I'm Italy alone and this is the slowdown.

Once walking home from my graduate poetry workshop at NYU, I found a perfectly good globe

set out by a trash bin in the West Village.

I wanted to take it home to my apartment on 21st Street, but in order to do so, I'd have

to carry the globe.

It was fine at first, and then my arms began to get sore.

I thought about putting it down, but then where would I put this miniature world I had already

grown so attached to?

When I reached Union Square, my arms started to truly ache from trying to carry this large

globe in this one particular position, which is really the only position in which you

can carry a globe.

As I was about to give up a man on a park bench suddenly started singing, she's got the

whole world in her hands, she's got the whole world in her hands, and I started to

laugh, and it gave me just enough encouragement to carry the globe all the way home.

I don't know why this moment comes back to me so often.

Maybe it's because the metaphor of it is so obvious.

The world is really hard to carry.

It hurts, and it aches, and I keep wanting to drop it to let go of its burdens.

And isn't that what we feel so often?

We want to put the world down, even for a moment, so we can rest.

I'm often marveling at the idea that we can take on more.

Right now we are living through a pandemic.

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