Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. The lad you
Speaker 1: are here, Let's get into it. The cross wood was
Speaker 1: proving stubborn, but not in a way that bothered me.
Speaker 1: The park swoke gently into early spring, the grass after
Speaker 1: vessons starling, stitching the canopy with their bright whistle. I
Speaker 1: claimed the same least facing bench for years, and all
Speaker 1: ranges happy, too, ingrained for retirement to break. Not that
Speaker 1: I minded. I liked to pretend the bench was a
Speaker 1: sentry post to the crossware, a cryptic despatch to be
Speaker 1: related to those who cared about the small dramas and
Speaker 1: folding among the flower beds and chest tables. I paused
Speaker 1: with my pen hovering over a six downs something about
Speaker 1: a French river, when the world, simply, utterly and without fanfare,
Speaker 1: fell silent. It was so abrupt it took a second
Speaker 1: to register. And then as I cast about for some
Speaker 1: weiskirk to myself about peace and quiet. The absent became
Speaker 1: a prison all its own. No bird calls, not a
Speaker 1: single child shriek from the playground, no buses hamming from
Speaker 1: the avenue on the far side of the park. It
Speaker 1: wasn't only the people. The wind itself was gone, not
Speaker 1: just subdue, but as if the entire world had pressed
Speaker 1: a finger to its lips and waited. That stillness, too
Speaker 1: heavy for the hour or season, hit with a strangeness
Speaker 1: that nudged me upright. I looked around a knot nervously,
Speaker 1: but out of a feeling somewhere between embarrassment and bewilderment,
Speaker 1: as if out wandered into a pantomime. At just a
Speaker 1: run moment, a collie, always exuberant, stood midstride beside the path,
Speaker 1: its hind legs bunched, waiting for the man on the
Speaker 1: other end of the leash to catch up. Only the
Speaker 1: dog wasn't waiting. It was suspended the least court and
Speaker 1: a droop that seemed carved out of glass. A group
Speaker 1: of teenagers arms made gesture over a fawn brimmed with
Speaker 1: mock out rage. They too were held in place, faces
Speaker 1: how sculptured in the act of laughter. Squalls, Oh, the
Speaker 1: nerves of squails amid investigation beneath the chest, tables, tears
Speaker 1: arch moving as the plints themselves. Even the air felt
Speaker 1: thick and tall. I blinked once twice, expecting a scene change.
Speaker 1: A dog barking a skateboarder coasting down the hill with
Speaker 1: wheels that wind, but nothing I leave. The silence and
Speaker 1: the faint ticking of my wrist were suddenly deafening against
Speaker 1: my skin. I half expected the hours to roll backward.
Speaker 1: The parked pale into black and white. Sixty seconds by
Speaker 1: my watch passed as if my pulse had been poured
Speaker 1: over cold stones. I couldn't say the world's bed, or
Speaker 1: lagged it with simple blankness, as clear and full as
Speaker 1: any sound. Then, as inconspicuously as it left, the ordinary returned.
Speaker 1: The collie lunched forward, embarked, the leash, ship taught, the
Speaker 1: teenager's exclamation escaped in a burst, one girl tossing her
Speaker 1: head back at whatever prank had just been played. Birds
Speaker 1: interrupted into the emptiness, and the faint roar of the
Speaker 1: city reasserted itself behind the railings. I found myself breathing out,
Speaker 1: not because I'd held my breath, but because something in
Speaker 1: me waited for a cue. Was it a faint dizziness
Speaker 1: or simply confusion. I shook off the scentse of pause
Speaker 1: and studied the crossword, tasking my pencil deliberately on to
Speaker 1: a wall, but with each blink I found my eyes darting.
Speaker 1: Did any one else register it? Surely a minute of
Speaker 1: such emptiness would demand a response, a dropped coffee, a
Speaker 1: quizzical glance, a ripple of unease. Yet by all appearances,
Speaker 1: the only thing out of places the lag in my
Speaker 1: own heart. After a time, the spell broke, or at
Speaker 1: the very least became small and private, to the sort
Speaker 1: of thing you assigned to a wandering mind or nap
Speaker 1: gone m I filled in three clues in quick succession,
Speaker 1: relishing a return to normalcy. But something at the base
Speaker 1: of my spine hummed with the aftertaste of whatever it
Speaker 1: was that oppressed the mute button on the well for
Speaker 1: a single maclate minute. The afternoon drained slowly toward dinner time.
Speaker 1: I got up duster crumbs from my knee and circled
Speaker 1: it up pond once before heading home. But deja virewed
Speaker 1: deeper flavored tue at the edges of my thoughts. The
Speaker 1: silence hadn't frightened me, not exactly. I'd spend enough time
Speaker 1: alone in woods, storms and search and rescue drills to
Speaker 1: know the difference between real peril and things that tease
Speaker 1: around its edges. Still, I found myself, wondering why no
Speaker 1: one else seemed the least bit perturbed or even distracted.
Speaker 1: Had it happened for and I chalked up to fatigue?
Speaker 1: Had I finally become a doughty retiree seeing patterns where
Speaker 1: there were only ordinary gaps? That night I dreamed of
Speaker 1: his pieces frozen midgame, the entire board abandoned, while every
Speaker 1: last pigeon watched with silent regard. In the morning, it
Speaker 1: was the silence itself I remembered most, not emptiness, but fullness.
Speaker 1: At dawn, the park was frost clear, every blade jowled
Speaker 1: and bristling. Most of the city was only just yawning
Speaker 1: to life. But the park has always belonged to the
Speaker 1: early rises, the runners, the birdos, and the unumbered elderly,
Speaker 1: who walked their rounds with measured prey. I came more
Speaker 1: for the company than I would a met. With my
Speaker 1: badge turned in, I'd become one of a particular breed,
Speaker 1: those for whom the little patterns. Madam moved this park
Speaker 1: Penning's Green, a ribon of woods and lawns and spoiling
Speaker 1: between the old stone University gate and the grid of
Speaker 1: the city's southern blocks. Was equal parts playground and zantuery.
Speaker 1: Paths wove between stands of beech and oak, carving shortcuts
Speaker 1: to the duck Pond playground and a community garden so
Speaker 1: regularly weeded you could almost believe the dandelions had each
Speaker 1: signed an agreement. There was a banston that played host
Speaker 1: to everything from Cellus d amateur comedians, a scatter of
Speaker 1: ancient chess tables, older than most who played them upon
Speaker 1: the quit gossiping malarts, a perennial champion oak, a tree that,
Speaker 1: as legend had it, survived the parks, founding almost by accident.
Speaker 1: Its roch shoving up the path stones with slow insistence
Speaker 1: even before retiring, had slipped easily into kinds of neighborhood routine.
