Speaker 1: I always say Savana wakes sideways. People talk about Southern
Speaker 1: mornings as if their gentle sliding mist and sunlight and
Speaker 1: polite sequins. But this city's never much cared for any
Speaker 1: one's stage directions. Those open when they please, Robin stop
Speaker 1: before the bells cross the squairs in along the river front,
Speaker 1: light bounces off twenty surfaces, water brick, a hundred window
Speaker 1: panes before it finds you never quite from the angle
Speaker 1: you expect. Since I retired five years ago, these mornings
Speaker 1: belonged to me in a way they never did when
Speaker 1: I was still sorting mail. By five forty five. My
Speaker 1: name's Pall Chambers, sixty five neat habits patch you beat,
Speaker 1: and I consider myself patient if the world co operates,
Speaker 1: and inventive. Whenever it doesn't, I spend my first hour
Speaker 1: at the door, rain or shine, walking the thirds that
Speaker 1: hold the city together. Every day I tell myself I'll
Speaker 1: try a new street, some alleyway between the big houses,
Speaker 1: or the narrow brick lanes that breed the quarter together.
Speaker 1: Not out of restlessness. For all my porking, I'd rather
Speaker 1: polish routine than start a new one. But because Vanna
Speaker 1: deserve respect, she is this pattern like bread dough given
Speaker 1: to rising and some mornings I flatter myself I can
Speaker 1: learn how she's folded. So on Tuesday, near the end
Speaker 1: of March, with the air warm already and jasmine crawling
Speaker 1: across ledges, I step out at six when he determined
Speaker 1: to catch the square before the trash trucks my plans.
Speaker 1: Lazy cross PULASKI leap south, drift through the edgeward o' lanes,
Speaker 1: but half way down price just for the satisfaction of
Speaker 1: breaking my own ritual, I cut left where a worn
Speaker 1: wooden sign leans of her brick arch, marking a lane.
Speaker 1: I swear I've never used ibray. It runs angle behind
Speaker 1: two row houses, more a passage than a true street.
Speaker 1: I don't remember any part of my old rat diagram
Speaker 1: involving this corner. The lanes cooler shadowed by twhend Magnolia's
Speaker 1: pavement patched with old brick and colpings. I expect it
Speaker 1: to spit me out behind the Episcopal Church, but only
Speaker 1: a hundred feet along, I find myself emerging before small
Speaker 1: fade shop, a single story, pale with sun brickwork stitch
Speaker 1: by vines. This the pink tile steep a round window,
Speaker 1: thick with reflected morning, and above the sign, once blue,
Speaker 1: now chiped nearly white, remise time pieces inside an all
Speaker 1: clock sits in pride of place, pendulum gleaming faintly through
Speaker 1: the glass. I give it a long look, let the
Speaker 1: detail fix in my mind, and circle around the block again,
Speaker 1: amused at my own discovery. It's the sort of shop
Speaker 1: you expect in Charleston or the back lanes of New Orleans,
Speaker 1: not tufted away here with then inshut of the court house.
Speaker 1: I tell myself, maybe I've passed it before and simply
Speaker 1: never noticed. What is the weak undfouls, And I indulge
Speaker 1: myself in new routes, making a private game of escaping
Speaker 1: the all too familiar. I keep ending up outside from
Speaker 1: my eyes, no math of my intention, once coming Niecet
Speaker 1: from Tatannall, another time doubling back from Montgomery. Once even
Speaker 1: circling the square is so wide as to be almost
Speaker 1: lost in the maze of old iron work and camellia.
Speaker 1: The shop is always precisely there, and, assuming its windows
Speaker 1: gently fogged, the sign readable in any light. It's not unsettling, really,
Speaker 1: just curious, like a dog that keeps finding your tracks.
Speaker 1: I've never counted Savannah's sharps as mysteries, having warp post
Speaker 1: for thirty years to a greater riddles. But this one
Speaker 1: is persistent, insisting on a place in my mat that
Speaker 1: I can't quite sanction. After the third accidental arrival, I
Speaker 1: pause on the thum, grazing the edge of my battered notebook.
Speaker 1: I fish it from my pocket to habit drilled into
Speaker 1: me from postal days when details mattered more than first impressions,
Speaker 1: and jot a single line remise time pieces, never recall
Speaker 1: seen it before? Why always here an oddity? I finished
Speaker 1: my walk as usual, comforted by the straightening sun, and
Speaker 1: the city's all near bustle still. Even as my boot
Speaker 1: find the cobbles at my own porch, I admit to
Speaker 1: myself something's afoot, and it's not just my memory plane tricks.
Speaker 1: If I am anything these days, I am methodical. My
Speaker 1: morning rituals are both armor and amusement. Filling feeders for
Speaker 1: the rents, checking the forecasts, folding the day's crosswood into
Speaker 1: my inside pocket, as though the clues might change through
Speaker 1: the temperature. My house sits on a corner not far
Speaker 1: from Crawford Square, tidy as a pantry shelf, but outside
Speaker 1: is all charm and disorder. Savannah's old quarter is a
Speaker 1: tangle shade sudden Bowginvalier, I am work chips of history
Speaker 1: turned up in every stoop and gutter. Since hanging up
Speaker 1: my satchel for good, I've made a hobby of mapping
Speaker 1: its moods. Most mornings. Misss Wallace finds me on my rounds.
Speaker 1: She's lived down the block since the sixties, and retirements
Speaker 1: knock up on her before it did me. By mutual agreement,
Speaker 1: we neither hurry nor judge each other's chosen roads. She
Speaker 1: corrects the Latin names of finds with gentle precision, and
Speaker 1: when her hip allows, quizzes me on the prudence of
Speaker 1: every mansion at Jones and Avercorn. If there's a five
Speaker 1: times slow to recall who restored the forest house where
Speaker 1: the azaleas were moved last wet season, she teases it
Speaker 1: out of me, making the ants to feel almost like
Speaker 1: my own. Marvin, on the other hand, owns the cafe
Speaker 1: two corners over, and his schedule is as crooked as
Speaker 1: his espresso machine. He's a fixture bold glasses perched on
Speaker 1: his colored cap apron never quite clean. I see him
Speaker 1: behind a counter before sun up on Thursdays, sometimes sweeping
Speaker 1: the steep. While I pass by. He waves, but never terrrors.
