Minutes in the hour of the wolf

The party ends. There are too many people. Wrong conversations, deceipts that can't be fathomed. You move from table to table, there's an uneasy feeling. Disolve. Walking along the side of a cliff, on a frozen trail inside a vast indoor cold world. Like a soundstage. I would almost have said an 'ice palace.' The cold is severe, yet artifical. You can only go so far on this trail, better to turn back. That would be prudent. You can see the trail reaching around the other side of the valley and you'd like to follow it, but it's too dangerous. You turn around but on the way back, the slippery slope not avoided, you drop something, a piece of tent flap, and in picking it up, in that motion of stooping, your weight shifts back, shoes lose traction, and over the edge you go. It's miles to the bottom, and for a moment there is relief that now it's all over, and there's no fear in that. You turn to say goodbye, to express real things in real time and that should be it, but your hands grab an edge. Not you, but your hands. And after a second you think, well 'it's not as difficult to hang by your fingers as you thought.' And so you are between rising and falling, living and not, stranded in uncertainty and ambiguity.