living, in a way

One of the few things that still hold meaning for me now are words--words, the stuff of argument, the little gleaming beads we try to string together to weave unbroken strands of meaning in our lives, those tiny carriages linked witlessly together in trains of thought, trundling aimlessly in no direction--words, falling silently and implacably into place, one after another, in the deliberate, hopeful fashion of the hopelessly lost.

Nowadays everybody I come across seems to be familiar in some indefinable way; a stereotype, a half-forgotten habit, a recognisable tilt of the shoulders, ripple of hair. When memories walk past me laughing and smiling and joking to themselves on the streets, and I turn back to stare in disbelief, time and distance and age and circumstance contrive to halt me from across an insuperable inch of pavement. My only recourse is to sit down sometimes, usually at night, stringing together mismatched words that bounce and skitter in the shadows across my page.