I know I have a habit of running my fingers through my hair, which likely makes me look still more odd. I wonder now what Katie saw, and am not surprised that she may have been frightened.

The hair, I can feel, is uneven. It is still cropped short. I do not have a mirror.

Two things I have been without here: mirrors and clocks. At first it was so hard. It was an instinct to want to know how I looked; or perhaps I wanted to be able to catch glimpses of myself, just in passing, to reassure myself that I existed. That is what mirrors do; and also, I have decided, what clocks do.

Now I prove my existence by what I do. A growing pile of wood that is larger than yesterday’s tells me that this is what I have accomplished, that progress has been made, which is what time is.

I remember now that in the old life, I watched clocks. They told me everything: when to do each thing, waking, cooking, laundering, watching television, reading the newspaper, even having a cigarette. And sleeping. Time was how I counted off my life.

Now I see that it was time I was accomplishing. I was not timing my tasks, but making the tasks into time; and all that is gone. A job now takes simply what it takes, a season is something in which a certain amount is done, but not according to any schedule of mine. I do what I can and for the rest I have no further responsibility. I have been absolved.

I learned the hard way. When in the first enthusiasm and energy I tried to push, to do more than was necessary or possible, nature took no notice. After I finished with the inside of the cabin and went out to work the garden, I learned that I could not make it hurry. Elementary, obvious — but for me it was a revelation, and so I learned to let each thing have the time it needs.

Slowly, in those first weeks and months, and painfully because so many things went against the nature I brought with me, I learned.

4

4

The memories collapse on me, striking me, and I have no protection against them. I think, “I do not want to cross over into this, it cannot be of any use,” and then I am into it anyway, quite helpless. “Look,” the memories say, “this is what it was, this is what you left, look at it, see the way it was.” Why is it happening now, when so many years ago, when everything changed, there was very little reflection, or thought, or confrontation, or regret?