There are sights and sounds—frequencies of perception—that are instinctively wrong, that tap into our primal, animal sensibility and tell us it’s time to go—now. It can be the tone in someone’s voice, or the pitch in a gust of wind; it can be a screech of tires, the lurch of an airplane, or a sudden movement by a stranger; it can be the size, color, and proximity of a smoke plume. In none of these situations is there an established threshold, or fixed redline. Instead, there is a kind of subjective, sensory equivalent to crossover—a moment beyond which we are moved involuntarily to a state of
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