"What?"
"I used to say 'that's where forever begins'," I said, and Greg, momentarily locked wholly onto my wavelength, miraculously caught the sarcasm and self-deprecation and only smiled.
"I was a pretentious little fucker at ten," I said after a while.
"Indeed you were," he replied.
Around us, a school of jellyfish began to wash ashore, inexplicably dragged from their silent existence and into the midst of the crowd, seemingly thousands, mostly day migrants from the cities, families from every rung of the social ladder or the young and stupid, like Greg and I, high on what could possibly the last gust of true, innocent verve, the kind that makes you kiss yourself if you can't find anyone next to you, or stare directly into the sun just to see what happens. The building stiffness in my shoulders and arms and the tautness in my figurative heart and mind represented the only question whose answer unfailingly escaped detection-- "what am i?" The closest I got was, as always, "now."
And then the instant passed, like it always does, and we started talking again, and it was almost like there wasn't.
25.09.2003-Epilogue.
30.08.2003-Exeunt, the Moor.
28.08.2003-why?
27.08.2003-Last night, and august in general.