Days that vanish as if through a trapdoor, nights that simply dissolve.

Rachelle and I, our daily responsibilities now behind us, are lying in bed drifting Netflix. All the shows are more or less the same, minor variations on a theme. The algorithmically engineered content, a bland, smothering limbo. I wonder if I have become unentertainable, if I have passed through some sort of threshold from which these simulations of life can no longer penetrate. And then sounds from outside. At first I think gunshots, but then I realize it’s the long weekend and somebody is setting off fireworks.

This defiance, somehow both lonely and life-affirming.

And last year there were fireworks, too, and Jones’ face was illuminated beneath them. A bright point in a life, that. I remember I could not believe my fortune. That I could have traveled all this distance, passed through such time and circumstance, to end up here, a part of such beauty.

But all is change. Each of us now in the midst of something too strange to understand, something that asks questions bigger than we are. But still, look at this day living around you. Everything is green and gold. New. Live in it as deeply as you can. And you are resilient beyond words. Be proud of that. Be proud of the fire in your bones. These dreams we’ve all been having, they’re not of sinking, they’re not of drowning. They float, these dreams, and then take flight.