One day recently, I woke up and my allergies were with me, like a memory I thought was lost to time.  The acacias are covered in adorable yellow pompoms of pollen dust, which smell beautiful and are slowly killing me. In my garden, the pea shoots are above my head, and the ranunculus blooms are general. Some have weird hole-punch circles eaten through them, as part of an obscure insect campaign which is also devastating the calendula leaves.

My book is coming out in a month, and soon I will have tour dates to share with you. I will be coming to Phoenix, to Los Angeles, to Portland, to Seattle. I will be reading virtually in New York and Boston. I’ll be signing books in Tucson. Yesterday I saw this picture of End of the World House in Paris, at the Louvre, and it nearly made me cry.

The world is very unstable, both in feeling and in fact. I just saw a notice on the New York Times website that Volodymyr Zelensky’s comedy about becoming the president of Ukraine is coming back to Netflix “by popular demand.” And while I have no problem with this, and can certainly understand why people want to see it, it also feels so perfectly beside the point of who Zelensky is right now and what he is desperately trying to accomplish. On the internet, no one can hear you scream.

Then again, what are we supposed to do, those of us who have no control over US or NATO policy, who are just watching and hoping that all of Ukraine is not destroyed? I don’t know. I am sneezing. By necessity. I am trying to work, and to pay attention to a great many things. I am trying to grow an Armenian melon, which is currently unfurling its true leaves as the days grow hotter and hotter, and I move it between the sun and the shade. I am wearing a t-shirt, writing an essay, hoping to find my way into the world. And hoping too that the world will still be there to meet me, when I do.