Grain.

The impossibility of what I am trying to accomplish hits me in an instant. I am stunned. Previously, I had gone through the motions - rising at dawn, running to the field, working the statistics of the cloud movements, measuring the distance of the dust from the tree, walking back to the house, calculations going in my head, slaving away at the theories that needed to be worked out while living my daily life, going to the paper, seeing coworkers, maintaining the relationship that was past repair, coming home to the same unsolved calculations sitting on my desk, the tree in the distance a constant reminder of the, quite literally, closing horizon - not thinking about just how serious this was. But now, as I stepped onto the train for the long commute into the city, it hit me. I stood still between two strangers and nearly fell as the cart started forward, my bag swinging into the face of a nearby passenger. Remembering the two hefty folders and rubberbanded box of dried leaves I had neatly stacked in it two hours earlier, I gasped and stood dumbstruck as the man let out an involuntary groan and let go of his section of the metal holdings that ran across the ceiling of the train, grabbing at his nose.

--

Incomplete free-writing. Why anyone would have a rubberbanded (is that even a word?) box of dried leaves in their bag when on their way to work, I do not know. The things that are hidden in my brain. I swear.