Altman's foot touched the graying top of the road, cracks roaming freely out from under tar patches and rivulets that came with no discernible age, and were something to focus on as he slowly moved his oxford to the side to stare at it. It let him focus on how much he hated the shoe, and the forced image that came with it, when at his job. Outside of work, things were very different, but here Here the sky was upside down. Or he was upside down. He wasn't quite sure which.
In a house in a town at a distance from here things move forward as they move backward and she knows she knows she knows
His hand remained rested against the door's rolled window, something he was unaware of at first, but also was something to focus on. He was upside down.
The nail on his soft brown thumb rubbing over the rubber that the glass would rise from. Blue dress shirt like dark like wet ash under a very off-black suit, a combination he was fond of.
He was upside down. Why did they send him here? Could he even remember? Suddenly the job was unimportant and lost to the expanse of blue below him, which was still above him in a sense, but slowly he was starting to understand that by looking down he was doing nothing but.
Altman's hand left the car, resting at his side a moment before stepping back and away. The moment of truth was upon him, and he was making a choice to meet it. With every step away from the company car and back "down" the road, the less he could remember the importance of details centered around his job, his life. Instead he descended along the curve, not once feeling a need to look back to the car until he felt his body follow the fullness of the curve that had changed his perspective. And then
In a room in a voice without space or time we feel ourselves hear the song through out and they know they know they know
he looked up.
Up at the car on the road in the sky high above, but did not feel much concern. Once upon a time, he would have. Moments ago. But those moments were also now and they had changed. And he knew this had no been the plan they had for him, they from where he had come. Instead he should have walked that road, some sort of "off into the wilderness" finding self ordeal that you typically read about. Something to shake him up, and ordeal that may kill him. Even as he thought it, "an ordeal that may kill him", he thought about how he could relate himself to those stories, of sudden great adventures and then closure or comfort, and he couldn't. That was not the stuff of life. Not for Altman.
Instead, the road back, down, in, was new knowledge. He knew the idea of forward wasn't right. Because to move forward one must also have a backward to come from, or even a here to be leaving behind, and everything behind in, further back than he could think of, was a long line or things that did not, and would not add up.
But things were, now. By moving backward along a road traveled. He was changing something, even if it was himself. But he knew the idea of himself too was too small and confined. Once so expressive, he suddenly found the modes of expression he always used did not fit here. But something else would. And he would remember it.