Cold weather causes every breath to materialize in the air and, if you’ve a moustache and beard, to collect between strands of hair like plankton in baleen. It necessitates a pause every few minutes to clear the condensation. Sometimes ice. I accept the responsibility when I step outside to watch my breath and listen to the music playing inside. It shakes the walls and windows, numbs the ears. That may be the cold.

I don’t do waiting well. It feels like time better spent on the road to somewhere, from which there is another road that leads somewhere else. An interconnectedness to the nature of fleeing.