things move around

I think back to my first day here: the point in time at which my existence most tangibly overlapped with that of my predecessor, Stephen. He was two weeks gone on the day I started. Perhaps if I can recall every detail of that day - every flick-knife of feeling, every intuition, every sense of any sort at all - then I will form a more detailed impression of his being. In other words it’s possible that he left some lingering psychic imprint on his office, something of which still remained before I came and trampled it like a hobnail boot on a butterfly, in the firm but spongy mud of a tropical delta.

What were my feelings? Apprehension, terror, delirium, those go without saying on the first day of a new job. But what else? I remember feeling hungry when I first sat down at my desk (and I had already breakfasted), and for the first day or so struggling to breathe, although not seriously, not as with a compressed chest or an infected tongue. So what, then? So Stephen was a very meagre man, of this we can be sure, not given to overindulgence of any sort, as likely to feast and cavort as an aphasic to recite an epic ballad, a cripple to ascend a crag, a dead man to walk around bodily in the world of the living, although there are those who would affirm and believe in all three of those wild scenarios.