Willful exercise cut me off, jumped me into old places and new timelines, and jumpcut me into roles I’m unsure I recognize: first, the out-of-towner hearing the radio station spinning the same format decades later; next, the prodigal son eating fatted calf and seaweed salad, neither surf nor turf.

Maybe I mistook kindness for control, with the choices that followed compounding over time like interest. Maybe I spent too long in the gap between what I thought I heard and what I believed it might mean. There’s no way to unring the bell: doesn’t science say it is ringing somewhere for all time?

Running shotgun in a borrowed SUV through a hollowed out hometown, we ran errands, marveled at gloomy skies and tried to take our minds off early starts with road perspectives, ancient and all-too-modern neighborhood changes, parkways blocked off by police and hot French fries while racing sunset.

Nothing rides rails like trains of thought, neither wish nor may, neither would nor ought. From a station gate, a stairstep rise, a platform bench under watchful eyes, there are lights that stand, sound to enthrall riders answering distant calls to pull onward out of view of the likes of me and you.

So planes are still planes: you buy a ticket, you board, they go up, you freak out over turbulence, you sip V8 or juice, they come down, and you’re thousands of miles from where you started out in a different time zone. But that bit’s just space, and doesn’t even account for That Other Time Stuff.

I’ve no local yet to replace my old spot, which closed in September. I did find myself at World Grounds this morning with an hour free. There was coffee, à la carte menu items, weeklies on tables: if not for the running industrial floor fan in the open doorway, it could’ve been 2019, or even 1995.

In the bookstore, already wall to wall Christmas carols out of overhead speakers. At the pet store, more carols rain down in advance of an actual pet Santa appearance. At the chaat house, blessed respite. Then to the grocery store, with tiny trees for sale outside and carols with autotune blaring.

Sometimes there’s symmetry, but only if perception permits it. Toggle a domain’s PHP upgrade settings, then notice it’s about to expire so you renew it. Pick up a notepad, then realize it’s opposite the calendar from the last one started. Squint into the mirror while shaving and, well, say no more.

There was some Ceiling and Walls discourse early on. The day and its demands intruded soon enough, from early rain to an ocean of numbers into an empty hundred years of nothingness, with a looming gauntlet of words ahead. Tomorrow marks a half year, barely two hundredths of that. But first, sleep.