A rare popcorn day, on the heels of a gas up and a doubling back with not enough time for coffee, before hours within the grasslands of Oklahoma, with detours for Fort Worth, Washington, D.C. and the next life, not counting the endless all too early dispatched. No Goncharov, but still deserving.

A walk along the greenway for the first time in a minute, just one foot in front of the other. Dirt stretches in the creekbed with puddles, and abandoned paperbacks, liquor bottles and clothing piles at a couple of benches, and foliage and wet pavement, cloudy skies, darker hours and cool weather.

It took me till this week’s last workday to get the hang of getting to work on close to time. As it turned out, maybe that was just in time, given what kept thousands of others from making it themselves. Convenience vs. the conveners, flight takers vs. flyer takers, time outers vs. out of timers.

Up in the darkness, with less taste for music to start because there’s more weather and cars in the way, plus one fewer lane and increased dawdling at the toll plaza. I’ll see if it changes once I get real sleep, or the holiday gets nearer. I’ll pass up tomorrow and next month’s swanky shindigs.

Airport terminals are my least favorite null spaces, counting their uniformly loud and echoey but not resonant acoustics, arbitrary uses of personal space, cruel and slap-happy approaches to time given its import. This makes folks who work there into puzzles on two legs, nominally upright but not.

Sore, so much so that I did the standing desk thing for the first time in months, and grouchy not from work but from having to look up and listen to someone insistent about it but weaselly so. I’d rather diffident but forthright, but here we are, yes? I’d missed yesterday’s, but here came today’s.

Up early and in earlier because the only way to run through the day is to run straight at it, build up momentum and let it carry you forward across the bridge, through the tunnel, around crowd members and into the individual perspective as it’s encountered, from street corner to barstool to bed.

When you know you’re walking and talking tomorrow, it’s good to shut up and be still for as much of today as you can. It’s the same advice the cat would have given me if we were on speaking terms. As such, we both made do with her purrs and meows and lap hops to my chin scratches and belly rubs.

The year has turned on several of its invisible hinges, 5 o’clock sunsets aside: a heater hauled down from a high shelf; teeth cleaned, with a return appointment set for six months out; an air ticket purchased to an alternate past. Next comes last year’s rains, returning for us high as passions.

Local news often means real 9th house type stuff: far journeys, publishing open minds, exchanging concepts across distances higher education. But of course its opposite is built in: a walk around the block, a quick hunt for an exchange of local thoughts, or an idea seeking bounds and bounce backs.