It all makes sense, in a strange sort of way. The nebulous feeling; cloudlike and hanging about in the air.

Is it the pandemic? Is it the fear of constant shortage; today it is baby food, but what about tomorrow?

Is it that all the children have stayed inside for two years and now don’t know how to go outside, how to play, how to think for themselves or learn? Is it the overdependence on testing over knowledge?

Is it the fast pace of it all; Googling answers takes no time. There iss no thrill of the chase of discovery anymore. There iss too much available at the push of a button, and all the while it grows hotter and hotter outside.

I look out my window at my front garden and my front porch. Both are beautifully dotted with plants; some are in pots. My front garden is full of roses and irises and a few trees; some loofahs grow on the fence.

Yesterday it was 90 degrees in Maine; almost as warm there as here. I don’t think that has ever happened: 90 degrees in May.

I remember the winter, when I was young and more recently, and watching Frenchman’s Bay in Maine freeze over with a skin of ice; I loved watching the short and stubby icebergs form on the beach over the course of each winter; they are blue against the black-grey of the beaches. I wonder if by the time I am 60 they will be smaller, or maybe they won’t exist at all.

I remember learning about hot and cold molecules in elementary school; cold molecules are slow while hot ones move around quickly and bounce against each other like a pinball game. Is that what is happening now? The heat is rising, both physically and socio-politically, so we are bouncing against each other, rapid-fire, without any understanding of why?

An 18-year old shot and killed ten people today, in upstate New York, because he was afraid that black people will replace white people In America as its dominant culture. He is 18; his life hasn’t even started yet and it is already over, alongside the people who he murdered. He must have learned this on the internet. How is it that the internet impacts young people so differently than we who grew up without it?

The air is still today; there is no wind.

In a couple of weeks, we go to England to sprinkle my dad’s ashes in the River Dart under the Saxon Bridge and toast his spirit as it truly becomes part of the Earth that birthed him all those years ago, in 1939.

I said to my students on Friday: Lord help the teachers of the future. I am every day battling the internet for their attention. I am battling videos, texts, and Snaps; I cannot compete with the sheer size of the moving energy of the internet and its entertainment.

Will we get rid of jobs and money like in Star Trek? Perhaps, but not for a long, long time. War continues to rage in Ukraine and so many people here in the United States can’t go to the doctor, can’t read at an 8th-grade level, and can’t afford to buy a car. The United States is confusing and terrifying; why is there a baby formula shortage and why can’t people, in this situation, make their own babies’ food?

We are losing our ability to solve our own problems. Meanwhile, the temperature outside grows hotter, a problem that we feel that we cannot solve. Entertainment grabs us and holds us for mere moments that stretch to hours, days, and years. Distraction is everywhere.

Why can we not mourn quietly? Why can we not process into spaces of acceptance so that we can change what we can, accept what we cannot, and understand the wisdom to know the difference?

I missed my Dad the other day; I was sitting at ACC graduation and his face appeared in my mind’s eye; he was old like he looked just before he died. That was it: just his face. I smiled.

This is how it is, how it will be, always, forever, for as long as it is to be.