Speaker 1: His time is meeted in coffee spoons and phone calls
Speaker 1: from supplies. I not a lotter dozen others In passing
Speaker 1: Mikey and his dog on Howard Lane, A mess read
Speaker 1: from his roses burst their beds every spring. Father Dorian
Speaker 1: walking in a collar and sneakers. Savannah is a city
Speaker 1: of habits, most of them quietly bent to suit the
Speaker 1: person who walks them. The young woman who delivers groceries
Speaker 1: cuts blos corners with a skateboard, swearing every alley is
Speaker 1: an improvement over Asphal. The city is communal, but stubborn
Speaker 1: the individual. I pride myself on my sense of order,
Speaker 1: a trait that chafed as much as it helped when
Speaker 1: I was young and in the Marines, and still serves
Speaker 1: me sorting out which gas bill belongs to which cottage.
Speaker 1: I spent the better half of my career keeping recos
Speaker 1: dry and stack straight. Local knowledge filed in dozens of
Speaker 1: little coded quarks. Tourists would ask how to get from
Speaker 1: Chipys Square to the market and I'd smile behind my
Speaker 1: sun glasses, knowing it was a trick question. Every answer
Speaker 1: is right, none of them are identical. Some of the
Speaker 1: newer residents who mistakes of Anna for regret are gently
Speaker 1: corrected by the first range storm or a chance parade
Speaker 1: blocking half the block. Even within my own neat world,
Speaker 1: I keep a notebook, the postal workers talisman. It's half journal,
Speaker 1: half luckwicker, placed to drop the sudden, the inexplicable, and
Speaker 1: the quietly remarkable. This week, that notebook is dominated by
Speaker 1: one recurring line. Why due my intentional deters always lead
Speaker 1: to remised time pieces. I copy the address, or what
Speaker 1: I suppose must be the address, though its number doesn't
Speaker 1: quite fit the sequence of its block. It's not that
Speaker 1: I distressed my memory exactly. I pride myself on keeping
Speaker 1: track of birthdays, repairs, jew who owes me coffee. But
Speaker 1: the city's geography, supposedly so familiar, has started to feel
Speaker 1: as though its being rewritten when I'm not looking, always
Speaker 1: sketching the same endpoint in its margins. My notebook expends
Speaker 1: March twenty seven, South Route avoided, Pulaski pass back Ali
Speaker 1: unknown name, Remise again six forty seven a M. March
Speaker 1: twenty eight tried doubling square's bull link an abcorn remise
Speaker 1: at seven two a M sign unchanged no traffic shop closed.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is the shop is not nonscript The
Speaker 1: sign is not like any other turquoise. Beneath the appealing
Speaker 1: there is filigree in the stroll's lone transom. I would
Speaker 1: swear I've never seen in shop window before, no postcards
Speaker 1: in the local book store, no mention on quirkys of analysts.
Speaker 1: Yet here it stands in the center of my unsolved puzzle.
Speaker 1: No matter how I try to wrap myself away, It's
Speaker 1: not a phenomenon that frightens me. If anything, it's like
Speaker 1: being gently nudged, as though the city wants to see
Speaker 1: if my sense of direction is as good as I claim.
Speaker 1: For now, I listen for the pulse of city bells
Speaker 1: from three different blocks, walk my routes, scribble in my notebook,
Speaker 1: and begin to wonder who else or what else has
Speaker 1: noticed a shop and what exactly have I been missing. Thursday,
Speaker 1: I ready myself like a man plotting a small, bloodless
Speaker 1: coup over coffee. I sketch my path in the margin
Speaker 1: of the morning paper. I will walk north on Prize
Speaker 1: Cut across Perey, then circle around by Saint Julian before
Speaker 1: heading inland, keeping at least five blocks clear of where
Speaker 1: remise has appeared before. I walk with purpose, each step
Speaker 1: measured humming under my breath. Every land mark a mess
Speaker 1: redferends roses, the oak with its null branch, the fire
Speaker 1: hydrant with the appealing red paint. I take them off
Speaker 1: with the satisfaction of a man who knows a code.
Speaker 1: Has the bright blue mail box into the lane with
Speaker 1: the hand painted bird feeders as slow to sante of confident.
Speaker 1: I am nowhere near a small brick shop, nor any
Speaker 1: street that should lead me near it. But as I
Speaker 1: round a short cuve marked by unfamiliar brickwork, the light
Speaker 1: hits in a way that turns my stomach. And then
Speaker 1: there it is, again, as unavoidable as my reflection in
Speaker 1: my own window. Remised time pieces sits before me, precisely
Speaker 1: where the last few mornings have ended. The stooplest time
Speaker 1: miss slick with two, the clock in the window, taking
Speaker 1: a few minutes ahead of my watch. I stop the
Speaker 1: spring earthick around me for half a moment. The logic
Speaker 1: of the thin and spools. Perhaps I miss a turn,
Speaker 1: or the streets join in our triangles here, or I
Speaker 1: simply misread the contours on the map. Yet when I
Speaker 1: dig out my note book, comparing my plan to the
Speaker 1: street signs and recalling the path I took, nothing quite fits.
Speaker 1: The next cross street is not the one it should be,
Speaker 1: and I'm not just south, but somehow east of where
Speaker 1: I'm meant to be. I draw a diagram on the
Speaker 1: line page price perry Lin can intry to pin their
Speaker 1: relation to the shop, but the squares don't close. Each
Speaker 1: attempt to close the triangle sends me in a loop
Speaker 1: that never quite connects. As I pause, I notice movement
Speaker 1: behind the shop's window. A tall, slight fellow remind himself,
Speaker 1: I suppose, half shadowed by ticking clocks, catches my gaze.
Speaker 1: He doesn't open the door, just lifts one hand in
Speaker 1: a slight, almost mischievous wave and nod back. Caught by
Speaker 1: embarrassment and a flicker of camaraderie, feeling as though the
Speaker 1: city itself is sharing a private joke. I want to
Speaker 1: walk inside to man explanation, but the impulse vanishes as
Speaker 1: fast as it came. Instead, I turn and stroll home,
Speaker 1: my notebook now crowded with arrows, the corners of my
Speaker 1: diagram freed by rasures. For the first time, I question
Speaker 1: my certainty, not in my memory, which still feel sharp,
Speaker 1: but in the map itself. Surely I'm simply growing forgetful,
Speaker 1: or Savanna's gone lupier than ever. Either way, breakfast will
Speaker 1: taste better with a problem left and solved. I call
Speaker 1: the next phase stubborn curiosity, bordering on obsession. There are
Speaker 1: strange if things in a life, but few is persistent
Speaker 1: as an announswer question that greets you at the same
Speaker 1: corner every day, Friday morning, I command for battle, notebookington ready,
Speaker 1: city mats sticking awkwardly out of my jacket pocket. I
Speaker 1: set way proms distinct signs, the fine shaped gable of
Speaker 1: the purple has on troop the row of old crape metals.
