Water-tower Conversations

(This text will continuously change with every detail that comes back to me.)

"For weeks now we've neither slept nor breathed no motion, just like a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

The trip was planned for months, always wanting to leave but always finding a reason big enough for me to stay home, build up more a aggression, more necessity to leave. Situations have changed suddenly, recently, quickly and it took so little for me to finally be able to leave. Not the most unbelievable corner in the world; not the most incredible; not the most hidden or mysterious but a place that holds memories of my past, fond ones of my childhood in forgotten castles surrounded by woods which were covered in snow; memories where all I had was a car or a sled that I slid down a slope or down a hill, into trees, rocks or incoming cars. I guess I had a thing for being thrown one way or the other into moving traffic.

It never took too much for me to want to go, I just needed a good reason, something bigger than the reason making me stay.

I invited myself, during a half drunken proposition, halfway between here and another destination in an opposite direction. All it took was a promise of colder winds and a few hours.

The highway was as introspective as It's always been for me, rummaging through the feeling and the words I would later tell myself to remind me why I left home to reach this place. All comfort; finally an opportunity to sleep.

With the scenery changing, the flat desert turning into wooded highlands, 6747 Ft above in the air; above the whole world; barely being able to breath; barely being able to speak when I wasn't speaking to myself.

First day and by myself looking for a change, finding the town looked smaller than 10 years ago. The truth being that, as everything, back then the world seemed larger and more promising.

I held my ground by myself for hours there with the lights and the music; the cold wind outside and the drink warming me up. Small oblivious invitations were made, to which I would just smile and reply: "I'm here by myself." The lights from the alcohol in my eyes brought words written on forgettable paper, as forgettable as memories I deny remembrance. I was alone and I was with myself. I was enjoying my solitude without feeling the accustomed loneliness.

Day turned into night, even colder air, even more words appeared only to disappear between ink and wet paper of tabletops and bar counters. Words disappeared in a blurry example of everything I decided to forget. I felt free.

Slept like a rock; for weeks it seemd. I felt as if the hours lasted days and that night I slept a whole years worth of sleep.

I woke up with a voice, a sudden change had stolen an hour from this visit, suddenly I found myself in hurry to find myself where I had decided to lose it all. I was bound for the road earlier than I thought.

Woods surrounded me once more, it a was a peace I hadn't felt in years; it was an independence I hadn't ever experienced. It was a trip for myself, a trip of introspection; a trip to learn to live without a pillar to lean on; to learn how to balance myself on a wire instead of leaning against a solid wall.

I took my time ending my stay; I took to the road surrounding the houses and hills I remembered; the old abandoned castle in the woods and the cabin that kept me from the cold and those few encounters with bears I barely remember now. The scent of pine and the mountains presence, I was there and I was everywhere, my lungs were filtered and my sight finally found a way to leave all the routinely sights I take in everyday behind.

Mid-day around Midtown, there I found people to see and things to do before things even happened. I had minutes just for myself and no one else. I took it as my time to silently celebrate.

Company crossed the street, barely barefoot breaking the law like any respectable felon would. First company in days, hours or weeks; first sight in God knows how long. We walked through Midtown, up and down It's entire street finding trees with peculiar scents that reminded me of stains in my room that stuck in my overactive imagination.

She took me places; showed me the hidden sights of town; sights she memorized herself; places she shared with someone else before. Walking in the mud, my boots all muddy and her bare feet just as much. Showing me her misplaced collection of death; her incomplete catalog of bones long bleached in the sun only to see her throw them in the water, watch them sink and become lost forever in "Bill's Pond."

Climbing to the top of the world, fighting gravity; fighting the lose ground and thin air all around. I was shown where all the sea of green below me flowed and waved as if it were moving from one place to the other. The wind and the trees were playing a pleasant trick on my eyes.

On top of this world we laid speaking words straight into the air letting the wind carry them to wherever they were to go, if someone were to have heard us I would not have cared. I was riding a watertower to the top of the world.

All these "watertower confessions," all of those words spoken that never fell on more comfortable ears, that were never spoken by such carefree lips, such small lips.


The memories we spoke off; the experiences we described; the newly remembered turning points that shaped our lives, everything described in words of past present and future. The perversions that those words brought, the sweet images and laughs it brought to our cheeks; all of those were carried by the wind into the mountains and are still flying long after we had come down. We might have stayed there the rest of the day but the cold air invited us to a warmer place.

Burning my hand with the coldest of compressed airs, being dramatic about it and her reading me the haikus written in times before all of this was even imagined. Having tied in impossible matches; impossible to tie; does that mean she did the impossible then? "Greasy hands", and shamans recommending searching for guidance among the stars, words derived from the sweetest of alcohols; from the sweetest of her personal cohorts.

Conquering the town, street by street, memorizing my way back if I ever had to return to do the same, all along listening to the soundtrack for this trip, hearing words that spoke "of a revolution" that threatened this time was about to end.

We toasted to goodbyes. If you give her a couple of beers she'll give you her Texan accent; she'll give you words of painted boats on painted oceans and a horses that are short.

Goodbyes are always cold and this one was no different. The friendship we share is better left unbroken by other darker intentions, like those described on top of the world. At least not now; at least not ever until we have all the time we need for what we want it for.

She passed me by, her highway was different than mine. Her eastern destination left he sun far behind while my southern ending gave me a reddish dwindling copilot.

Coming back I see all these familiar sights, those exact lights I so eagerly left behind just a day before. But returning now with a soundtrack that carried the taste of her tongue made me see those lights in a far more friendly darkness.

And so I returned to the place I so quickly left. Not a minute went by on this trip that wont be on my mind tomorrow; not a feeling or word will be lost. All the air I breathed I'm breathing it still; all the sun I soaked I'm feeling it still. It's keeping me warm.

This way it ends where it started. Time to get back to reality, time to be responsible once again.

"If only she knew, what would I do? Would I run? Maybe stick around just for fun. Would I take you out just us two. That would be grand. If only she knew."

And so I can only quote myself right now: "... maybe in another life we were something; maybe in another life we will be something more; but for now we can only be what we are..."