Calcutta, India
February 23, 1985

Dear Folks,

The slow waters of the river cast back the sun's last light like some old dirty mirror. This was, I pondered sadly, perhaps the final time our meandering paths would ever cross. For behind me were the entire width of the Indian subcontinent and the 1,500 miles of the Grand Trunk Road.

I was done, or nearly so. Calcutta, the "Royal Route's" eastern-most anchor, was but a few hundred meters away at the end of the bridge on which I'd paused. It was so hard to believe I'd actually done it, actually made all those supposedly "deadly" and "diseased" miles between the Afghanistan border and Calcutta on foot and alone.

Gripping the bridge railing and standing tall, I looked back toward the land to which I'd just given so much of my time and emotions. A river breeze tousled my hair and tickled the stubble on my cheeks. I laughed aloud, causing a rainbow of parrots to stretch out over the river. How utterly absurd to think that all I have seen, learned and felt these past months could ever be put into ordinary words! There was nothing in any dictionary that could have described my time here.

I watched in awe as the sun settled onto the lance of a poor farmer's rake and burst into the heraldic rays of a magic wand. Was not all I'd seen the greatest magic possible? Surely every second was a miracle.

A rumble to my right caused me to turn. There, with its smokestack horns flaring and its dark labyrinth snarling, lay the "Black Hole" . . . Calcutta! With a never-ending poverty stirring restlessly inside its hulk, it looked to be the most evil of urban pain. But it didn't scare me in the least. If I am sure of anything, it is that fear is an unnecessary part of life. Oh, to be sure, there were dangers inside that beast, but I also knew from my journeys that they would quickly flee in the face of boldness.

My walking has shown me that fear need be a reality only to those who don't care to see past man's false worlds and experience the universe as it really is. So much of what we have been told in ignorance is taken for granted, when all we need do is look for ourselves to see that what we had feared is really absurd. Why, I wondered sadly, do so many end their pilgrimage in life with empty eyes, when all those years they had been surrounded with so much wonderment?

India had shared much with me, and not all of it was beautiful, particularly the widespread bribe-taking, police brutality and horrible public education and high illiteracy. Yet, I also knew that even those had been invaluable to me, if I realized that those things were not to feared, but to be viewed as a challenge.

An infant democracy of only 38 years, India's philosophy for its nearly one-billion people is taken from Mahatma Gandhi, a simple villager who became a dominant figure in their war for independence from the British. As our Martin Luther King did later, Gandhi stressed non-violence and peaceful co-existence. Because of my being from the nuclear superpower America, I found myself continually having to answer for the current nuclear race madness between the United States and the Soviet Union. India, the leader of the Third World (or the "third superpower," as they like to say) forced me into being a sort of "backroad diplomat" more times than I cared for.

All across this world, even in some of the most isolated spots, I have found the vision of a dead planet, charred by nuclear war, to be on most people's minds. Their sense of fatalism and their staunch conviction that nuclear destruction from the arsenals of America and Russia is a certainty is enough to shake the confidence of even the most naive optimist. In India that sense of doom was the strongest yet.

Unfortunately, I had no answers for their worried faces. I have no clear idea why the superpowers keep building so many nuclear weapons. I could, however, share the words of a village sage I shared tea with one night: "My child," he said slowly, staring into a campfire, "if you want peace, look not at others' faults, but to your own. You and I and the rest must learn to understand that none is a stranger. The world belongs to all. When we seek only for goodness and the beauty God has placed in every single man and woman, then will evil lose its hold. Then we will know peace."

Of all the treasures India gave me, surely that sage's words were some of the most priceless. They were nothing new, of course, for those same words have been said in a million other ways by countless men of peace. Yet, the truth in those words still rings out as crisply as ever.

Now, if only more would have the boldness to live those words.

Taking one last look at an Indian sunset, then at a garland swirling down the Ganges, I shouldered my heavy pack ... and continued my journey.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dhanbad, India
February 10, 1985

Dear Folks,

I shall never forget the roses: so large and so regal as to be from the pages of a tale, each flower a perfect sculpture of nature's poetry.

Nor shall the kindly image of Baba (the Elder) be easily dismissed from my mind. His mysterious figure had guided me to those roses . . . and to the very special gift of love they watched over.

