Our mornings and evenings have been heavy with fog, and on my way to work I passed the last of the dandelions all nodding with moisture. I worried, walking by, about all the wishes sitting there sodden, too heavy to lift through the air and plant themselves somewhere new. All those wishes that might never get off the ground.

Someone I like very much has an unpleasant diagnosis, and over the last few days I have watched something very private turn into something very public and inspiring, and...I just can't really think about it, friends. I feel outpaced by all of the losing this year and buried under trying to find what is light inside of what is dark. I am feeling fragile and worn thin and lucky and angry and tired.

Last week I read an article about a bunch of scientists out in the Australian desert taking x-rays of trees sitting on top of an unmined gold deposit. They've always known that that thing growing over gold ended up with gold in them, but they couldn't be sure if it was coming up from the ground or if it was kicked up by the wind. The x-rays show that the trees gather it through their roots and thread it all along themselves to their leaves, where it concentrates in the highest amounts. You can see it there in the x-rays, little spots of difference all along its veins. You could cut the tree open to find the sparkle laced inside, of course, but why would you? We have always known that the ground on which we plant ourselves makes up the nature of our bones.

I am thinking mostly about cooking this fall, about keeping my small family fed and safe and healthy. There's little else that I have any say in, with this world being a basket of yarn and three kittens most days. I keep finding myself reading memoirs about kidnappings and mental illnesses and wondering how much of becoming paranoid is just good common sense.

A month or so ago I read a news item about magic in the Maldives and how a coconut was arrested on suspicion of election tampering. Coconuts are inscribed with spells in the Maldives, it seems, and no one was sure if the coconut was being used to rig the vote. The police brought in a magician who cleared the name of the coconut, and I think it seems like a good idea for us all to have a magician on staff. Just to be on the safe side.

On our last night in New York we took a sail boat ride out into the Hudson River, just about sunset. I wrapped my bare legs in a green blanket and my hands around a glass of champagne and watched the city get further away and come into view in the way only a city can. Once out in the river they cut the engine and raised the sails, and we watched the Statue of Liberty approach, the sky ringed in rainbow, silence all around. I could have moved, I guess, walked around the boat and looked at all the angles, but it seemed like a better idea to stay part of the stillness and the quiet.

From the water, all the lights in all the windows kept their secrets.

On a rooftop visible out the window of our rented apartment stood some kind of statue, arms raised above its head. We probably could have guessed at its location and gone looking to find out what it was, but I like to think that it wasn't a statue, that it was someone who lives in the building regularly taking to the roof and greeting the sky.