I had practiced that morning: An hour before taking the boys to school and an hour after I got home. During those sessions, I followed the line to see where it would go. Staying with it, step by step, until I inevitably tripped over one along the way. When I did, I stopped and took a good look at it.

I’d walk over that step again and again: up and down it, forward and back and vice versa. I stepped onto it so slowly I couldn’t help but smile, and then again altogether too fast. I laid on the step, rolled around in it like a pig in the mud. I tasted it and held it in my hand, tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t there, to forget. And when I knew the step a little better, I followed the line further. Then I abandoned it.

After the afternoon’s work, I found a new line. I had a pair of shorts in my pocket, just in case I ended up someplace warm. It was cold out. It’s winter here, and the ground is covered in snow. There are a few places you can get through, though.

The line brought me to a small parking lot with a circular path plowed through it. There were no parking spots cleared out, but rather just the short tear-shaped loupe connecting back to itself and out to the main road. Perhaps a plow had turned around here. At the center of the cleared path was an untouched area of snowpack. It was glassy and reflective and at that time of day the sun bounced off it a sheer white. It was pure winter creation. I wanted to adulterate it.

I stepped onto the untreaded snow and my boot sunk in past the ankle. With each crunchy step, the partially frozen surface cracked outward and broke large chunks of snow slanting in around my foot. I started more or less straight for the center of the field, but soon felt compelled to curve my trajectory. I spun around and walked backward. I stepped off to the side, crossed back and veered. I made it through to the other side and stepped onto the dry pavement. I looked back at the trail I’d made. It reminded me of the traversing of a vein, twisting and winding under the surface of the skin. I recalled a book I had once read: Deep Simplicity, by John Gribbon.

In Deep Simplicity, Gribbon outlines the underlying, or perhaps overlaying, patterns that govern even the most random-seeming occurances of our physical world: the colored markings of animal fur, traffic patterns on the interstate, the scratchy noise of television static, or how a trickling faucet might escalate into a rhythmic drip, which can then accelerando into a sleek and steady stream of running water that may yet still explode into splashing, gushing rapids. At full choke, it each droplet’s path seems unpredictable. But according to Deep Simplicity, life, even at its most chaotic, follows order; it displays patterns sometimes too large for us to see from our limited vantages. I had to wonder.

Had the line I followed through the snow been the same the veins in my legs once traveled back to my heart? Was I pulled along by the same force dragging the vine across across dusty ground searching for something to climb? Or even still, does anybody really know what time it is?

Does anybody really care?

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