Speaker 1: Park folks don't walk so much as belonging, each with
Speaker 1: their rhythm. This Marco strata just of the chess tables,
Speaker 1: whose opening gambits are only rivaled by his frosty inability
Speaker 1: to conduct a chat about the weather. Cassie, a whirlind
Speaker 1: of laughter, with soil forever packed under her finger nails,
Speaker 1: tends a patch of beans with the diligence of a surgeon.
Speaker 1: If there is any insect not yet cattle oged in
Speaker 1: the beds. It hasn't escaped her eye. Oldly, who brings
Speaker 1: a batted field notebook for daily tally of every finch
Speaker 1: and flicker, entering numbers with a precision that would joy
Speaker 1: the sternest statistician. Grocer presides over the remaining chess tables,
Speaker 1: wielding a grocery bag as both purse and referees by ton,
Speaker 1: and can turn the air blue with her defense of
Speaker 1: the regulars. There's Townsend, the dog walker, who knows more
Speaker 1: about canine psychology than any vette. I've met a small
Speaker 1: parade of four legged companions always in to the routine
Speaker 1: goes like this. I walk to pass, I check on
Speaker 1: a stand of blueberry bushes, making note of which have
Speaker 1: burst into flower overnight. I nod to Marco, who never notices.
Speaker 1: I accept Kassi's offer of a carrot straight from the
Speaker 1: damp soil. I have her over Lee's shoulder, peering at
Speaker 1: his careful script. He never seems to mind, even when
Speaker 1: we spot only sparrows at the older I tapped the
Speaker 1: bark once for luck at the duck pond. Listen for
Speaker 1: the slash of the old broken pump. It's a whirl
Speaker 1: built from smold SERVANTSS. The rhythm of the fountain spotter
Speaker 1: will tell you if the wind's about to pick up.
Speaker 1: The course of Blackbird's means dryer weathers held on an
Speaker 1: extra day. Even the absence of the maintenance fan are familiar.
Speaker 1: Sidling yawn of diesel and radio at eight twenty carries
Speaker 1: meaning perhaps the head grounds keeper called in or a
Speaker 1: flat tire to laid the usual bustle. My memory works
Speaker 1: this way, glowing itself to patterns, to repetitions and their
Speaker 1: rare startling lapses, which is why the minute of near
Speaker 1: holy silence the day before sat so squarely at odds
Speaker 1: with the park's cadence. Not the fact of quiet, parks
Speaker 1: are full of rare private silences, but the surgical certainty,
Speaker 1: and not a smoothness at such a peculiar hour alone.
Speaker 1: It left its impression both feather light and ements. There
Speaker 1: were stories over the years of oddities with easy explanations.
Speaker 1: Usually animal escapage are clever pranks. The escape raccoon that
Speaker 1: had made off with someone's head fens and returned nightly
Speaker 1: to the same hollow lock. The rare snowy ill nesting
Speaker 1: by the pond one bit of winter, which drew binoculars
Speaker 1: and whispers. By the score more than once. The gardeners
Speaker 1: found footprints and beds never entered by human hand, later
Speaker 1: revealed by the muddy prince of a wayward dog, or
Speaker 1: once a sand del prankster who swore he was blanting
Speaker 1: lock for the tomatoes. I've witnessed and dismissed trotities before,
Speaker 1: but thus the dead minute press thought away like a
Speaker 1: gast slide. On my third morning after the incident, be
Speaker 1: pen hovering again, I did something I hadn't done in years.
Speaker 1: I noted in my pocket notebook, with as much detachment
Speaker 1: as I could muster, three fourteen minutes, three fifteen utter silence,
Speaker 1: all asterisk, goolasterisk pauses, Nobody blinks. I added a question mark,
Speaker 1: as if that might preserve my skepticism despite myself. I
Speaker 1: returned to the bench that next afternoon, my posture as
Speaker 1: casual as possible, despite the tremor of anticipation. My hands
Speaker 1: was with the cross would but didn't scribble much. At
Speaker 1: three thirteen, I folded the newspaper, set my phone no money,
Speaker 1: leaned forward and simply watched there. It was three fourteen
Speaker 1: p m. At once not gradually, but with a strangeness
Speaker 1: that tickled the roots of my hair. Of the world
Speaker 1: clicked into silence again. The sand faded, leaving even my
Speaker 1: own heart Betutdding against a cushion of nothing. I looked
Speaker 1: up by the low wall. Two joggers in Neon Short's
Speaker 1: Froze poem, tails hovering at improbable angles with a sense
Speaker 1: of physics on holiday. The first beee, sky blue and spinning,
Speaker 1: seemed to rest impossibly syllables from the end of its
Speaker 1: parabolic fight. This time, I couldn't even hear the faint
Speaker 1: swish of my jacket. My phone, whose timer I had
Speaker 1: started seconds before, in a fit of justification, tipped merrily forward,
Speaker 1: second by relentless second, yet next to the world didn't
Speaker 1: move for that minute. I dared to stand. My legs
Speaker 1: felt like waiting through syu, but with a determined flex,
Speaker 1: I braced myself upright. The effort throlled me. Could I
Speaker 1: break the spell? I waved, perhaps foolishly, at the closest jogger.
Speaker 1: They were unmoved. Only my own mind moved freely, cranial fugue,
Speaker 1: sliding through the silence with ease, like a fish darting
Speaker 1: in a frozen ponds under current three fifteen. Without prelude,
Speaker 1: the park snapped to the first be clattered on to
Speaker 1: the path. The joggers grunted on their way, and the
Speaker 1: distant city noise poured into the hour. As if released
Speaker 1: from Madame. I let out all laugh, half ames, half nervous.
Speaker 1: It was disturbingly the same ritual as before the world
Speaker 1: for a stretch of colckrk seconds steped wholly outside itself,
Speaker 1: rattle but fortified. I waited for Tamsen to pass her lead,
Speaker 1: rattling as her black lab deftly sniffed out a crust
Speaker 1: of bread. I fell in step beside her. Afternoon Tamsen
Speaker 1: did something ought just happen. My tone, I hoped, was light,
Speaker 1: as if making sport of the question. She gave me
Speaker 1: a sidelong glance, her brow creased. How do you mean, Jack,
Speaker 1: dog's been good? Didn't trip you up again, did he?
