found drama

You are there to visit her, an old colleague. And older colleague. A mentor. There are three of you and you visit her in her office: a large, high-ceilinged room with massive bookcases, all of which are overflowing onto the huge desk in the center of the room (which is also overflowing). The three of you reminisce with her about by-gone days. She seems… lascivious. But you’re uncertain whether this is long-withheld affection finally coming forward, or something remembered and returning. In either case, you cannot be sure to whom she directs these passions and you leave confused.

When you leave, you wander the city. Or rather, something like a trial size of some larger, much older city. The kind of crowded Old World borough that Calvino would describe. Clotheslines run from window to window overhead, but they carry every other kind of cargo: pages and papers; parcels and packages; vegetables flanking slabs of bacon; memories and dreams, if such things could take shape. But when you wander to the outskirts, you stumble out into a snowy field.

It is a mountainside. A deserted ski resort. The trails are only half-covered with snow, and the access road is blocked. The only way down seems to be via the gondola. But there is no way aboard. You job beneath one and take a flying leap. You grasp a strut and haul yourself up and inside. For a moment you are relieved; you have found your way down. But soon you see that this is a dead end. The cables run out, and the gondola is ejected into a heap of others.

About Rob Friesel