Mackerel or herring / Hurled into the sea

Walking with this wide world, its raging spin, and the ways that others unimaginably spin and pinball forth and away along our sphere, can rack a person in their shoes. It can transform a person and their paradigm. The way that horizons are created and closed off can leave a person feeling embattled with futility. I have been writing a lot, and reading a bit. I thought it would be an exciting thing to study some languages and to learn some new words for thoughts. There are some that I have not been let to speak, though. But I remember a night some while ago, in a place that I used to live.

I was out on a night time walk, and found myself stepping through a block or two of sleeping street construction. Pylons were strewn everywhere, and the whole asphalt of the street had been ripped out and piled in rows along its sides. It felt like a parted sea of tarred black rock. I stood for a moment, grateful for the feel of dirt beneath my feet in the middle of a city. Then I thought, and I left myself there. I poured the ashes from my pipe, turning it upside down and tapping it lightly on the side. I moved forward, with slow steps down the middle of this sea floor, and as I walked, I drew from my pockets what I had in them, and let them drop. A receipt from some groceries, a bus transfer ticket. A dirty penny, and a clean nickel. Another receipt from the purchase of some delicious burgers. I pulled a thin layer of dirt over this trail to cover it, stamping them where they lay so that rivers of glimmering asphalt could soon spread over them. And as I started my walk over again I knew in my steps something certain, to know them as a place I will always be, and to leave a trail of signals, a line of buoys towards where I will always be.