I'm in London not London, the abundant tubes leading out of the city, travelling around but I'm not recognizing any of it, none of it at all, it's not as I remembered...
I find a large vacant lot, much of it torn up by excavators, half of an old building still standing, it reminds me curiously of the new condo developments near the Hillhurst Community Center...
...Anyways, I have permission to be here, going in amongst the big piles of dirt being excavated I can see the giant ends of old books buried in the mud, I climb the hill and begin to pull out the books, I'm free to salvage what I can...
...the first find, giant, old pages, 200 pages at least, and I pull it from the muck and read the words and I'm thinking it's by Salman Rushdie, that can't be, this is far older than him, some odes to Satan or some such, not time to read, work is off for today but they're not stopping for me...I take it down the hill to a table I've set up, there's a cute blonde there and I'm showing her what I've found, I don't know her but she's agreeable and interested...
...Back up, into the muddy hillside, pulling out more books....and then I'm inside the tenement building, what hasn't yet been torn down, there's books here as well, odds and endments, some CD's, games I recognize from my previous life and I'm annoyed they've been left here, bits of me I'd forgotten about, there's an old book, about (???), and another, I'm pulling it apart, handwritten, a curiosity, scrapbook of somebodies life, handwritten and illustrated with artworks, and around every letter written in the book there's a picture or a story written, there are decoupage and paintings and other trifles of the authors life (a she, I'm presuming), I'm trying to date it, guess when she lived and wrote it, I'm convinced it's valuable, priceless, but I'm in a hurry, I resolve merely to gather it beneath the covers of another old book, I can discover it later, there's an antique typewriter, with a large brass screen above an ugly 50's keyboard and the logo "Royale" written in Gold letters, unplugging the typewriter (and someone is telling me there's a sheet of paper inside, between the brass screens, I don't check it, there's no time) I see the light fading beautifully behind the "Royale" logo, from between the screens where the sheet of paper is, I can do something with this, I will take it with me, to an airport with the books and ship them back to Canada before I go to Europe...