back from Riverman’s without stopping if I get enough speed up but the fog unnerves me, jabs into the thought jumble and the subconscious calculus. Night on Bald Mountain from my phone, a forgotten Halloween playlist, rammed into my shirt pocket. The towpath greasy with leaves, almost lost the back wheel at the guard rail turn, peddle faster. Are books analogue downloads of our that-second state of mind, our imaginative yearning and reading of things? Every novel is a map learned. Where for coffee, Zappi’s bike cafe is the best in town, please don’t besmirch my cappuccino with cocoa, wouldn’t dream of it, sir, not at Zappi’s, but you can never get a table. Why is the aiming reticle – why reticle? a net for your target perhaps – so slow in Drake’s Fortune, I get blasted and keep greying out. The game’s AI knows me too well. All gone into memory past, gone with the geese chevron clacking overhead as I crest the bridge a cold second later.
