topography

I’m racing up a steep hill on the tail of a pickup truck, stuck to their bumper without really meaning to be—having trouble locating the brakes, and then even once I do, still we seem to accelerate—we’re going faster and faster up the hill, flying over moguls in the road.

I’m climbing back up a hill I walked down earlier—crawling up the steep slope doggedly—and it’s really, really steep and, I realize in dismay, long, and I’m nowhere near the top—and I feel like I have no energy whatsoever and despair of making it—but I also know I can’t just stop and sit there, I need to get up and over and through it.

there’s a tidy little house, almost like a doll’s house, perched at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere—a spiffy gay couple lives there, and I’m admiring the pianos, and the self-described missus asks me if I play, and I say, no, I used to try, and I loved to tinker around with it—and as I say it, I realize the truth of it.