Foolishly, I had wandered from the Grand Trunk Road to follow the banks of a small river channel that seemed to be paralleling the road. However, the river soon veered sharply to the south, and I had little choice but to plunge into a thick forest of bamboo shoots and banyan tentacles in the direction that I hoped the road still lay. Soon I was snarled in the vine and root cords of the leafy net draped about my stumbling figure, haunted by the approaching night and unseen wild cries. Worse, I was in the region of Uttar Pradesh, the home to India's most deadly cobras and many of the nation's man-eating tigers. Why just the day before I had read of a veteran British guide being killed in the bush of Uttar Pradesh by one of those tigers.

As dusk became thicker and every trail I stumbled along led me only to more fleeting shadows and confusing swamp, I began to wonder if the maze in which I was trapped might be my last vision of this world.

It was in a raffish jungle where my worried eyes first met the little citadel of silence and humility that others respectfully called Baba. At the time I was over 700 miles into India, and I should have been advancing toward my final destination of Calcutta--almost an equal number of miles to the east. Instead, I was hopelessly lost.

Then, suddenly, as composed as a monk and looking as if he'd been patiently awaiting me, there stood Baba, around a curve in the trail. To my relief, a glint of recognition shone from his peaceful eyes at my mention of the elusive highway. Uttering not a single word, he turned and glided away down the footpath, having simply nodded that I should follow him. And yet, even after all I'd been through, I hesitated: a strange creeping tingle pricked at my mind.

Very quickly I realized my monkish saviour was being swallowed by the jungle, and I raced toward the fading form as the forest's thorny fingers grasped at me. As I teetered from my pack's weight and tripped from time to time over the roots of trees, my eyes clung to the steady stranger's back always just ahead and out of reach.

At last we exited the jungle and came upon an enormous checkerboard of inlaid sky mirrors that were race paddies speckled with snow-white herons. We splashed and splished our way over the perfectly square paddies to a distant roadway of asphalt and broad shade trees. At the road a divine scent enchanted my senses, and I looked across the empty road to be dazzled by the magnificence of roses growing prolifically on the front wall of a house.

Leading me past the roses, through a tall gate and under an inconspicuous sign which read The International Guest House, Baba guided me up onto the columned veranda of a beautiful European-styled villa. Completely uninhabited, it was the quietest and cleanest home I'd seen along the Grand Trunk Road.

Waving away my wallet, my guide-turned-host handed me the home's keys and wandered off. Inside the double doors I settled down in a luxury of wicker furniture and privacy, all the while marveling that such a beautiful place could be in such a secluded area, a place where foreign visitors were surely rare. I reclined onto the soft bed and was soon sound asleep.

I took my bath the next morning in the same manner I have had to do all across India: quickly emptying pails of icy well water over my loudly protesting bones. But in this particular bath I had good reason to celebrate, and to even take an extra baptism or two--privacy! For the very first time I had no large crowds of gawking villagers for bathmates. Only me--me!

It was the first bath in a long time that I came away from feeling totally cleansed. Awash in perfumed mist, warm sunrays, and the sparkle of watery diamonds dripping from the petals all around me, I set out to see who was responsible for this secret paradise. My answer lay but three strides away, around the nearest corner of the house in a little garden of gold roses.

Beneath the sheltering branches of a wizened old mango tree stood two ordinary headstones. The one on the left was etched in the flowing script of Hindi, the one on the right in the stoic characters of English. Humbly and soon with tears stinging my eyes, I read its special message: The divine souls of an extremely simple couple of this area, who symbolized the ideal of love, compassion and selfless service to mankind, are resting here in peace.

This place has been constructed by their son in the memory of his most ideal parents, as an expression of his extreme devotion and love towards them. Having founded this memorial he has made a meek effort to give concrete form to his parents' feelings of "welfare of all."

What an honor to have been invited into such a home--one built entirely from love and devotion! And what a strange coincidence that the sole person who held its keys had been there in the jungle when I'd needed shelter the most. I picked two wildflowers and gently placed one on each grave.