Speaker 1: I shook my head, trying a different tack. Just was
Speaker 1: it unusually quiet? Say a minute ago, you didn't notice anything,
Speaker 1: she laughed, He getting philosophical on me to day. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Maybe you're finally relaxed enough to enjoy
Speaker 1: the piece in quiet. He earned it, She waved off
Speaker 1: my growing perplexity, clicking her tongue at the dog, who
Speaker 1: hardly noticed, Still mulling, I visited the chess tables, idling
Speaker 1: near Marco's in game. Marco Bailey looked up his focused total,
Speaker 1: his hand decisive, as he claimed upon good afternoon, Marco
Speaker 1: strange sort of silence A bit ago, wasn't it. He
Speaker 1: furrowed his brows, quinting at the board. Then at me, silence.
Speaker 1: Do you want to play or not? Jack? Only if
Speaker 1: if you admit you noticed? Time stood still for a second.
Speaker 1: Air he grunted, snorted with amusement. With you lot talking,
Speaker 1: there is never silence. Not deterred. I found Cassie leaning
Speaker 1: over a row of sunflowers. She greeted me with a
Speaker 1: mock salute, grinning, have a good puzzle to day. You
Speaker 1: look troubled, I shrugged. Suddenly sheepish, Probably nothing, just sat
Speaker 1: in an odd patch of quiet. Anyone mentioned a hush
Speaker 1: around three? Did your plants freeze? She feigned solemnity. If
Speaker 1: my sun flowers start freezing themselves as a joke, I'll
Speaker 1: have words with them. I laughed, but her answer too quick,
Speaker 1: too glib, didn't satisfy. Birds chattered above, people meandered, the
Speaker 1: world spun without hesitation. Only I was left holding this
Speaker 1: minute of emptiness like a pebble, and she, nobody else
Speaker 1: seemed to feel. That night, I replayed the day in
Speaker 1: my mind, hunting for cracks. Old age did things to
Speaker 1: a person. Sure, but I'd been a ranger outdoors in
Speaker 1: crises and calm, reading tracks and chatters. I trusted my senses,
Speaker 1: or at least I wanted to. But the repetition, the
Speaker 1: fixed time, the absolute regularity, the wells, refusal to finchmok,
Speaker 1: the pussy of mere daydream. If I was losing my grip,
Speaker 1: it was with a precision. The mine shouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to summon. The next morning, I packed my old field watch,
Speaker 1: about a notebook and my phone, determined to see, not
Speaker 1: just to see Astris, to catch at Asterisk. I arrived early,
Speaker 1: walking the perimeter with careful, even strides. Three times I
Speaker 1: paused on the chest tables, twice by the pond, once
Speaker 1: beneath the big oak. At three thirteen, I perched at
Speaker 1: a different bension with awkward flourish, set my phone to record.
Speaker 1: I started the audio app as the second hand swept up.
Speaker 1: The minute arrived again. The world receded only this low
Speaker 1: store me. Thump of my heart and the persistent tick
Speaker 1: of my watch grounded me. The phone's time I counted upward,
Speaker 1: but no ambienthum, no birds, not the faint noise of
Speaker 1: sneakers on gravel. A single leaf midfall, caught in the
Speaker 1: sun seemed held indefinitely in place when it ended sixty
Speaker 1: seconds there or other bouts. I played the recording oddly,
Speaker 1: the app showed a glitch A minute of flat land silence.
Speaker 1: The countermoving is normal, but the whip froms frozen, no
Speaker 1: matter how high set the volume. I quickly scribbled in
Speaker 1: the notebook three fourteen to three fifteen. Silence confirmed on device,
Speaker 1: clocks continue. My handshook was steady, quiet elation. Over the
Speaker 1: next four days I made a study of it. Each time,
Speaker 1: without fail, the effect, if that's what it could be
Speaker 1: called to, persisted at exactly three fourteen. I took up
Speaker 1: different vantage points, once on the bridge of of the pond,
Speaker 1: once by the amphitheater where children usually spilled onto the
Speaker 1: steps at intermission, once beneath the old oak. Each time
Speaker 1: the effect was complete. Movement stopped the ducks held on
Speaker 1: the water like figurians. The children midly gravity apparently reversed.
Speaker 1: The wind itself, whose leaves and water ripples were so faithful,
Speaker 1: vanished every time I tried a new device, video, audio,
Speaker 1: even the digital timer on my watch all tracked the
Speaker 1: passage of a minute, but displayed only absence of black frames,
Speaker 1: flatland recordings, a solitary minute, and touched by any human
Speaker 1: trace but my own awareness. Increasingly, I began to feel
Speaker 1: not so much insane, as excluded, as though I blundered
Speaker 1: into a party where every one else had been briefed
Speaker 1: and the rules accept me. Perhaps it was guilt to
Speaker 1: arrangeous guilt at missing signs others took for granted. It
Speaker 1: became clear whether or not others admitted something happened at
Speaker 1: three fourteen, something only a select few fell, if at all.
Speaker 1: On the fifth day resolved to widen the net. I
Speaker 1: picked my moments carefully. Marco and the chess Cohorp were
Speaker 1: circumspect deserver bursa ruling the tables that day offered a
Speaker 1: more cheerful response a jack. If I stumbled into sixty
Speaker 1: seconds of peace, I touched it with champagne, but no
Speaker 1: the clock ticks, the pigeons e ae a sandwich, the
Speaker 1: world's staggers on as usual. Maybe you need stronger coffee, Cassie. Ever,
Speaker 1: the scientists only shrugged. You want me to tie my
Speaker 1: beans growth around your magical minute. Yet the very dismissal
Speaker 1: spured my curiosity. What if in their routines others failed
Speaker 1: to notice because they simply hadn't looked closely. Each has
Speaker 1: their rhythm, each is invested in their own patch of
Speaker 1: the park's fabric. The contradiction gnawed If time moved uninterrupted
Speaker 1: for them, and if my device is confirmed the passage
Speaker 1: of time, but the world itself paused to what then
Speaker 1: did it mean for the order of things, for perception,
Speaker 1: for simple human notice. I stalked the flower beds until dusk,
Speaker 1: pondering how could I know if my senses deceived or
Speaker 1: if the world itself sheltered a one minute impossibility each day?
Speaker 1: Right here beneath the passing feet of all these rig'lars.
Speaker 1: Over dinner, I composed myself for round the day's discovery.
Speaker 1: Something real happened to not only in my mind, not
Speaker 1: merely in the muscles of my imagination. It pressed out
Speaker 1: of every yock of frozen fountain. Every mid rush pigeon
Speaker 1: ever sound a snap of leash? But if it was real,
Speaker 1: what was it? Who else might see? The park at
Speaker 1: dawn is a different country, lighter, but more honest. I
Speaker 1: met mister Leo, as was his gentle custom, with note
Speaker 1: at the ready, binoculars dangling. He nodded in greeting cheeks
Speaker 1: read against the dawn shell. Morning, lou anything unusual these mornings?