Speaker 1: I cut corners, take six that would confuse loss tourists.
Speaker 1: Double back through squaes and lanes. I delivered post to
Speaker 1: four decades. At each decision, I got a note left
Speaker 1: here by lambos, right by the alley with spilt flower pots.
Speaker 1: It should be impossible for this route to meet the shop,
Speaker 1: even at across the market street, and hear the droll
Speaker 1: of biscuits. I calculate the distance in my head, confident
Speaker 1: I'm safely outside his own. Yet as I turn left
Speaker 1: beneath the crumbling brick arch, the street curves and my
Speaker 1: footsteps guide me precisely, inevitably to the Glint's store front,
Speaker 1: with this soft ticking from my sign appearing like a
Speaker 1: punch line. I soap and chuckle. For the moment, amusement
Speaker 1: has the upper hand. The world's old edges are fraying,
Speaker 1: and my notebook has become more imaginative than explanatory. To day,
Speaker 1: I decide to double down. I sketch the path I
Speaker 1: just took, then ope of my old postal delivery records
Speaker 1: for this quarter. The city maps have changed somewhat in
Speaker 1: thirty years. Streets closed for urban repairs has is subdivided
Speaker 1: about the bones are the same. I compare my plan
Speaker 1: and the old map, tracing a finger along the line
Speaker 1: I supposedly walked. According to all logic and memory, I
Speaker 1: should be facing a laundromat, not a clock shop, and
Speaker 1: my east west turns make no sense. Inspired I spend
Speaker 1: the afternoon in a chilly air of the library's map room,
Speaker 1: if there's a secret passage, we're in a marked thoroughfare,
Speaker 1: I'll find it here. The oldest atlases agree with my recollections,
Speaker 1: but recent printings show two hours I'm certain didn't exist
Speaker 1: the last time I want them. I copied down street
Speaker 1: names and sequences were buried tailor eden, But on cross examination,
Speaker 1: some names on my walk do not even appear on
Speaker 1: the maps, while others are misplaced, as if a child
Speaker 1: had rearranged them in a moment of fancy. Saturday, I
Speaker 1: try to walk the rut backward, determine that by approaching
Speaker 1: in reverse i'll escape this odd magnetism. But in retracing
Speaker 1: my steps, I find the streets don't align my left
Speaker 1: hand to become sudden rights of fence that should lock
Speaker 1: my way now opens into a tiny square i've never seen.
Speaker 1: I finish, of course, on Romie, stoop round window, blinking
Speaker 1: with morning. It's about then I noticed something else, passing
Speaker 1: a sound at shot two blocks off, I overhear two
Speaker 1: men debating the time, one checking his front, the other
Speaker 1: gesturing at the clock hanging up of a door. The
Speaker 1: first remarks, you set it by remise not your watch,
Speaker 1: as if this is common practice in a flowers shop.
Speaker 1: I watch a woman pause to check her wristwatch against
Speaker 1: a tiny bruss clock on the chain, distinctly stamped romise.
Speaker 1: People step past the clockmaker's window as if it's not
Speaker 1: just as different but a kind of city tank keeper,
Speaker 1: part touchstone, part ritual. I mention this that afternoon to
Speaker 1: missus Wallace. I find her on her porch, hat perched
Speaker 1: at an angle, clipping faded leaves from her potted hydranger.
Speaker 1: Do you know the clock shop? I ask? Noteoo get
Speaker 1: the ready, making the question seem casual, She smiles, not
Speaker 1: looking up. You mean remise, Oh sure, I've always used
Speaker 1: it to get my bearings right before you hit Mercer's
Speaker 1: old placed just around the odd little curve, I hesitate.
Speaker 1: When did it open? Oh? I couldn't say. It's been
Speaker 1: there longer than I can remember. You know, I never
Speaker 1: did pay attention to the owners. The city shuffles its
Speaker 1: off Loosa's shops, gains them back. But remais been steady
Speaker 1: as the riverside ferry. He ever get turned around. You
Speaker 1: just aim for the clock shop, She says it, as
Speaker 1: though it's obvious routine. I ask a few more questions,
Speaker 1: but get no firmer answers. She mentions once getting lost
Speaker 1: on her ome work, circling back by remise as always.
Speaker 1: I laugh, but inwardly I more confused them when I
Speaker 1: started marve that the cafe is more precise, or at
Speaker 1: least tries over a thin mug of coffee. They ask
Speaker 1: him for directions to the courthouse. By passing hermise, he
Speaker 1: rattles off a sequence so rapid I can't record it
Speaker 1: punctuated by then you'll pass fromised her and left after that,
Speaker 1: not before I press him on the point, couldn't I
Speaker 1: skip rimise entirely? He grins. Maybe you could, but I
Speaker 1: doubt it did save you any steps that places like
Speaker 1: North for downtown. Sooner or later you'll hit it that
Speaker 1: I remember my way if I'm ever lost. A group
Speaker 1: of students in line snicker when I mention getting turned
Speaker 1: around in my own city. One says the Savannah shuffle.
Speaker 1: My dad calls it. You always pass the clock shop
Speaker 1: at least once a few leaves before breakfast. Another nods,
Speaker 1: I use remise for timing the bus. He sets his
Speaker 1: clocks a few minutes faster, says it keeps the city honest.
Speaker 1: At home. My notes are our mess lines crossing at
Speaker 1: impossible ankles, arrows without realistic and points. Reviewing an old
Speaker 1: notebook from fifteen years back, the year after the hurricane,
Speaker 1: I find reference to a Floris's shop at the address
Speaker 1: now taken by Remise. The street numbering then was off
Speaker 1: by one, but the location is unmistakable. The shop itself
Speaker 1: no record in my pages, nowhere to fag at sudden
Speaker 1: arrival or steady presents. Next morning, Not willing to be
Speaker 1: bested by a handful of winding lanes, I devise a
Speaker 1: new tactic. I take along the child's compass, walk three
Speaker 1: turns east, then two south, only to find myself impossibly
Speaker 1: on a street leading west and to predictably before Remise again.
