The Time to Go

Perhaps this should be the day I turn and walk away. Perhaps I should be gone from here, go back again.

I know I never belonged here. This city was always a strange place to me. I get uneasy this close to people, especially strangers. I am too used to being alone now.

I don’t know why I came to this place. I was looking for something, but what it is I do not know. Now, as far as I can see, no-one else here in these teeming streets has any idea of what I look for here either.

I was out on the road one night, sitting by my campfire, watching the flames when a stranger, some traveller came up. When I was sure – as sure as I could be - he was not going to kill me, and he was as sure as he could be I would do likewise to him; I offered him a place in front of my fire. We - warily, at first – exchanged food and stories of how we’d got to be in the same place on that road that night.

I said I was looking for something I could not name and could not place.

He told me that cities have so many answers to so many questions. What cannot be taught at the universities and schools can be bought in the markets or alleyways and what cannot be taught or bought can be learnt on the streets and in the houses that line the streets, looking down through open windows as life passes by beneath them.

I have been here in the city for almost a year now. I found no answers in the university, the temple or the market place. I found no-one who could tell me what I seek in the temples, the inns or the brothels and I am still alone and searching, watching the streets below for any sign of what it is I need.

Now, though, all I know, all I have learnt, is that the time has come for me to go.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]