I woke up at a quarter to 6 on a Saturday, to imminent nuclear meltdown and a world whose axis, some said, had shifted in minutes.

Galway was cold, wet, and silent as I biked to campus, also cold, wet, silent. I wrote, or typed on my laptop, with my mobile turned off for once... for once not distracted, but certain. According to the writing web app I've been using this week, I am anxious and preoccupied with death. The shadow of my work.

Today I will leave my laptop at school. One less screen to mediate between myself and ... call it reality? No, I'd say the present. An unmediated present, a moment physically embedded in this cold wet city. Make drop scones and read a book of paper and ink, Ursula K. Le Guin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, and imagine worlds beyond this world.

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