[From September 2007.]

There’s something out of place, something like an out of tune instrument in the orchestra where I can’t discern which one. And I’m staggered, blinking through the spell of half day heat, parting hand clasp with the border guard in a crisply tailored uniform who grins in puzzlement or encouragement at the bicycle and the trailer, not knowing what to do so I’m pushing it through the gates and then across meters of a buffer between nations separated back then by violence but also hope and the realization is almost a cool breeze: silence.