Parma
Some of you will remember a time of gaiety and mirth long ago. A frolicsome time. A time when maidens and their fairy consorts swarmed in the forests. A time when the sighting of a unicorn was arguably life’s greatest gift to a mortal. Do you? I am not what you would call a “man’s man”, if you catch my meaning. No, I spend all the day’s “long” moments fastened to the rim of a glass. I peer out beyond my nose, over the blighted landscape. I see how the mists of despair and perdition are choking the life from the members of my lost tribe. Where are you, my brothers and sisters? I long to hear the stories of your survival. Great, epic pillars of literature shall we make of them, when once again we are together. I have lit my nightly fires for a thousand years of remembering, and for some longer span before then which I do not recall at all. I have listened for a fingernail against my door. I have loitered in the marketplace where travelers tell their yarns of ancient desert roads. We leave our marks, we do. Both subtle and grandiose. I saw one of you working at McDonald’s on Shattuck the other day, and never again. Where did you go? To whom do you tell your secrets at night, my friend? Ah! I am a fool waiting in an airport in the wrong city on the wrong day at the wrong gate, for a passenger who is sitting at home watching television. I may go home. But you are still invited to come “bliss” me today. I need it, bad. The Wind offers her guidance, as always. But I have learned to prefer the Touch Below, the Secret Water, playing as a current against my broken rudder.