In a weird coincidence, the very first video I watched this morning was of someone asking Bruce Lee how to find peace.

“You don’t find peace. You choose it,” he answered. He’s not wrong. Otherwise, how can we explain that two different people exposed to the same circumstances can have wildly disparate reactions and outcomes?

The biting breeze became a penetrating wind, making the tears on my face painfully dry.

I had escaped my apartment after the second time I absent-mindedly put down my right hand, knowing that Güino would come for scritches or to wrestle my fingers. It was a ritual we’d developed over the years, after the cat juice and treats, and after I made a cup of coffee and sat on the chair next to my unauthorized table that I had built into the wall.

It was beautiful out there. Truly. Even the fact that my fingers became increasingly inflexible in the cold was a comfort.

But of course I couldn’t stay out in that cold forever, wandering the streets. I tried not to look past my colorful bottle lights, to see the cat castle towering in the front window.

It is kingdom without king now.

I built that castle out of several different structures. I watched Güino as he used it and climbed it, adding baskets where he preferred, pushing out lateral steps where he seemed to want them, and cutting holes in the sides of the little intermittent cubicles so that if he were inside one, he could hold his face inches from the bird feeder directly on the other side of the window glass.

I slowly opened my apartment door and heard the heat kick on. Hot air hit my face and stung. I had placed the castle strategically between two overhead vents so that he could bask directly under the heat, 5-6 feet off the floor, waiting for me to walk up and dare him to bite my fingers playfully.

The day comes, the minutes pass.

My backward clock ticks and reminds me that it is only demarcating the passage of these minutes in reverse. Time laughs.