How did he do that?
How do you know when you meet one,
one of the good ones?
The rule is, some people say,
you don’t notice anything exactly but
you get a sort of unusual
floating feeling
and carried along feeling
like a leaf on a stream, let’s say,
and some sense
of an incursion
of ongoing unreality,
although each thing and event is joined to the next,
but it doesn’t really
take the centre of your attention
until a special moment,
hard to define,
but quite definite
just
afterwards
when it’s finished
and, let’s say, you feel a chill,
you pat for your reassuring wallet
and find you don’t
actually, even, any more
possess trousers.
Daniel Richardson was born in April 1941 in Chicago, and grew up in Carmel, California during a time in which there seemed to be great optimism about the future in general and the future of the U.S.A. in particular. He studied mathematical logic at Bristol, and is currently working as a mathematical consultant. He also works as a volunteer at Borderlands, which is place for refugees, or people who are trying to obtain refugee status, helping to teach English and mathematics. He admires Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver and John Lee Hooker. He likes conversation, coffee drinking and tennis, especially doubles. Stairwell Books (www.stairwellbooks.co.uk) have published Rhinocerous, a book of his short stories, with a possibly misspelled title.