A crowd flows past, an intense barrage of partially understood morphing transactions. She sidesteps into the colours.

This time red is constructive so are blue, silver and black. This means she is avoiding green, orange, gold and white. Birds are also significant; magpies sound safe, crows warn, parrots gossip and laugh. Bees are good, dead bees are bad, dead magpies are bad. Music rises in pitch to the right or falls to the left. She maps her path to a personal key, looking for sense in landscape.

Sometimes it flows, this abstracted means of navigation. Patterns overlay softly, a lighthearted duality, a stigmatism. It is possible to catch and respond to passing pieces of the puzzle sensibly, like a turtle rising for air, but moving more easily under the water.

But, sometimes it is difficult. Mistakes are distressing. Sometimes the system becomes impassable. Perhaps the path is noisy; colours and sounds jumbled, dogs barking, or perhaps the mind itself loses clarity, seeing only the risk of mistakes, any misstep represents some ultimate error. Her system freezes, locking out other perspectives, options collapse into a judgement. Her mind screams, bad move.

She remembers that humans contain ten other lives for every human cell. Somehow this dilutes the problem. People are planets of organisms, loosely associated, symbiotic, or competitive, but integrated, systemic. The wonder of a web of interwoven life allows another abstraction, a gentler interface. It begins again.

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