ref: b9fbb17c04e4ccfb2021dac818e514351ca8f646
dir: /troff/0109.ms/
.LP \& .ce .sp |4.25i .PP .ps 12 .CW ░ Finally and at long last knowing himself, SL wandered into the countryside. He'd sneak out of the hotel before dawn, while the brand coaches were still asleep, and break for the woods. In these parts there were no isolated stands of trees. Every branch of the forest connected somehow back to its trunk. You followed the leaves to the sky, then followed the veins back down to the ground. You never escaped the tree. .PP .ps 12 Within this semantic forest one typically encountered more trash than on the street. A catalog of discarded items, some of them immediately saleable, some useful personally. Today SL encountered both varieties of green trash, and immediately he made plans for its collection and dispersal. .PP .ps 12 The creeks were similarly full of litter. Sometimes SL came upon piles of unopened MREs. He knew which shops back in town would be interested in the expired meals. Caches of crap turned back into cash. .PP .ps 12 SL would perch himself on an outcropping alongside the creek and feel the cool water soaking into his shoes. Mosquitoes skipped across the reflecting surface, dodging expertly as he tried to swat them away. Mold, everywhere. .PP .ps 12 He had no memory of why he'd come here. .PP .ps 12 Twenty minutes deeper into the woods (though somehow still within earshot of rush hour traffic), the trail opened up onto the abandoned ruins of what once must have been a house. Like everything else in the town, it felt familiar. .PP .ps 12 On days when it rained the whole town stank of cat piss. In reality it had to have been something else because SL had never seen a cat in West Berlin. Or maybe it was just that they'd all been hiding from him. Whatever the cause, the air, and everything else, was stifling. .PP .ps 12 SL couldn't get back to his room quickly enough. He propelled himself into the shower. .PP .ps 12 Breakfast was a cul\-de\-sac. He steered himself to his table, turned himself around, and steered himself right back out again. Another routine sublimated within the blank, gray miscategorization of his user icon. This, too, flew in the face of recovery theory. The automatic mechanisms he had hoped to finally transcend had been replaced with labor intensive equivalents\(emthough these, too, were beyond his willingness to comprehend consciously. They had him working against himself. Life imitating farce, world without end. .PP .ps 12 It had all gone quiet enough that he was once again prepared to wonder about the fate of his friend, whose name he could no longer remember. .PP .ps 12 That would complicate a search.