1. We find our humanity in stories, you say. Perhaps this is so, or perhaps we turn to stories to forget our own humanity. We're all looking for escape, from something and to something, aren't we? A burrow to hide in, or to disappear altogether - yes, I think that's so. Even when all else fails - or especially when all else fails? - stories'll do. Magic! Yes, stories well told are certainly that.
2. To sleep I stumble, a glassy fugue in which I bury the undoing, the stuttering of poor choices along that forward tumbling line, time. Only fourteen or fifteen hours after evening's close (near-dawn stumbling past dusk) do I find myself catching the bitter dregs of a hangover. A slow & unkind death the living, beating days sometimes are. And other times rushing forward, past present future as likely moments springing forth as falling back.
3. The night before, this symphony unleashed: my computer died; half my only warm gloves tumbled away, lost; Proud Mary and I garnered ourselves a speeding ticket. Something else too, probably - though now, weeks after, who'm I to remember? A warm wind that night blew, hard, quite feeling like Spring; I slept uneasily. I'd not been drinking. Not a drop, but these weeks that's noteworthy only on account of the wholly unmoderated exceptions. I'm running more, yes, and how easily one sin'll trade itself in for another.
4. Aberrations aside, I've a good, oft-fulfilling life seemingly begun here, finally growing up and all that. [My] undoing is not one of place... I've excitement enough to embrace the reason of this place, the home I'm slowly making it. So I wrote; I think it was mostly true. And perhaps still is. And maybe, I think, will continue to be, the constancy of change notwithstanding.
5. I'm reading more, all my own words having vanished - damn you computer!; thank you, computer! - and with them, most the desire to make more. So I'm reading more and writing less, and some days (most?) I think it's for the better. And? If I run just a little more (a century each week perchance sufficing where eighty will not), maybe I'll cease thinking altogether.
6. I sleep disturbed these nights, an oily sheen across the slip-sliding dreams... I find it both fitting and unbecoming the moon's watch, the swirling fog of these sometimes icy dawns. I'm running too much for not feeling nearly fit, the winter weight that won't bend to training weight, nevermind the ten more to racing form, but at least fatigue'll blur the margins nicely. Stories? This is the most common tale I have. It may be all I have.
7. Or: I'm not sure I've many more - if any - letters forthcoming, if there'll be stories yet shared. More accurately: I doubt it. We've each our burrow, and this no longer feels like mine. I secretly wish for the Universe to erase me, you'd said, and though I'll disagree myself, I'll not prefer the quiet places any less. It's been a good run here, these past years, and besides - at any rate, so it goes.
