Dear Ruby

it is probably worth mentioning, at this exact moment in time, because such a dispatch as this is really limited to a particular instant in cosmic time, that things are pretty good at this time. the homemade lager has all the fruitiness of a beer that was fermented at the wrong temperature, and i love it. it feels like my invention. the weather is perfect, and the happy little baby is sleeping next to a rubber duck the size of a real duck, a few feet away. true, there is no meteor shower, but there are also no impact craters, and for that, i am eternally grateful, or at least, until an impact occurs. there is rock out there. that is to say, rock, and heavy metal exist. i like this. i like that the world harbors so many species of insects, also. i watched one bee intimidate and harass another today, separate species and both solitary, and i approved. these things go on happening even in urban gardens, evolutionary events such as the transport of strange fish across great oceans.

i have never felt truly like a member of the human race. this may result from an upbringing spent with my face pushed between colored illustrations of ants, or it may result from abnormalities in some prefrontal gyrus of mine, but every glance in the mirror is a surprise, no matter how old i get, because i do not generally expect to see a primate there. seriously, i find its hands beautiful, its eyes and lips interesting, and its sheer bulk paradoxical. it seems curiously degenerate, lacking so many of the features that should have made it a chordate to begin with, and its immune system waging war on the last remnant of notochord. its societies are so complicated, and so much of its energy is devoted to activities which, if anything, negatively impact its Darwinian fitness. that said, i never expected to have any Darwinian fitness at all, and that strange creature i spent the day with has a similar, odd, interest in its own status as a human being. such things as nostrils need to be accounted for. a continuous digestive tract, and heterotrophy, were not forgone conclusions, and the existence of something like the ocean is a like some weird homecoming. i do not know what strange galactic cluster you were at lately, nugget, but welcome to earth and, when you get old enough, enjoy the beer.