Everyone is back to work and the building rests silent in the suddenly sunny afternoon. It’s early enough that the neighborhood is yet motionless, productivity is sequestered to downtown areas and along the feeding arterials.

I’ve opened the shades to let in the color and used the movement to untwist the comforter and lay it flat against the sheets before deciding the sheets must be washed anyway — if this untainted energy lasts I’ll get it done.

A list of tasks, a few new with many rolled over from last year, await attention. I’ve no expectation for completing them though. It’s satisfying enough to use what energy comes for however long it lasts. Slowly, I work my way through the chores and the house starts to regain its shape.

My imagination, as always, precedes activity, and ideas for what I want to do next with the house billow through my mind, overlaying the physical, real parts. I call this motivation.

Also, the new sunlight is reminiscent of more active moments and allows me to imagine biking outside or driving the night away or being out with friends.

(We traveled for a week and for more than that I’ve been ill. A low-grade, chronic thing that has persisted long enough to foster something like a foreshadowing of terminal conditions. The driving, the socializing, the exigencies of grace and obligation overwhelmed the growing toll the body claims. Now that I’m home, the whole person lies collapsed and at ease. Some moments crying in the discovered comfort here, relieved not to be in a moving car or in a house of strangers, or even to have to be sitting upright.

I’ll get better; I can feel consciousness rising to the surface. I’ve only to wait out the remaining days.)