Speaker 1: I tried to sound abrupt enough to pass off his
Speaker 1: idle chitchat. He pursed his lips, thoughtful. The sedan birds
Speaker 1: stayed longer yesterday, ought, why do you ask? Oh? Nothing
Speaker 1: in particular, just noticed round three a sort of lull.
Speaker 1: He turned a page, finger in the edge, as he thought,
Speaker 1: you know now that you mention it. I sometimes get
Speaker 1: a lag in my bird records, makes me cross out
Speaker 1: a line and the schedule. He flipped several pages back
Speaker 1: see here at around three fourteen, nothing logged. I'd assumed
Speaker 1: it was a mystic. Got distracted, But it's consistent. Birds
Speaker 1: disappear then return, always precisely curious, isn't it? Could you
Speaker 1: keep special track this afternoon? I tried not to sound eager.
Speaker 1: He scribbled a note I will for science. Leaving Lige's birds,
Speaker 1: I doubled back to the gardens, finding Cassie humming as
Speaker 1: she weed stubborn stretch of lamb's ear. When I brought
Speaker 1: up the silence, she looked first worry, then amused. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm in my own world out here, but now you
Speaker 1: mention it. Sometimes it feels like the leaves sort of
Speaker 1: catch their breath. I lose track. Thinkets heat stroke or
Speaker 1: mild dehydration. Maybe I am just absent minded, maybe I mused,
Speaker 1: but behind her words luck curiosity. Later, amidst the chest tables,
Speaker 1: a cut rose, eyeing me sideways as MARKO bast in
Speaker 1: another wind here in your odd little theories, she teased,
Speaker 1: folding her arms. Is it all the fresh air getting
Speaker 1: to your head? Jack? Fresh air is all I've got
Speaker 1: these days. The banter softened the tension, a kind of
Speaker 1: shared teasing that acknowledged the oddity without ever omitting to
Speaker 1: its substance. Incrementally, it became clear I was not quite alone. Lee,
Speaker 1: with his fastidious notes and reluctant observations, had registered a
Speaker 1: blank space in his record. Cassi sensed perhaps a subtle
Speaker 1: stir among the garden beds. None of these confessions came
Speaker 1: out as admissions, but they carried traces of my own knees,
Speaker 1: the shadow of something caught at the edge of experience.
Speaker 1: That night, sleep failed me. I combed over the day's exchanges.
Speaker 1: Was there a common thread? Did some things set apart
Speaker 1: those who noticed the gap? A two meant perhaps familiarity
Speaker 1: with small changes, or just a willingness to admit what
Speaker 1: cannot be cataloged. I decided that tests must be more rigorous.
Speaker 1: The following afternoon, I set up my digital watch to
Speaker 1: beat at the critical moment. I chose the chess tables,
Speaker 1: placing my arm atop the coal checkered marble where Roset
Speaker 1: and Marco played, setting the alarm for three fourteen. When
Speaker 1: the minute arrived, there it was the hush, total and consuming.
Speaker 1: I weeded for the beep, nothing, no vibration, no hint
Speaker 1: of digital psalm. Yet the time piece's second hand crept onward,
Speaker 1: recording the minute's passage, as indifferent to my confusion as
Speaker 1: any celestial clock. Furious, I clenched my hand, trying to
Speaker 1: reach for a pawn. The air resisted. My muscles lived
Speaker 1: as a swimming through cold molasses. I could think. My
Speaker 1: mind still raised, twaling possibilities, sifting for close, but my
Speaker 1: body was no longer my own, no pain, no panic,
Speaker 1: just a remote, muffled state of being. When the silence ended,
Speaker 1: Roses slid her rook, glancing at my outstretched hand with
Speaker 1: a smirk. Your move, Jack lost and thought again. My
Speaker 1: watch didn't beat, I muttered, Maybe it knows a better
Speaker 1: time to wake up, Marco replied, not looking up. For
Speaker 1: the first time, I felt the possibility of real difference,
Speaker 1: a true split between mind and material. I could astrisk,
Speaker 1: think asterisk, but could not move with intend or intervene.
Speaker 1: In the pause, the world and I were both inside
Speaker 1: and outside ourselves for one perplexing interval That evening, I
Speaker 1: made a request, an unexpected one, perhaps from a former
Speaker 1: ranger with a modest rapport among the Puck staff. I
Speaker 1: emailed the maintenance office my eye in the name of
Speaker 1: nostalgia and volunteerism, have a look at olds curity footage
Speaker 1: of the park for a project, as I gently put it.
Speaker 1: The next morning, one of the office assistants, a friendly
Speaker 1: girl named Dea, loaded up several weeks worth of clouded,
Speaker 1: jumpy security video. Together we watched noon one two and
Speaker 1: then three p m. At the critical moment, every foul glitched.
Speaker 1: At three fourteen daily the security footage recorded nothing of
Speaker 1: just a block of black tancoags rolling on, and then
Speaker 1: at three fifteen, the world blinking instantly back into motion,
Speaker 1: as if nothing had happened. De found this only mildly amusing.
Speaker 1: Must be a soft, poor patch, she said. I took
Speaker 1: her word for it, but in Mardi my conviction only
Speaker 1: grew armed. Now with hard evidence, I returned to Cassie
Speaker 1: and Lee sharing my findings. Their response is mixed skepticism,
Speaker 1: reluctant wonder, and the sort of nervous laughter that bespeaks
Speaker 1: not dismissal but a grasping at reassurance. Cassie robbed her
Speaker 1: into her palms and characteristically fidgety. So what we're in
Speaker 1: a Sefi drama? Now? Next thing you'll say is my
Speaker 1: bean's teleport crossed the beds. I'm not saying anything yet,
Speaker 1: but have you ever noticed, maybe after I don't know,
Speaker 1: certain afternoons, a patch of flowers shooting up overnight faster
Speaker 1: than others. No reason. She frowned That patch by the
Speaker 1: gate lost week two inches of growth after a hot day.
Speaker 1: I blamed the rain, but there wasn't any Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just a bad scientist. We're a good observer, I countered.
Speaker 1: Leu was less easily rattled. He straightened his glasses, flipping
Speaker 1: through his note book. If you're correct, we should be
Speaker 1: able to collect more data. Double up, watch record confirm.
Speaker 1: Cassie agreed, though her laughter sounded thinner than usual. If
Speaker 1: nature's running a secret experiment, let's give us some competition.