That day stretched into three, and never a single rupee of payment was wanted, or even accepted, from my willing pockets. To the Hindus, one of the saddest tragedies anyone can suffer is that of being separated from one's family, particularly one's parents. I have noticed that in India particularly, most sons never leave the area of their parents. And so it was that many farmers and villagers, some with small gifts of fruit or vegetables, visited me at the guest house to let me know in their own subtle way that I was still among a family of sorts. Some stopped by just long enough to ask where I was from and where I was going (as if they didn't already know), while they puffed on one of their crude and bitter bitas (cigarettes.) Others stayed for hours and took their turn trouncing me at chess, deftly capturing all the pebbles we had standing in for absent pawns and rooks. Usually in the background there were laughing children, playing another one of their unusual badminton games in which marigolds were substituted for birdies and hands became rackets.

Eventually I learned bits and pieces about the devoted son who had built the guest house. He had lived in West Germany, having gone there many years before as a young man from a
nearby village, and he had been fortunate enough to land a good job with the government. However, having found the material riches he'd hoped for, he was still plagued by homesickness. Acutely aware of how it was to be alone and in a strange culture, he'd had the home built to shelter and provide comfort to any foreigner who should need it. They would not, he hoped, feel so far away from family and friends as he had all those gray, rainy German evenings.

The night before my departure I sat up late reading the messages of gratitude contained in the guest house's log book. Since the house was but three years old and unknown to all except the occasional foot or bicycle traveler who chanced upon it, there had been only a few guests inside its walls. Smiling broadly, I noted I was the thirteenth, a very lucky number in India, where many associate the meaning "giving to all" with it.

I was also the first American, though most of the writing was in English, the common tongue of the world anymore. One passage held a particular fascination for me, written by another foot traveler, dated July 9, 1984. Shozo Nakamura, a Japanese from a city named Gifu, had written:
I'm walking around the world. But yesterday I got sick. Maybe I caught cold. So when I reached this International Guest House, I was real happy, like oasis in the desert. The rest was in fluent Japanese, of which I know nothing. But then that hardly mattered...I had no doubt that the very same emotions and thoughts of joy that he'd gone on to express would soon be flowing from my very own heart and pen.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Varanasi, India
January 27, 1985

Dear Folks,

Thunder boomed. Water drummed relentlessly against water.

Rushing bodies and weaving bicycles, their movement intensified by the pitch blackness and angry horns, surged against and past me. It was all I could do not to stop, turn my tired leached body around, and become another piece of human driftwood. How tempting to let myself be swept back down the Grand Trunk Road to the quiet little side pools of mud huts and banana trees where most of the mobs were undoubtedly heading.

Those rushing past me were anxious not so much to escape the cold winddriven rain, as they were the mire of painted flesh, bad-sweet odors, and ankle-deep mud in which they had spent much of the day. Over two million Indians--all Hindu and mostly very poor--had made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Allahabad in the past week to celebrate the festival of Mankar Sankranti. From all over the nation they had come, most with babies in both arms and pots and blankets on their heads.

"Mother Ganga," the Ganges River, had called their souls. It was the time of the new year to bathe body and spirit in her oily, muddy flow, to wash away sins and give the gods reason to smile once again.

Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Ganesh, Durga--all the countless lords and goddesses of a Vedic past, dating back thousands and thousands of years--danced in all the brown eyes tumbling by me. Even in many of the lifeless eyes, so pervasive in India, there glinted a hope of new energy.
Beneath a heaven exploding with lightning, the tumbling river of humanity and its many tributaries flashed intermittently into countless sharply-contoured details: ragged vagrants huddled between crumbling temple columns, broken-spirited horses, bent-back dogs, scavenging sows scurrying ecstatically from one littered shop front to another, their little piglets scrambling to keep up.

In the darkness following each flash of lightning the vermillion tikka dots and candy-colored stripes on the foreheads of the pilgrims glowed with an eerie vividness. Like sailors with
freshly-tattooed anchors, they wore their beacons proudly. It was their outward proof, along with their exhilaration, that they have journeyed somewhere special.

Later, while slogging through flooded streets in search of a non-existent hotel bed, the haunting image of a pretty child leapt at me just before another crack of thunder. Behind a smiling face that could have been from a broken stick doll, she was dragging bent useless legs. As soaked and sunken as I was, I couldn't help feeling that the lack of bitterness in her eyes was the blessing she had received.

