We sat outside to eat dinner last night. We live right on a park. The golden light of the evening sun shown through these majestic, enormous trees onto the green, green grass. Children were still playing on the playground. Birds flying low through the tress and calling there evening chatter to each other. The sky was a darkening blue and cloudless. I felt the breeze, but too cold against the warmth of the rest of the day.

Earlier in the day, I was driving and trying to make sense of how the world has changed for me, how it has shrunk and caved in  and what it is like for me to be alive now. And sitting there last night, I realized this was how it has changed: I can see the beauty and the peace and the warmth and the joy and the essence of life right now just as I see that beautiful scene of nature in our park. But as I sit and see this truth, there is a constant, chilling breeze that makes it utterly impossible to fully receive it anymore, to be a part of all of that. It is beautiful and warm all around me and I can see it but I am slowly dying of hypothermia from some unknown source of deep chill that is constantly blowing in like that breeze. I want to say that I am outside of life now, of it’s poetry and beauty. But I’m not outside of it. It’s worse. I can see it and touch it and am squarely in the middle of it, but I am no longer fully a part of it.