So I’m possessed, now, tapping into the odyssey to reclaim that territory, juggernauting my route for the sanctity of the forgotten lands. Yes, it’s lurking around here in these zones. But I don’t even know the time now, I’m not sure of the distance between when I last glimpsed the glowing haven and the misty present. It is pixelated by ambiguity.

Yet underneath, these rolling precincts reek of it. Perhaps I’ve embellished the nagging moodflow, sketched in a lantern where only shadows fall. But, no, it’s surely there, that blazing disk of a metaphor for a figurative euphoria, which was once even a full-on real sun, an authentic anomaly out here cutting through the dense powder, and visible by its outrageous colour.

Already I’ve wandered quite some way. I sense a shift in the geography of the city, and though it’s not difficult to be swayed off track by its obnoxious currents (those that alter perception in an instant) I trust my instinct. I’m happening upon foundations closer to those I’m drawn towards, where the depths are brighter, diamond-lit.

That’s right, ha! the much-missed square. The one with the ornate, narrow entrances and ecstatic fountains. When did I first wander into it? Nothing will ever help me to remember, but it’s eternally there, taking the form of a hazy, sunspotted illustration. I can’t capture it. And I glimpsed it for just a few moments anyway, as though I was an intruder on a faraway and just-unearthed planet. Those minutes streamed a watercolour joy into my soul, so I have always remembered them.

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