It’s getting worse than I thought it would, as I fade into the old man with the cane and bedroom slippers. This one is stuck in the history he can’t let go, while trying to clear the streets in the city he’s still lost in. I’ve spent my life imagining the next city or the road to the country and the mountains I used to climb that I kept trying to bring back complete with the friends and women I left in the weeds. The view is terrific; it looks like another planet from the past up near the top. It’s the end of a trail that I keep climbing. The air so fresh it’s beyond description, and the peaks below dwindle into the house I can actually live in, with a switch to open and close the windows and a place on the side to change the oil in the car. The snow there is still waiting to melt or slipping away down the slide I skied through and still imagine. The memory is enough to keep it all alive. There must be a book that explains how I got here and where to go next.
