Windows 2020
The recesses of my brain store a jumble of blurred images, indistinct scenes viewed through train and bus windows half a lifetime ago: Turreted castles on the high banks of the Rhine. Crumbling remnants of long-fallen empires. Epithets spray-painted in romance languages on underpasses. Minarets and windmills and Gothic church spires. Fields of synchronized sunflowers pivoting toward the Mediterranean light. People going about lives different from my own.
Though the memories are no longer crisp, I can call up the feeling of that time with ease. It’s the soaring feeling of being 23, alone and utterly free.
