I am praying a lot lately, which is kind of weird when you consider that I don’t, actually, believe in god. Or gods. Or whatever. Or do I? I have never really made up my mind. I find it easier to believe in ghosts, and spirits of place, and small ancient gods, and possibly Buddhism, and definitely an ill defined sense of the universe as deity that can be chalked up to growing up hippie adjacent in the 60s and 70s and then doing acid in high school. But no, maaan, I don’t believe in, like, God, despite my cultural Catholicism. My family was really more Catholic adjacent than hippie, by a long long way: it was my aunt, my mother’s sister, who was the hippie, although my mother did go through periodic bouts of health food and natural fibers.

My parents, after putting my older brother through the full Catholic wringer from altar boy to parochial schools, had given up on the church by the time I and then my younger brother came along 15 years later. I was baptized but never had my first Communion, and we only went to church on major holidays or when my father occasionally decided, probably hungover on a random Sunday, that we were growing up shockingly godless and should go to mass. None of it really stuck. My other, very non hippie, aunt would take us to church whenever she saw us and respond in Latin, but she didn’t see us that much. She was my father’s sister and they were often feuding for inexplicable grown up reasons. We never saw my hippie aunt either, for that matter, until I was sent to live with her as a teenager for being totally impossible to deal with. So I did, in fact, grow up shockingly godless.

Maybe, not really believing in gods, I believe only in science. Except science can be flawed, and I would very much like to believe in Sasquatch and aliens and timeslips and alternate dimensions. Magic, according to Arthur C. Clarke, is just future science anyway. Which makes sense if you are kind of pantheistic, which, I guess, I am. At any rate I am praying, sort of, to something that may or may not exist and is undefined in my mind, but here is my prayer: help, I need $300,000.

This is weirdly specific, I know. I try to keep my lottery prayers reasonable. Every so often I tell myself that this is completely insane: if you are asking ineffable possibly nonexistent beings to grant you riches, why not go for the gusto? Why not ask for a billion dollars and a golden, um, something? Small hoop earrings? Gold is so tacky. But instead, I am approaching these prayers like a grant application. I’m all like, ok, god, this much would go for administrative costs and this would get my brother a place in a nice residential memory care. Some of it would get my daughter a new car, which would enable us to serve x more family members, and the remainder would also cover new windows and the bathroom plumbing, a sustainable initiative. Apparently, probably like many longtime nonprofit and academic workers, I think god is related to the William T. and Catherine C. MacArthur Foundation. Who I doubt are going to give me any money, any more than the gods are, but one can dream. And buy the occasional lottery ticket and mutter Nam-myoho-renge-kyo at every opportunity.

And now, the week that was in photographs. On Sunday Five and I picked blackberries. On Monday, I made blackberry jam, which turned out OK. I mean, even OK jam is better than no jam – jam is rarely really bad – but the problem with wild blackberries is they just don’t actually have a lot of flavor. Next time I do it I’m going to add some more fruit. Maybe peaches. On Tuesday I took two photos of the pelicans and the whatever that is – wild dill? Anise? Something deadly poisonous that smells like dill? – by the auto parts store on West Marine Drive. The photo on top was taken around 8 am and the photo at the bottom was taken around 8 pm and as you can see, the weather had changed. On Wednesday I saw these little daisies by a metal plate in the sidewalk. Thursday, I babysat for Five and took this amazing photo of the amazing Sushi, who had a near death experience due to a truly epic case of worms and bad reactions to worming medicine and just being a giant handful because it’s hard to be tiny and new in the world with a bellyache. He now seems to have turned a corner and is okay. Keep your fingers crossed. Friday, Five and I went to Waikiki Beach (iykyk; it’s not, surprise, the one in Hawaii) and had a lovely time. And on Saturday I was out taking more photographs of pelicans. I am praying, I guess, that they recover to their former numbers and I get to stand under hundreds of them silently wheeling overhead at least once again in my life. Here’s to praying for the earth! And to the earth, possibly, because why not! Also, I still need a lot of money. Yours in poverty, see you next week –