sometimes, on a very respectable day, sun and all, i just slip away. unhook the phone, shun the internet, and read. aloud. to myself. in the meantime, keeping an attic crammed with people ignored, things, big ones, undone.
this morning, i read, reread, aloud, to myself, portions of gabriel garcia marquez' one hundred years of solitude. i've been through this before. many times. and yet, again, it felt strange. like watching shadows of buildings, familiar ones in my neighborhood. who knows these structures, tall and steady, throw uneasy shadows? like temper tantrums one never knows one has.
this morning, too, after many days of not seeing him, L called. his voice in the mailbox, wrinkly. i couldn't follow him. he was sort of asking me a question. sort of his way, perhaps, of asking me what now?
i wonder if L, at some times in his very orderly life, just decide to slip away. say on a perfect september day. would he just, without calling the secretary, not show up at work. then drive. just drive south, passing near abandoned farms. would he hear the silence? of redstarts absent from the alders? would he notice an old man, a pail of fresh milk in his bowed right hand, tottering home along a dirt road winding through maples, their leaves blazing?
