It made me feel alive, enthralled. And I remember, years ago, wondering what I would write about if it wasn’t about what was wrong and how to fix it (which was really, how to fix myself). I thought about the great writers and the great painters and how they were suffering and how that suffering provided grist for their art.

Today, as I was sitting at the kitchen table listening to the twitter of the hummingbirds and the sound of the fountain outside and not feeling moved to do anything or fix anyone, least of all myself, I was remembering my concern of long ago about the lack of drama. Calm meant boring.

Nothing is wrong these days. I don’t mean that there aren’t challenges (i.e., we’ve had a bit of a rodent problem in our house. Did you know that if a mouse can stick his nose in a hole the size of your pinky nail, he can crawl though that hole by collapsing his bones and reconstituting himself on the other side. Geez). Anyway, the rat people have been here quite a lot and besides them, there are the challenges of having a body, being in a relationship, being human here on earth school. And of course, there are the politicians. But in this moment, nothing is wrong. And when I refrain from the temptation of fixing and improving even for five minutes, I still have a rodent issue, my close friend is dying, my back aches, my cousin is in the middle of a messy divorce and nothing is wrong.

Out my window, the setting sun. The late afternoon magical light. The green of the trees. The bunch of sunflowers in the gold vase looking as if their purpose on earth is to delight anyone who cares to see them. Things are the way they are, and without my stories overlaid on top of them, there are challenges, but no problems. And so many sunflowers.