(中文)
(32 records of a saddle)
(the saddle feed)
(drops of ink)
(introduction)
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Record No. 32
I got an email this morning from Discord informing me that an old friend from Baltimore, whom I'll call B, had messaged me nearly a month ago. I haven't been able to log onto the Discord desktop app the past six months or so, so I finally went through the minor inconvenience of logging in on the browser. After a few paragraphs of the customary apologies for such a dreadfully late reply, updates about the neighborhood I'd lived in, and reminiscing, he asked if, in Shanghai, I'd found any of those wild/mysterious characters we'd always talk about wanting to meet.
B and I never really spent that much time together, though I think about the handful of walks and drives we went on through the Baltimore suburbs a disproportionate amount. I'm not sure what he was like when I wasn't around, but when we hung out, it always felt like we were looking for some ethereal mystery hidden just out of view of the roads and sidewalks. We had to use this world for ways it wasn't designed to be used. Shopping centers and bars and arcades -- all those places that advertise themselves as harboring amusement -- seemed so much less interesting than the alleyways behind them, the streams that flowed across the street from them, and so on. I suppose we were people who'd enjoy living in an ancient mountainside forest and going for long walks ln overgrown trails past ruins, but instead we simply lived in a place where doing that would require us to go just a little too much out of our way.
Essays:Contact me at saddleblasters [at] gmail [etc]
