Life has locked into a tight loop. I wake up and perform my morning ablutions. I tune into the governor’s morning briefing that veers from the data-driven to the deeply weird. I write and work. I step outside and look at the sky. Sometimes I go for an ugly run. I make phone calls. I tend this journal. Repeat.

The only variance is the impossible imagery that fills my screen. This morning I scrolled through images of floods in Michigan. Last night the Sears tower went dark, haunting the Chicago skyline with a dark silhouette that bordered on the sublime. A flurry of headlines mistakenly announced that NASA has discovered a parallel universe where time runs backward. They didn’t, but it’s a clear symptom of how much we’ve come to believe this is not the best of all possible worlds. Meanwhile the television says, “Things work out all the time for monkeys that turn out to be useless for human beings.” I think they’re talking about vaccines, but who knows anymore.