Tuesday

He didn't even notice.  He didn't notice much these days.  But then again, how much can you pay attention to? Between the infinite and ongoing parade of stimuli and the finite you can achieve you have to economize, rejecting some, and focusing on others.  There you are.

Simple, solid; out of his hands.

And so the wipers' squeak-and-thump cycle was lost on him.  The pine needle under the blade smeared the passenger's half of the windshield, happily drawing its intermittent arc throughout the journey.  The wind would spar and sometimes gain a small victory against the car's own steady momentum, knocking it ever so slightly off course, corrected, of course, on course again and continuing as one jostled on the subway.

He did notice the occasional opportunity to send a tidal wave breaking against the side of the road through the collected puddles deep enough to be ponds and long enough to slalom a curve on a water-ski.  Sending a parabolic flume to the front, side, and now behind, his thoughts and the the wheel in his hands seemed to nod briefly, tipping their hats in synchronicity as if to a lady en passant.

But even this small pleasure was brief, unconscious, a joy from a simple thing like the water draining back through the tub's spigot from the the shower head, a small child who smiles back at your own silly-face.  Yet the wave failed to carry him away from his focus on...

Nothing really.

He was simply driving home.  It had been a day at the office; it would be an evening at home.  Unremarkable in every way.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Leave in the dark, drive west through the rain complacently ignorant of the imposing mountain shadow to his right on the way in, return east in the evening with its fading shadow lost in the mist on his left, the day's tasks done, the page pulled from the desk calendar, the meetings attended, the small talk left to its own misplaced sense of wonder about this incessant weather, again, as emails slowly filled the tub of his inbox, waiting for the 'morrow to be attended to.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

October, November, December.

1998,  2005, 2014.