Drawn Under

A preoccupation does not stop at the edge of the day, and nothing about the hour persuades it to. There is a line where one thing ends and another begins, and it goes over without registering that anything happened.

Everything else changes there. Colour reverses; what showed dark against the pale now shows pale against the indigo, and the whole character of it turns over. Whatever stays with someone does not keep to the hours. The preoccupation notices none of it. It arrives on the other side exactly as it set out, neither slowed nor encouraged.

Evening changes a room completely, and changes nothing that was already sitting in it.