i have a lot of friends in the City. they stand by me in my hour of need, and i do the same for them. but i haven't yet learnt to separate the grain from the chaff. it doesn't really come as a surprise when friends i meet after two or three years ask just where it was down the line that i became this cynical. you see, i am writing this note to an omniscient reader, whose soul reflects mine like a lake of stillwater glass. unfortunately, omniscience, as ever, is an ideal, and you, attentive reader, can only see so much, since, no doubt, your mind walks its own silent corridors in the night, and all our individual corridors are irredeemably our own.

i do my best to open the windows in the room.i have noticed that the early dawn and the hour after midnight are the best for this. this 'aesthetic' choice,mind, is a compromise. a veiled denial of the early morning's dust and sunbaked fury, or the late evening's rush hour yoko ono song. to keep my windows open at those hours would, at best, be a brave acceptance of defeat a scale higher on the ladder than a window that will stay closed, silent and blind. true victory would only be arrived at when the beauty of the wideawake evening would reflect the beauty of the dawn.

the path is not an easy one. even then, to keep the window open, for all that, is a small beginning.