I've probably covered the escape route.  It leads from one end to the other, and it goes like a rock song, like a long stream of silver.  It lends itself to dreaming because we can't see what might be over the horizon and we're constantly dreaming in extremes of good and bad, worst case and best case alike.  We want no dire middle.

But it goes like this: the $thing ends with a BANG and the race begins to gather and run run run.  Maybe it takes a day or an hour or maybe you only have ten minutes before the poisonous cloud descends on your house and your pets and your plants turn zombie so you go go go.

But it never is like that, is it?  I was out at the range, taking my time (forcefully from the things that take it from me), breathing slow.  When you do this, you solve the first problem, first.  Then the second problem.  And you narrow it down and down until you have whittled to the very heart of it, and you solve that last thing and, breathe.  Then, ya know, on the less spiritual and more mechanical side, you pull the trigger straight back and hopefully the problems you've solved make everything line up, fuck the wind and the curvature of the earth, something 300 yards away gets a hole put in it.

But that isn't the important part.  The important part is the plan, the method.  The Way.  You sit and ponder actively, it is not a passive thing, solving math problems or trying to calm your nerves.  The wind, the humidity, the physics, sure.  The physical side, allergies, too much coffee, not enough coffee, too much oxygen, not enough potassium.  Or the psychological, sleepless nights, too much emotion or not enough, not enough money never enough time the car needs oil the world is on fire but you have to narrow down, whittle it away and solve. One. Problem.

All day at work I strive for that senseless calm, and I find it in problems too vast to really map out, like, say, running out of disk space again on a 4TB array.  Everyone yammering at me how terabytes are so cheap these days and me, thinking, how much cash is your life worth?  Should I just buy a cheap ass drive or five and call it a day?  Let you handle the details and I'll just retire?  Because, goddamn, I'm tired of justifying my thinking.

And work just such a tiny part of the whole, such an insignificant eight hour chunk of life, but the rest of it waits.  The house, quiet, waiting for the dishes to explode against the walls, waiting for the harsh barking echo of whatever just happened to pass, quietly, into the geology.

But no.  At the end of the day, the escape plan sits there like a jewel, a sunset in the most perfect movie.  And the world is still on fire.