I thought I would remember this town with more clarity, greater immediacy. I believed it would be akin to being dropped cleanly into the past, some form of streamlined escape. But I fumble any crisp memories and I'm in pain. The skeletal recollections are there and it's a hopeful start but I need more otherwise I won't have any evidence that I ever felt the way I did, even if it was only fleeting, transitory. These lands can help me claim that - but not, as I first thought, on first sight. This is the ghost sojourn. Half-memories and lost conversations and flashbacks not quite found. Some weird reformation of a place known, squashed deep into my brain.
Deja-vu territoryEnlivened with reflex for the finality stretch. Body and soul dunked in evening canal. Tourists are memories. Reverberations from dwindling pasts. Infinite wanderers around any identikit European city.
Sweets and ice cream, aftershave and flavoured vapes along claustrophobic cobbles. Hearty Vltava atmosphere. Forgotten gameplans sensed, in some far-off, in some murk. Incredible May-day elegance, cocktails gloaming by improbable candlelight.
Balmy desires in familiar territory. I opened up the sojourn onto deja-vu peaks and got among them to see if it's possible to reclaim zeniths that recede under the great beast of time that chugs on despite desperate attempts to halt it.
I gambled on my dreams. I threw my desires back into the past. Having to see the trajectory once more is intriguing but more than probably pointless. Double time.
Flashbacks cracking the opportunity on these seen-again lanes. Ephemeral familiarity finally banishing receding embers. Epochs in twilight. Dusk-time epiphanies. Begrudgingly I let all of it melt.
Weirdly there is so much time to think, dead minutes to bring that warm past to some form of life. A poignant gathering in all the gleaming evenings of this return.
© Copyright 2022 John Maher