It is tough to take on the world's larger philosophical quandries when your window is filled with flowers.

We have no talent for scale, we humans.  It's probably for the best.  If we were able to hold in our hearts the proper measurements of each disaster, we'd be worse than useless- and we're already only a few notches north of decorative.  Give us a sense of of the relative importance of this versus that, we'd drool and gibber and vomit chunks of climate change rhetoric.  GO BACK!  SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!  WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Instead we thumbs-up that Onion article on Facebook and fortify our positions on fractions of eighth notes and stare at our windows filled with flowers.  And then we finger, like a rosary, all the the small disasters of our lives: the bug bites and the missed busses and the lost opportunities, that ache in your knee and the continued erosion of my skin.

Two downward strokes, in the middle of my forehead, punctuation to no point.

Earthquakes, cancer, the despoilment of the sea, homes ripped from their moorings, ISIS ebola, peak oil.

Those flowers- clusters of white, loose, fragrant, butting up against the glass.