Speaker 1: At this point a certain stubborn delight kicks in. If
Speaker 1: the city is playing games, then perhaps I need a
Speaker 1: partner to call it bluff. On Sunday, I run in
Speaker 1: to masss Wallas a block from the square, hat fixed,
Speaker 1: walking stake in hand, determined as a parade marshal care
Speaker 1: to join me this morning? I suggest, adopt in a
Speaker 1: conspiratorial tone. She eyes me amused. You have the look
Speaker 1: of a man planning mischief. Just scientific inquiry. I reply,
Speaker 1: let's see if two heads are less likely to turn
Speaker 1: back on themselves than one. We agree on a route
Speaker 1: east to the park, circle south behind the bakery, then
Speaker 1: up BroadOn. We'll pap briefly at the fork near the
Speaker 1: old library, and reconvene near where the streets meet again
Speaker 1: farther north. Both of us carry no pads, for the
Speaker 1: sake of rigor. I half expect the city to respect
Speaker 1: our logic. For once our walk is companionable. She points
Speaker 1: out fresh lilies. I note the muddy sent off the river.
Speaker 1: Out of return, we trade observations. Here's the alley that
Speaker 1: coves like a horse. Shee the the gate that never
Speaker 1: sheds its paint. At the fork, we part with a
Speaker 1: promise to meet at the crossing after half a block.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes later, we find ourselves incredibly, almost predictably, standing
Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder before remised time pieces. Both a little
Speaker 1: out of breath, both surprised. Missus Wallace lasts first, a
Speaker 1: short musical sound. Well, that's of anna free, no harm
Speaker 1: in a little deeter. I open my note book. Let's
Speaker 1: compare how lists sinct neat mentions. Passing a white house
Speaker 1: with blue shutters, then a faded mural. The bakery with
Speaker 1: the glass counter mine includes a house on the same block,
Speaker 1: but its shutters were burgundy, and the murle I passed
Speaker 1: was a garden scene, not catch chasing a bird. We're
Speaker 1: both sure we followed the plan, but our memory is
Speaker 1: diverged just enough to make certainty impossible. We stand abating
Speaker 1: the logic, pointing here and there, until she says, let's
Speaker 1: check the time. She gestures at the clock in romis window.
Speaker 1: My watch reads seven forty nine. Remis clock visible through
Speaker 1: the frosted glass, breaths just past seven fifty two. Cross
Speaker 1: the square, the city hall bull begins, striking light by
Speaker 1: a menut. According to my phone, it's always a little fast.
Speaker 1: Missus Wallace murmurs. He used to joke about it with
Speaker 1: my father. He'd say, or Mike keeps the city from
Speaker 1: falling behind itself. Her words hang between us, half memory,
Speaker 1: half riddle. The rest of the walk passes in bemuse silence.
Speaker 1: I realized suddenly that the puzzle is not just in
Speaker 1: my head. It's woven into the way people think of
Speaker 1: their own movement. Here, no one, when pressed, can recall
Speaker 1: the clock shops exact place in time, but all acknowledge
Speaker 1: his presents. The one constant and a city of subtle changes.
Speaker 1: That night over lefto of Rugumbo on my porch, I
Speaker 1: weigh the evidence. The problem is larger than one man
Speaker 1: losing his way. The city citizen's orbit remise, memory bending
Speaker 1: just enough to make each new observation slippery. It feels
Speaker 1: less like a failing of rekal and more like an
Speaker 1: agreed upon way to keep the city secrets intact. Why,
Speaker 1: I wonder, does every one recognize Fromy's place, yet no
Speaker 1: one can pin down its beginnings or the man behind
Speaker 1: the counter. Why does the city's pattern twist and reform
Speaker 1: so gently around the single unremarkable shop. For perhaps the
Speaker 1: first time since retiring, I am grateful for the gift
Speaker 1: of not knowing, even as my need for clarity intensifies.
Speaker 1: If I wanted to escalate the game, I needed better tools,
Speaker 1: or at least more modern ones. By Monday, I determined
Speaker 1: to break the loopoor. Failing that, to catch the leep
Speaker 1: in the act, I charge my old smartphone, update the
Speaker 1: mapping app, and select the GPS tracking function. I joke
Speaker 1: to myself that this is the point at which a
Speaker 1: more paranoid man would expect to see men in black
Speaker 1: or the matrix slip at the seams, But there's no
Speaker 1: sense of fetch, simply the sturdy pride of a man
Speaker 1: with time and technology on his side. I plan each
Speaker 1: turn of map and new map in hand. I mark
Speaker 1: my path with chalcate corners, leave my own set of
Speaker 1: footprints and check each one as I pass, my fond
Speaker 1: vibrants in my pocket, promising to save every step to
Speaker 1: the cloud. Surely the digital witness will settle the question.
Speaker 1: But tech, it turns out, fares no better than memory.
Speaker 1: Half way two to walk, my GPS error dances across
Speaker 1: the wrong streets according to the map, I'm on Habersham,
Speaker 1: but the sign on the walsall Sailor. Moments later at
Speaker 1: the phone screen flick as I am now a block over,
Speaker 1: despite never crossing an intersection. At each turn, I stop
Speaker 1: and compare what the digital trees says to what my
Speaker 1: eyes see. Things drift. Sometimes street names on the app
Speaker 1: swap order or vanish, entirely replaced by old family names
Speaker 1: I've only seen on headstones. Once the screen tells me
Speaker 1: I've walked in a circle, yet every step took me straight.
Speaker 1: I tried to compare the heights of street lamp, surely
Speaker 1: a detail not so easily tampered with. But over the
Speaker 1: course of the walk, one lamp is suddenly taller, casting
Speaker 1: a longer shadow. The next block's benches will reappear in
Speaker 1: a new arrangement. Seasonal flowers bloom when none should be.
