[18] pieces

I am still learning this town, and today I happened upon a whole new part of it just by missing my turn into the gas/petrol station and trying to drive around the block but the block turned out to be really really big and then suddenly I saw a street sign and the name on it was one that I had heard but never before located. The pieces are coming together.

I remember how, when I first moved to Gone West, I had all these little snapshots in my head of different streets and restaurants, but they didn't fit together. Sometimes, years later, standing on a corner, I would look down a street and remember that I had seen that view before, long ago, before I knew how it fit with the rest of my city, and I would think of how familiar it all is now, a big grid in my head full of sunny spots and favorite shops.

I had coffee again today at the place where I sat with my mom before my first interview for this job. We shared a burrito at that table over by the door, and she asked me possible interview questions. I changed into my interview suit in that bathroom where now I run to wash my hands before I touch my coffee. Now that coffee shop is across the street from a building where I go almost every day for work. It is no longer the center of the town, the way it felt before my interviews, but just ancillary to the places I go all the time.