It is dark. I am in the street, driving downtown. W is with me. We are on our way to a meeting. At the intersection, I prepare to turn right. I peer intently forward, trying to observe any pedestrians in the intersection, searching for signs of a moving shadow in the street.

W speaks calmly. He tells me that I am turning into a one-way street headed the wrong way. I abort the turn and continue east, toward the next block of traffic. W exits the car and I begin the search for a place to park.

There is a longer “driving at night in the city” story here. The upshot is that in the search for parking I became ensnared in a block of unmoving cars. I sat motionless, perturbed by my earlier error, by my failure to recognize the illegal turn. I knew the street. I had walked it a hundred times. More than that even. Yet, on this night, my focus on people in the street had completely shuttered my prior knowledge; I searched only for the singular set of clues that would reveal a moving shadow in the dark, and completely neglected all other knowledge.

These events weighed on me as I remained motionless, imprisoned within an immobile stream of tin and steel with carnival lights casting a thousand reflections. I felt unsafe. I underwent a sudden and immediate loss of confidence in my own abilities. I wanted only to be at home. To return to a place of safety where few decisions were required, and where there was little chance of injury to others, or myself.

And that is what I did. I extricated myself from the carnival of light, where even the reflections could not move, and went back the way I had come, detouring to reach a well known travel route (the one I use after seeing Dr D), and from there scuttled home as fast as my little crab car feet could safely carry me.

Home was a huge relief. And then I discovered I had a dozen telephone messages (the phone was forgotten in the charger on this day and I had felt near naked not possessing it and all the lists and help notes that it contained). Then came the sudden realization that the people at the meeting would be expecting me and be puzzled at my absence. So I commenced returning calls, alerting everyone to what had happened, and what I had done.