In a place without roadless areas, I may know where I am at all times but I find I do not know where I’m going. I stand at the intersection of Main Street and Independence and do not know which road to take. The one cuts through the center of town and the other exits to the beltway, which circles town, dependent on its center. Where the roads lead leave me lost. Lost and running out of time.

I go past the outskirts of town that encircle the beltway, towards where there are no roads, for there I am on my own road, which is formed as I go forward, and then left behind, with no signs to show where I’ve gone. Left on my own, not led by any road, I may not know where I am at any one time, but I know where I’m going.

Not running after time, I do not run out of time, but walk into a world where neither it nor I play a part. As I walk into a part of the world outside the comic absurdity and tragic suffering of the human play, something returns to me like water from the shore returning gently to the sea. What was on the surface of the shore recedes until there is nothing but the ocean and its depths without measure. The guise that had acted as a protective shell is not cleaved violently open but gradually unveiled, for what had needed protection for so long now must be revealed as slowly as it took to become concealed.