The cat is running back and forth across the apartment, calling in a desperate voice. I’m sitting at my desk. All day I have felt a lightness in my head that last night I attributed to the cocoa I made an hour or two before sleeping. But when I started reading one of the stories I was going to be talking about with my students today it became immediately clear why I hadn’t been able to focus. What I had avoided thinking about immediately rose to the forefront of my mind.

I prolong uncertainty through willful procrastination. Which is how I can spend almost an entire day at home alone even when the temperature rises above twenty degrees celsius in the first week of November. In Toronto, Canada.

I want to take my time thinking about something without having to act. The truth is that I would rather take action but I am unsure about the consequences of action built upon premises which seem to me abstract, in the way that all of reality can seem that way.

I understand that consequences follow actions. That reactions are emotional as well as physical and can take time to settle.