Speaker 1: The next days we set a regime. Cassie marked a
Speaker 1: patch of fairly Crooks's with string. Lee tuned his old
Speaker 1: field recorder to capture birds, and I manned my bench
Speaker 1: with phone, note book and timer. Every three fourteen the
Speaker 1: same the world paused. Our intentions held in amber. Cassie's
Speaker 1: thermometered in the soil, flat lined, the birds leaves pride
Speaker 1: skipped a minute, then picked up their routines as if
Speaker 1: nothing passed. Our devices continued to can't, but recorded only
Speaker 1: empty space. After one such minute, Cassie approached me, eyes
Speaker 1: wide watch. The crocus lines she measured with a peach
Speaker 1: marched blossom leaped forward minutely, but indisputably in height. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't be possible, not over one day, but it's right here.
Speaker 1: They offered up his tally numbers gapped with birds resuming
Speaker 1: their forging as if time had never touched them. We
Speaker 1: sat together, three oddities in a field of order, waiting
Speaker 1: for the minute notes and lap. During the next pause,
Speaker 1: I was keenly a where, not panicked or slowed, but attentive.
Speaker 1: My breathing seemed to rest beneath the surface, my heart quiet,
Speaker 1: the world admitting me to its paws. Cassie squeezed her
Speaker 1: eyes shut. Leeu penpaursed managed a rough sketch of the
Speaker 1: frozen stallings above. When ordinary life and one again, Cassie pointed,
Speaker 1: look the dragonet. The familiar green dragon fly hovered motionless
Speaker 1: above a garden row as the minute elapse. AS second
Speaker 1: appeared at the far bed, and a third by the
Speaker 1: pond ditch, identical as if one insect had been triplicated,
Speaker 1: a perfecticcko reeling. We dove into records. I brought out
Speaker 1: maintenance logs, bertle and stained stored from decades past. Cassi
Speaker 1: poured over old garden journals left by volunteers. Lee found
Speaker 1: references in a burning Club newsletter dated nearly twenty years
Speaker 1: before three fourteen aer Rare de Kuiet must have been
Speaker 1: the traffic time, and again the logs recorded the same
Speaker 1: puzzling facts. Gardening tools misplaced, fan trowl at gate, though
Speaker 1: no one recalled bringing it, hoses run dry at otdors,
Speaker 1: no memory of watering yet, beds soaked. Even the phrase
Speaker 1: dead quiet, penned by a groundskeeper, quickly dismissed as a
Speaker 1: trick of the imagination. The collective effect was inescapable. The anomaly,
Speaker 1: impossible as it was, had marked the park as surely
Speaker 1: as the statues and the old okun heralded, mostly forgotten
Speaker 1: but undeniably real for decades, perhaps longer, The park had
Speaker 1: hosted this impossible minute, same time, same effect, same mystery.
Speaker 1: In Dent we met beneath the great Oacus, the sun
Speaker 1: drew law, the three of us participants, now in a
Speaker 1: secret tradition we didn't begin and couldn't yet explain. It
Speaker 1: was no longer my private curiosity. The phenomenon was not
Speaker 1: only experiential, but traceable, with echoes in the world's smallest details,
Speaker 1: those of plants, birds, logs, and memories. It was a
Speaker 1: fall or a feature in the park's tapas unremarked but enduring.
Speaker 1: As dusk fell, our little circle looked at each other,
Speaker 1: complicitly exhilarated and quietly unnerved in equal measure. Whatever the
Speaker 1: quiet hour was, it belonged not just to me, but
Speaker 1: to the park's order, its generations, and as attentive enough
Speaker 1: to notice when the whirl, for one precise minute, decided
Speaker 1: to draw a breath and be renewed the next day,
Speaker 1: our trio gathered with a sense of promising mischief. There
Speaker 1: was subtle pride in this strange assignment. We'd given ourselves
Speaker 1: to map the perimeter of the impossible, to see just
Speaker 1: where and how the park observed this daily retreat from
Speaker 1: the ordinary whirl. We add with us not only cassis string,
Speaker 1: a notepad, and Leave's battered field kit, but also set
Speaker 1: of walkie talk is borrowed, perhaps more for effect than necessity,
Speaker 1: and a resolve that felt almost ceremonial, I distributed the radios,
Speaker 1: resisted the temptation to salute, and we found out each
Speaker 1: to a different edge. Cassie to the community garden, lay
Speaker 1: south to the Duck Ponds foot bridge and out of
Speaker 1: the Amphitheater steps, where the wind sometimes made an audience
Speaker 1: of empty benches. The sky hung gray, bucklet by the
Speaker 1: hint of rain in the air, and I found myself
Speaker 1: tracing my boot in the scattering of petals drifting across
Speaker 1: the path. I kept one eye on my watch and
Speaker 1: one on the ste weep of motion through the trees,
Speaker 1: the wind, the tumble of a child's ball, the slow
Speaker 1: circling of a jet overhead. The city's border pressed close here,
Speaker 1: apartments visible through thending boughs, crosswalk signals strobing from afar.
Speaker 1: The park seemed always both separate and stitched into the
Speaker 1: city's sleeve of boundary, but also a leak, a mutual
Speaker 1: borrowing of space. At three thirteen, I depressed the call button,
Speaker 1: static crackle, then Lee's voice, ready by the pond, Cassie's chime,
Speaker 1: gardens quiet, Let's see what the old place cooks up.
Speaker 1: We chuckled, a little tense, a little schooliard. The city
Speaker 1: was just audible beyond the trees, traffic, a snatch of music,
Speaker 1: the steady scuff of shoes on the path. Then, as
Speaker 1: if tuned by a master hand, three fourteen arrive. The
Speaker 1: silence returned for the first time. I was poised not
Speaker 1: just to feel it, but a sea asteriskt in the
Speaker 1: faces of others, however distant. Yet this was different. Rather
Speaker 1: than feeling alone inside a trick of the mind, I
Speaker 1: could imagine my companions caught mid motion, radio silent and useless,
Speaker 1: unioned in inertia. As the park exhaled, the walkie talkie
Speaker 1: so life like a moment before, gave only a faint
Speaker 1: pop of static, nothing more. I pressed the button, then
Speaker 1: released it fingers slow sensation, stalled by the air's palpable thickness.
Speaker 1: The trees strung out behind the amphitheater appeared painted umoving.
Speaker 1: A pair of crows mid dived spent up of the stage,
Speaker 1: a theatrical tableau too perfect to be real. Around me,
Speaker 1: the world did not so much stop as exist in
Speaker 1: a deferred state, each detil preserved, waiting its turn at resuming.
Speaker 1: My eyes skated to the far edge of the band,
Speaker 1: stent with the grass ruffled in a moment of wind.
