LIVING SPACE

An adventure stranger than fiction hangs on the thread of a garden spider. In a clearing outside the church, crickets are having a proxy vote. Congratulations, I say. To be here is an honor and unmistakable. You will cross the moat and maybe never come back.

This pen gapes at the prospect, finding nowhere to begin or end. Abstruse, it muses. A seeming comfort. It's like coming across a volunteer sunflower. When will it bloom? And then returning, to find time forgotten.

For an alternate view, the UnAdAgency hangs its sign on a dirigible:The sky isn't falling!

Below, a man in a tree is taking a selfie and proudly displays his hat:Make The Hindenburg Great Again.

She's angry with us? Who is this Mother? War! Let's have a war against climate change. But the biosphere R us. It's no contest.

A dirigible?

When all is said and done, at least for today, our cats go to sleep. Once they are and the TV is off, there is this. Think of it as a splash at the bottom of the well. Nothing much.

Under there, not very far down, is unbelievable heat, the stuff of volcanoes. It's energy. Looking up, there is the sun. More energy. The crust in between holds a pittance, called black gold to distract us from considering it's actually a bad bargain that's suffocating the planet. It also yields a rare element that, after careful processing, splits itself again and again to produce energy and a radioactive, deadly byproduct that endangers future generations.

All along there's been a better deal. Hydrogen fuses with itself, and this releases a great amount of energy, without leaving dangerous byproducts in its wake.

Twinkie is no longer a kitten. She used to snore. Now she purrs. It's not on a scale with planetary issues, but it's making me sleepy. Regardless, it still shows these considerations apply. Even if she doesn't know about climate change, or stresses from overpopulation. Everyone needs a habitat with space enough to grow, enough food, pure water.

The pen gapes. This planet is not a chicken farm.