A Halloween party at work on October thirty-first. Masks and foamy beer and little scraps of food you can hold in one hand. Fat people laughing and blowing fat air out of their red cheeks, spinning and effervescent and sad.

I can watch Federal Hill from the balcony, and the harbor from the window in the dining room, there at the top of the museum.

I can listen to people and look at people and talk to people and think about people. But I’ll probably just look at Federal Hill under ghoulish lights, and the harbor under dense fog.

There at the top of the museum.

And the sides are all made of glass, and there are enormous machines whose only function is to inspire and look beautiful. They exist to furnish our minds with colorful little thoughts we can put in our pockets and hold up to the sun.

And I will look down on the garden full of wooden animals and stone faces, there at the top of the museum.

Later there will be laughing and singing and the drinking of more and more and more beer. And my face will be behind a mask to commemorate a useless holiday, and to uphold a ludicrous tradition.

*

A brief sojourn to the mountains of Virginia on November twenty-sixth. I will be alive, then, for maybe two or three days, alive with my dear Cousins, and awake in their thoughts. And we will feel spirited and electrified for a basketful of hours, and a handful of days. We’ll talk about the cold air and the trees and the animals. We’ll point out just how much of a God damned genius Shigesato Itoi is, there at the top of a mountain.

We’ll hike and eat lung-bursting food.

*

A winter voyage to Japan on December twenty-ninth. I’ll fly away in the early morning and zip through timezones like solar systems. I will read books and drink hot tea and listen to music without words. I’ll watch the sun rise over Alaska, and the snows of Russia, there at the top of the world.

When I land, I’ll take a train into an enormous city lit up by yellow and green and red and blue. And I won’t say a word about the weight of my pack, and the cold at my ears and nose. I will dip my body into volcanic hellbroth and eat vegetables cooked in sesame oil. I will stare at the peak of Fuji at dusk, and say my nighttime prayers at the foot of friendly Buddhas.

The earth will spin on December thirty-first. And I will spin at the top of skyscrapers, and in the underground tunnels of trains. I will peel away the old year, and a new one will unceremoniously roar to life in one of the biggest cities in the world–

There in the last month of my childhood.