GIVENS
You ransack your head and heart for an idea, a thought worthy of the arrogance of being written down, a tune that lays claim, somehow, to the lyrical. Yet some days there is only the light patina of snow outside, the scent of coffee rising from your cup, the after‑tingle of someone you love against your flesh. You wonder what need the world might have of more embellishment than this, or what is lacking in you that might wish for a larger drama, a greater luminosity.
Yet in your heart you know that the greatest cure is these things themselves‑‑ the world’s great and small givens, those palpable and rather unexceptional events that are both our lack and our bounty… in other words: our life.