I left the city after they demolished the music hall and lost all touch with everyone that I’d met there. I heard that they turned it into a city garden. I wonder if Marie is there growing sunflowers and fennel or if she’ll ever leave New Cheshire. I doubt that she’ll find me now, though often find myself hoping that chance will bring us back together again. Most of my time is spent aimlessly wandering around Saint Alcuin, the Québécois town that I’ve been exiled to. I’ve met a lot of people here and have forgotten just as many. I’m writing a thesis on Nominalism and the concept of śūnyatā, though I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Tibetan Buddhism or William of Ockham. Time has taken on a strange character. The days pass quickly enough for me to be taken by surprise by the change of the seasons, and, yet, I always seem to feel as if each individual moment lasts for a near eternity. I guess that you could say that I’m depressed. I do well enough to remember to appreciate what I used to love and to be kind, though. All that I really want out of life is to love and to be kind. I used to think that I was sort of like you. Marie once told me that we looked alike. I couldn’t understand how until I found myself caught by my own reflection in a shop window one rainy Sunday afternoon. I had the uncanny experience of déjà vu. You made the same forlorn expression, listening to an acoustic live recording by Spiritualized, during one of your bouts apart from Marie. We were both sort of listless, I guess. We both felt like there wasn’t a world for us, or one of us and her. We both just couldn’t seem to create one, somehow. I didn’t cope like you did, though, and, so, I guess that we’re not so much alike. I hope that you won’t take that as too much of a dig; it’s just that I feel like I’ve come to an odd kind of wisdom after all of these years. It’d probably be good for you to hear, but you probably wouldn’t listen. Isn’t it strange that I’ve addressed this to you? We were never close. I’d like to talk to you for some reason now, though, but I can’t quite place why. I hope that you get away. I’ve spent all of these years waiting for you to turn yourself in like Markos. I guess that I, like her, just wanted some form of closure. I don’t wait anymore, though. I just hope that you put it all behind you somehow and stay free.