Why does everything feel a little gentler now? I've been reading; chiefly, about surrender. Another dumb history book, another view of Captain Armistead glimpsing the top of Gettysburg, where his best friend turned opposing general was waiting, posed on the opposite side of the lines, and how he told him "you can never know what this has cost me." I like to read about the battle, about the way that the guns were so loud that even the birds fell out of the sky from the percussion and how a lot of the men actually just fell asleep because when your heartrate gets too high, you fall asleep. It's very human.

But it's May here in formerly war-torn Virginia, and I feel sleepy, and I smell like soap, and the mayapples are blooming, which always feels like a celebration for something, like candles on a cake.