That dripping nostril was no ordinary toddler snot. That was when you should have known, and stopped working, and stopped drinking from the — write it — water cooler. Fuck. Fuck. When will the wave of absolutely certain regret and terror arrive. Come on already, I can’t wait anymore.

I was in a cab headed to the Courtyard of Changes when my friends texted to say that the police had just painted over the mural. But by the time I got there, building residents had almost finished repainting it. “This is the sixth time they’ve painted over it, and we always put it up again right away,” they told me, laughing.

One UN staffer, astonished by my knowledge of the kinship networks of the Nuer leadership in Unity, asked me uncertainly: What is fieldwork, exactly? It’s just talking to people, I said. You should try it.

What was I doing on Zoom? Everyone was outside. Doing the Corona Waltz: six-foot radius, smile, nod, little bow. It was at that point that I started to dream with the planet. I noticed weeds for the first time, as if they were long-lost little friends. Weeds also live in liminal space: ignored, trampled on, not even seen. And yet they grow together, egalitarian, in resilient communist clusters.

Nobody is innocent, says the ice cube. You’re not as experienced as you think you are, says the ice cube tray. Experience isn’t everything, says the ice cube. What else is there, says the ice cube tray. Feeling, says the ice cube. I don’t understand, says the ice cube tray.