So, like, you won’t believe this shit. Seriously. My mom found a joint in my bag. It wasn’t even mine. Sufjan asked me to hold it for him.  Anyway, she had a total meltdown. Said I was “on drugs” and a bunch of other retarded bullshit. We got into it, and I went to my room.

Yesterday morning I got woken up by these two dudes in khaki who shoved me in a van and drove me to this godforsaken wasteland. They wouldn’t tell me anything. 

So I am stranded here for the duration. Outward Bound.

Fuck my life. Seriously.

Every bridge and castle has the same story of some luckless sod  buried in the pilings, having fallen in during construction or otherwise come to harm.

We prefer to believe that places are haunted. It’s better than the alternative, which is that when we die we are simply gone forever and before too much time has passed will be forgotten by everyone.

Even we masons are not immune, for though we build monuments of eternal stone we become disconnected from them in the long chain of time. Our names are never spoken, our stories never heard.

Better a ghost, then.

 

Günter took his cello case and walked up the stairs into a city he did not recognize, a city no more. The air raid sirens had begin screaming late the previous afternoon, and he had dutifully gone down to the cellar to await the all clear as he had many times before. This time it never sounded.

The cold air smelled of burned meat, acrid wood, powdered plaster. No buildings remained standing. The Frauenkirche was gone, the Royal Library, the Kirchewald Apartments.

In the streets lay blackened logs. He could see they’d once been people.

Mozart’s Requiem, he thought. Perfect.

The Colonel sat astride his mare at the hill’s crest, his spyglass winking in the morning sun.

“That rooftop, there,” he said to his adjutant. “The colorful one. You know about that?”

“Ah yes,” said the young man. “It is a very old tradition in this valley. It is said that the colors serve as a reminder to the villagers.”

“A reminder of what?”

“In winter, that spring will come. In summer, that we should appreciate God’s gifts as they are given. It gives solace to all who look upon it. ”

“Makes a splendid target, anyway. Bring up the artillery.”

 

I made the run from Tucson to Tucumcari in six hours, pushing my gauges to make up for lost time. Least that’s what I told myself. Truth is I just like going. I live for the run of it. You set me down, I’m nothing but itch, like a greyhound you hold by the collar. I don’t answer to nobody, not even the dispatch. Oh, I get along with them. You got to, you want to work. But I know when I sign off that they are sitting chained to a chair somehwere and I am out here, rolling on.