Speaker 1: Just before the silence had frozen in wall Patten, the
Speaker 1: last miner of enderpark permitted before closing its gates to
Speaker 1: sound and movement for the first time, the thickening suspense
Speaker 1: gave way to a calm, as if the parkoateelf was
Speaker 1: content to disclose its secret, so long as you did
Speaker 1: not blunder over it with hurry or skepticism. One three
Speaker 1: fifteen arrived. The radio snapped alive again. A brief shirt
Speaker 1: from Cassi, then LEU, did you get anything? We all
Speaker 1: spoke at once, voices overlapping, kiatida, unsure nothing dead air.
Speaker 1: Cassie reported thermometer didn't move well. It flat lined, then
Speaker 1: jumped weird. There was wonder, not fear in her voice.
Speaker 1: I saw a flock midflight, froze up, drew a rough
Speaker 1: sketch like always. Lew's voice had a rare charge, a
Speaker 1: youth full lift. Had not heard from him exactly like
Speaker 1: before sim Poe's as yesterday. It's never the same birds, Jack,
Speaker 1: but the pattern holts. We converged near the chest tables
Speaker 1: to debrief, the park resuming easily all around us, rose
Speaker 1: a wrangle in two chest novices into an argument about
Speaker 1: the Sicilian defense kid streaking past with arms flung wide,
Speaker 1: a volley of stalling suddenly erupting from the far sycamorph,
Speaker 1: as if catching up on last momentum. This another detail
Speaker 1: that added quietly the amphitheater Grass was holding still like
Speaker 1: water's surface. Gun to glass. My radio did nothing. It's
Speaker 1: only inside the part that it happens, not square inchut side.
Speaker 1: Cassie nodded, tapping a battered thermometer still swinging from her lanyard.
Speaker 1: See the step flat at the minute, then spikes the second.
Speaker 1: The world moves. I measured again by the entrance outside
Speaker 1: and no break, no pause, steady temperature and breeze. It
Speaker 1: only happens here. Same with the birds, Lew added, Step
Speaker 1: past the front in Robin's carry onlike it's nothing. Step
Speaker 1: back in the minute is missing the air. He hesitated,
Speaker 1: searching for words. It feels different, waiting to be resumed.
Speaker 1: We found ourselves ranked by gravity of careful attention. Even
Speaker 1: Rosa finished scolding her junior chest disciples, left the board
Speaker 1: to Lauda nearby. When she saw a huddle, she raised
Speaker 1: one eyebrow. Ye three, look like you were plotting to
Speaker 1: steal the dawn's rook. She joked. Rosa, let me try
Speaker 1: you with the question, I said, half in jest, half
Speaker 1: in hope. Every afternoon about this time you don't find
Speaker 1: your chesscock comes up short a minute. She opened her tray,
Speaker 1: thumbs grazing the better timer. Always thought it was my
Speaker 1: thumb slipping on the button. But she gestured behind her
Speaker 1: to Marco, who by now was sipping Hardsider from a
Speaker 1: thermost disguised against all logic as a travel mark Marco's
Speaker 1: got the closest thing to a metronome, Introsso's asked him.
Speaker 1: Marko looked over at skeptical lips twisted in arision or
Speaker 1: amused interest. I could never quite tell. What's the accusation,
Speaker 1: old friend, Rosa cut in these while folk think time
Speaker 1: skips in the park, Marco shrugged. Every day my match
Speaker 1: timer is short, a minute between three and four. Never
Speaker 1: really minded. It only happens here, he pronounced, hero with emphasis,
Speaker 1: as if the park itself were a rival. Never home,
Speaker 1: never in the cafe down the street, only on this marble,
Speaker 1: with these trees overhead. We were hushed for a moment,
Speaker 1: as if by that ubtrovision alone the world might bend again.
Speaker 1: I said, outside clocks are normal pohones, outside fine, within
Speaker 1: park limits, a minute disappears, not memory or perception, something local, physical,
Speaker 1: even if our senses are part of it. Cassie laughed softly.
Speaker 1: And what exactly is inside the park to make the world,
Speaker 1: hold its breath, that said Leo, gazing up at the
Speaker 1: sky is the question. It was the first time since
Speaker 1: childhood that I felt properly conspiratorial, party to knowledge at
Speaker 1: once specific and boundless, a club, not a secrecy, but
Speaker 1: of wonder at what is rarely admitted by those who
Speaker 1: operate only in a common daylight. Later, as the others
Speaker 1: drifted off, Cassie lingered by the main path, dragging the
Speaker 1: toes of her boot through softterred as if tracing out
Speaker 1: a boundary. Nobody else could see. My beans. Love it,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, she said, quietly. They seem stronger after
Speaker 1: the tulips too faster, A greener like this, A bonus
Speaker 1: hiding in that second makes you think what else we miss?
Speaker 1: I knew what she meant the very way the park
Speaker 1: emerged from that minute. A new shoes flooded, birds on wateredly,
Speaker 1: me more robustly in a fountom suggested a secret mechanism,
Speaker 1: not subtracting from but adding a surfeit of life. That night,
Speaker 1: Lee sent me a scan of his sketches, three four
Speaker 1: days in a row, a flock of starlings each page,
Speaker 1: the same motionless curves, wings extended each frozen some beam,
Speaker 1: nearly a carbon copy of the day before. It's like
Speaker 1: the well reverts to a save file he'd written an email.
Speaker 1: The pattern persists, the plays changed, but the post holds
Speaker 1: same as your joggers and Cassi's dragonflies. It was something
Speaker 1: to hold on to a trail of material fact, as
Speaker 1: substantial as the oak's roots above the buried old path stones.
Speaker 1: But curiosity, that itch that survives the initial questions, demanded more.
Speaker 1: I wanted not just the habit of the thing, not
Speaker 1: even a map of where it happened. But asteris qoiast risk.
Speaker 1: Henning's green is old by city standards as trees, though tendered,
Speaker 1: are allowed a degree of self will not common in
Speaker 1: manicured spaces. If a hawthorn desires sprawl over the boundary
Speaker 1: of a formal flowered bed, leather, birds and insects love
Speaker 1: wildness more than symmetry. The garden plot where Cassie earned
Speaker 1: how war stories had over the years grown m ruly
Speaker 1: and their need according to the whims of its keepers.
