climbing

I was driving in traffic up a steep hill. As I neared the top, my car slowed and struggled. It felt weak, unable to make it. I pressed my foot on the accelerator but the car flipped sideways and I fell out onto the road. I lay on the road, gripping the hot tar with my arms and legs, trying not to slide back down the hill. I felt stuck, unable to stand or move forward, as the traffic swerved around me.


A friend dropped me off, somewhere in the back streets of Kotara in Newcastle. I didn’t recognise the area but the roads seemed to be in a valley, lined with trees and shaded; they criss-crossed and twisted like a labyrinth. I walked the streets, in and out of neighbourhood properties, trying to find the right place. I walked into a house where I seemed to be expected. A meeting was taking place: four or five young men in their early twenties and a woman a little older than me. She started taking the meeting and it quickly became apparent that it was about a sales job. For some reason, the woman mentioned that she was forty-one and, although I am still in my thirties, I stood up and said that I was also forty-one and too old to be at this meeting—I didn’t want or need this job. I walked out the door, thinking that the rest of her meeting probably wouldn’t go too well. Outside, I was uncertain about which way to go. I surveyed the streets, wishing that my friend had waited for me. I felt that I should choose the steepest hill for surely that would lead out of the valley. Reading the street signs, I chose a street and with cement stairs leading straight to the top. I climbed the stairs but as I neared the summit, I began to lose the strength in my upper legs. I had to use my arms and my legs to climb the stairs, to keep going, so that I would make it to the top.