If you don’t live along the coast, or beside a river, or just in a valley (a low point, a slump, a dent in the landscape), you might live on a plateau. Imagine a mountain, a really big mountain, the biggest mountain in the world, then saw the top off. There you go. The air will be thinner and therefore manual labor and certain forms of abstract thought will be more difficult, but think of the views! There are some advantages to living on a plateau, but then again, it may bring you closer to God. Or gods, we can be non-specific on this. You may approve of the idea, but you wouldn’t want to live next to it, kind of like a strip club or the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal lies next to a river and in memory it seemed to rise out of the plains of Uttar Pradesh like some mammoth marble lily nourished by the tiniest stream. Something to do with sentiment freed from abstraction, I can’t remember, the air here is very thin.
is a peripatetic teacher whose writing has appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Shot Glass Journal, and Otoliths.
