How far?

Letters I wish I could write:

To someone far away --
Remember last year at this same time when you shared a song with me? When you, in your life out there somewhere had been listening to How Far and decided that I may enjoy it and I did, only I am such a music baby that anytime I hear a plaintive voice, I get too choked up?

And to another --
Remember when last year we listened to Pokarekare Ana on a blanket outside? And how you did not know then that you’d be hearing it in New Zealand a year later? And that I’d be composing imaginary letters on Ocean? Because one just cannot know these things and I am basically your terrible predictor anyway. So much so that I am prone to asking others about what they think next year or the year after will look like, because I typically have no idea and in my Polish angst about each day, I always assume that by tomorrow life will topple and I will find myself wasting away in some state of discombobulation in a Benedictine abbey in southern Italy, or, horrors of horrors, digging ditches in a Russian kolkhoz with a burly фермер standing over me telling me to dig harder.

How far, how far do we go each day, how far did you travel? Did I?

Today I took the bike out and, in a straight line, headed west. Everyone talks of doing that. Driving, running, without stopping, until you run out of steam, breath, or gas. Well what if you biked? How far can you go before you encounter the first corn field? Farmland that rolls onto itself with no end in sight? A red stable with horses? The end of the road?

The thing is, however far you take yourself, you always have to figure out a way to get back. Leave yourself enough gas, or, with a bike – enough energy to peddle those hills again and head home.