A drizzly Sunday with a high of 66 and thousand-percent humidity. The clean winds of autumn have yet to arrive. I’d like to read Herodotus someday. I remember reading about ancient Egypt on the top floor of a library while waiting for my mom to pick me up after work; I thought the pyramids and the Sphinx were science fiction. Rain streaked the windows, smearing the lights of Grand Rapids as the library began to close. I must have been eight years old.

I want to spend more time in the distant past while thinking about the future. Time is moving too fast, so I sat in the park this afternoon, hoping to slow it down. I watched the people pass by. Young lovers and middle-aged hand-holders. Elderly couples holding each other steady. Ducks drifted in pairs, and I wondered if they mate for life. (They don’t. They find new mates each season, and this fact left me disappointed.) Then I pulled out my notebook, and my pen hovered above the page for a half-hour, wanting to write something observant or clever or true, but I didn’t write anything except for this.