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When a male betta is ready to mate, he makes a bubble nest. He does so by taking air from the surface and then releasing it beneath the surface to form a ring of tiny air bubbles around the edge of the water. If a female is placed in his tank, he will fertilize her eggs and keep them in the nest he has prepared. Prisma has kept a constant nest around the water’s edge. Sometimes we awaken to his night’s work and are awed. His nest is instinct, something he simply must do, cannot help but doing. If I chose to attribute sentience to a fish, I would say his constant keeping of a nest represents his hope. And I envy him for it.

A harsh reality has overcome me this year. Succinctly stated: life sucks.

Pam once said that my writing was like Chicken Soup for the Soul, only less obviously didactic. I was deeply complimented because I felt that Pam was communicating that she felt from the pestle and mortar of my thoughts came some kind of healing or comforting property. Sometimes I purposed this, other times I just wrote what had been turning over in my mind, connecting the dots between the lives of my own daughters to me, to my mother, to her’s. My hood was so fraught with fear and uncertainty. To believe that I had a soul, that there is a God, that He is ultimately in control, and that just punishment would be issued to those from whom came the deepest cuts on my body and mind comforted me. It somehow justified a little girl never knowing her father; getting the shit beat out of her by a man who was supposed to love her as his own , protect her, be as a father to her; a mother breaking her daughter’s heart. Somehow believing there must be some enigmatic reason for such pain gave me hope. If I have no soul, if there is no God, and if life just happens, then it was all for nothing. None of the pain in life--death, abuse, murder--can be explained or understood. I have such a hard time accepting no spiritual meaning, no justification, no explanation for my pitiful hood, my disapointment in this life.

I am not saying that I have given up hope; I am saying that I think it is here, in this dark room, and I simply cannot see it, that is, until the sounds of the night outside my window are replaced by the ones of the morning before sun, and I awaken in my bed. I lie there a few minutes, sometimes still drunk from a dream, then I rise and find my way to the kitchen, where I see, swimming round and round in the fish bowl, Prisma and his bubble nest.

Note to My People: I am fine. Remember, I have about 6784¾ thoughts an hour. I have been thinking about all of this for awhile, and just needed to get it out of my head, you know, to make room for all the other swirling thoughts and theories (Anne Elk, anyone?).