On Monday I leave for Guantanamo Bay for like 10 days. It’s possible I’ll come back earlier, as the thing-I’ll-be-covering could disappear in a puff of procedural haze, confusion and quasi-lawlessness. But I’ll be there for awhile.

There is no journalist who works on just one story at a time. Well, maybe there is, but I’ve never met him or her and I’ve never heard tales of such an odd achievement. Mostly that’s for professional self-preservation, since you never know what’ll pan out and what’ll fall through. For some of us, it’s compulsion. We don’t feel contented or even really busy unless we have multiple stories cooking. If I worked in a professional kitchen, I imagine it would be like just firing one solitary pan. What in the world are you supposed to do during the now-interminable period while it cooks? If you had all the burners going, you could keep the great machine functioning at full capacity, dipping back between one item and another and garnishing this or that plate while prepping ingredients and minding the oven and making sure nothing overcooks and salvaging what’s gone wrong. Harmony, in other words.

At Guantanamo Bay, I will have limited internet access. Stimulating things will happen, and I’ll report on them, but there won’t be enough of them. In the meantime, I will be left with my thoughts about how the other plates I have spinning are decelerating and crashing on the floor. My ingredients, purchased with care and placed carefully in the walk-in, will spoil. I will be online just long enough to see other people — people who aren’t at Guantanamo — cooking the meals I have planned. Sources will wonder where I am or won’t care that I’m on a naval base to observe a legal Negative Zone. All that matters to there interest is that I am not online and interacting with them, therefore ceasing to exist in meaningful ways.

I suppose in a sense this could give me some useful way into the passage-of-time-without-change that is Guantanamo’s cosmic stock and trade. But — Lord. My blood is already running cold at the thought. Yesterday a colleague told me it must feel good to have an opportunity to relax and take the long view on a story. I agreed, because what can you really say in a small-talk situation like that. But how do you do just do one thing?