I wouldn't sail this ship if I were you
1. Do not stray from the path.
2. When you stray from the path, know that you can never quite go back to the same one. But there is always still be a way out.
3. There will be side streets down which you may see a lone bagpiper, or the embassy of a nation you have never heard of, or an ancient wooden door that stands a crack open, or a shop that sells sweets from the exact other side of the world.
4. There will come a time when it rains, and you will be near those buildings. Those buildings with their great metal-and-stone lobbies and their glass and their plants in pots and lifts and escalators in perpetual silent motion behind the security gates. Know that there are beings within who will chip out your soul from your body’s stone slab, and worse: they will teach you that this is what everyone does. Know too that sheltering from the rain is a thing that is protected, for a short while.
5. Those beings have loves and lives and difficulties of their own, too. You may find yourself at dinner with them. Or you may see them at dinner through the plate glass of the night city. Sometimes they have secrets like splinters of diamond wedged into their busy hearts. If you can pull these splinters loose, you may be allowed beyond the silent security gates.
6. Do not do this. Never do this. If you look up as the moon rises and find yourself on the wet streets with a handful of diamond splinters, drop them in a drain. You will be a long way from the path, but there is still time.
7. In any case, if you find yourself at dinner, do try the duck.
8. There will be a river to cross, but you may do so by any of a hundred bridges. Do not fret: this choice is not important.
9. There will be a door in a wall. There will be a forest, but it will have people instead of trees, and the wolves will be beautiful. There will be a castle, and you can enter it with coins. There will be a cottage by the water where an old lady will sell you tea. You will know all these things when you see them.
10. If you stray until nightfall, the forest will be lit with neon and rippling with music. It will be wine and sweat and breath and skin. It may not be resistable. And you may find yourself in a cold morning, overgrown with all the forest’s ivy, as if a hundred years have passed. Know then that you are not rooted in place. You are a long way from the path, but there is still time.
11. The other side lies over the mountains. They say that in the mountains there are beings who must be paid in blood. Ignore this message. When you come to have tea with them, remember that they have lives and loves and difficulties of their own. If you can pay them in stories, they will give you safe passage up the concrete stairs.
12. Out past the concrete stairs, the city ends.
13. Know that there are many ways to be unscathed, and not all desirable; and many ways to leave, and not all desirable. Know that you have loves and a life and difficulties of your own, too. Know that there is no shame in staying. This is how we came to the city for the first time, too.
