laying out to the west for a week, reading Conrad and scanning the open horizon to Newfoundland. Swabbed at the airport then drive to the shore, remembered sights and feelings tumbling from the arrival-overturned vault as we surge down the lanes. I feel the tug of my own formed past when I come to this island, the experiences have been funnelled, same pink granite farmhouse where I stay, same bays and woodways, same fare of drinks and diet. It gets harder to slip your past as the sea chest you lug about grows heavier, too easy to daydream in review, looking for clues. And the virus shutdown has amplified my sense of time-paralysis, an end-of-the-tracks feeling. The past snares you in cobweb memories, you have to hack through them to cling onto the present.
