Volatility

A building halfway through construction can resemble the aftermath of something. Exposed rooms. A staircase ending in the air. Without the plans, it can be hard to tell what has been lost from what has yet to exist.

Some years have this architecture.

The old explanation has stopped working. The next one would sound absurd spoken aloud. At dinner, someone asks how things are going, and there is no honest answer short enough for the occasion. Fine will do.

The mind has trouble leaving things unfinished. A difficult week becomes evidence against an entire future. A small success makes every mistake look like part of a design. The past acquires a plot it never had while you were living it.

Nothing is allowed to remain its own size.

An ordinary afternoon can contain several incompatible futures. A little fatigue is enough to move between them.

The temptation is to choose a character who can survive all this: the misunderstood visionary, the person who always knew, the one who never quits. Once the role is chosen, new information has to negotiate with it. An error becomes a test of faith. An exit begins to look like betrayal. Even curiosity threatens the plot.

And difficulty guarantees so little. Some buildings are being abandoned. A mistake can acquire the appearance of a calling if it has been defended long enough.

An unfinished thing needs room to become different from the reason it was begun. That is difficult to allow when the next step has become entangled with proving that the first step was right. It takes a peculiar freedom to have given years to something and still let it surprise you.

Sometimes the evidence is almost embarrassingly small: a better question, a detail that no longer fits, an experiment worth running tomorrow. Enough to alter the plans. Too little to make a speech about.

The plans are still on the table. Someone has crossed out a wall.

Outside, it looks much the same.