From The Writer’s Journal: (Original Entry: 1/1/94)

It takes place in another life, perhaps in one of those camps, maybe even a boarding school.

There’s snow.

When I first leave the museum, I can see the the ski slopes and a majestic sunset.

This is Buffalo and Brooklyn combined and I’m living next to a train station.

I’ve finished my classes on time and still have two hours to get to the slopes and squeeze in

some downhill before dark.

It’s all part of my addiction–a craving for alpine induced endorphins.

I just need to get there, but soon it’s fairly obvious–it’s not going to happen.

First, I’m interrupted along the way by a lot of people I don’t have much patience for. Regardless, I’m obliged to stop and talk.

“You need to come to our party,” they keep saying.

A brunette woman seems familiar; thin and fairly attractive. I must have known her from

high school but can’t recall the details.

“I saw you in this movie,” she says. “You played a really happy character–you know, like laughing a lot. It was a short part, but you were really good.”

A short part. Apparently, so short I can’t recall it. But she mentions three or four other movies I’ve appeared in. I remember zilch.

My guess is that someone’s following me around filming me.

I may appear surreptitiously in a bunch of films, but I can’t get anything else done. I”m in danger of missing both the party and the skiing.

I can’t even find the train station. So I run out onto the streets of Brookalo, in the middle of traffic with its wet slush and out of service taxi cabs and finally I see these two guys in official train uniforms and ski patrol jackets. One wears a party hat, the other’s carrying a balloon.

“Which train do I take to the party?” I ask. “And where do I transfer to make it to the mountain?”

But they ignore me and won’t stop speaking about broken vending machines.

I need to interrupt them, to fulfill my obligations and finally go skiing–to feel high in the wind, so the day won’t be wasted.

© Richie Smith