Notes From the Editor’s Desk, 6/23/20

Olivier looks out the window with rapture and at the birds he cannot reach. It is instructive, except that the human mind can travel deeper, delighting in these depths, whereas the cat loses himself in the trill. The perimeter of our interest comprises a halo, and there the gates of heaven open in the change in the least degree. I did not perceive the pinwheels arbor produces when, early to leaf, the forms of a tree feel palpably manifest. Their contiguous forms, disparate trunks seeming, in the bowers, to inherit the essences of their neighboring trees. Today, after a weekend without our morning walks, we found the peonies vanished without even a trace of the pedals, the ants that traversed their sweet tracks, as was the aroma, gone with those. To miss these strands in the cycle leaves the deeper workings these touch off without gear. When at my work, I feel portions of my motivations, and even a particular sense of self, missing. An appreciation of the cause of this poverty must count my sentences riches. Like a swimmer, and nothing without the sensation that lends itself to purpose, I feel the extension of my arm and the drive of the kick, feel the water run along me and resist me. I feel the sun beaming down on me. My face has looked down on pages like this for an incredible extent of time. The action of the pencil has a place in the wheel. Like the peonies, the flower to result of green diligence will one day, not suddenly, but unexpected, vanish. At that point, an appreciation of transitions precipitates, and a writer cannot help but continue to ponder the change that is not the result of the fourfold tilt of the earth, but owed to the result of manifold tilt.