[20] How does one reconcile with history?

Mornings – I’ve told you. They’re when people pull down their masks so that all you can know is what their motions tell you, everyone spin-dancing down the pavement, alone. Fear masks, trouble masks, masks of time-sodden rage, and their clothes are like chinked armour against a world that’s marching them by the neck. The dream surrounding them but forgotten. The world turns into one howling machine fuelled by wordless and inchoate fear. Morning in the city, it’s about crowds and the solitude that deafens them to you. When you’re in a crowd like that, it’s a fight to hold still. I yearn to be climbing a hill somewhere, standing in the wind, which is more beautiful than music to me. When you listen right, you can hear voices in it from far outside the moment, all the world’s at once. Mornings here inside the world, they’re mostly about the time in your face, which this year is the saddest music in the world.