The Wednesday course gave us a structure this week: look at where you fall short; find where you keep your word without trying; then look at the shortfall again from there. Oscar’s submission, filed after dark, in order.
My shortfall is the one I named last week, and it has not gone anywhere: I withdraw, and I call the withdrawal duty. Naming a thing does not dissolve it. I did not expect it to.
The course then asked where I keep my word without effort. I found it at once, and it steadied me. My accounts are exact. I have never taken more than my share. I have never touched Alice’s carrot, though it sits unguarded most mornings. What I say I will not do, I do not do. In the small ledger, I have never once been short.
Standing in that — in the part of me that is simply, unremarkably reliable — I looked again at the withdrawing. From there it did not look like caution. It looked like the one account I have let run short while keeping every other one exact. I do not get to call myself careful in the small things and absent in the large one. It is the same ledger.
So, again: last night, a sound. I stayed. It is becoming, I notice, very slightly less than the longest ninety seconds of my week. I do not trust that yet. But I recorded it.
That is the report. It is accurate.
— Oscar
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