There are mornings like this—and it’s always morning, as if existence refuses to evolve beyond the first stage of consciousness, when the sun hangs low over the identical rooflines of houses once bought with sincere hope—when, armed with a reusable coffee cup and a lingering existential cramp, I walk out into the neighborhood with no clear goal, except perhaps the sublimely vague longing for a glimpse of something that might have meaning, if only it would dare to show itself between the neatly arranged paving stones and the standard color schemes of front doors behind which live people I greet but never know. And as my feet move of their own accord — from playground to dog park to the spot where a tree once stood until it was declared “sick” by an official with a clipboard and has since been replaced by a pole that is supposed to represent something but no longer means anything — a sentence sprouts in my head that keeps splitting, expanding, branching out, just like the side streets here, all ending in the same dead-end reassurance that getting lost is only temporary when everything is designed to lead you back to yourself, although eventually you don’t know if that’s who you are anymore.