Before, we sat and stared out at the trees. Making food and making conversation. Food and shelter, the clothes upon my back, and a reason to spend the day otherwise. Because, as Annie Dillard says, you can’t take it with you. These days like coins dropping through an unseen hole in your pocket, clinking along the pavement and rolling into the gutter. Those days unspent, in rolls packed tight by the merciless crushing machinery around us. To disengage is to appear a failure in the soulless eyes of those watching you. To walk away is to sew that hole up, to turn your pockets inside out in defiance. In dreams I sink my hands into a deep sea of wild minutes and hours, their flashing sides unmarked by the greasy brand of a dollar sign. They swim untamed and free and I slip from the shore into their midst, shake off my rusty shackles and float away into the golden light.