The tale of Goldilocks, revisited to include a skewed playing field in which humans, their objects and their pets tend to tumble down. Or get bombed out of recognizable shape. Or attacked with tear gas and water cannons for the unspeakable hubris of not dying on cue and out of sight of greener pastures.

Tales of Goldilocks, caught between contradictory urges, both their own and those of their entourage. Assailed by images of gruesome destruction and appeals to nirvana; or normalcy of the clean and orderly type; or calls to insurrection, resistance, and other collective uprisings against the wreckers of human life and decency.

Morning. What can get done, what cannot. Lives and expectations can and do get stretched into different shapes. Priorities do get up-ended. Goldilocks do find themselves on teeter-boards and doing balancing acts on shifting ground.

Personally, I’m no good at batch work. No point in sending this Goldilocks to the front lines, she works best at the one-on-one level. This human, that object, this specific pet…

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And if I don’t get some control over the paper maelstrom on my desk, there won’t be much getting done even in my tiny outpost.

The photo: another of those wild seedlings with no sense who can’t tell the difference between green pastures and a handful of dirt in cracked concrete. When she set out into the woods, did Goldilock have any idea of how messy the world could get? No, she did not.