“Spooky action at a distance,” the phrase credited to Albert Einstein, reduces to a shorthand phrase a much more complex phenomenon. More complex because not conveniently observable, shades incommunicable. More complex because strings are only sort of followable. The ‘theoretical’ in theoretical physics allows for quantum leaps. Matter or whatever holds together somehow. For now.

This fall, September especially, jutted jabbingly an abrupt switch-up from how I had imagined things would go. I have always cherished my routines; there is safety in them, is one way to think about it. Boring gray-hairedisms; I age and with each passing year become even more of a routinist, clinging to dailiness with eating, walking, writing, reading, drawing, yoga, rest, and so on. And only now, October turning the leafy page to November, am I beginning to reclaim routines. Some, may they rebecome rituals. As I worked on the presentation I gave last week at the Conference on Community Writing, I kept closeby a variation on ‘drive according to conditions,’ instead recast as ‘walk according to conditions.’ Verb according to conditions. And then, from the upheaved start of September, verb according to prepositions.

Now I write in vagaries, mumbles a cryptologist, or cyber security specialist, updater of passwords unguessable with the goal of keeping a vault secure. After weeks of practicing, Feta finally lays down on command after walks. We’re moments from going on her late morning walk now, in fact. Learning, like every other speck in the burbling cauldron of verbs, takes the time it takes. And yet. And yet. Orange vest because it is hunting season, the one neighbor warns us. How much dew holds on determines which shoes. Hawks harass the chickens even more than usual on windy days and other hunches at the cusp of nascent, local mythologies. Ask a quark what it remembers, and it could be anything. Or everything.