time, I can't remember how many times I'd planned to do it, the air was cold and the sun was shining. The sound of traffic on faraway highways and the rumble of a prop plane carried into my escape pod, a travel trailer that I'd parked in front of a shed nearer to the road than the house. The dogs lay with me on top of an electric blanket, unaware of the journey that they would miss that day.