Cassette 6, side A, the past.

So let's talk about the first time I saw you.

The first time I saw you after the ten year sessions and pharmaceutical regimen.

The first time I saw you after I had been made to forget you.

You were outside on an autumn day.

You should always be outside on an autumn day.

You were far away from me, on the other side of a crowded courtyard but I knew it was you.

The sessions had not allowed me to remember you but in that moment I did.

I remembered everything.

Not in the distance but all in the here and now.

Feelings of years before suddenly fresh and brutal in the present, all of early childhood

were re-experienced in one autumn afternoon.

So let's talk about all the things I had forgotten about you until that moment.

I had forgotten that you laugh as if you're getting away with something.

You often were getting away with something but even when you weren't, even when there

was nothing to be getting away with you laughed like you'd won.

As if the joke is even funnier because someone somewhere doesn't want you to enjoy it.

As if the joke has been delivered to you in private, along secret channels and hearing

it, laughing at it is some kind of rebellion.

This isn't how you feel of course.

You know there is no one who does not want you to enjoy a joke now and again.

There is no one who does not want you to laugh.

...