A loose routine in a warm climate: heavy-pedaled bicycle for the chalky white sidewalk as broad as a street. Or it is a street, but without cars. There are vendors, but not densely. A woman with her hair wrapped up in a bandana tied at the crown of her head. Women, actually. All the women have their hair held in this fashion. There is a bar but I do not make it and I let nobody down. No one is waiting there for me. If I have a job I don’t know what it is and I have not been for a long time. I have no memory of any boss, what her name might be or how she communicated disappointment or love when she remembered balance. No, now I am nightly sitting with a book and making notes on other paper. Notes about connections and listing words I don’t know and when I finish with the book I start another and months later I can’t recollect anything past and I have to start all over again, returning to some book, making new notes. There are no old notes. Old notes refer to nothing, their meaning never was. It would be against the days I’ve been having here to speak of old notes any more than I already have.
Alex Higley
Leaving the Sea
Ben Marcus