thank your cloud.

hello my loves…

thank you for the incredible feedback on the poll yesterday.

in real life;

this cloud appeared over the ocean last night on waiheke. everybody i have been talking to lately – predominately my friends in the states and australia – is just shattered, energetically. melbourne just went into its 6th lockdown. sydney is in lockdown for who knows how long.

case numbers soaring. deaths.

for my friends in the USA, the delta variant is creating atrocious levels of confusion and uncertainty. my friends in new york are in despair because gigs – their life-blood, so long awaited – are getting cancelled. exciting plans to attend friends’ weddings are being withdrawn.

people don’t know if their kids are going to be in or out of school. masked or unmasked.

and meanwhile, here i am, in the land of no masks and no covid. i have been grateful to be here all year, but my gratitude today, right now, especially given the pain across the tasman sea, is profound.

i am also aware that the bubble we are in is as fragile as a molecule. any moment now we could all hear the symphonic blare of our phones alerting us to go home and stay home due to a delta outbreak. everybody is feeling it coming. and hoping it doesn’t.

so today i am going to go to a coffeeshop and sit there, unmasked and able to loan my pen to the stranger’s toddler across the communal table so that she can draw, and know exactly how goddamn lucky i am. as warren zevon says: enjoy every sandwich.

thank your lucky clouds.

we are so lucky to be here in new zealand.

we are so lucky to have clouds to look at.

and in the words of my songwriter hero jeff mangum: we are so lucky

to be

anything at all.

xxxx

afp