story

Things discovered in notebooks while looking for something else:


From a letter, written for a birthday and left unfinished. Not mailed.

Once upon a time, there was a man who was walking along and singing. He had gone quite far, both on the road and in the song, before he realized that he had no idea what he was singing. The tune evaporated from his mouth as soon as he turned his thoughts on it. He stopped walking and his jaw twitched. His tongue hit the back of his teeth.

He tried a note, and then another one, and then he strung a bunch of sounds together and threw them at the air in the hope that he might recognize where they landed.

It had been a pleasant tune, something sweet and bold, and it had lifted his feet along as he walked, high and light and almost as if he were dancing. He tried this, marching back and forth across the road like a man whose joints had all been switched for springs.

The song continued to vanish.

It slipped from his ears and his head, fading from...