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I’ve spent a good part of the day thinking about a lost friend. There are those friendships that fade away to be rekindled later. Some just sort of peter out over time. I think about the friends I lost long ago due my own bad behavior, particularly when I was drinking so heavily. But that kind of loss has only occurred in my sober life a couple of times. I feel the sadness of their loss whenever life slows down for a moment.

When I’m out on a route in normal, walking-around times, I hardly see a human being. I carry mail in the suburbs, where a kind of deadly silence pervades the atmosphere. The houses ae empty or seem so. At the same time, I get the feeling of being watched, surveilled, as if eyes peer from the dark interiors of those houses.

I’ll never forget the feeling of falling, endlessly falling. I was lying in my room, bed oriented toward the door. I felt bigger than normal, as if I was expanding, slowly but inevitably turning into Rabelais’ Gargantua. The loneliness was deep, almost impenetrable. I looked out at the room around me and down the hall outside the door. Everything had collapse to two dimensions. Though I could dig no deeper into the blankets, I was dropping, moving backward out of the scene.