The Mosaic

Day two hundred and forty-two, Georgia. Looking for an answer can take a long time. Longer than you would think possible.

What you are shown is often a mosaic put together out of half-truths, and at some point you accepted it, because everyone around you had accepted it too.

Step back and look at the familiar thing from a distance and the cracks show. The plaster starts to come away. The pieces become pieces again, and what had been forced together makes a different sense once you let it fall apart.

This memory belongs over there. That detail belongs in a chain that is obvious the moment you lay it out.

In the end the answer is usually simple. It generally fits in one sentence.

Which is also why whoever has been telling you the story will not want you to be still. A man who has come back to the middle of himself is a man who can see the shape of the thing, and that is precisely what must not happen.

So they get louder. That is the tell.