“He would never forget this particular twilight. Years later, looking back across all their voyages together, this walk along Penn Boulevard would become his fondest memory. He would wake from a deep sleep in the dead of night and remember Philadelphia, Christmas, and the snow. He would hear the far-off carols playing their evensong and taste the winter air they breathed and feel the frozen grief of the solitude that divided them. That was the year I gave her a pear, he would tell the darkness.”
-Marc Behm, The Eye of the Beholder
Asides
Adventures At The Thrift Shop
I traipsed through thrift shops picking up random items today. Some days are like that. Oddments find their way into my hands. I’m not one given to coincidence yet there seems a flow to things I can’t escape. I found a jar for mead and haunted old books looking for the rare and unusual before I found a hardbound cover of something French and gothic. I think the pages are held together with angst, which is probably more substantive than what’s holding most books together these days. A dove cote. A notebook adorned with the images of clocks and timepieces. Time, of course; I can’t escape the feeling it runs out.
Martin Rose 