7. Once more the opium bonds of self-flattering love longings, the chattering brain of romantic fixation, the neurotic repetitive stroking turns soft spots to craters, making clues out of clay then pretending to find them while combing the newsprint grey lint piles of searchlight blasted daydream reconstructions, each day a perpetual one-woman gloaming. The retreat into imperative needs to change into something else first, musty boudoir months ensue full of sateen-muffled perplexity and interim measures. I spend another weekend choking in my attic life on dusty absolutes, chalk-marking what I must hold in reserve until I have her. Preparing for the big move, I have some problems, I have other problems in storage. What I have left to hold in reserve until I have her though is alarmingly little. Impulse buying all those looks on her face I've spent most of my revelations.

The branching off into solitary homosexuality and the watering of the desert that occurs as a result, the seasonal nature of creekbed formation, the long dry spells broken by rare flash flood conditions that alter the landscape of memory but not the issue of drought.