Reader poll

Help me decide what to write about next

Substack limits the number of characters per option in a poll, so I’ve briefly expanded on the choices before requesting your input.

Options:

• Why I threw my daughter a Taylor Swift Eras-themed birthday party instead of driving to see the totality

• Replacing my old mattress: the agony and the ecstasy

• Ben Franklin’s grandfather, Thomas, was a blacksmith and farmer and Thomas’s wife was named Jane. Do I have any feelings about this sentence?

• XX Expertise (and how might this be related to the preceding topic)?

• Definitive answer to the question: If a tree falls in the suburbs does anyone hear it?

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I wrote a poem yesterday:

Washing the dishes (part infinity)

someday you will wish you were standing at the sink
in this kitchen
in this house
watching the ants
getting in from outside
you will remember
the lunchboxes returned
with uneaten cucumbers
and your eyes will fill
you will wrap your arms
around your brittler frame
you will rock yourself remembering
such richness

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I hope you are doing well and by that I mean navigating life — whatever the conditions are of your fragile, breathing body and all of the moments that have led up to this one to form the you that is, connected to all of the circumstances and relationships from which it has learned to be a you, all of the choices that life made for you, all of the life which you do not control, no matter how hard you think about it, how much you work, how diligent you try to be, the beautiful moment that is you now, and now, and now — with some grace and support.

P.S. I am predicting which topic will win.