Alfred Lord Tennyson invites us to consider lost things thusly: The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost/ No wing of wind the region swept/ But over all things brooding slept/ the quiet sense of something lost.

If you leave your hat behind on the bus, does it cease to be? Without the firm grip of your possession to confirm it, does the miscellanium of the everyday simply dissipate into theory? Like that proverbial tree in the forest, does our consciousness define the hat?

Hmmmm…with steepled fingers I present to you these questionably relevant 19th century quotations and pseudo-philosophical questions in order to fabricate an aching existentialist poignancy for this story.