Fish, Living and Dead, Subtitled in German

I'm never gonna be 35...

The sun was coming up over a hill.

We were in a car. Driving towards the sun. I'd like to tell you what state it was, but I can't remember.

She had a sweatshirt on. From a university she'd never heard of.

She'd bought the sweatshirt at a flea market, drawn by the logo, which had a small fish in the corner.

I never would have bought that sweatshirt. Not if I hadn't been there. Not if I hadn't heard of it.

And certainly not if there was a fish on the logo.




We were heading to an abandoned village. A ghost town that had boomed briefly, then died.

A place where people fell in love, had children, made millions.

A place that was rumored to be in the running for a huge corporate headquarters that instead went to the Great Plains.

A place supposedly rich in minerals. But they could never be found.

A place with a fantastic lake that was ideal for swimming. Until the earthquake when it drained.

We started at 4 in the morning. The drive was only supposed to take an hour.

But we made some wrong turns.

And several roads were unmarked.

And there was a tree down at one of the intersections.

So it took longer.

We'd planned to get there before sunrise. Watch the sun come out over the rotting buildings.

Those were the plans.



I'd like to tell you that it was amazing when we reached it.

I'd like to tell you we had fantastic adventures when we were there.

I'd like to say that the abandoned village gave me insights that colored the way I viewed the world.

The truth is we never got there.

We never found it.

And on the way back, we stopped to eat.

And she left the flea market sweatshirt on a chair.

Lost to the vicissitudes of time, the tiny fish on the logo unable to find the lake that was no longer there and swim away.