‘…When I am on a pedestal

You did not raise me there

Your laws do not compel me

To kneel grotesque and bare…’

Leonard Cohen from the song ‘Avalanche’

“Taken aback by the exclusive wilderness that eclipsed my ‘Paradise Wasted’ I footslogged best I could, ever onward knowing this neck of the woods was not for me, not one little bit. For here I found myself upon a foundation of outcast fragments, sun-bleached dog’s mess, unstable drabbest grey paving, occasionally a hint of aesthetically tolerable cobble stones, all within a sturdy barricade of mind-numbingly conventional real estate, a place where hosts of small children toted sharp blades, plucked the wings off butterflies and chewed tobacco.  All I possessed was what I left fool’s paradise with at the time of my prescribed banishment, namely nothing at all.

Almost crazed, still marvelling at the ungraciousness of Earth’s mortal souls, finally I reached…