An ordinary day. A day late in time.
Here, from the tower when I, Amaldus the Ageing Reminiscer, am now sitting (well, tower is perhaps saying too much, for we are talking of a sorely modest cabin where, in addition to myself as I write, there is only room for a table and a chair and a little fireplace and, under the table, a folded parachute) – from the window up here in my elevated nook I can sit and look out across the tiny smoke-veiled town in the midst of the ocean, where three quarters of a century ago I saw the light of day and the darkness of night for the first time and had my first timorous thoughts about life and death – thoughts that have perhaps since taken on a more clearly definable shape, but which are no less helpless for that…
Here I sit, staring far out into the distance, out into the Land of Youth, gone and for ever vanished, a place to which I no longer belong, and which I secretly envy you who still have a free rein down there; especially I envy you your wonderful regenerative ability!
Down there, where the beginning began and the continuation still continues, night and day still pursue their customary course, everyday reality still reigns, life is lived, those great things that are worth experiencing are still experienced, those landmark first things that ever make life constantly new.
From this long cri de coeur it might be understood that the town of which we are talking is not a voluntary refuge, but a prison, the miserable cell of age and corruption at the End of the World. Aye, here I sit abandoned in my lofty prison on the edge of the great abyss – listening to the threatening roar from the depths and trying to take the situation with good grace, although God (who still hovers like a cloud above the waters) knows that it is not always easy and that it would be quite unbearable if I couldn’t cheat a bit.
So look, I will take my good parachute out now and open the window, and then I will float slowly and full of delicious expectations down to the vanished but imperishable places where my heart is at home.