If I delete the most recent text messages up to the ones from before something happened, can we revert back to that time?

The last couple of months have been a trickle of emotional challenges, by way of news about deaths, illnesses, and injury affecting family and friends. While it hasn’t plunged me into any bouts of solipsism pondering my own mortality, it certainly has shaken up the fragile foundation of routine and habit that I’ve built to lull myself into taking for granted that when I wake up the next day, everything I am lucky enough to have will still be there.

A couple of the deaths were compounded with a layer of estrangement between the deceased and their families. These were not people who got to say goodbye and leave this world surrounded by love. Death forces reconciliation to become a one-way street.

All this against a backdrop of ever-rising global uncertainty, with Brexit, the coronavirus, and seemingly every day a new technology being rolled out that reduces our need for human interaction to get something done.

On a much tinier scale, my human interactions have been choppy at times, and I have been learning to triage them and detach myself from them quickly, because the singular interactions do not define the relationships (new or old).

It’s a good time to lay low and not react to things right away. Maybe some unimportant things will just wash over.

Perfume is still part of my daily routine, but my subconscious quest for constancy seems to have reduced the scope of my selection, and I’ve been reaching for bolder and heavier scents (to counterbalance my inward retreating). Une Rose Chyprée by Tauer Perfumes has had a lot of air time this week. It has an enlivening, juicy chypre opening, and I also find a lot of weight in the incense note (even though it’s not listed). I don’t think it’s any spiritual connotation, although there is a feeling of shelter and gravity that I associate with incense.

This, too, shall pass.