Or sets of circumstances. E.g., the fact that I want to be the captain of a hot air balloon. Now. One could set that circumstance on a shelf.
Or of a dirigible. Although in that case there would be engines involved, and instruments. I’m not sure if instruments are needed on a hot air balloon. No doubt they are. Instruments and instructions. And charts. I will have to learn how to read charts. And to navigate at night. That could also be set on a shelf. Even the same shelf. Fragile objects that float at night with things and instruments in them.
Or just drift. A dirigible adrift. Of course, a dirigible adrift eventually explodes. I saw footage once — not pretty. Or a projectionist. Another shelf. That too. Projecting film, silent film, onto a white wall. Which is what I used to imagine I could do. See above. Back then.
But the story really is still out by the river where I really still was, looking down into the cold, slightly angry-looking water, figuring that, at least until circumstances might determine otherwise, I would keep some distance between it and myself.
Mine was a medium-sized not overly great-looking earnest-appearing individual. I stood on one end of a bridge, he stood on the other. I knew this one. He was one of the best and was going to be hard, if not impossible, to slip. Hello, I called across the bridge to him. He didn’t appear to hear me. I waved. He didn’t appear to see me. I began walking. He followed. It was quite an interesting relationship.
Off we went. Up the streets and down them and through doors and up escalators, I mean elevators, very small ones, but also I do mean escalators, or escalator, it is a rather funny word, as they all are, said over and over again.
It is possible, in this city, to cover distance underground. I did so. Through doors and down stairs. Corridors like snakes. Bright posters and glistening tile walls. People coming toward you in trickles and bursts.
Off in the distance, down one of the corridors, I heard music.
Voice and instrument.
Each after the other.
Gal I knew.
Hello, I said.
Part of the time she was one of us.
Right now, as far as I could tell, she was not.
She let go of her instrument, let it hang from a thick strap around her neck, and held out her hand.
You? she said, glancing down the long hall at him.
Yes, I said.
She nodded and started singing again so I dropped a coin into her hat and pushed off.
As I rounded the next corner and moved up toward the exit I heard another coin dropping, the other’s coin dropping, and the voice, which by the way was impossibly low and lovely, stopped.
Then I stopped.
Then it started again, with the instrument this time, and I started again, only, having started, found myself walking back the way I had come, so that, having re-rounded the corner, I was now walking behind him. He was not far ahead of me, and not moving fast, a nice easy pace, and his legs were shorter than mine and he looked a little, perhaps, round in the middle, and limped slightly, that was important, so that probably, conditions permitting, I would have him soon, I thought, only at that moment I passed her again and she nodded again and the music stopped.
She shrugged.
I dropped another coin.
He, in passing her again, after me again, did not.
So that was that and, back outside, we walked around like before until I was tired and sat down in an establishment where they served nice big drinks, one of which I sent over to him.
A few weeks before someone had sent one over to me.
I raised my glass.
He appeared not to notice. He appeared not to be drinking, either, but did, of course, and was.
I was trying to develop a plan.
I am no good at all, I believe I have already mentioned, at planning.
Nevertheless, I thought that I could somehow employ the paradigm of the dove-coming-out-of-the-hat trick, as described above. Yeah, I thought. I thought, somehow you understand, that I could reverse it, the idea of reversal having rather effectively just injected itself into my mind. It seemed to me that I could make the dove (myself) disappear into the hat (some receptacle) if I could only figure out some equivalent for the swishing of the hands. Dove, I said to myself. I swished my hands around a little, practicing. He was, without appearing to be, watching me. That was the problem. Even if I was a dove, the trick could never work if he was watching me. I mean if he was watching me while he was supposed to be watching my hands, or the putative equivalent thereof, swish around. I had been the proof of that — at the event, when I was sitting on the floor, before I had become a dove.
I’m a dove, I said.
The waiter shot me a look.
I kind of eased off on being a dove and got up.
He got up too.
It was a little like wearing a well-tailored, loose-fitting jacket.
Albeit one made of eyes.
For a second I thought about running. But then I remembered hearing about someone who had tried running on him. So I walked. Wearing the jacket. Quickly, but I walked.
In the end, I couldn’t think of anything except for a scheme which would have required as half the swishing part a few short seconds of time travel. I actually conferred with him on this and he said that he thought that yes that might just about do it, though he couldn’t be certain, after all it was difficult to be certain about these things. Incidentally, what do you think of this? I asked him, holding out my hand, slightly cupped.
Nice, he said. Where did you get it?
It was a present.
Nice present. Those are hard to come by. Interested in parting with it?
Nope.
I’ll give you 200.
Nope. Etc.
Or actually, more accurately, at the end what I thought of was calling her, which is what I did, you already know.
Hello.
Hello.
Suddenly he was standing right behind me.
I’m going to hit you now, he said.
And he did.
In one of my dreams I sprout wings, glorious wings. And I wait for them to fly. And they don’t.
They climb. Up tall buildings.
Dreadful heights.
Prehensile wings.
Always at some unexpected point in these dreams my head, which seems only ever capable of lolling, hits against a projecting cornice.
Whunk!
At this point in the dream a separation occurs and I watch myself being dragged by the wings up and up.
She had added animals in cages to her shelves. It took me a moment to realize that someone else must have done this while we were on our trip. There were birds and rodents and a monkey and some kind of a cat.
It looked like a cat.
Also she had added, although it could not, almost, have been possible, more shelves.
There were splotches of bright violet on a few of the shelves. I cannot, I don’t believe I’ve yet mentioned, tolerate bright violet. There was a bit of bright violet on the hole puncher. The monkey had a bright violet hand. I registered this part about the color, it now seems to me, but I have already spoken to you about overlay, at precisely the same time that I began to smell cigar smoke.
Hello, I said. Boss, I said.
The only response I got was stutter.
Then, however, began the Q & A, and I can tell you that in her part of this exercise my boss was quite fluent, and that it was I who seemed to stutter.
She asked, I answered. Actually, I also asked, but she did not answer.
This, in its way, was another kind of relationship, everything seemed to be about some kind of relationship. For example, one of the questions I was asking was, where is she?