The conflict that's always in the background is flaring up again. War remains a staple of the human condition, and there is no atrocity or any number of them that convinces enough of us about war being an optional development and not an intrinsic feature of the human animal. One could argue the animal, with the broadest degree of optionality, has the longest rope, which we do not use to climb and explore ever higher moral and ethical peaks and landscapes, but we use instead to hang our neighbour and ourselves.

The things we already owe owe us and the things we are striving to owe are borrowing from time not yet ours...

Time goes back and forth, collapsing as the tip of the pen presses over the virgin paper, like footprints over an unspoiled patch of sandy beach; destined to disappear the moment they come into existence... Distractions flood the space that I am, and I wonder if I've become more adept at waking from their relentless somnolence. Attention flutters like an anxious bird, threatened by everything, overwhelmed by the faintest of changes in the environment, shifting nebulously. Resting now, ever so briefly...