Warm Green Monolith

Tom was walking down a wide empty Dhubbabera windy boulevard, his pants flapping. It was disorienting not to have to go anywhere in particular except what one had planned out for oneself, and that type was the most breakable of oaths.

So his thoughts took over. Only when he forced himself to admire the towering desert chank, blurred with a haze of spring olive verdance, did he feel that he existed as himself in that place, and in any case, that was not a pleasant thing. His mind operated as a spring this way, snapping back almost audibly after an intensive moment of pessimistic concentration before the sharply pending withdrawal. A whip. You wouldn't always want to be the object of that studied, cringing fronting off with reality.

So when a young German widow, furtive, herself disoriented, chilled by the wind in the shadow of the warm green mountain, blurted out, "Are you familiar here?" he saw the look of fright on her face and didn't want to be the cause of something like that, so he deliberately brightened up his mood, from within, allowing her innocence and vulnerability to spur on a sympathetic view of life, a view of life's delicateness, which ended up showing in his face and reassuring her.

It's back that way, he pointed. See the golden building? She'd asked him for the casino.

Then his walk continued and he did not snap immediately back into internal patter. He was crossing the shadow line on the sidewalk. Wind seemed to buffet him from all directions. There was brightness and bright color, magenta blue pink green yellow blossoms and their fragrance. As water sprang into his eyes stingingly, he imagined all of the dead who loved him standing in chorus and encouragement. But also in envy.

He felt responsible to use all of his senses, just for their sake, for a few moments longer.