That the mass was circumscribed was a tentative positive. That the sun was circumscribed was a looming negative. A day in the balance between cancer and wildfires.

“Tongue-tied and twisted just an Earth-bound misfit, I.”

And I’m meditating and yoging and walking all the steps and using too much plastic no matter how I try and mindlessly tearing leaves from stems as we hike the preserves. And, even in unemployment, there is not enough time to meditate and yoga and walk the steps and cook healthy food from scratch and arrange my life to be free of plastics and be mindful enough to never tear leaves from stems and keep the house clean and play the instruments and do the writing and read books and sleep and be profoundly present to every person (human or otherwise) I encounter. Or maybe there is enough time but there is a leak in the time container and it steals away in drips and trickles (and episodes of Antiques Roadshow).

That I’m feeling more divorced from reality initially alarmed me but now seems like the only reasonable path. We can’t alter a context we can’t see outside of. Anything other than the present is pain. And sometimes the present is pain. Everything passes through the present and changes, even pain. Change comes in drips and trickles and oxygen molecules and oceans, and pain doesn’t stand a chance against oceans.