Speaker 1: Lilactrulily by a month, Tulips that don't belong in this
Speaker 1: region at all. Bright yellow light filters from a windows,
Speaker 1: if through stained glass. Though I know for a fact
Speaker 1: the synagogue's two blocks away. There is beneath it all
Speaker 1: the faintest whisper of organ music, impossible on a weekday
Speaker 1: before sunrise. It's not unpleasant, this shifting strangers. It's as
Speaker 1: if the city is politely resisting measurement. All living thing
Speaker 1: unwilling to be cataloged. The map of the GPS, the
Speaker 1: digital compass, all report versions of reality, none of them
Speaker 1: entirely accurate. When I run an rip lane, prepared as
Speaker 1: always to accept defeat, I paused before Remai's time pieces
Speaker 1: as window glinting gold, the ticking louder than before. My
Speaker 1: amusement has given way to admiration. If every attempt to cheat,
Speaker 1: The game only results in another return to the same
Speaker 1: square of sidewalk. Perhaps it's time to enter and ask
Speaker 1: for rules. The bellob of the door gives a quiet,
Speaker 1: dignified jungle. As I step inside. Romai stands behind the counter,
Speaker 1: spectacles low on his nose, the faint smile lifting one
Speaker 1: corner of his mouth. He's tall, rail thin, hair gone
Speaker 1: white at the edges, wearing clothes that might have fit
Speaker 1: a century backfests sure it, sleeves rolled neatly. The shop
Speaker 1: is a gentle chaos. Clocks on every surface, note to
Speaker 1: in agreement, all ticking, some chumming softly, a few striking
Speaker 1: notes in familiar sequences. Mister chambers. Ramai says without prompting,
Speaker 1: as though greeting someone for an appointment they never set.
Speaker 1: His voice is measured, carrying both memory and expectation. I
Speaker 1: wondered when you decide to come in the oddest thing
Speaker 1: is I am not startled, not even embarrassed. There is
Speaker 1: something comforting in assurrety of his greeting, as though a
Speaker 1: question has finally been answered before it was spoken. The
Speaker 1: shop feels smaller than it looked from outside, but also
Speaker 1: more expansive. Clocks crowding close overhead, acent of oil and brass,
Speaker 1: and something gently spicy. My confusion receipts were placed by
Speaker 1: a sense of being invited into a room I once
Speaker 1: knew to welcome so familiar at aches, rom I gestures
Speaker 1: to an empty stool beside the counter, as though he's
Speaker 1: been civiing it for me. Would you care to have
Speaker 1: a look around, or would you rather answer your first question?
Speaker 1: I sit not beckeldlessly in my lap and prepare for
Speaker 1: the first time to begin from my shop, with its walls, ribbon,
Speaker 1: slender shelves, seems to brief wood faintly creaking, a dozen
Speaker 1: clocks ticking out of sink. The air is close, but
Speaker 1: not stuffy, the kind of climate that belongs to places
Speaker 1: where time rests and layers instead of lines. My eyes
Speaker 1: are just, It occurs to me watching rom I, just
Speaker 1: a clocksman at hand with a jeweler's focus, that there's
Speaker 1: more brass, more ticking, more everything than a single room
Speaker 1: should logically hold. I don't say anything at first. Sometimes
Speaker 1: when a question is too urgent, it knots the tongue.
Speaker 1: I let my note book fall open, half, expecting him
Speaker 1: to comment on its weather. Pages, the dozens of notations
Speaker 1: about his shop in the city that folds me back
Speaker 1: toward it. Instead, Ramai simply waits, one hand steady on
Speaker 1: the clock face, the other inviting mine to rest beside
Speaker 1: a box of tiny, numbered brass keys for a minute
Speaker 1: may be longer. I'll let the rooms speak for itself.
Speaker 1: Tick tick, tick, each rhythm over lapping. No two clocks
Speaker 1: striking together. Some are old school house models, faded and plain,
Speaker 1: the hours in heavy Roman type. Others are carriage clocks,
Speaker 1: as nate as their gilded cages. Several rest under glass domes.
Speaker 1: There are names, initials, even short inscriptions on many, most
Speaker 1: nearly lost to wear g F nineteen forty nine term
Speaker 1: eat the day I came home, see w return soon.
Speaker 1: The hands on each clock are not matched. One might
Speaker 1: be three minutes ahead, another trailing, as if by intent
Speaker 1: I didn't know, I say, finally, there were so many
Speaker 1: kinds of time. Were my laughs, quiet and warm, sand
Speaker 1: fringed with the comfort of someone deeply at ease in
Speaker 1: his own world. People like to believe in standard time,
Speaker 1: mister Chambers, but you'd be surprised how many clocks march
Speaker 1: at their own pace. The trick is understanding what they measure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I do, but I nod as if
Speaker 1: I do. Around us, the slow track of morning leaks
Speaker 1: in distant footsteps, a muffled by scobelle, a dog somewhere
Speaker 1: sounding a solitary warning. The street outside is exactly as
Speaker 1: it should be, but in here the hours swell and recede,
Speaker 1: unhurried by any expected schedule. A young woman comes in
Speaker 1: her hay, bundledunder a scoff as sketchbook slung by her side.
Speaker 1: She and her my exchange glances, nothing more. She sets
Speaker 1: a pocket watch on the counter, murmurs, I keep ending
Speaker 1: up behind Saint Julian's gate. Can it be fixed? Ramai
Speaker 1: gives that same patient open litz smiled, without looking, selects
Speaker 1: a delicate key from the box. He adjusts her watch
Speaker 1: as if he's mending something more persistent than a lost minute,
Speaker 1: and returns it after scribbling a single row of initials
Speaker 1: and to day's date in a thick leather bound logbook
Speaker 1: at his elbow, I appear at the lock on to
Speaker 1: day's page. My own initials p c or penciled in
Speaker 1: the time only moments off. I hadn't noticed his hand moved,
Speaker 1: but there it is p C seven forty five. Others
Speaker 1: to e W which must be Missus Wallace, dated earlier
Speaker 1: in the week. M R. Perhaps Marvin, do you always
Speaker 1: know who's coming? I ask, half to Ramai's fingers dance
Speaker 1: along the spine of the log book. People bring questions
Speaker 1: here before they find the words for them. The city
Speaker 1: guides them when it's time. I just keep the record honest.
Speaker 1: A chimer bell from one of the clocks, clear and
Speaker 1: out of step of my watch marks the hour. I
Speaker 1: look at my wrist. It should be the top of
Speaker 1: the hour. But Remai's clocks form a canvas of shifting moments,
Speaker 1: each running a hair too fast or too slow, like
Speaker 1: a crowd of people humming difference arms. I notice as
Speaker 1: the morning shifts that locals come and go. An older
Speaker 1: man in a suit, a teenager still blinking sleep from
Speaker 1: his eyes, a woman with her arms full of flower stems.
Speaker 1: Each offers a worldless object to watch key, even a
Speaker 1: snap of clock hand. Each leaves with their question near
Speaker 1: the gently teased depart are simply folded back into the
Speaker 1: rhythm of the day. No one appears surprised by the police.
