Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Five

1. Too much to think about at 5:15 in the morning.

2. So quiet. Still too dark for me. I need more light. Where is the light. I don’t remember it feeling so dark last year.

3. Episode 232: My Embodiment by Craig Morgan Telcher

4. He’s sending pictures from Disney World. Everyone looks so happy. I am happy that they are happy.

5. I get them all out the door so that I can just gather myself for a few minutes before I need to leave. Just a few minutes of quiet in an empty house does wonders.

6. All of the cows are back on this side of the pasture today, lazing around in the dry grass. A calf gallops andlands his face right into the side of an adult. The big cow doesn’t seem unnerved at all.

7. Sometimes I’m just waiting.

8. Holding all of this.

9. I never take a bath but I want to right now. Maybe I can squeeze out enough hot water before they’re all in the shower. I light some incense and set The Book of Delights by Ross Gay on the edge of the tub. Delight.

10. “If you’re black in this country you’re presumed guilty. Or, to come back to Abdel, who’s a schoolteacher and thinks a lot about children, you’re not allowed to be innocent. The eyes and heart of a nation are not avoidable things. The imagination of a country is not an avoidable thing. And the negreeting, back home, where we are mostly never seen, is a way of witnessing each other’s innocence—a way of saying, ‘I see your innocence.’” - from “8. The Negreeting”, The Book of Delights