Spring is springing, for which I am eternally grateful. I enjoy taking walks around my neighborhood, spotting the occasional one-off bunch of flowers or bright green blades of grass shooting up from the cold ground. While above, trees are starting to bud, their naked branches tinged with color and texture promising happier, longer, warmer days ahead. And completing my early spring explorations is the omnipresent choir of birds, boisterous and fervent, heralding the change in season.

Keeping up with the Trump administration’s incessant microaggressions is a Sisyphean task. But people do. And I am eternally grateful for their hardy resolve. Zeteo’s “This Week In Democracy” series, a day-by-day distillation published every Saturday, does a fantastic job at recapping the essential Trumpian chaos you may have caught, missed, or (if you’re like me) deliberately ignored in an effort to not spend the evening hyperventilating on the couch.

I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about painting or mixing or laying down oils, but I found it very soothing, surrendering to the delicate sounds and smells and colors. When it comes to creating art in my waking life, I enjoy the individual parts much more than the sum itself. The process. The means. There’s a lovely line from Ursula K. Le Guin’s dazzling science fiction novel The Lathe of Heaven—about dreams, realities, and an unusual painting—that goes, “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

I met Hoo-dini, a great-horned owl and love-child of Muppets Bert and Statler, at the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge in Medford, New Jersey the other day. Perched behind his woody shelter, he bored his lazily blinking eyes into mine. As one of Hoo-dini’s eyelids retracted a bit slower than the other, he was constantly winking at me, the feathery old flirt.

Like the average American, to regain consciousness after sleep and strange dreams, I require coffee first thing in the morning. I can't think of a better way to orient myself than the aroma of fresh grounds, the liquid taste and temperature, the steam that rolls off its filmy surface, warming my skin and temporarily steaming up my glasses.

Apart from being happily married with a partner of 15 years, I really have no business giving relationship advice. But since today happens to be my sort of nine-year wedding anniversary, and since this is my blog, why not?

There’s a lot of evil, conniving shit that goes down in New York City. There’s also a lot of brave, furious pushback from its inhabitants. While the efficacy of said pushback is dubious at best (counterproductive at worst ☹), attend any NYC protest and you’re bound to be met with an overwhelming feeling of solidarity, a shared electric hum of determination and rage. You’ll know you're not alone in your feelings.

I've been sick all week, occupying myself with the miserable activities of the indisposed—breathing steam, hoarding tissues, brewing copious amounts of herbal teas, deciding between uninspiring medicine combinations—it’s all deplorably tedious. Plus, thanks to round-the-clock frowning, my forehead has aged no less than 10 years over the last seven days. I swear to god it looks and feels like someone took a fucking carving knife to my head and scored the number eleven between my brows, bearing down as hard as they could.