Speaker 1: Some linger cheering shorthand jokes, others nod and vanish. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they all find the shot by accident, or
Speaker 1: if some inherited this practice spinning for Savannah's allies trailing breadcrumbs,
Speaker 1: they'll never recall. Setting down, Ramai offers coffee, as if
Speaker 1: it's understood, I'll be here a while. The cup is
Speaker 1: mismatched to the sorcer, but the poor is warm, the
Speaker 1: cream set out in a small rude joke. I sit,
Speaker 1: then peer at the cluster of photographs pinned under the
Speaker 1: glass armer mais counter. They are of the shop, this
Speaker 1: very one, but also not like a family resemblance filter
Speaker 1: through memory. In one, Remai stands younger, suited tightly. The
Speaker 1: sign and new paint, the street outside busy with horse
Speaker 1: drawn wagons. Another is washed in sixties color, bell bottom
Speaker 1: tcenes clustered near the door, a lemon yellow bice coll
Speaker 1: edged into frame. Each photo scenes correct for its time,
Speaker 1: but only barely, as if the longer I look, the
Speaker 1: more sudden I become that something skipped or double along
Speaker 1: the way. The stoep worn year and tile, another in wood,
Speaker 1: the street number changing above the lintel. Beneath the glass dome,
Speaker 1: a spot a pocket watch, its face cloudy and impossible
Speaker 1: to read before a single second hand moving counterclockwise, its
Speaker 1: plaque reads for journeys finished and begunny are? I turned
Speaker 1: to Rumai the every clock here? Is it? Someone? Sorry?
Speaker 1: Ramai dips is heyd neither confirming nor denying, But I
Speaker 1: sense thus the only answer I'll get for now. The
Speaker 1: minutes blur. I check my watch, which reads almost half past,
Speaker 1: though the sun outside it suggests morning should only just
Speaker 1: be stretching. There's a feeling one I can only describe
Speaker 1: as elastic. Is not that time is lost in here,
Speaker 1: but that it breezes in, sits a spell, then leads
Speaker 1: by another door. Before long, I notice I haven't written anything.
Speaker 1: My notebook lies open, But the question I'd rehearsed, why
Speaker 1: does the city's map always tow ust toward this place?
Speaker 1: Starts to seem too small. The more precisely I observe,
Speaker 1: the harder it is to recall ever having entered the
Speaker 1: shot before. Yet at the same time, I feel as
Speaker 1: though I've always known it. The sound of the bell,
Speaker 1: the faded letters on the window, the scatter of tiny
Speaker 1: screws in the work bench. Memory here feels like an
Speaker 1: unfinished puzzle piece is familiar in isolation, but the way
Speaker 1: they fit together keep shifting under my hands. M My
Speaker 1: seeing my searching look, slides a small square clock across
Speaker 1: the counter. Its hands rest at seven fifty two, exactly
Speaker 1: where the window clock stood when the cesswallace and a
Speaker 1: pause that morning. It backplate bears a scratch in date
Speaker 1: to day for you, he says, simply, as if pastonia
Speaker 1: name or a minor inheritance. You've ourned it for a moment.
Speaker 1: I have no reply. The clock is light, that tick
Speaker 1: quiet as a cat pacing. I run my thumb along
Speaker 1: the brass, but I haven't asked the right question yet, promise.
Speaker 1: Smile sharpens. Sometimes the city gives you the question after
Speaker 1: you think he knowed the answer. Sometimes you carry it
Speaker 1: with you until the rub bends in a new way.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel cryptic, just matto fact, like advice handed
Speaker 1: down by someone who's never needed to consult a calendar.
Speaker 1: I leave remise just after nine, the sidewalk shining as
Speaker 1: though it's just been swept. The clock tucks easily into
Speaker 1: my pocket as impossible provence, making my fingers tingle. For
Speaker 1: the rest of the morning. I wonder with it, comparing
Speaker 1: the time on my phone, my wrist, and this freshly
Speaker 1: acquired artiffect. For a while, each insists on charting a
Speaker 1: separate course. The day presses on. I feel more awake,
Speaker 1: not less. The quiet strange is sharpening my senses, making
Speaker 1: everything I follows sun laughter, even the grind of ties
Speaker 1: on bricksy, more urgent, more alive. In the days I follow,
Speaker 1: curiosity needles me deeper. I speak with everyone who will
Speaker 1: tolerate my questions. Marvin, serving coffee in the blue daylight,
Speaker 1: cradles a remise mug and shrugs FORMAI. I don't remember
Speaker 1: when he arrives. Oh, always fixing this so that you'd
Speaker 1: think there were three of him, with all the repairs.
Speaker 1: My mom's wore. He fixed a'clock for dead the year
Speaker 1: I was born. But I could have sworn the old
Speaker 1: place was next to Schmid's Bakery, not where it is now.
Speaker 1: Cities are slippery, Savannah more than most. He's not bothered
Speaker 1: by the confusion. Sometimes a shop moves, sometimes your memory moves.
Speaker 1: You still get your morning coffee, don't you, missus? Wallace
Speaker 1: breached on her porch as a shaft of sun brightens
Speaker 1: her head ranges grows thoughtful at my persistent probing. You know, Paul,
Speaker 1: I sometimes think Remise feels just to step outside the
Speaker 1: rest of town. When I was a girl, I swore
Speaker 1: it was on Hull Street, near the old music store.
Speaker 1: Then in college it was touched by the Spanish moss
Speaker 1: at Green Square. I suppose it's always where you need
Speaker 1: it to be. She considers her own contradictions with the
Speaker 1: pleasure of someone els weighed by facts. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: nobody in Savannah relies on a map alone. Half the
Speaker 1: city was built to reward the lost. My father said,
Speaker 1: Remai Shop is the city reminding you to pay attention.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you end up back at the beginning.
Speaker 1: But the beginning's always a little different, I ask others.
Speaker 1: The male supervisor retired these twelve years. The old bars
Speaker 1: to whose Bird's certificate by rumor spells her first name
Speaker 1: three ways. Some camp police remise at all, others reference repairs, seats,
Speaker 1: all jokes, Remai's spring special, stories about clock or cats
Speaker 1: that chase down the day, vis a story from nearly everyone. Laughter,
Speaker 1: even in the confusion at the library, Hunting beside the
Speaker 1: musty chronological files, Ali for city directories. Remai's time pieces
Speaker 1: or Ramai watchin clock keeps Appearing and Vanishing eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: two on Teilo Street, nineteen seventeen on Bowl briefly in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five under the name Ramai and Daughter with
Speaker 1: no Dress. Listed newspaper clippings mentioned store from competitions judging
Speaker 1: Rama's holiday window, but the grain new photos are inconsistent.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the shop is broad fronted, sometimes horridly wider than
Speaker 1: a doorway. The year could be any men in straw, boaters,
Speaker 1: women in horn room glasses, all staring back with an
Speaker 1: awareness of time unfamiliar to us. New in a yellowed
Speaker 1: collection of post cards at the Register, I find an
Speaker 1: image of a young man and smiling behind the shop window.
