My Way

This morning Jacob looked up from his book and said that horses first appeared in the Cretaceous Period and were then no bigger than toy Collies. I didn’t know what the Cretaceous Period was or what it meant for horses to have “appeared” at any time, or how anyone could know that that thing that appeared then was a horse, but I just said That’s crazy and went back to reading my book, Pond. I would have liked to understand but that was apparently all his book contained on the subject. To understand it I would have had to go out of my way, I don’t know how far. When I’m prodded to go out of my way I realize how greatly worn my way is. Not just worn bald, so that no grass grows there, but deep, like a trench, so that it has to be climbed out of heroically. Anything more about horses would need to be lowered down. My way fits me like a shoe, or something less removable than a shoe: I generate my way unconsciously, like hair.