Ritual

Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings. “Hello?” The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming “un-thank yous” and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who i