driving with my headlights off

love as air, even as the world burns

“Children brought up in great security, tribal or familial, aren't very aware of love, as I suppose fish aren't very aware of water. That’s the way it ought to be, love as air, love as the human element.” - Ursula Le Guin

I could begin with the obligatory everything is terrible and what is happening refrains. I could tell you that I still have not been able to make myself watch the Zelensky press conference or any portion of the State of the Union address. I could tell you my thoughts are splintered and raw and unfinished, and I can’t write lately because I cannot focus too deeply on anything except whatever storm is raging and whatever dying moments we are living in

Instead I’m going to write about something else. The sun is gone from the sky, both kids are working on homework, and I’ve lit a candle. I flipped through my messy morning pages for some fragments to sew together, set a timer for sixty minutes, and promised myself that when I get to the end of this hour, I will wrap it up and send it to you, even if it’s messy.

Carl Dean died this week, Dolly Parton’s husband. And they’re a couple who have always fascinated me because of their privacy– both the need for it and the continued commitment to it. I read once that he maintained an asphalt paving business for years, even as he was married to one of the most recognizable and famous women in the world. I think about them and I think about steady love, all the many iterations of it. The way I thought for years that it was a tether to hold you down, a weight you haul from place to place, a fixed thing that all too often turns women to stone. And only now I’m seeing in new ways that if it’s done right, it is not a tether to weigh you down, but one to hold you steady enough to reach a little further and fly a little higher. Maybe especially now when the whole world feels unsteady, we all need to hold on to something.