i'll let you know when i get there

One of my tutor students gives me updates about her hamster.  She told me she'd given him an apple for a treat after school.  Knowing they're nocturnal, I asked if she'd woken him up to give him the apple. And then we just laughed and laughed at how it would feel if someone woke us up at 2 a.m. and put an ice cream cone in our hand and was like, "here, have a treat."

If the strangeness of the future world requires any amount of running, I will not be among the survivors. Even a healthy jog, I fear, will be too much to ask.  I saw plenty today though, on my walk. The future survivors. All shapes and sizes too. Some with weighted vests. Preteens with ill fitting shoes clomping along in front of their mother. Some impressively fast, some holding whole conversations through earbuds while they blur by. Others just an A for effort.  All of it makes me parched. I sit down to watch it all move by me for a minute. The sun came out after a morning of rain and it's like the first color scene in the Wizard of Oz. Come out, come out. A belligerent man stands further down the path, blasting music from his phone and screaming "you can do it, put your ass into it," to every runner who passes by. Bopping and sputtering, on a journey of his own. He'll probably survive too, I think, a little annoyed.  Somewhere in between, I sit with the...

was going to meditate .  finish citizenship application .  reach out . start strength training . budget better . put effort into marketing . meal prep. write a letter . edit those photos . consider other sources of income . read those saved articles . plan future trips . touch base . commit really commit to a regular art habit . save for retirement . start a book club . clean the blinds . learn a language . start putting care into my aesthetic .  but head cold . someone else needed something . rain . dishes and laundry . trade war . delayed flight . the irreversibility of time . dental emergency . it is calm and cozy and known here in this small apartment . repulsed by what social media has done and is doing to us . cats . lack of space . screens . aging . weather events . lack of funds . needed a nap . surveillance capitalism . a likely recession . out of social energy . trash tv . the possibility of WWIII . why ............................................... Falling as...

Some comfort in talking to someone who is also following it closely.  Some relief in talking to someone who is not following it closely.  Some horror in talking to someone who is also following closely it but is coming to an entirely different conclusion.

A third seems inevitable, I think.   I contemplate this in the sandbox, decorating cakes.   Hard to imagine what it might look like. The first floats vaguely in the mind. The second more clearly, of course. I've been to the museum. Read those books, always imagining it was quite a long time before when really, grandma was 16 years old when it started.  (How many of us can name all eight great-grandparents, let alone name a single thing about them?) So this is what it feels like. I remember hearing how even in the second, it wasn't as clear-cut as you might assume with the privilege of hindsight.  There may have been people, even in your own family, that thought what would now seem unthinkable things.  A breeze catches my face in its hands and I think this must be one of the things the astronauts miss.  What must it be like to see it all from a distance, small and vulnerable and precious and almost nothing? Will it start on a day?  Is it hap...

The days will start to get lighter, little by little.  You will start to feel the winter  wait  below your layers.  You will feel the tension of near spring as something starts to stir beneath the ground.  You will notice sparkles in the frost.  You will make eye contact with people you pass on the sidewalk.  Seeking. You will plan a little but mostly continue on in the little habits and rhythms that eventually become a day. A week. Your life. Your one life!  You've got roots in the cold, cold ground.  There is another place that is nowhere  where folks will be checking out for good.  Won't blink for eight whole days. Even years! There is a constant wailing and gnashing of keys. Blue sky replaced by the blue glow of tragedy and a choir of rage singing, incessantly, on loss loss loss fear fear fear Don't look  awaystayherestayhere Hard to believe that you share the same planet: peace of mind & piece of mind. There really won...