The snow is back. I was really happy to see it this morning, even though the wind was blowing it in my face. Tonight, when I was walking home, impatient to see my kids, the little snowbanks marking the border between the street and the front yards felt almost cozy. I don’t even like snow that much, I just like the comfort of having seasons and regular climate events.

I finished Kelly Barthhurst’s Crane Husband. It’s beautiful and very sad. Ever since I have children, I am disturbed by the stories revolving around siblings, especially when it’s sister and brother. I was holding my breath for most of the book, hoping nothing bad would happen to these fictional kids. This week, I’ve been listening to the podcast with Merlin Sheldrake and someone else, an artist, talking about fungi and challenging our ideas of individuality. We see ourselves as separate from the “outside world,” our skin serving as a barrier. What if instead we saw ourselves as a process, a constant exchange between the inside and the outside, our skin not as a barrier, but a porous membrane. I definitely feel my skin getting thinner, at least metaphorically. Everything gets to me. Almost everything.

The good thing about having thin skin is that kindness gets through even faster than all the bad stuff. The thing that made my day was that my husband decided to pick up kids early, because yesterday our daughter said that she had a bad day at school. This was pure kindness and it moved me in an unexpectedly deep way.

Everyone else will remember this day as the day that Alexey Navalny died. I honestly don’t know anymore how I feel about Navalny. I certainly don’t feel grief so many people seem to express. Nowadays, grief is reserved for the innocent. For me personally, Navalny is a product of the same colonial russian system that putin. He may be a better, lighter part of the system, but still a part of it. It is not putin that needs to disappear, but the whole system with its tyrants, oligarchs, it liberals and freethinkers, because as long as it exists, no one will be truly free. I don’t know if that will ever happen. Could colonialism be eternal? Anyway, let Navalny rest in peace.