Geworfen

She said her fondest dream of me is of me by the pool reading Heidegger.

Me at twenty-four, rail-thin and poor, a slight pungency about me from the slop encountered at my job as a hospital janitor, squinting at the German verbiage as tight and springy as racquet strings, mouthing it soundlessly in the vain hope of finding its meaning; me in the springtime of my intellect; me before the days in which names found bodies, names joyful to speak, bodies delightful to embrace -- pregnant, however, with misery to come.

And come it did. Though not that day, that day of mind-spraining discourse, of wrathful sunshine which made the pool's water seem oily and slack, not at all inviting. No, then it was only me and my ambition, my frustration, my loneliness. . .

This is also one of my fondest dreams of me -- as much a dream to me now as it is to her.