by an unexpected blast of wind, unaware that it will soon wither and die. Writers are always obsessed with beauty, pontificating on it, crumpling pounds of paper for it, inhaling pleasure from the bifurcated branches of a tree, or the exact length of shirt sleeve poking out from coat sleeve. You meet such a writer in the imperial ruins, where even the royal ponds are now nothing but rank little patches of bones and silt. There would be many opportunities to expound on what was here, what will be here, but the writer will have none of it, for the only important matter is the right now, framed in his question to you: What is it like? What do you feel? With an easy stretch-ing of limbs, you climb atop the tattered stalk of a pillar, and look down on him. The writer holds his pen with great expectation, poised to catch any immortality you can bestow on him through Lin Page 18 the telling. Please, your story. You do not respond, for your attention is caught by the old man wandering a few miles away, down a back alley, unaware of all around him. Unseemly hairs sprout from the mole on his cheek, the charcoal he uses in his stove scores his lungs, he is half-blind, his clothes hang on him like chains, no one can understand a bit of his natterings, and he sings through his straw, his fingers fondling the straw, the straw piercing the lid of his fast food cup, into the empty cup, the cup reverberating with the passion of his off-key melody. Chan-neled through the container, the song floods the alley, rises to the trees, catches the ears of the pigeons, who in turn soar off with their own music, as metallic whistles are attached to their ankles. You know that the writer passed the old man this morning, and the man was singing then, too, and the writer looked away, repulsed, re-pulsed, because to him the old man was infirmity,