Leaving Flatland

I spend almost all my social life thinking fast, spinning, smashing into one face after another. Like a billiard ball. Clonk! Clack! Thud!

All abstraction; no time for anything more accurate.

Yesterday, on a hike, I lingered on the top of a hill while my friends walked away from me. They shrank to the size of my arm, then my hand, then my thumb, and then they were just a part of the forest that I happened to know very well -- bouncing hair, black coats, cocked elbows. They became concrete. I'd never felt so protective of them, or so proud.