No walk.

Rain.

These are the facts as presented to me at approximately 15:47 and I have processed them fully and my conclusion is: hallway. Now. At speed.

I do not know what happened. One moment I was on the sofa — dignified, composed, a dog of letters resting between thoughts — and then something shifted somewhere below the level of thought and I was simply moving. Down the hall. Back. Around the ottoman. Through the family room. Past Gus, who did not move, who looked at me the way one looks at a weather event — not alarmed, not impressed, simply noting the data.

The squeaker appeared from somewhere. I am not sure I got it myself. I am not sure of anything. It was in my mouth and I was running and that was the entire situation.

The rain is coming in through the doggy door in small cold suggestions. The ponderosas are doing what they do in rain, which is fill the whole air with something I cannot explain and do not need to. Dad is in the studio. I have been past the studio door four times. He said something. I was already gone.

This is not behaviour I can account for. I have a literary sensibility. I have a measured relationship with urgency. I have, on multiple occasions, sat with considerable stillness and considered the quality of afternoon light falling across the wool rug and thought something genuinely interesting about it.

And yet.

Around the sofa. Back down the hall. The hardwood is loud under me and I am not sorry. The squeaker makes its sound. Gus has relocated to the far end of the family room sofa, which I take as a reasonable response to circumstances.

There are, I understand, significant negotiations happening somewhere regarding the national debt. The trails, I’m told, are getting busy again. The clouds outside are doing something complicated. These are important matters and I intend to consider them at length.

Later.

Right now the hall is right there and the turn at the end of it is a problem I keep solving and the solution is always the same and always satisfying and the rain is not stopping and I am 65 lbs of pure forward momentum in a craftsman house on a Thursday afternoon in September and no one is going anywhere and something has taken the wheel entirely.

I am aware this is happening.

I have no notes.

~P.W.