I stopped at a top little food nook that serves the freshest sushi in Brisbane, not in the mood to cook after gym.
I strolled out the shop door to wait for my food outside, away from the TV news, and walked right off the time spectrum - just for a few moments.
Trees have this effect - on me, not all trees, there's some kind of perfection that can be found in the shape of some trees.
Can't remember when this started - it's not an obsession. I don't go around hunting trees.
They just appear before my eyes like Gods.
Perhaps I was set off when I got my first oil paints and tried painting trees, studying their shapes in painting manuals.
Could've been years before when I was climbing 40ft pine trees - well, racing my brother and friends to the top.
The memory is vivid, rough bark, stinging needles, dizzying heights.
But this tree now ... this tree is small, shaped like a delicate bonzai - a leopard tree just starting to make its presence felt in this car park on the corner of a busy intersection.
The curves of its branches reaching into the dark night sky.
I'm not thinking about sushi or traffic or anything except: "Superb!"
The street light falls on the trunk and yet the leaves are just shadows.
I don't want to draw it. I don't want to hug it. I think I just love it.
And then I catch myself.
"Is this what people will think and feel when a tree like this stands alone, the last of its kind on earth?" - there's a thought.
Suddenly I'm conscious and I'm thinking and the moment is gone.
And the finale of Wall-E springs to mind.
That tiny little fragile hope of life on Earth - a seedling preserved by a funny little robot who sees the beauty of life.
I bookmarked Wall-E from the first moment I saw the awe in his eyes as he looked at the stars.
I look at a screen for most of my waking life these days - I love it and sometimes I get lost out there in a wilds of everything at once...now...now...now...right now! YES!
Intellectual life - it's just like sport these days. People sprouting the words of long-dead philosophers in 140-character tweets.
People spruiking themselves and their companies in cleverly disguised pitches. People searching for meaning.
Someone at gym tonight said: "To hear you've got to listen, but most people are too busy talking."
Really. I'm guilty of it. How many times I've kicked myself after realising too late the significance of what someone was trying to say.
Or the significance of silence.
I turn from the tree and look through the door at the TV showing the nightly news and read the subtitles - the sound is turned down.
Funny how text has such a powerful effect.
Words like revenge and slaughter rile me to silent indignation - and this is the sports news!
Michael Phelps broke his own world record without the use of a floatation suit.
That's wonderful, not just for him, but for all those who seem to feel that, by virtue of their shared humanity with Phelps, his achievements are theirs by association.
And they don't have to lift a finger. Shifty, risk-averse folks who are quick to judge and condemn and hide. They usually travel in packs.
The same dullards go on about how bad "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" is for mental and physical health.
From my observations, it seems that all of us navigate a "virtual space" we construct in our heads - and we call it reality.
As you can see, my reality's quite different from yours.
Once I was at the physio, thanks entirely to a little computer mouse and deadlines, my eye focused on a tree in the middle distance beyond an oval.
This was a tree you could have a beautiful picnic under - and you could pretend to be Helena Bonham-Carter in Room With A View or Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma.
And then I catch myself.