Morning came cool, misty, pure, and rapidly changed into warmth under the usual spring-like sun. In late afternoon I wandered on, glad to be free of Allahabad's choked streets, but sad to leave the fatherly bearded Sikhs who rescued me from the stormy night. Very soon after leaving their fortress of a temple, I was at the Ganges herself. Already the bridge was choked with mufflerless three-wheeled taxis and rattling windowless buses filled with still more pilgrims, coming to catch the end of the month-long bathing festival.

On the mud flats along the roiling river current was the largest number of tents I had seen in my life. The patched, angled canvases of Mother Ganges's brood left no gaps between myself and the far flat horizon. The notes of flutes and playing children floated up to me, along with the smoke of all the campfires. The squatting lumps ringing the fires took me back to the gypsies of Turkey. Those seclusive but friendly nomands never traveled as lightly as these Indians. Their camps had been of warmer teepees, grazing pack horses, and the smells of wool and leather and roasting corn. The gypsy camps had been small enough to be romantic, but such camps as these beside the Ganges were too overwhelming to be anything but a spectacle. I continued east, contented to leave such places to other explorers less loathsome of crowds and noise.

Four days later, downriver from Allahabad, I came to Varanasi (or Benares, as most still say in deference to its ancient name). Where Allahabad was a place to renew the soul, or in a sense be reborn, Varanasi was reserved for the dead. Here is where the Hindu faithful have their spent bodies of this incarnation consumed by fire and then tossed into Mother Ganges. It is a returning of themselves to the All.

And yet, ironically, the very magnitude and (alas) profitability of an industry as stable as that of Death has attracted to Varanasi a greater clamor of life than is to be found in most cities several times its size. Swept along by the tide of voices and crying babies, one nearly forgets about the pyres burning nonstop along the river. The wistful shouts of the religious paraphernalia vendors, the streets crammed with rickshaws, the children charging from everywhere to practice on me their school English made Death seem a "has-been."

"Good morning, sir!"

"What is you name?"

"Sir, my name is..."

Down at the river, at the smokey gate to Death itself, there is the greatest display of life anywhere: Curly-tailed monkeys screech from temple walls; Children rake embers from spent pyres for their mothers to cook their meals on; Cows savor marigols garlands that had decorated the deceased; Brightly-dressed old women cackle delightfully at each other's stories, their voices more vigorous than the logs crackling beneath the burning bodies. And, as if to show Deat once and for all that it is not be taken seriously, there are thousands of persons of all ages splashing merrily in the spots in the river where all the ashes and charred bones of the dead are raked.

In the evenings in Varanasi, the sun becomes as a perfectly round dot of immense beauty, like a sort of celestial tikka dot. When it sets, it leaves behind a flaming world and a din that never softens until just before it rises again. The sky at dusk turns the color of the ashes around the pyres, and it reflects off a wide, slow Ganges etched with criss-crossing rowboats and junks. Silently, the black, featureless forms of the boats drift past the flaming pyres like restless spirits that have been freed by the pyres' fires but are still reluctant to leave behind all the laughter and merriment.

On my final day in Varanasi I stepped from my back-alley hotel to take one more good look at a city that, much like India itself, is too lively to ever begin to know. Just outside the hotel entrance I was stopped by the smiling round face of what was surely one of the most exotic beings on my journey. The smile and eyes of this ancient holy man in saffron robes spoke to my imagination of mucj mystery and beauty. My heart pounded. What an endless source of delights this world could be!

Politely, kindly, the Chinese-looking Buddhist monk told me in his halting English that he was a Tibetan lama. And that with him were two of his Buddhist devotees.

They were the most compelling humans I had seen since leaving Europe. On their backs were crude packs of board and cloth. They had journeyed from the hidden heights of the Himalayas to learn more about the world below their solitary monastery.

"What is your name?" the monk asked softly, as all three bowed toward their tattered sneakers.

With the excitement of an excited schoolboy, my voice rang out, "Sir, my name is Steven!"

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Agra, India
January 7, 1985

Dear Folks,

My ears were struck by the shrill of a single cicada: brilliant, eerie, a sound as sharp as two finely-edged swords brushing in midair. Gingerly, I pushed a hand-stitched blanket of burlap from my eyes. A farmyard of silvery moonlight and statuesque oxen, still tethered to their clay feeding bin, floated into view. The largest of the bulls, Zebus, a veritable giant with a floppy hump as thick as a fat monkey, turned his long neck ever so slightly, and the small bell secured to it tinkled with a beautiful subtleness.

