What the Paper Knows

April twenty-seventh. The workshop costs what it costs. I have known the number for three weeks, it was on the flyer at the gear shop, printed in small type at the bottom right corner the way prices always are when they want you to feel like the cost is an afterthought and not the whole question. I wrote it down on the same piece of paper as my updated number the night I came home from the gear shop, folded it in half, and put it on the counter.

I looked at it again tonight. The two numbers are close. Not heartbreakingly close, not disqualifyingly close, just close in the way that means the answer is technically yes, but the margin is thin enough that you notice the margin. I sat with that for a while. Poured tea, didn't drink it. Looked at the windowsill, the bowl, the card, the two photographs, Carol's small object, all of them just sitting there not helping.

The windowsill as witness.

I think what I am trying to say is that I expected the number to settle something, and instead it just sharpened the question. The 2011 number was the same way, I wrote it down and thought it would tell me what to do, and it didn't, it just told me where I was standing. The updated number does the same thing. It says: here is the floor. It does not say: take the next step. That part is apparently still mine.

I have not registered yet. I am not not registering. I am in the three-day lag, probably, which I named, in a post, six weeks ago, with some confidence that naming it would make it less comfortable to live inside of. It did not. The lag is the lag. I'll know when I know.