She and I are the unintentional peas in a pod; five or six years ago we were introduced by friends who knew her, and her husband, first, and who thought of Jeff and I as "another Brian and Suzan." They were as right in many ways as they were wrong, for we are as radically different as we are eerily similar, and our friendships keep doubling over and crossing themselves and coloring and re-coloring over the lines as a result.

It wasn't spartan, and it wasn't center-aligned or itemized, but when I walked in and closed the door behind me I thought immediately of the simplicity of a monk's cell, and I looked at its inhabitant and thought, "I'd rename you 'Monk' if I thought I could make it stick." I said nothing.

The leaves threw themselves like lemmings across the road and I threw the Jetta from 'drive' to 'slalom,' tucking my earpiece into my left ear and beginning to dial. Fall had lit northeastern Alabama to incandescence, each leaf a sun-dappled facet, each turn an autumnal surprise."I'm going to be early," I said, looking down at my speedometer and wishing desperately for any errand on the northwest side of town that could cause me to avoid inconveniencing the person on the other end of the conversation.

We've relaxed since getting here, having put down our daily lives on the floor next to our bags and picking up something simpler. We've flitted from restaurant to restaurant, snagging wings here, Chinese there.This afternoon, we went gifting, bringing Patrick along for the plan of getting him a birthday shirt. A simple plan, a dress shirt; help Patrick finally find a dress shirt he liked that actually fit, buy it for him and wish him a happy birthday.

When we drove by, it was tantalizing. "Right over there, over that wall, there's the beach," Gareth said. It was dark, and all I could see was a vast expanse of nothing that might, or might not, have held shifting shimmers of reflected light from the streetlights around us.

Gareth gunned it, and we were gone. The water would have to wait for the next morning.

You cannot take the measure of a place without experiencing it with your own senses. I do not know this place, not yet; I know bits and pieces of roads and intersections, and the interior of a gym rather well, and the photos on the walls of this house best of all. It's been a long time since I've done this sort of thing, traipsing cross-country to a place that I've never seen before in order to drop out of my life for a week or so at a time.

I've been disoriented.
It's improving.