Speaker 1: His remaid must be the strong brow, the unbothered gaze,
Speaker 1: the slight joline, identical to the one that greeted me
Speaker 1: this week. But in each successive decade seep polaroid digital prints,
Speaker 1: the man age is slowly barely, and the only detail
Speaker 1: that remains absolutely fixed is his gentle reserve. The awning
Speaker 1: above is always marked or miike, sometimes plain, sometimes ornate,
Speaker 1: never quite the same. Among the referenced acts, the surprise,
Speaker 1: an envelop addressed in my own handwriting, stamped with a
Speaker 1: date several years back, tucked into the directory of lost businesses.
Speaker 1: I pull it out, heart nudging up against my ribs.
Speaker 1: The postmark matches my own address, but the ink has faded.
Speaker 1: The note insie brief and enigmatic romas. Every returne is forward,
Speaker 1: every forward is a return. Don't forget the blue shutters
Speaker 1: a PC. I find myself reading it over and over,
Speaker 1: uncertain whether I wrote it as a joke, a reminder,
Speaker 1: or in a moment already slip from memory. My block
Speaker 1: never had blue shutters, and yet missus Wallace insisted she
Speaker 1: saw them just last week on a route was supposedly shared.
Speaker 1: It dawns on me, unsettling, but only in the way
Speaker 1: a lingering taste can be unsettling, not repellent. That perhaps
Speaker 1: the map I trusted all my life as a map
Speaker 1: of recollection, not just of streets, landmarks, anchor memories. A
Speaker 1: memory here is not a chain of events, but a
Speaker 1: set of corners one circles until ready to move on.
Speaker 1: I leave the library lighter than when I entered, even
Speaker 1: as my list of questions lengthens. If remise is a puzzle.
Speaker 1: The solution is not debted, but perhaps direction assents thought
Speaker 1: loops rather than lines at the grammar of Savannah's oldest quarter.
Speaker 1: A few days later, I amplify my test. I hail
Speaker 1: at taxi fon poised GPS loaded. My plan far too
Speaker 1: sober for what is by now an adventurer is to
Speaker 1: bypass every familiar block, to drive beyond walking distance, to
Speaker 1: mark by satellite each dep The driver laughs at my directions,
Speaker 1: his accent as crisp as autumn leaves and takes back
Speaker 1: al as I didn't know permit a cause. And yet
Speaker 1: as we turn the final corner, the taxi slows before
Speaker 1: a familiar window, remised timepieces, subtle as always sits flanked
Speaker 1: by an alley where I swear there shouldn't be one.
Speaker 1: My GPS pings, the map losing its mind, straight lines
Speaker 1: replaced by a color script, the path overlaying itself. I
Speaker 1: pay my fare. I'm concerned, in spite of logic, I
Speaker 1: cound to relish the deeter. The driver winks, saying, that's
Speaker 1: Savena for you, sir. Some places ye get to where
Speaker 1: you're meant to be, no matter how you plan for.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere takes a while to get used to it. Back
Speaker 1: in my pocket the clock room, I gave meticks in
Speaker 1: a sharper, more confident rhythm than it did at first.
Speaker 1: I check it against the court has clock in my
Speaker 1: digital watch. No two agree, and yet each seems right
Speaker 1: on its own terms. A pattern begins to emerge. In
Speaker 1: the cafe at City Hall, even the post office clocks
Speaker 1: are slightly out of phase with each other, never by
Speaker 1: more than a few minutes, but never reconciling completely. When
Speaker 1: I stand before my shop, however, all time piece is
Speaker 1: seen to alie in bar more exactly, to fall into
Speaker 1: harmony that feels less like synchronization and more like a
Speaker 1: choral arrangement, distinct overlapping, impossible to resolve. Later, at Marvin's
Speaker 1: I bring up the Savannah shuffle again, a joke about
Speaker 1: getting lost about clocks at one degree. Marvin shrugs, Paul,
Speaker 1: you know the city falls back when it needs to best,
Speaker 1: not to fight it. Why do you think people linger
Speaker 1: at vermise so often? We like a little company as
Speaker 1: we start again. Others echo the sentiment, Missus Wallace armstack
Speaker 1: with groceries hums. It always works itself out. You circle back,
Speaker 1: you get your balance, and somehow you're right where you
Speaker 1: need to be. In the end, something else comes back
Speaker 1: to me, as if reframed in clear light, delivering post
Speaker 1: all those years I remember knocking on the same doors,
Speaker 1: seasons apart, to be met by the same face as
Speaker 1: faces unaltered by age or little changed that the calnder said. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I recall once a young boy handing me a crumpled
Speaker 1: letter meant for his father. Then years later the same boy,
Speaker 1: no taller, every feature identical, playing marbles beside the stoop.
Speaker 1: These occurrences were jokes at the time. Now they seemed
Speaker 1: like slivers of a city wide refrain. The repetition is
Speaker 1: not frightening, nor even melancholy. It is a gentle persistence,
Speaker 1: a comfort. The loops, once noticed, seemed to suggest that
Speaker 1: every loss is also a beginning, every confusion and invitation.
Speaker 1: I decide to make one final attempt at certainty, neither
Speaker 1: for pride nor proof, but from the pleasure of the chase.
Speaker 1: I gather every map at ever drawn, postal routes, recent notes,
Speaker 1: diagram synced. At midnight, when a detail wouldn't quite sit still,
Speaker 1: I spread them across my dining table, overlaying city plans
Speaker 1: with pen and sketches, placing them side by side with
Speaker 1: Marvin scribbles, Missus Wallace's addeters, even the fragments of memory
Speaker 1: annotated in the corners over the years, The patterns are mistakable. Loop.
Speaker 1: Every sequence, no matter how designed to avoid radiats or
Speaker 1: folds around from my shop. My delivery notes from fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. Sure one sort a flow, recent diagrams another.
