Unfortunately, I tell them now for the second time. Five minutes ago, my Visor PDA--on which I am writing this account as I fly from Vienna to Chicago, and as the passenger next to me (a self-professed man of leisure) drinks himself to sleep on port--failed and reset itself. I have rotten luck, sometimes, when it comes to preserving my work. Sasha likes to say I enjoy a "unique relationship with objects." Perhaps. Now, I return to this particular object feeling the too-familiar pang of lost prose.
If all goes well, one rewritten prelude will detail the characters and context of my journey to Georgia, and the other will be about the second inauguration of a George Bush in Washington, D.C.
A caveat: the story of my actual travels will seem more a string of snippets than a steady narrative. They're easier to write, and besides, that way I can skip the boring parts (come to think of it, I'm not sure this trip had any boring parts--I guess we'll see in the retelling.)
* * * * *
There should have been three characters in this story, but Karen fled to Cappidocia early on, opting against Georgia in favor of a canned tour of Turkey. As for Sasha--twenty-five years old, married--Sasha speaks more languages than there are nations in Europe. On top of that, he is a true intellectual virtuoso, able to leap with equal fluency between topics like postmodern philosophy, political geography and the law, in all their painstaking particulars. I have seen him author three brilliant (if erratic) short stories, and wrestle his way through many challenging (and, again, erratic) business negotiations.
True, I often err on the side of exaggerating my friends' virtues. Sasha himself acknowledges a number of "imperfections" in his character, though he wouldn't term them anything such. Among them, a certain mathematical impotence, a complete inability to arrive anywhere on time, and a sardonic wit that can draw blood.
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