That comes from Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism. All such things are open to multiple interpretations, even if they aren’t translations from an archaic version of a distant language and credited to a person whose very existence is disputed. Nonetheless, this aphorism seems to have a certain clarity to it. However long the journey, it must start with that first step. If you try to look 1,000 miles ahead and think about how long it will take and how much effort is needed, you will be overwhelmed. Instead, take the single step. Next, all you need to do is take one step. Not one more step, there is no past to weary you, no endless future to intimidate you, only the present, with one single step.

Murdering Mick McMunchun—so it wouldn’t look like murder, getting away with it, making sure I got paid the promised amount—was a journey of 1,000 miles. Too great a distance, too many mountains to climb, rivers to cross, people who might try to stop me on purpose or by accident, too many possible accidents to anticipate, too many mistakes I might make.

Finding the girl, having her seem so right—it felt like that first step. The first step that I was certain was going forward on that journey. I’d been a half-dead thing. Saying yes to this beyond-the-bounds project into precarious and treacherous territory had made me feel like I was coming back to life. Looking at myself from an imaginary distance, as we often do, I was watching a sci-fi film, and I was an automaton taken out of storage, experiencing reactivation.

Of course, I’d felt good about that, because in sci-fi films automatons have consciousness, self-awareness, and feelings. It had also awakened tension and stress. Pulled my nervous system so tight that it created its own vibrations. I only realized that part now. Because it had stopped. I’d taken the first step. It brought me calm. Great calm. Even though I could discern that both ends were…could well be described as…Did not sane…clinically speaking…mean insane? Oh well, this end seemed more pleasing than the other.

—

I woke rested. Having slept deeply and well. I rose to go about my extraordinarily ordinary, bland, and trouble-free routines. Wake, feed the cats, shower, make the bed, go to town, coffee and something, read the paper, in print, not online. Go back home, pick up whatever needed picking up. Turn on the television, realize that I didn’t really want to watch anything that was on TV. Turn off the television.

There was a good, clean, touch of cold. Now that I was going to keep the place, I should be cutting and splitting firewood.