LOOK AT THAT lamppost by the newspaper kiosk. No, not the one where the bike is locked. The other one. A woman just walked by it. A boy once leaned against it and wept.

Wherever you turn in this town, you come across reminders. You feel a bond with a place or a person, a tree or a bridge or the river itself. Then your first kiss comes back to you, or the memory of a grand disaster, the remnants of which still lurk somewhere in the basement of your mind. The trauma is so deep that every time you come upon that reminder you subconsciously change course. The lamppost does that to me. I frequently walk from one end of this town to the other. Every time I pass it by I pause, then cross the street and sit in the café and stare at it out the window. For the people of this town, this post is like all the rest, a place where the stray dogs lift their hind legs to urinate and young drug dealers lean as they sell their stuff. But for me it’s tied to Vavan. When I look at it, I relive the day my mother said, ‘Take your brother to town and help him start his military service.’