Jenn Habel’s poems have appeared in publications such as Southern Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, and Puerto del Sol. She lives in Colorado Springs. Thoreau Entered His Cabin Fifty Years Before       Freud's First Mention of Transference Jenn Habel   Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here!   When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here.                                             —Thoreau’s Journal, Nov. 1, 1858 How is one question and why another, though I understand when I placed my finger beside the ladybug lost in the white tub then carried her to the window—when I saved her— it was the best thing I’d done all day. I remember noticing she had five almost-black spots before thinking her humped shape something like a turtle’s, and though that sort of comparison can be a route to perception, whenever I watched my childhood pet Mr. Tortoise cross the carpet, he was only, perfectly, himself. I think of Thoreau finding no little amusement in baking his bread— yeastless and thus requiring no trade or barter—as if he’d already learned to speak is to speak to someone, and from an early age that someone is often a composite of someone elses. For two years I lived with a man whose disciplined philosophic inquiry led him to declare emulation of drifting fish as his primary goal. Since Studies on Hysteria, we’ve known that if I apply myself diligently I might discover which voices I heard when he said this and why it seemed to me one of the most aggressive things I’d ever been told.