Imagine my surprise.

To find out, at such a late stage, what I truly am.

In the corner, an instrument that does not yet exist plays a strange music that has never been heard, and so cannot be heard.

Above your head, a small green worm sucks the green liquid from the pale, green veins of a dark, green leaf. The leaf is attached to a tree, which shakes in the wind.

I am the mist which sprays up when tires meet concrete in the rain?

You wander for a long time. All who wander are not lost, but all who wander do wander. Let us say, then: all who wander are testing the tethers attached to them, leaning this way – then that – all the while wandering.

The tree settles. The worm clenches its body into an upside down S and then lunges again at the veins of the leaf, and the tree resumes its shake.

Suddenly, it is night. A bird. A call. Did you see that! Who’s there? The music that cannot exist from the instrument that does not yet exist stops completely, and there is a moment of silence.

It is Pablo Casals, and he holds a perfectly blue cello. He is playing Bach’s Suite #1, and near his foot there is an empty bottle of Carmenere.

You begin to realize that much of what you have stated, in papers, conversations, phone calls, emails composed in five minutes of spare time – all of these – have been lies compiled from false interpretations of moments and expectations. Casals plays on. The worm lays flat against the leaf, like this: _____, and the tree has settled once more, its shoulders shrugged. Casals has begun to play a riff from Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, and the smell of tomato vines fills your nostrils.

Nightshade! You feel you should examine something, but do not.