Dennis Hollingsworth

Noon Today

In our week in K?ln, weather systems passed overhead one after the other in an atmospheric parade. A series of short bursts. A kaliedescope of rain and wind and hail and sun and drizzle and big fat snowflakes falling in sudden flurries only to melt on contact with the earth's surface and then to be washed away with mists that cling to your clothes like crystal beads.

All of this, as if we fell through clouds. Similarly, we met a succession of people and cycled through events as if we plunged through the heavens.

I am writing this in the morning after K?ln and before Madrid. I'm typing this in the morning after our social freefall.

I'm looking back into foreshortened recent memories.

Chutes of reflection.

And a proximate travel to Madrid (the last time I was there, It was 1969), a subsequent travel that will surely scatter the record of what had happened here in K?ln. The ground is rushing up, a blur.