The tinkling business and romantic ninnies all well and good, but the paydirt for me, without doubt, the teased-out erotic history of Sarastro and the Queen of the Night and the strange evocation of Masonic brotherhood as the highest form of Enlightenment.
A suitable public mien, for a man of any age, consists of purpose and mild distraction. What my father taught us as a question of prudence on the mean streets of New York, is also good manners.
The gantry above the vehicle ramp advertises the short route to New Jersey. A dubious claim—leaving aside the question of why one would want to go to New Jersey—but it stirs a memory of an epic bike ride.
The first clue should have been the unmistakeable evocation already of ramps, the wild garlic, whiffs of which we got in spring tramping through wet woods in Wales. The second was less ignorable: a few snips on some corn chowder for lunch and we stank until the next morning.
A familiar in disguise? A twin? Zygote-mate unseparated at conception? I prefer to think Edith is anima, the feminine aspect of the soul, or perhaps better yet guardian angel—a figure that recurs in all my writing.
For a moment, suppose migrancy decriminalised and all the border apparatus, the walls, the arrests, the holding pens, the clogged courts, the caged children, the separation of families, all dismantled.