Wrong Turn, Better Route

Mile two is where I started not recognizing anything. I wasn't panicking, I know this neighborhood well enough that getting genuinely lost would require effort, but I'd taken a left I don't usually take, and then another, and suddenly I was on a block I'm pretty sure I've driven down but never run. There were leafless trees and a bench I didn't remember and a stretch of older brick buildings that had that particular quality of looking like they've always been there and will always be there, and I kept going.

The thing about finding a new route accidentally is that you can't replicate the accident.

the route going forward

I've been running this longer loop on purpose since I first stumbled into it a couple weeks ago, but I still can't fully account for how it feels different from the old one. It's not faster. It's not more scenic in any obvious way. It's just, more. More blocks, more turns, more of the city moving past me in a way that keeps me paying attention. The old route had gotten so familiar I could run it half-asleep, which was sometimes the point. This one I'm still learning.

stopped at the corner for no particular reason

Somewhere around mile three I came around a corner and noticed a building, low, brick, ordinary, that I have definitely seen before, in a different context, and I couldn't place why it felt familiar until I was already a block past it. Didn't stop. Kept going. I'll probably place it eventually. It's the kind of thing that comes to you later, when you're not trying.

November is actually fine when you're moving. I keep forgetting this and then remembering it again every year. The cold doesn't bother me when I'm running; it just makes the air feel more real, if that makes any sense. I got home around seven-thirty, made coffee, and sat with the window cracking cold air into the kitchen while I tried to write something and mostly just ended up staring at the street. Good morning. The kind that doesn't need to be anything else.