Two cats, both black and white but not brothers, emerge. Know them by their fears: sleek young one fears the other, his dash, his sudden flash of teeth, barbarity. The other fears me. Yellow eyes askance, we face one another. Black fur grey, an undercoat of dirt. He moves not. Half a cat facing, half hidden in the vert.

The sleek young one rolls on his back on the grass, ecstatic. The other glances, dismisses, retires.

Apples blossom.

The luxury of time to stand before a bloom for as long as is right, for as long as it takes to make the marks I need on my page and the state of my mind. To stand and slowly study light. Luxury, to breath in the wood in a season most alive, to care more for the light and the air than for when I will arrive. Luxury, to have hands that have learned to mark, eyes that have learned to see. To have this capacity.

Gratitude to past me. Only, there is no past. There is no “was”.

What if I am the only one that is? If there is only now, if was is only memory and memory is nothing but imagined sense, if reality exists only in perception, I am indeed alone.

At that thought: lonely?

A little.

Why?

No one is in the mirror.

Why need a mirror?

If reality exists only in perception, to be seen is to be made real. To see is to make real. I am made real by that one’s witnessing, yet even as (s)he witnesses (s)he is not real except in my seeing. Witnessing reciprocal, and therefore circular: therein its downfall.

A yellow smell: sun, new grass and dandelions. Cooler, greener under the maple trees.