Beside me, on another blanket spread on the same straw-covered dirt floor, a black-skinned boy stirred uneasily in his sleep. He was of the lowest caste, a shudra, and I wondered if perhaps the ox's bell had stirred in his subconscious a fleeting image of all the udders to be drained by his hands in the morning.

The gentlest of breezes kissed my forehead. Mother Nature's sweet perfumes momentarily transfixed me. Images of the farm I had explored beneath a pink evening sky drifted into my mind: a bent and toothless ancient grandmother squatting barefoot on the cold, finely-swept dirt beside a broken clay pot, churning milk in the pot as she sings; a shy young mother plucking ripe guavas from branches bent to moist clay because of the sunny fruit's abundance, as her baby clings papoose-style to her rainbow-colored dress; lean beautiful children, playful and friendly, taking my hands and walking along, oftentimes stopping to burst into somersaults and laughter.

How easy it feels to be superfluous in such surroundings as this farm and the region I have passed through the past 10 days, in no haste and not in want of any gainful destination. This is the land where it is said the Hindu god Krishna played and teased his love-struck human friends over 5,000 years ago. Where, as a boy of indescribable charm and disconcerting smiles, he played his flute and danced with the cow herder girls, the Gopis, his almond eyes agleam with the sparkle of heaven and flowers.

In many of the meticulously-cared-for farm fields, the time-darkened ruins of formerly graceful temples have stood as numerous as the stumps of an old and great spiritual forest. Many of the keepers of those temples, still topped with prayer flags, have somehow sensed my passing and had me go behind their walls to be fed and sheltered from the foggy nights. Never have I found heaven and its God to be of so many forms, nor so many confidently hopeful, happy, obedient devotees.

The members of the various religions have been as different and colorful as the innumerable tropical birds swarming through the forests like winged kaleidoscopes. They have ranged from one group that dresses entirely in burlap sacks, to one that is heavily financed by American pocket change and whose well-mannered, cologned disciples live in spacious, sterile apartments and dance wildly to sequin-covered deities housed in an enormous palace built of the finest marble and crystal chandeliers dollars can purchase.

I even had an audience with my first "saint," although I must confess that, after humbly raising my eyes from my bare feet to his gleaming white beard and gown, I could not bear to gaze upon him for very long. His nervous eyes revealed, all too painfully, the real reasons for his six automobiles and all the immense property he had lately felt in need of acquiring.

India, it is said, is a religious experience. I can vouch for that. Self-serving saints and monied statue worshippers aside, there is unquestionably something here that plays with attentive minds and souls. This has been particularly true in the countryside, where the hard glare of technology is practically nil. There, mixed with the pastel shades of yellow mustard flowers and wispy, green eucalyptus leaves, a clear and subtle illumination of the oneness of existence does reach the spirit. As simple and uneducated as most are, the farmers and their families bear the calm of contented monks. They are happy, and Nature reflects that joy. The people laugh so naturally, so effortlessly, as do I when watching with delight the many wild monkeys and peacocks each day.

What a pleasure to again see man and woman as equals, to not see the women cowering and hidden away like inhuman objects, as they are in the staunchly male-controlled Muslim societies. In this serene and indiscriminate domesticity, there murmurs a common pulse of being: there is no hesitation to tie up a loose blouse, or roll up a sleeve, and help another with his or her labor, or for the animals and their keepers to work together.

My eyelids closed, heavily, slowly. Sounds of a world not quite asleep trailed across my fading thoughts . . . the soft rhythm of a baby swaying in a wicker basket; a dog's paws scampering to--or maybe from--a suspicious moon shadow; a field mouse scratching curiously inside my backpack; a housewife in the heart of one of the mud huts, clustered in the farm's center, chanting prayers before a simple altar, her prayer beads rustling nervously every so often. The sounds, as much as all the glories and love I've experienced in the past 8,300 miles of walking, assure me there is much more to life than the obvious.

And yet the tears fall...again. My spirit is still so numb from the news I received on Christmas night that Dad had died, that he no longer will be anxiously awaiting my figure to come back up our long driveway. I cry because I loved him, still love him. Because in spite of all the miles between me and home, I can feel too strongly the void his sudden absence has brought to my life.

