Leaving town, going to work, is more and more like driving into a war zone. And yet, as my days lengthen in “stillville,” this war affects me less, steadily less. Lately, I’ve simply found myself at work. I went there without noticing it. The tedium and frustration of my commute is gone. At work, I do my tasks easily, regularly. Once I suffered for this job. I created patterns of work, which helped to ensure that I didn’t overlook anything or miss deadlines. Unexpected changes would keep cropping up and disrupting these patterns, inducing a fierce distress in me that seems disproportionate now. After I’d been living in my new home for a while, I began to wonder if we were enjoying a period of greater regularity, with fewer surprises. Or, actually, no surprises. In a spirit of idle curiosity, I reviewed my calendar. To my surprise, I realized that the last few weeks had been as chaotic as any I’d experienced during my time with the company. By my count, more than half the events in it were struck through with long, steady pen-strokes and rescheduled with neat arrows. I could only marvel at my progress. My progress in slowing down my progress. Days that, at one time, would have wrung me out, would have had me raving to no one in my car as I drove to and from work, and left me fuming as I lay down to stare at the ceiling at night in lieu of sleeping, had passed me by in silence.

No more of that. Less and less, and then no more. I carry the quiet, without magic, or any effort, everywhere I go. I neither acknowledge nor avoid my neighbors. I am aware of them, as I’m sure they are aware of me. We grow in awareness of each other. This awareness depends on our being still. When I sit in my living room, I am aware of my neighbors all around me, sitting in their living rooms. When I pad silently upstairs to my narrow bed and lie down, I am aware of them lying on their narrow beds around me, like so many figures hovering in space, all the same distance above the ground. Those of us on this side of the block sleep with our feet to the east, and those of us on the other side of the block sleep with their feet to the west. Between the rows of our sleeping heads, there is a sloping gulf, like the fold between the pages of an open book. Each of us is a sentence, complete on its own line. The war goes on without us, somewhere else. It is not here. It is not in us.