It seems to me now that Fanshawe was always there. He is the place where everything begins for me, and without him I would hardly know who I am. We met before we could talk, babies crawling through the grass in diapers, and by the time we were seven we had priced our fingers with pins and made ourselves blood brothers for life. When ever I see my childhood now, I see Fanshawe. He was the one who was with me, the one who shared my thoughts, the one I saw whenever I looked up from myself.
But that was a long time ago. We grew up, went off to different places, drifted apart. None of that is very strange, I think. Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control. and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.
Exerpt from the Locked Room, by Paul Auster