As I suspect too many other children do with their fathers, I took him so much for granted. He broke down and cried when I left, so afraid he'd never see me again. His intuition proved correct. Now it is my turn to weep.

I have plodded along in a state of amazement, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping. One must have a stout heart to follow the unusual road I have taken, for it is long and full of sacrifice and decisions to be made. But something tells me the road I follow is no more "heroic" or difficult than that road the parents of a large family must take to see their children become responsible adults.

Perhaps, like me, Dad also sensed there is a source for the deep restlessness that stirs the human soul, and that the path leading there is not a path to a strange place, but the way to our real home. Now perhaps he is walking the path home himself. Maybe he's already there. I hope so. For, God willing, we may yet embrace each other one more time.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Choma, India
December 31, 1984

Dear Folks,

With 15,000 extra police manning the election polls in New Delhi on the December 24 elections, peace reigned in that crowded megalopolis over the Christmas season. Still, I cried.
In a phone call to home on Christmas night, I learned my father is no longer with us. After years of struggling, his heart finally surrendered last Thanksgiving, my mother told me softly.

Not wanting to talk, yet not wanting to be alone, I have walked these past six days in silence. More than anything, I have wanted to end what seems like a silly, stupid journey, and go home.

As my family has become little more than a long-ago memory, I find myself increasingly gripped by terrible bouts of homesickness. I reflect often how all through South Italy and the Muslims' paternalistic societies, I had watched the close, lifelong bonds between the sons and fathers with a deep envy. Now, my own father is no more. He will not be waiting at home for me. And there is nothing I can do.

Dad had been ill for many years with heart trouble, and there was no way of knowing when the end would come. I had gambled he might outlive my walk, just as he had so many of his doctors.

In the final weeks leading up to my departure from home, I had spent every evening with Dad in his bedroom, watching the television news programs. Afterward, we'd spend a long time discussing the woes the newscasters had shared with us that day. Though I never allowed it to show, those few precious hours we had together meant more to me than any others. And, by the way Dad would stall me from rushing back off to my typewriter or maps, I realized that he, too, feared we would never see each other again.

One day last September, in a little town in Turkey, a small group of excited telephone linesmen braved a fierce rainstorm to secretly present me with a free, though probably illegal, telephone call to home. While lightning crackled and a cold northerly blew, the bravest of the group scrambled up a pole in a back alley and somehow connected their ancient field phone to a mess of wires overhead. After dialing and re-dialing for what seemed like an eternity, he finally got a distant ringing tone. A loud, happy shout went up from our soaked bodies.

Concentrating so hard that I forgot all about the rain water dribbling down my mustache, I silently prayed that through some miracle our fragile connection might hold. The ringing stopped. From another world far away came a teeny voice, like that of a child.

"Hello?" It was Dad.

"Hello?" he repeated.

"It's Steven," I screamed above the thunder and wind.

"Hello?"

I shouted my name again. But it was no use. For some reason he couldn't hear me.

Then, something happened that will haunt me to my own deathbed: There was another very weak "Hello?", a long pause, and then ...crying. So soft, and yet so clear over all those months of distance.

"Steve?" the trembling voice asked. "Steve? Is that you, son?"

Then ... he was gone: our fragile connection blown away by the howling wind.

It would be our very last contact on this world.

He had cried only once before that I could remember. It was on the cool April morning that I began the Worldwalk. Though he was so weak he had been confined to his bedroom for over a year, he somehow found the strength to greet me standing when I entered his bedroom to say goodbye. We stood before each other, unable to speak and barely able to look at each other, when suddenly he reached for me, as if he wanted more than anything to hug me.

I had had to grab him to steady him. He sagged into my arms weeping like a boy of 6, not a man of over 60.

"Please promise me one thing. Promise me you'll place a rose on my grave when you come home," he said.

I promised, hoping that such a scene would not come to pass.

No one who watched me leave home that morning knew of the horrible pain and sadness gripping my insides. All they saw was a confident and smiling young adventurer-to-be. No one knew the truth...no one, that is, except for the gaunt little man behind the crying eyes I noticed peering down at me from an upstairs bedroom as I was walking away.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)