April 26, 2023

chaos as organizing principle

Now that the future seems even more uncertain, the collection of papers on my desk, 
cleaved from their columns, looks mutinous. Downstairs, there’s a basket of red potatoes 
in various states of decay, and in the center an onion is sprouting a wild, green stem. 
I don’t know why I’ve been working overtime to keep up appearances 
when a few hundred miles south, an entire congressional body has lost its compass, 
swapping common sense for the mud they prefer to sling on newsprint. Last weekend, 
pulling the season’s first weeds, I wondered how long it would take, left 
to its primitive devices, for an overgrowth to obscure the house, spread thickly 
down the street, turn the neighborhood against itself. I wasn’t ready to disappear, not yet.
My back was sore, the trowel edge dull. Yet what is there to do but start where you are?