Gary Brandt delivers his most deceptively profound and emotionally complex chapter yet in this episode from The Dimension Of Mind Dot Com, where the simple rhythms of old man John's lakeside routine become a haunting meditation on memory, belonging, and the mysterious nature of time itself.
The genius emerges through the morning's perfect predictability—John fishing at dawn, cooking breakfast just as Sally arrives 'like she has for what feels like a thousand years,' sharing stories while Ben 'Tekky' wanders up to fix John's tangled fishing rod with the same gentle scolding about thinking better thoughts toward his equipment.
What makes the chapter so emotionally compelling is how Brandt uses these seemingly mundane moments to explore deeper questions about identity and permanence when John admits he's 'been retired for ages now—honestly, so long that he's lost track' and finds himself 'perfectly content living the same day over and over again.' The relationship between John and Sally becomes particularly poignant as we see this 'sharp as a tack' young woman who 'adopted him as a father figure' when she was fifteen, now collecting stories from the older residents like she's 'waiting her whole life to hear them.'
But the real emotional depth unfolds through the chapter's exploration of longing, displacement, and the pull between staying safe and seeking adventure when Sally starts asking about leaving this lakeside community while John finds himself curious about returning to 'the old places.' The brilliance lies in Brandt's subtle world-building that suggests these characters exist in some kind of liminal space—a retirement community that feels almost otherworldly in its timeless quality, where Ben helped 'create the lake in the first place' and people came here after 'some kind of trouble' in their previous lives.
The chapter's haunting power emerges through Ben's admission that 'I'm not sure we can go back now' because 'I doubt much of anything we remember is still there,' creating a profound meditation on whether home is something you can return to or something that exists only in memory.
The story ends with perfect emotional resonance through Sally's mysterious ability to 'appear and disappear' unnoticed, suggesting that even in this seemingly perfect routine, change and uncertainty are always present—and sometimes the people we love most are already preparing to leave us, even as they promise to return 'in the morning for fish.' It's a gentle but deeply moving exploration of how the most comfortable patterns in life often mask our deepest fears about impermanence, connection, and the courage required to either stay put or venture into the unknown.