In a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and winding rivers, there lived a man who spent his days perched upon a weathered wooden chair on the front porch of his modest cottage. His eyes, a mirror to the vast expanse of his thoughts, gazed blankly into the distance as if searching for something just beyond the edge of his consciousness.

The man's mind was a void, a vast emptiness that seemed to swallow up any stray thought or fleeting emotion that dared to cross its threshold. He sat there, unmoving, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the bustling village around him.

Neighbors passing by would stop and exchange fleeting greetings with the man, but he hardly registered their presence. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and memories.

Some said he was a dreamer, a man who had wandered too far into the recesses of his own mind and had lost his way back to reality. Others whispered that he was haunted by ghosts from his past, memories that clung to him like shadows in the fading light of day.

But the man paid them no mind. He remained on his chair, a silent sentinel guarding the threshold between the known and the unknown, his gaze fixed on a horizon only he could see. And there he sat, lost in the vast emptiness of his mind, a solitary figure in a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

There seemed to still be a thin line between his past and his present. A past that he couldn't and didn't want to let go. Maybe his past mattered more than his present. His dry eyes, that constantly traveled the world while the man himself remained rooted to his three-legged stool, told it all. He must cling to his old days because he needed it like he needed the oxygen that wind, his only moving companion around his house, fed him. Maybe his childhood left a mark on him. A mark so worthy to nourish with memories and thoughts that invigorated the sentimental feel, or a scar that he wanted to forget but lingered on, haunting and taunting his frailty.

Perhaps he could do with a friend or two if he lost all his family, or if they abandoned him for good and moved far, far away from him and what he owned or imagined to possess, or if he made the fiercest choice to walk away from them, away into the darkness of Earth where all his beloved will hear from him no more. Cold, dead-silent and scary is life that you live alone. It must feel like being hand-tied in an abyss where above, below and beside you bay for your life. But an abyss has the much sought-after element of peace, because dark as it may be, an abyss doesn't attack, or does it? Could he have chosen a sombre life in a one-man house so that his life is shorter because he had been through it all and wanted no more? He must have despised the concrete jungles and their endless seas of humanity who bring nothing to happiness but noisiness and messiness and take no blame.

Folk had heard it from the grapevine that Samaritans who in different occasions offered to be kind to the lone ranger and even offered him food and drink were met with utter stare from his hard working eyes and silence, so much so that they never made the second attempt to help. Neither would the man take goodies from anyone including cash! So, Manna from heaven isn't everyone's longing after all? Could the man have been so self-sufficient but poverty-stricken in disguise because his life only depended on a status that he must, East or West, not move so far away from a niche of faking life or the worst will come to him.

The man's eyes mostly remained locked on a particular point on the horizon. That point is the spot about 30 degrees to his right, where the road winds up the hill, reaches the top, and then disappears from sight. The trees are sparse up there. Nothing blocks the view at that peak of the hill. Perhaps 3-4 travelers a month appear on the road and continue on their way. Usually the travelers are in groups of 3 or more and have their pack animals, because day to day travelers never use this lonely road. This road is for the stalwart, the strong, the adventurous ones who seek fortune, work, or even merriment beyond the borders of their own small country.

When they go by, his eyes retain the blank, stoic, melancholy stare. Invisible to the world are the few seconds of rapid heartbeats, the short intake of breath, the wordless prayer and hope that she might be wending her way on the road, coming back to him, to their home, to rebuild and forgive. In the seemingly endless decades, she never came back.

The shadowy memories float to the forefront and then recede with no particular pattern. They both hated the concrete jungle. The ladder leading to the Horn of Plenty just never stayed straight and they just slipped down more rungs than they went up. That tiny 3-inch newspaper ad to start a new life in the country gleamed golden and bright. A small home, jobs, country life, new dreams, simple hopes, plans just between them.

Does life change in one moment or like the slow drip of water that bores a hole in a rock one drop at a time? The answer is: both.

The fleeting memories usually cloud the most painful one. The day she said, "I'm sorry", and he just turned his back.