Speaker 1: Everything here, even the benches and lamp hosts, seemed to
Speaker 1: have a vote. Those stories the kind that get told
Speaker 1: when every one is tied, circled and dust had long
Speaker 1: alluded to minor marvels, the crooks, bulbs reappearing after supposed removal,
Speaker 1: stone surfacing, and gravel paths that no one remembered laying
Speaker 1: the old duxshabbit, of splitting the path stones and knew
Speaker 1: every third spring. These were the ordinary miracles of the park,
Speaker 1: the slower crushions of time that memory cannot audit. But this,
Speaker 1: the quiet hour, seemed different, precisely inversal, more stewardship than
Speaker 1: an accident. There was I felt suddenly a pattern in
Speaker 1: the very arrangement of things, the geography of the park itself,
Speaker 1: trails radiating outward from the central oak, the garden beds
Speaker 1: and gentle acts. A chest table was focused in beneath
Speaker 1: the tree, spreading armshole created if you stepped back, mentally,
Speaker 1: a shape that resisted linear explanation, a circle, a compass rose,
Speaker 1: or perhaps just the suggestion that here in the city's heart,
Speaker 1: how pazardness had been given a particular intention. Passey, sensing this,
Speaker 1: joined me the next afterneon outside the guard odd beds
Speaker 1: with the measuring tape and a handful of colored twine.
Speaker 1: I want to see what happens if we mark a
Speaker 1: stem before three fourteen. If it grows or even stretches,
Speaker 1: we should see it. So we did, three flowers, each
Speaker 1: marked with twined, tied gently at sol level. Notes made
Speaker 1: in my battered notebook. At three fourteen, our ritual hell
Speaker 1: silence eer congealing the world's slow gulp our, unbreathing, softer
Speaker 1: and more internal than usual. At three fifteen, Cassie needled,
Speaker 1: barely daring to believe her own eyes. Look, she whispered.
Speaker 1: The string on the middle stem had slid up with
Speaker 1: a half inch, the flower now resting noticeably above its neighbor,
Speaker 1: which remained unchanged. That's impossible, Not even a greenhouse's foresteck
Speaker 1: can grow a stem. In a minute. Something happened. I
Speaker 1: recorded it, hands trembling, not with fear, but the thrill
Speaker 1: of being prison for the inexplicable. Not yesterday, not the
Speaker 1: day before, only after the minute, Cassie added, some days
Speaker 1: nothing pit the right spot, though, And it happens so
Speaker 1: fast you think you imagined it. I found in the
Speaker 1: logs of the groundskeep was kept in the silent cupboards
Speaker 1: of the admin office. Snorted and hurried workmanlike hand. A
Speaker 1: house found running at edge of lellies, no reco turning
Speaker 1: spig at odd hush stood by pond, all stilled for
Speaker 1: a second. Must be tired humans, I thought, possess an
Speaker 1: infinite capacity to dismiss what cannot be cross examined. Lee's
Speaker 1: birds did the same, more or less at three fourteen.
Speaker 1: In his Wreckers, the entries simply halt were placed instantly
Speaker 1: at three fifteen, with the same robins flitting from the
Speaker 1: same bell. If not for the time stamp note, no
Speaker 1: one would notice. It's like they were set, he mused
Speaker 1: over Tea ought to put it badly. They vanish and reappear,
Speaker 1: with no memory of having gone. We began, in these
Speaker 1: moments to share a hush among ourselves. Not superstition, not
Speaker 1: quite reverence, but the carefulness of those who know that
Speaker 1: a place holds more history than it shows the passing stranger.
Speaker 1: A week into our new practice, I found Cassi at
Speaker 1: the main garden gate with Rosa, the Chess matriarch, discussing
Speaker 1: of all things acons. They say, the old oak always
Speaker 1: drops one of three fifteen. Watch for it, Rosa, sad,
Speaker 1: leaning on her cane eyes, darting between us with an
Speaker 1: unspoken dare Cassie grinned eyes alight with suspicion, and together
Speaker 1: we turned it into another experiment. On the dot of
Speaker 1: three fifteen. The next afternoon, as the world amoun from
Speaker 1: its paws, an acorn landed on the brick path at
Speaker 1: the fort. Theok nearer erlin O later Kassi stood to
Speaker 1: retrieve it, holding it in her palm as if weighing evidence.
Speaker 1: It's a ritual. I'm sure of it, she said, once
Speaker 1: the spell had properly cleared. Even if we don't remember why,
Speaker 1: there's something resilient, cyclical away for the park to mark
Speaker 1: its own time. We began gathering the acorns, time stamped
Speaker 1: and tucked into an old janjar, and not to a tradition.
Speaker 1: We could sense more than explain. The pattern was becoming clear.
Speaker 1: The quaieta was not simply a gap, but an actor gesture,
Speaker 1: renewing something in the soil, in the order of living things,
Speaker 1: in the awareness of a chosen few. That night, as
Speaker 1: rain lashed the eaves, I searched through city ukaus, their
Speaker 1: digital corners and fusty microfiche, seeking the park's original stories.
Speaker 1: If the event was as old as some logs imply it,
Speaker 1: perhaps it was older still a legacy in inverting the
Speaker 1: left or carefully installed. It took me to a new character,
Speaker 1: the park historian emmesse Naek, whose reputation for finding the
Speaker 1: city's odd corners matched her purple streak of hair and
Speaker 1: hei lift that seemed to raise the dust off the shelves.
Speaker 1: When I called, she chuckled, Jack, is this about the
Speaker 1: legend of the park's breath? You would be the first
Speaker 1: to ask, Let me dig for the dirt, if you'll
Speaker 1: pardon the pun. I met her by appointment in the
Speaker 1: striplet chill of the Wrecker's room, Cassie, and leave trundling
Speaker 1: in behind. We hunched over municipal minutes, crumbling ledgers and
Speaker 1: hand drawn maps of Penning's Green in its earliest shape,
Speaker 1: Patrick of Farms Marsh, a small stone bridge since long gone.
Speaker 1: She spread out an old newspaper, ink faded but readable.
Speaker 1: Park opening ceremonies March fourteen, eighteen ninety three, dignitaries in
Speaker 1: towns for co ten, blessing of the trees, blurry figures
Speaker 1: beneath bunting and bowl at hats. Here is the interesting bit,
Speaker 1: she murmured, reading from the article, fingers sliding along the
Speaker 1: column before planting the first oak. The assembled wish upon
Speaker 1: the land that every day, whatever changes came, the park
Speaker 1: would keep for itself one minute, untouched by man or machine,
Speaker 1: so its living things might never hurry after the city's clocks.
Speaker 1: She grinned at our startled silence. The wish jack perhaps
Speaker 1: no more than that. But what are traditions if not
Speaker 1: repeated wishes? Leo interjected, excited. Does it say when she
Speaker 1: rummaged further minutes from the city's works committee, something about
Speaker 1: the fourteenth hour, fourteen minute A curious phrasing, may be
Speaker 1: POETICU knows, But the date itself March fourteen, three fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's there if you want it. Cassi, notebook in hand,
Speaker 1: began riffing ideas by day, circle of trees to wish
Speaker 1: about preservation set in the city's heart. Maybe enough people
Speaker 1: believed in attend the park. Listened a mess neck pursed
Speaker 1: her lips. Thoughtful. My grandfather, who grew up near here,
Speaker 1: once told me about the park. Blink said, the birds hush. Suddenly.
