there's this memory that I have, that I don't think I can explain, because it's not really a memory of something that happened, it's just a memory of the way I felt. I know__ or I think I know, that I've felt this way before, but maybe it's just a trick of nostalgia. it's a feeling of security and assuredness, and it tends to remain just out of reach, but I believe in it because of this recollection... this memory, of having felt it before.

It's a slightly european memory, connected oddly with figueras or maybe florence___ odd because security and assuredness hardly seem like feelings I experienced there, but maybe I'm wrong. I connect it with madrid and in the US with, eugene oregon, despite the fact that I know I was terribly lonely when there... and even that last winter in omaha.

it's also a childhood memory and I feel sure it has its roots somehow in family christmas mornings, and summer vacations with my grandparents in upstate new york.

it's a somerset maughm feeling and sherlock holmes___ edwardian literature of a world before world war... not that war hadn't been atrocious before, just that the less mechanized world had seemed simpler and safer. it's the feeling I sometimes have when I reread old favorite novels.

it's a sunday morning listening to hippy music feeling. it's a college friend feeling from those days so long ago when it was unimaginable that a friendship could ever end, or even fade away.

I remember that feeling and I crave that feeling today, but it seems so out of reach... and I wonder if it only exists in memory...

I remember my grandfather teaching me to cup my hands so I could drink rusty water out of the green iron pump along the path up bear mountain.