Going Down

[poliphilo]

 I dreamed I was following my friend the courtesan down a spiral stairway on the outside of a building. We were in Neuchatel (a place where I spent a very happy three months in my late teens.) The treads were thin, like planks set on end- and there were great gaps between them. I had been galumphing down, not a care in the world, but I slowed when I saw the danger. We had been up to the seventh floor in the lift but my room was on the fourth and I had business to be getting on with at ground level. As I went down I knew there was no need to get worked up about the life I was going back to and I saw my life- and all our lives- as discreet little parcels of experience...

...as presents to be unwrapped