well it's over
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Goodbye, 2009 and the nameless decade.
Hello 2010 and what promises to be an interesting few years. I greet you in fine form, with a sprained ankle and a hand covered in a rash from greeting a dog. But I'm also surrounded by (adopted) family and this really does promise to be a memorable year.
And it's a new year under a blue moon, the last one 'til 2028. I ran out the final light of the decade wandering the neighbourhood near Mari's parents place.
Curiously, when blundering around in the remains of an old pig barn (photo below) I had a strange experience where I could clearly hear someone approaching from the far side of the hole-riddled concrete-and-fiberglass wall. I prepared a pleasant expression and made sure my camera's flash was charged for a last-second "accidental surprise flash in the face" (I find it good to keep people a bit off-balance when they've found me on their property) but .. no one came in.
I was standing about four-five meters into the frame above, and facing to the left. It wasn't a matter of hearing some bamboo knocking together or something like that. There was some bamboo around the back of the ruin, but that's not where the sound was coming from, and it was too regular and far too much like loud, clear footsteps to be bamboo. Regardless, there were none of the secondary noises that bamboo makes (creepy creaking sounds wouldn't have been welcome in any case) nor in fact was there any wind.
The footsteps sound resumed, then, somewhere off to the back of the structure a bit. I cleared my throat and made a few steps in the direction of the sound, baffled and with a tingle of apprehension. What the hell was making this sound?
The noise, seemingly from only 2-3 meters away from me on the far side of the wall, then stopped. I watched and waited for a while, then turned around and left that particular building to enter the next one. There I found that much of the space on the side of the 'noise' wall was impassibly overgrown and littered with old bamboo shoots and clutter. Clutter like saw blades and hatchets and low-hanging bits of the ceiling.
In other parts, the floor was old concrete, bare and patchy with lichen. Not the sort of thing on which loud footsteps would come unless you were making a point of it.
What with the sun having gone down and the general prominance of animal pens and things made for cutting other things, I decided at that time to leave.
As I returned to the family home I was greeted by the rising moon, huge over the horizon and bright in the clear winter air. We had a big meal, then at midnight ate soba noodles and drank champagne. Mari's grandmother gave me prune lozenges and a jar of prune extract for my health.