Grieved. A little lost. I've lost contact with some people who are important to me, this last week. One is certainly offended, and one is just plain gone. All day long I can watch my mind make up stories to explain why. Entertaining, in a grimly way.

It takes effort to lift my thoughts out of the path they usually take to, like a duck to water: what does this mean about me? What have I done, said, omitted to do, omitted to say? What is it that has finally been revealed to be despicable about my character, that has driven people away? Or, on the other hand, what pathetic weakness does my need for constant contact reveal? I can simmer those questions over a slow fire of resentment for hours at a time. Profitless and misguided. Not that I may not be despicable somehow. But my chances of guessing how are near zero. And cooking invented dishes of despication can only make things worse.

How hard is it, I ask bitterly, to write a two-sentence email?

Well, it can be very hard. If I were wondering what this meant about them, rather than what it means about me, I might get farther and make fewer mistakes. It's entirely possible my messages have just gone astray. Or it may be that writing me is difficult for hundreds of different possible reasons, including practical ones, or just because of that kind of inchoate balking which makes me almost completely incapable of using the telephone. Or at the other end of the scale, they may be dealing with disasters or joys that simply preclude the possibility of directing attention my way.

So I work with it. Work to hold the door open: the truth is that I just don't know. Not terribly skillfully, but at least with a sense that it needs working. That's something, I guess. I can bundle it up and say, may this confusion, somehow, benefit all sentient beings. Some practice is pretty easy to give away.