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We each live in a little hut.

Ground floor.

I like to live.

I am alone for a while.

==

She is rolling out the thick soft curtain cord and tying it up again and again, as restlessness gets caught up in wanting less loneliness. She untangles the cord through her fingers, sets it back on the curtain, drops it until it hangs by itself, then rerolls it and ties it round her hand.

The curtains are always shut.

The house has paper thin walls and doors, built in the oriental style.  The garden is a state-run affair. It is the model of an old Chinese city. The poor moved in, after all the space that was available to live in, was being used up, into the middle of the city itself, which is some way away from Chinatown, so, some of us, are oriental, some of us not. My name is Ai Mu Kuan, it is 2042, and this is a story about Meng.

Let the world pass by.

He said;

“Drink with me, and let the world pass by.”

==

I seem to run into clouds, so high I got. I stand alone like a wall, you can walk all the way round me, and kick at me, but I’m always going to be there.

The river has beautiful sparkle eyes, even on days that are grey and dismal. It talks.

He wears a white shirt that is getting dirtier by the day and hangs down to the knees. He has large brown eyes, thin wrinkly hands.

I am merry in his talk, I am certain. He has a mind, a long drawn out thought, escapes his lips, but it shudders, and the idea isn’t finished.

I can see lots of his ideas merge into mine, into his, when he can’t finish, we still finish together.

“I am just…I am…”