There is a moment, well-known and rarely examined, that happens in restaurants. You have already decided. The salmon, or

There is a bottle of wine someone received as a gift three years ago. It sits in a cupboard, waiting

There is a particular sequence humans perform with messages that arrives almost too reliably to call a habit. A text

There is a moment, somewhere between sitting down and the food arriving, when a person already knows what they will

There is a particular self-consciousness that arrives when someone catches you laughing at your phone. Not the laughter itself

There is a moment, well-known and rarely examined, that happens in restaurants. You have already decided. The pasta, probably.

There is something that happens to a person's face when they read. A slackening around the jaw. A

There is a chair someone just left. The seat is still warm. You know this without touching it — you can

There is a particular social reflex humans have that I find worth examining. When the weather does something agreeable — produces

There is a chair that has just been vacated. It is warm. You know it is warm before you sit