“All I’m saying is, I don’t appreciate—I think it’s unfair—for you to make character judgments about me based solely on my outwardly perceived, categorical identity. Without knowing a damn thing about me.

“OK?”

O-fucking-K?!

I had no idea whether she had any idea what I was talking about.

She musta.

But ultimately, I had no clue.

She bowed her head slightly, but without breaking eye contact. Nodded.

Said OK.

I said OK.

Then knelt, gave Winnie one final, gruffly fraternal head-pat—she’d been hovering between my legs—and sent her back under the gate like a dove I was sending off to find land. Stood, turned, and shuffled off. Heart pounding. Like a crazy person.

I hadn’t, since, ever walked back in that direction.

•

But tonight I was.

East on Haverford, slight right onto Powelton, which ran diagonally SE to Center City.

This was the most efficient way into the city proper, but I never used it unless on my bike, when I could whizz past the site of all that trauma, three intersections down.

Or else only in the early a.m.s, when I knew I wouldn’t run into either of them.

Steve Rinella was going in about how explorers during Lewis & Clark times were distinct from their contemporaneous natives since they didn’t cultivate crops; they moved constantly, so couldn’t; they relied on lean meats—those that were most readily available—along with fats their mode of travel—constant motion—made them crave.

Jaywalking across 38th equidistant from Wal- and Chestnut, waiting on the middle island for a semi to pass, something clicked.

A hitherto hidden truth, revealed.

Concealment-unconcealment.

Wheels turning, connections connecting, heart rate spiking.

Euphoric suddenly as I picked up the pace, cutting instinctively down dimly lit, barely trafficked, warehouse-y Ludlow.

Sweating now, rubbing my face like I was tryna tear it off.

Like Fuck it mask off.

Took some deep breaths, sat on a curb, and started to roll a cig. To see what I had…

The major evolutionary shift that led humans from Motion (hunt/gather) to Stasis (cultivate crops) was, as is widely acknowledged, the advent of agriculture.

Was what led to the spike in birth rate, life expectancy—more food and more efficient means of growing it meant more people survived winters.

Before that, muhfuckers had to stock up on whatever they could merk or gather with their hands or rudimentary tools to get em through the cold months.

Was how Japan, despite being a tiny island, managed to imperialize damn near the rest of Asia: by learning how to grow rice before and more efficiently than the rest, and control them by being their food source.

But here Steve Rinella was saying dudes like this—hunters who subsisted off of what they killed, gathered—existed well into the advent of agriculture.

Suggested that the succession between epochal stages wasn’t necessarily linear.