Anna

Anna. Student life, meant in the very oldest sense--from somewhere in medieval Europe, if not before--the libraries and stone floors of an abbey in a painting by Van Eyck, felt shoes, hand-sewn in the quartier--as where you were born. An order or guild--the homeland of a calling--philosophy, letters, les artes...

She'd returned after an absence of many years. There was a quarry, somewhere in Italy, granite and marble, the sculptor's craft. Returned to pick up the traces--a language of patterns, but so much had changed. Things were no longer cared for, all now commodity, distance, disregard...

But no, we're simply in Room 170, and it's a Tuesday night. The aluminum chair leg, the rubber-reinforced toes--worn canvas from Sears, one step removed...

I saw her another time, on a bicycle, loaded down with books. Satchels and bags. Crossing a side-street, near San Pablo, en route to school--also a vision, but joined to the quotidienne--a new family, Albany Village, kids... All of them real, just like Anna herself, just like the gray stone floor...

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