Words: Tragedy, Unfairness, Fortune.

Word comes into my email inbox at the end of the day that the literary journal Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself has accepted an essay of mine for their Bad-Ass Mothers theme. This delights me immeasurably. My silliness aside, there’s nothing light about this essay.

My small concerns asides, it’s a week not to be flippant. Acquaintances in our world here have suffered a tragedy, in a house with small children. A friend of mine who knows the family rails at the unfairness of the world. I remind her of what she knows well, that unfairness is a human construct. I’ve never seen evidence that the laws of universe pay any heed to that notion.

After dark, I wander through the neighborhood where cats sometimes appear and brush up against your ankle, purring. The clouds rub away, and a crescent moon gleams, buffed up and shiny, as if newly minted. All my life, I’ve been following this moon, Lady Moon, acquainted with her numberless faces, as she has shed her silvery light on mine. The streets are nearly empty tonight. Ursa Major hangs over a house where a blown-up pumpkin glows in the front yard. These days, I imagine Lady Moon charming my long-ago relatives, in a time so long ago we humans hadn’t yet divided the earth into countries.

On this walk, I remember a favorite line from Ann Patchett: “There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.” That, perhaps, is its own koan.