Down in the big city I hit the ATM that doesn’t charge and then head straight for the dealership. Set up the laptop for downloads on their dime. Ask the nice jokey young man at the desk to keep an eye on it for me. Slip outside to burn.

You have to walk further and further from civilization to do it these days, especially if you want shade too. And you do, because as the world begins to burn with you, it is no longer considered safe here to be out in the sun at all between the hours of 10 and 4. Even if you wear sunscreen.

Which I only do when my left arm is cooking while driving, and then only on that arm. The inside of my door is sort of more blue than black as a result.

I read something the other day that said 98% of the people who have quit smoking in recent years are on other head meds instead now. (The claim was unsourced and probably wrong, but compelling regardless.) There must be some way to cope with the madness. Smoking is a bad way, everyone agrees. I’d like to stop. I don’t think head-meds-instead is necessarily at good trade though.

Anyway, out in this shady waste place on the edge on the dealer lot is a green palo verde, twisted and clinging to life next to a concrete wall. Doing what it can, to reprocess the exhaust fumes and carbon dioxide and smoke into something beautiful. A hopeless job being done anyway, and I could so relate to that tree.

I go back inside and start to write this post. An old man fusses about and decides he needs to throw away his plastic water bottle. Not in the recycling bin. In the trash. The lid of the trash can is broken, so when he opens it, it falls on the floor with quite a clatter. Almost onto his foot.

He keeps going fast, at least for a man his age. He flings in the bottle. Leaves the broken lid to the trash can on the floor. Moves on belching.

He’s the self-absorbed opposite of the palo verde tree, and I hate him. I hate him even though in a perfect world I would love my neighbor as myself.

These words are me trying to reprocess the sins of that old man, hopelessly, and failing in the relative sense.