Speaker 1: He thought it was for a moment of luck, a
Speaker 1: clap of nature against all the busyness. Marco summoned with
Speaker 1: bribe of tea and a chassette had tagged along with Rosa.
Speaker 1: He favored us with a rare admission. People lose things
Speaker 1: in this park find them again later. Time objects, even
Speaker 1: old arguments. Maybe there's always been a pause. We just
Speaker 1: have better watches now. Tamsen the dog walker scoffed lightly,
Speaker 1: but then admitted, every once in a while, my dog
Speaker 1: freezes up, won't walk, just looks at the sky. Thought
Speaker 1: it was bees. Maybe he knows went away. We debated
Speaker 1: gently in the low, humming light of the record room.
Speaker 1: What do you think a mess n'ak wishful thinking? Or
Speaker 1: did a genuine poles get laid down in the bones
Speaker 1: of the place, I asked tentatively. She smiled hard to say,
Speaker 1: rituals work it air way deeper than the reasons people
Speaker 1: in Vand if a community asked the land to keep
Speaker 1: a breath, maybe it found a wage oblige. The idea
Speaker 1: spiraled outword in me. What if the minute is not
Speaker 1: a whole but a preservation, a moment given each day
Speaker 1: for the park to be itself underneath all our noise,
Speaker 1: making changed wrangling ways, not a failure of time or
Speaker 1: a symptom of decay, but an act of endurance a
Speaker 1: living wish. Cassie Katy, with delight at the concept, nudge
Speaker 1: toward poetry. Maybe the plants surge because they have been
Speaker 1: carried just briefly outside of where given the secret to
Speaker 1: keep birds catch up their fetters, Flowers raised to bloom
Speaker 1: because the parklas so old to become new again, Lay
Speaker 1: practical murmured, And only those who mind the gaps, who
Speaker 1: are used to measuring, watching, listening, catch on at all.
Speaker 1: The rest moved through unaware, no less lucky for their ignorance.
Speaker 1: Marko remained unconvinced, but not dismissive. If it's a collective illusion,
Speaker 1: is a good one brings people together. It gives you
Speaker 1: a story to tell that counts for more than people
Speaker 1: admit are between us. Bristled with ideas, hypothesis and hesitance intermingled.
Speaker 1: Was a physics, psychology, or a very persistent, generly magical wish,
Speaker 1: or some tremulous boundary where the attent of few could
Speaker 1: participate and renewal simply by paying heed nodding to what
Speaker 1: modernity swallows nearly everywhere else, Cassi, with a mock solemnity, said,
Speaker 1: tomorrow will measure again. See if the acorns drop, and
Speaker 1: the bean search. After that, maybe it's enough to know,
Speaker 1: not to solve. In that I caught a gentle lesson.
Speaker 1: Not all things resist explanation out of malice, or because
Speaker 1: they are too big for minds to hold, but because
Speaker 1: they are perfectly made for noticing, for letting the attentive
Speaker 1: become stewers and witnesses of quiet wonders. The next afternoon,
Speaker 1: finding myself alone at my bench in the hour before
Speaker 1: the pause, I trace my palm along the grain of
Speaker 1: the wood and listen to the ordinary racket. Chilveren shouts,
Speaker 1: dog bark, the distant squabble from the chest tables, a
Speaker 1: snatch of some one's radio floating across the lawn. There
Speaker 1: was a comfort in letting the world proceed unimpeded, but
Speaker 1: I found myself more and more drawn to the coming hush,
Speaker 1: not to anticipate, but to practice attending. The Minute was
Speaker 1: not an interruption, but an invitation. It asked only that
Speaker 1: he be present as the pox wish unfolded cross the grass,
Speaker 1: under the slow march of clouds, and an old oak
Speaker 1: flexing its branches. I let go of demands for reasonable cause.
Speaker 1: The Minute was both out of fact an event both
Speaker 1: inherited and enacted, proof of what happens. Wind generations ask
Speaker 1: a space not just to exist, but to persist, to
Speaker 1: keep a gift from its own making. The story was
Speaker 1: not and how the thing was possible, but in how
Speaker 1: it endured. When three fourteen pressed itself into place, I
Speaker 1: sat quietly, spine relaxed, as open but not staring. I
Speaker 1: thought of Cassie in the garden, perhaps kneeling over her beans,
Speaker 1: or flavry of penpors, trucking stallings that would freeze and
Speaker 1: then re materialize as if nothing had passed, Of Marco
Speaker 1: and Rosser, fingers paused up but chess pieces. Unsure why
Speaker 1: the minute took longer than it should, I let the
Speaker 1: silence work gently through me, No panic, no racing for explanation,
Speaker 1: only the safering, RESTful beat of time when it needed
Speaker 1: hurry nor lagged sixty seconds. A whole season in miniature,
Speaker 1: and then life, the same but not the same, will,
Speaker 1: spinning on, but made less ordinary by being known for
Speaker 1: what it was. Cassie's laughter a drifted over. She'd found
Speaker 1: not one but two acorns, and was twining their caps
Speaker 1: together on a length of string. A new ritual bore
Speaker 1: on a top, and for the first time the city's
Speaker 1: boarder felt from a background music for the miracle at
Speaker 1: the park's center. I did not hurry to write it down.
Speaker 1: I tuck the awareness away, a private nod to the
Speaker 1: quiet out below the surface of my day. Most afternoons now,
Speaker 1: as I sit with my crossword or stroll the inner pass,
Speaker 1: I feel the minute approach and welcome it, not as intrusion,
Speaker 1: buts give a time kepticide, a breath, a circle, a secret,
Speaker 1: stubborn as the oak's patients. Sometimes, when the hush touches me,
Speaker 1: I glance open, think, I see for hearts beat, the
Speaker 1: entire cities soften around the park's outline, as if without
Speaker 1: knowing why it two pauses, breath drawn, then let out
Speaker 1: with a sigh of gratitude. I find myself wondering, not
Speaker 1: with skepticism, but with delight. How many are the park's
Speaker 1: gardens or corners of alders keep such impossible hours, waiting
Speaker 1: only for some one to listen, to notice, to bear
Speaker 1: quiet witness. It is enough to know that secrets can
Speaker 1: be kept, that every day magic hides best in plain sight,
Speaker 1: and that the world is quietly remade, minute by minute
Speaker 1: by those who care to attend, and that is the end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
Speaker 1: the next one.