One day he was walking along a cobblestone road, the kind that presently looked orange and pink under the setting sun of Naples because the sky was that very colour and the cobblestone road had the uncanny habit of reflecting that which was upon it and over it. To his left, the whitewashed houses were in the shadows of large pines and the forms of doors and windows made them look like paintings of horrified people with their mouths and eyes opened quite wide. But the trees were not their oppressors, so he climbed one of them to get a better view over the harbour.
He got sap on his hands as he made his way up, dangerously high, but he didn't care. When he got to the top, he could see the disc of the sun, hovering, the dial-less clock face, a sailing boat in the water below acting as a pendulum that had forgotten to swing back. From this perspective, the doors and windows of the whitewashed houses quite far below became thin lines and now looked quite happy. He wiped his hands on his pants, and to the right, the hills rose up out of the two-dimensional flatness of the afternoon to the reality of the time between sleeplessness and sleep.
A hummingbird hovered before his closed eyes. Upon opening them, he was so surprised by its presence that he breathed sharply and fell. On his way down, the mountains disappeared behind the whitewashed houses whose doors and windows once again resembled paintings of horrified people and he looked at his hands and noticed the sap and he heard in his head the tick-tock of the ships at the dock rocking easily in the current under the sun whose demise drew nearer...
The cobblestones drew nearer and he felt a gust of wind as the hummingbird lifted him slowly toward the stars that had now became the glittering hair of the city.