Speaker 1: The official city blueprints cannot reconcile with my live experience,
Speaker 1: no matter the era or method of mapping. Remise is
Speaker 1: the pivot, the unmoving center of dynamos. I realize, then,
Speaker 1: startled but grateful, that the city is not a grid
Speaker 1: intended for conquests by logic, but rather a tapestry, each
Speaker 1: dread of movement and recollection weaving around the same anchoring point.
Speaker 1: The more doggedly I try to resolve the loop, the
Speaker 1: more evident it becomes that is not meant to be escaped.
Speaker 1: It is meant to be inhabited, revisited, discovered again and again.
Speaker 1: By this point I misromise without thinking. I return one
Speaker 1: late afternoon, some lowering, casting long stripes through the half
Speaker 1: cursoned window inside the shop is buzzy, with quiet energy,
Speaker 1: clocks ticking, someone lightly dust in a grand father clock
Speaker 1: beside the counter. Ramaiah looks up and grins back again.
Speaker 1: He asks, I, I think I've stopped trying to beat
Speaker 1: the loop, rom I. He gestures to a pair of stools.
Speaker 1: Then you'll welcome to stay as long as you like.
Speaker 1: Most people come here when they need a reminder of
Speaker 1: what's possible, or simply when they're ready a place. The
Speaker 1: small clock he gave me on the counter. What is
Speaker 1: it really the shop, these loops? Why does the city
Speaker 1: rearrange itself to send us here? Ramisets aside, his tools,
Speaker 1: looks me full in the face of rarer as bearing focus.
Speaker 1: Some places invite straight lines, he says, Savannah never did
Speaker 1: hear the street spiral? The hours bend, time and memory
Speaker 1: follow suit the shop while it's less a place, more
Speaker 1: a possibility. He looks around the room, as if gathering
Speaker 1: the sense of what he'll say next, not from thought,
Speaker 1: but from the air itself. The everyone who passes through
Speaker 1: he brings a journey, a question they don't know they've
Speaker 1: asked a loop they haven't closed. Clocks wait for their
Speaker 1: owners to finish a circle. Sometimes that circle is an
Speaker 1: actual walk. Sometimes it's just the time needed to notice
Speaker 1: what's changed inside or out. He gestures to wall crowded
Speaker 1: with clocks, many unlabeled, all running at their own stubborn speed.
Speaker 1: None of these clocks agrees with the others, but each
Speaker 1: relies on a pulse its owner set by living, by wandering,
Speaker 1: by asking something unlikely of their ordinary day. When you're ready,
Speaker 1: when you stop fighting for straightness, the city folds around
Speaker 1: you and brings you home to this moment, this shop.
Speaker 1: He picks up my clock and shows me the inscription.
Speaker 1: He're here to day tomorrow. Maybe you'll come through a
Speaker 1: different door, or find that remises down the block, or
Speaker 1: only a memory in your neighbor's story. The important thing
Speaker 1: is not to force the city into submission, but to
Speaker 1: let it lead you through its labyrinth. Every return is forward,
Speaker 1: Every forward is a return your own words. If you remember,
Speaker 1: I do, and the phrase sends a ripple of recognition,
Speaker 1: almost but not quite closure. A few Regulus. Triffin, Marvin,
Speaker 1: with the shop order to pick up, winks at me.
Speaker 1: Missus Wallace leans on her cane as she steps over
Speaker 1: the threshold, her eye sparkling. They all seem lighter, as
Speaker 1: if having surrendered to the gentle impossibility of the city,
Speaker 1: is freed them from the pressure of directions. In the
Speaker 1: frustration of missteps, Remai shrugs off any suggestion of magic
Speaker 1: or malice. Some cities lose themselves to history. Others likers
Speaker 1: write history around the people who need a place to wander,
Speaker 1: to come back to themselves shops. Sometimes it moves for
Speaker 1: the city's sake, sometimes for yours. Some stories go stray. Others,
Speaker 1: like Savannah spiral, there's no final answer, not the kind
Speaker 1: that satisfies calculation, but the realization, the strongest understanding. It
Speaker 1: convoices this. Savannah's oldest Quarter is a living loop and pattern.
Speaker 1: It quietly orients and disorients, not as a test, but
Speaker 1: as a kindness. The map is not what matters. It's
Speaker 1: the movement, the asking, the coming back changed not by
Speaker 1: finding a new corner, but by letting yourself arrive in
Speaker 1: the same place with different questions. I don't ask for more,
Speaker 1: for once presents the companionship of a dozen clocks fromise
Speaker 1: measured focus. My own heartbeat is enough. In the days
Speaker 1: that follow, I find that I no longer try it
Speaker 1: out with the loop. I wonder because the wandering is sweet,
Speaker 1: My walks are playful. My notebook now collecting descriptions of
Speaker 1: sunlight on steeps and new mural near the market. Conversations
Speaker 1: started with strangers have finished with friends. Savannah's unpredictability delights me.
Speaker 1: Its gentlefolding of time makes every return and invitation not
Speaker 1: a correction. When rom My catch is my eye on
Speaker 1: a morning visit, he smiles, hands busy a clock like
Speaker 1: a patient hot. My old habit remain tidiness, the pleasure
Speaker 1: in small order. But now, instead of expecting the city
Speaker 1: to answer to my plans, I step outside, curious to
Speaker 1: be guided, to let the day rewrite its off as
Speaker 1: it wishes. The city is unchanged yet more itself. The
Speaker 1: clock's public private borrowed. Each tickeshete off, but their chorus
Speaker 1: is richer for it. Remai's shop has become a familiar refrain,
Speaker 1: one I look forward to encountering, without knowing quite when
Speaker 1: or how. This morning, as the first pail let sifts
Speaker 1: down the lane, alas my shoes step out and shoose
Speaker 1: a path at random, I know I'm certain I will
Speaker 1: cross the threshold to day, and that sooner or later
Speaker 1: I'll pass from my shop, its sign always precisely as
Speaker 1: faded as needed. Maybe every city has its impossible loop.
Speaker 1: I amuse its own roma. You only have to stop
Speaker 1: to ask to notice the world wanning, just a little
Speaker 1: out of step with your confident marching. I still don't
Speaker 1: know how that's possible, but I do know I'll keep walking,
Speaker 1: watching and wondering as long as Savanna keeps ticking alarm.
Speaker 1: As I stroll out. The city's clocks chime in their
Speaker 1: private melodies, each voice a little off. As the sunlight
Speaker 1: calls over the old stones, a harmony spawn unravel, all
Speaker 1: just so in a world quietly, endlessly, curiously whining in time.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.