Restful solitude, nourishing until the days wear into claustrophobic sameness. Glass door. Rain. Tea. Chair. Keyboard. Caretaking. Glass door. Rain. Thoughts pile up, crowd worn tracks, dress themselves up for disturbing nighttime scenes. I sleep for a day, stumble into an anatomy of melancholy, wonder if the tech billionaires have found a way into my busy brain. Still rain. Still genocide, still oligarchy, still authoritarianism rising, still greed and profit and planetary destruction, still not enough affordable housing, still a sixth mass extinction, still all the suffering I cannot control. I don’t want to move, but I do. I go outside, walk through the seasonal stream, across the swampy field. I notice the growth at the tips of the conifers, the leaves sprouting from the spirea, the buds on the osoberry. The baby ferns nestled in mulch rings, the advancing cottonwoods, the rain hitting my upturned face. None of it erases the suffering. It is there. Right next to this quiet joy.
