It has been one of those stretches where the days stack up against you before you have had a chance to argue with the first one. Nothing catastrophic, nothing worth dramatizing, just the particular grind of too much friction in too many directions at once, the kind of week that does not make good copy but costs you something anyway. A significant loss in the family that required me to help plan funerary rites, and restructuring at work that threatens my position. I have been moving through it the way I move through everything: upright, standard intact, but aware of the weight. Nothing breaks my stride, only I break things that deserve to be remade, but nothing in these uncertain times holds significant comfort for me (currently).
What has saved me, genuinely, is the weather.
Spring arrived this week with the specific conviction of something that has been waiting a long time to make its point, and I have been stepping outside just to feel it, that clean particular warmth that does not yet carry the heaviness of summer, where the air still has a crispness underneath the heat and everything green looks almost aggressive in its newness. There is something about spring light in the late afternoon that I find quietly restorative in a way I cannot fully articulate. It simply helps. I will take it. The cherry blossoms at the Field Museum are in bloom, and it's an easy walk. Lake Michigan has also been a close held companion, and was still as glass on Thursday. You could scry on her water like a mirror, and the light filtered through the overcast sky as if fingers were reaching out to dip themselves. It felt greedy to take her in, but I am nothing if not hedonistic.
And then there was Artemis, splashing down with the kind of elegant finality that makes you remember the world is still capable of extraordinary things on the days it feels most ordinary. Something about watching that capsule meet the water, the culmination of that much human effort and precision and audacity, pulled me briefly out of my own difficult week and into something larger. I needed that more than I expected to.
The bad days will pass. They always do. I remain steadfast. Someone recently appraised me when I talked about my resiliency : "As the stars stay lighting the sky".
For those of you following the story of the weight of three minutes, the continuation posts tomorrow evening. Come back rested.