Life reduced to a series of mechanical movements. There is no more mystery. It is a matter of course. I will continue, striving towards some nebulous point; two perpendicular lines extending infinitely into the distance. Their intersection is the present. They will never cross again.

The weather always captures my feelings perfectly. Chaotic atmospheric fluctuations are infinitely more complex than anything my mind could possibly conjure. Today it feels odd, as if the world can’t decide whether it should be warm or cold, so settles for both. A sterile sun beats down on trees that lost their summer leaves many months ago. It feels like the first vaguely springlike day of the year. It would be rather pleasant to take a walk but I stay indoors. Maybe I will go outside for a little while at about 3:30, I think, as the hours slip away.

I remember, when I was a boy, thinking it was odd that my grandmother was so attentive to the weather. Now I suppose it is because it was the only really constant sense of novelty in her life, the continual rotation of the earth a reminder that things had not yet come to a sudden halt.

I seem to remember that I was once much more sensitive to those things outside of me. Sometimes I feel it still. On a long summer weekend afternoon, dazed by the totality of existence, drunk on pollen and sweet beer.

I think it likely that humans and plants are not so different. A tree sheds its leaves when the air gets cold in the autumn. I think a human does the same thing, but imperceptibly. Likewise, the tree’s leaves return in the springtime, when the axis of earth’s spin tilts down towards the sun. And a human being begins anew in the springtime of a life. Not only symbolically, but literally, materially.

In these moments I cannot help but think that I wasn’t meant for this. The dispassionate routine, the inoculation, the palliative nature of my life. A continual process of pruning away, of maintenance. I always fancied myself a visionary. An idealist. Alternating between excess and abstinence. Drunkenness and monasticism.

I imagine myself melting away into my chair. Perfectly satisfied, wanting nothing. There is nothing else to pursue. Life is always perfectly self-contained. Death is natural.

A tree grows in some dirt. It follows natural rhythms - it knows when it should grow leaves, and when they should go away. Animals come and feed on the undergrowth; they die there and become soil again. The tree itself dies, becomes part of the soil, and is replaced by other plants. This is the noble way of living.

But then again I remember that my work, my busyness, my anxiety and disquiet, are all part of the same cycle. That is what a human life entails. I remember I am not a tree. I was born into a society and now I am responsible for the maintenance of a very small portion of it. I have no control over whether it will eventually be destroyed. I play my part nonetheless. I am fine with it.