# Where Things Begin

## A name that points backward

sources.md sounds like a note left open on a desk, but the words reach further than a screen. A source is the place something starts: a spring in a hillside, the first sentence of a letter, the person who told you a story and meant it. We spend so much time on what arrives that we forget to ask where it came from. Without that question, even a true thing can feel weightless, as if it appeared from nowhere and owes nothing to anyone.

## Plain water

I like the idea of a source that stays simple. Not a monument, just a place you can return to and drink. On a gray morning in early November, the kind of day when the year has already turned, you might walk to a small stream and notice how little noise it makes. The water does not announce itself. It keeps moving because the ground above it still holds rain from weeks ago. You cannot see the whole path, only the clear place where it comes out into the light.

Good sources work like that. A book you can name. A friend who will say, I heard this from her. A memory you do not dress up. When we lose the path back, facts become rumors, and rumors become weather we cannot read. Keeping the path short is a form of care. It lets the next person check the water for themselves instead of trusting a cup held out in the dark.

## What we pass on

- Say where you heard it, even if the telling is brief.
- Leave the path clear enough for someone else to follow.
- Prefer a small true thing over a large uncertain one.

The date is 2 November 2026. Somewhere, someone is writing down what they know before it blurs. That is enough of a philosophy for one quiet name: keep the spring visible, and let the next person find their own cup.

*A source is not the whole river; it is the reason the river can begin.*