Never underestimate how much I am a stranger to my own city. If there’s an opposite to knowing things like the back of your hand… well. “Iron deficiency,” was the latest explanation, and fairly likely in that it was offered as I pawed around the glass for the last piece of ice. Apparently— and this you can judge for yourself, I don’t expect you to accept it unchecked as I did— an iron deposit in the nose is our tie to magnetic north. Should it get depleted, all sense of direction is gone; you’re turning right instead of left, going east for the sunset.

I was just lost to and from the bookshop, the good one, where I know everyone working, if not by name, at least by sight: the bearded tall man, the blue haired girl, the one with freckles and plaid. As some kind of consolation, unrelated as it may be, the freckled guy smiled, searched high and low for Joseph Heller, slipped the war movie in for free.

Last night the moon was low and drunk, tonight it’s howling rain. There was a recent stealth operation for a wild scrub pine; Christmastime is here.