The first moment of clarity (bygone notion, useless really) happened here, on the porch of a friend's house, on the 15th of July, bright sunny afternoon, the kind you remember from childhood (but this isn't childhood, this is Today, the Present (Now it's the Past)), when some birds were cautiously eyeing us from the branches of a pitiful little apple tree whose apples nobody ever harvested. I think they want some bird seed, you said, and pointed to the bird feeder, right next to us, inside our danger zone. I guess you wanted to go inside, or at least away from the porch, maybe for the birds' sake but probably not. Okay, I said, and the screen door creaked open, and we went into the house and sat backwards on the couch to look out the big picture window at the place we just were.

Yes, literally a moment of clarity. What did you think I meant? We sat there and looked through the glass, the glass was totally clear like it wasn't there at all, no sources of light in the room to reflect off our side. The birds didn't have that luxury - to them the glass was incomprehensible in a different sense, masked by a reflection, of the deck and the apple tree and the other birds that always seemed to be here by the bird feeder whenever they arrived.