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Lost footing.  Don't know how it happened.  Just lost it.  He found himself only to be disoriented on the ground.  Exercises abstracted out of context.  Noteworthy mishap.  He was in a push-up position.  On the ground in that position.  Caught himself after he had stumbled along.  Stumbling along with legs tangled by a reverie.  Had it been a reverie? 

There was the reverie about a week ago.  Had it been before the start of this week?  How far into it had it been?  It had to have been that reverie.  The one about the calculations that led to decimals behaving like rhythms of music.  It created a visual that he thought really emanated in the story of the prodigy.  The prodigy had been groomed to become a magnificent composer.  Magnificently composing classical themes by the baker's dozen an hour.  Had to have been about a baker's dozen.  He wrote nothing down.  His themes piled up within him until he became an escape artist.  Escaping from art into all those glasses.  Empty glasses.  Half finished glasses.  Broken glasses.  Glasses chipped by his head nodding in time with the lyricism of the irrational.  Had his forehead sown back together.  Without anyone's prescriptive soliloquy, he pulled the stitches out and waved them to the themes soaking threads.  He threaded them together into electronic compositions.  Programming less than 4 pieces dying within a month of his rediscovery.

He didn't think his reverie emanated from that.  Had it been the source?  He thought not and doubted himself.  Did that as he stumbled along.  Didn't think that had been based on an actual artist.  Might have been one of those - what did they call them?  Extrapolations, if you will.  Actually had been based on an actual artist, but the details had been changed as well as rearranged, perhaps.  Or perhaps not based on an actual one at all.  The reverie floated off into the air like cigar smoke.  Maybe it had been a reverie while smoking his cigar.  Then he recalled he hadn't smoked cigars for a while.  How long had it been since he stopped smoking cigars?  Had it been long enough ago before his reveries clung to other acts of abandon?  Acts of abandon that separated from what was empty, half finished, broken or chipped?  Untouched?  Unapproached?  Unapproachable?  He stumbled along. 

He did not stumble as dramatically leaving the plane.  She was patient as he caught up to her with his carry on.  He carried it on and he stumbled along as she rolled her eyes.  She was patient.  Patient enough at least or had been until now.  This trip.  Not the stumbling along, but this trip - this attempt to locate some sources and emanations from his past in his town of his birth was before them both.  Before them and soon to be around them as they walked around what was before them. 

Before them and before him, he endeavored to rediscover the emanations and sources of his reveries.  She was patient or had been on the plane while he remained still.  What remained in what was before them beyond their flight.  His flight.  His escape.  What was it for her?  An accompaniment?  An obligation?  An affirmation of whatever he claimed his past and future could be?  Or a confirmation of the inevitable?  The inevitable that had not been.

He addressed her with addresses and locations that were dislocated and relocated.  Names and descriptions that remained unattached.  Invisible people and story fragments that had been pending transferred out of the existence he rediscovered with growing loneliness as he wandered alongside her.  She had been patient a lot less than he supposed or conjectured.  It had been less.  This had been reiterated by her hardening face that turned towards the other side of the emptying planet.  That way had been the turning of her hardening face. 

They stood on the beach he thought he had remembered.  Thought he had remembered as his escape route to forget so much of his existence.  His description was of its churning waves to consume the discomfort of experience.  Her hardened face coalesced into pursed lips contemplating the idea.  They stood there and observed each wave.  Observed each wave casting jellyfish and waste towards their feet.  Her feet.  Her hardened face that turned towards the other side of the emptying planet.  They had not been fast enough as they backed away from the ocean's dead jellyfish and waste.  He stumbled along what had not been of his escape.  Stumbling along what had not been of his efforts.  His efforts to avoid the waste.  As the tide and the waste filled around his lost footing.


- Max Stoltenberg