In Galveston, I learned solitude. I got a job in an office as a clerk and kept to myself. I found a cheap, simple place to bring back things that I could study: a book on quantum physics, a high school science teacher, houseplants that displayed some symmetry. I spent many aoristic nights without saying a word, staring at some focal point.
Until then, there had always been someone there to check on me, who recognized and could scrutinize. I was a supremely responsible child, the kind who could get away with anything so long as her impassive features remained intact. So I got a few occasions to be alone, but there was always someone to check in. Usually, it was one of my father's friends who would wink if I had someone over.
Chronovores cherish secrets. They are tiny shoots where a branches of time spring forth. I've used trouble to buy time. And money is time in trouble. "Cause you can count your days if my father ever finds out what you did." See what I mean? I don't need a stained dress. The look on my face says plenty. It bought me a ticket to Galveston.
Time cascades and generally misbehaves. There is nothing like a little bad behavior to feed a whole pack of chronovores. Look behind any scandal and you'll see them massive resevoirs of time into their imaginary accounts. But this time has a powerful elastic that demands full payment.
Why Galveston? It makes perfect sense at the bus station. Just look on a map and imagine yourself pointed to an extreme place, geographically and culturally. At that point, I didn't want to like anybody. I wanted to keep my life arc as free as possible. Galveston seemed ideal.
Light is time at tricky intervals. It has an advanced wave that behaves as a particle. That is merely its leading edge, corkscrewing out of the sun, meeting surfaces and bouncing. The sun feeds us time, moving about its own centers. The sun is time and not just by its basic cyclical reckoning. There would be no motion, no life without it.
The ability to control time is one of the most valued but least understood abilities. And people will understand that there's something special about you, but not know quite why. If I bring someone into that moment, he will always want to go there. Afraid to move from tripping through to his death, he searches for that interim. But can never find it, till he slipped into it with me. And he thinks it is an accident and not a faculty.
I find more old people there. Chances are, if I am next to an old woman in line at the grocery store, I will invite her in with a stray comment and look, only to find that she is already there. A smile from that place is one of the most precious of human expressions. "Come here for a spell," it says.