Vertical Motion

My late father once said to me, “After you die, who knows what you had planned while you were alive?”

One red leaf floated in the air above the forest of his thoughts—a forest that was totally bare, for it was winter now

I realized that I liked my present life. When you were about to achieve your objectives, when you incessantly extended your beak toward the things that interested you so much: Didn’t you feel happy?

Daydreaming was a way to relax, a kind of entertainment, a kind of tasty turpentine. Now everything had changed. My daydreams were no longer rambling; now they had an objective. As soon as I began resting, those two black things above me started suggesting a direction, and they towed my thoughts in that direction. What was above? Simply those two things