First she dropped her daughter off then she drove in circles. It was September and the afternoon was not going to last forever. She knew the city, but not this part of it; the names were getting more and more French, a sign she was out of her depth. Non inveniendo invenire. St Augustine's old Latin riddle caught her up in familiar circuits of association. To find in not finding. The sentence ended Confessions I.6 with a subjunctive form of rejoice: gaudet, connected by a conjunction to a

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... tive form of love: amet. Putting aside gaudet for the moment, this meant something like, He should love. Or maybe, Let him love. Why? Probably because it's in his best interest. He's the seeker. Or she is. This woman driving alone in a strange city, summer fading, chest aching. Maybe the saint meant, it behooves her to love because what the fuck else can she do! She sighed, shifting her weight into the car's upholstery. The next part was even harder to translate: potius quam inveniendo non invenire te. This evaluation of the situation was so densely packed with gerunds and infinitives that it was hard to know what to do with it. The pronoun signalled an address. Te was you singular. It was not the seeker Augustine was addressing. It was you: you who are found by not finding (whatever I thought I was looking for). She turned with the traffic through the streets, lost. Latin made no distinction between upper and lower cases. Augustine was addressing God, some God you couldn't find unless you didn't find something else you were looking for. A smaller god made in your own image? Your child? She-the woman driving a car with out-of-province license plates in circles, trying not to obsess over her daughter's empty coffee cup squashed into the map pocket on the passenger door or her bag of discarded clothing in the back seat-was writing an article arguing that Augustine's God was more maternal than paternal. Saint Augustine was, after all, the beloved son of Saint Monica. The hand that rocked the cranium. Ha! What better definition of process? She, the mother driving away from her daughter, she was in the thick of it. Inside the thick god of process. Non inveniendo invenire-it was making her crazy. She opened the car window, turning her face towards the draught of city air. After a while she realized that the sort of brioche-shaped