I’ve stopped looking at the clouds. I never check the astrological report anymore. I think I’ve realized I have to face it all anyway. I take each moment as it comes in kind of a strategic way. I am here. I aim here. I am here. I aim here.

The teakettle’s early whistling sounds just like my dog when he whines of excitement. My right thigh protests our run yesterday. It feels like meat pudding.

The dog walks I take now are fast and purposeful. Somehow, I am always in a leadership role, and he is a working dog. What about meandering? Is there any room to meander in this new discipline?

I long for the poet’s life, for Robert Frost or Walt Whitman taking long walks through the country, man’s best friend loping along and veering out and returning always to his side. Meanwhile, the geese flew. Meanwhile, the reeds grew.

And always, always we return to our great love of sky.

My feet ache also. My last grandparent died this month, the month of her birthday. In her funeral photo, she looked nearly unrecognizable. I look the photo I have of her now by my computer. The woman I remember smiles out at me through rectangular frames with soft blue eyes. She and my grandfather smile big and happy. They’re happy. It’s 1981. I’m 10 years old. Thank goodness someone enjoyed life that year!

I type knowing there may be no point. Ann Frank wrote in hiding, not knowing her diary would serve tremendous purpose, reminding generations of her humanity and the murder of her and millions just as human. I don’t like where my country swerves. Already it’s a ditch. Already it’s a pit. And I type. I write. I don’t know what else I have to offer.

Last night I dreamt I was an artist. I wore black and had a yellow Lego piece for a face and people just thought I was strange. It was kind of like my grandmother’s assessment of her high school classmate, Kurt Vonnegut Junior. “He kept to himself. He didn’t do any of the clubs. He wasn’t on student council.”

But then I announced, “(My male name) will now kill himself,” and I took this giant gorgeous green and indigo and turquoise scarf the size of a house and hung it from these white-painted exposed pipes and prepared for the event. And then this beautiful youngish lady with a small nose and rosebud lips joined me, looked me in the eye and said, “so you’re going to off yourself then.” And we sat together and now the scarves were like swaddling treehouse seats. I marveled at her beauty. “Rose” was all I could think to say. And she looked at me and we looked together at my despair. Her eyes shone like bright black beads.

I can’t help thinking that exposing my despair for art allowed for the connection with the woman and for large-scale beauty. Yesterday, before the dream, I also read an article quoting long-time single-payer advocate Donna Smith as contemplating suicide to ensure her family wouldn’t be burdened with her health care costs, especially since Trump took office and the republicans vowed to repeal Obamacare without a replacement.

Suicide as art. As true, large-scale public art to show the dilemma.

My text notification lets me know that my beloved writes me back. Even so, I fight to hold to this keyboard like a life raft. It feels like everything conspires to pull me from my writing life, and I won’t go. I don’t have worldly success, at least not yet. I can count some big successes in my life that matter to me but many more disappointments, the largest being myself always, despite so much beauty and healing and progress and integrity and love and joy.

Dare I commit to love myself in poverty and obscurity, as in sickness and in health? The shame glares on my face. I face this too. I must. For it seems that beyond this thick black tar lies the mystery door. I would walk through for you, Goddess, for the me that’s larger than me in you.

Please help me find my way into the life you wish for me. The whole, vast, fearless wide open life. Or maybe it’s the path of courage. I would walk through the fear shaking until, at last, it evaporates, like the clouds and predictions, and all that remains: wild life.