He would take up the suggestions of a moment, seeming to care little about how he spent his substance. It was something quite detached from him, he had only to look back to see how over time every rule had been bent for the sake of a correction that certainly did not come. But now the game played itself out with little risk, there was not much at stake. Any new direction that emerged would first have to engage in endless revisions, make sense of all that past, all those afternoons and mornings, the mugs and gearsticks, the smells of salt, tea and tar, his eyes opening onto as many common days, pink, grey and blue. If there was a thing to be found it had surely already been stumbled over too many times, the opposite of nostalgia being only another and thinner nostalgia. In the event, the only surprise was how gently these suggestions, with all their flutter and rehearsed abstractions, could be laid aside.