The Score for this one is in the High C's

 

Without wheels the fog can still roll in.  A drunk can be rolled and yet he also is without wheels.  This following story is about a wheel.   It has never touched the ground and yet has traveled to the far edges of over there and back again. 

If it ever touched the ground, it would be a very bumpy ride, because the wheel I’m talking about is not smooth.  It is the one used to steer the ship.  It is rotated by hand, by the captain whose ability to navigate, make decisions and ultimately corrections to those decisions while wearing a little Captain’s hat determines the outcome of the adventure.

 

Here’s where the rolling fog comes in.

 

 

***

 

The fog doesn’t roll in like a wheel, of course—no tidy geometry, no spokes, no hub. It arrives like a rumor that forgot who started it. It seeps. It sidles. It curls around corners as if it already knows the layout of the ship better than the captain does. And that’s the trouble.

Because a wheel—that wheel, the one polished by a thousand decisions and a few regrets—depends on sight. On horizon. On the faint line where “over there” becomes “here.” But when the fog comes in, the horizon is erased as casually as a chalkboard wiped clean by a bored substitute teacher. The captain turns the wheel anyway, because that’s what Captains do. They steer even when steering becomes a philosophical exercise.

This is where the fog becomes mischievous.

It doesn’t just obscure. It suggests. It whispers possibilities that weren’t there a moment ago. A darker patch might be an island or a cloud or the memory of a cloud. A lighter patch might be open water or a trick of the eye or the ghost of a decision the captain hasn’t made yet. The fog is not content to simply exist; it wants to participate.

And so the wheel—your wheel, the one that has never touched the ground yet has traveled everywhere—begins to feel different in the captain’s hands. Not heavier, not lighter, but more… interpretive. As if the ship itself is listening to the fog and offering its own opinion about which way to go.

The captain, wearing that little hat that confers both authority and the burden of pretending to know what’s happening, rotates the wheel a few degrees. The ship responds, but the fog responds too, shifting in a way that feels almost intentional. Almost helpful. Almost mocking.

Because here’s the secret the fog knows:

Steering is never about certainty. It’s about choosing a direction when the world refuses to show you one.

And the wheel—bumpy, wooden, imperfect—was built for exactly that kind of moment. It was never meant for smooth roads or predictable terrain. It was meant for the in‑between places, the half-seen waters, the days when the fog rolls in without wheels of its own yet somehow manages to move everything.