We start with the first image, which is of shimmering green coins reflected on the water's rippling surface. I suppose it needn't be near water but when I close my eyes this is the first thing I picture, the fluttering reflection of greens and yellows, the body leaning over the water, weeping I presume since that's often part of the job description. Weep for me, or for Nina Simone. All of us. What else do I know? In Japan there are always ghosts nearby, and once there was a soldier who fell in love and abandoned everything. Tender green love. In modern mythology it hides monstrous monthly secrets and beats people who get too close, though this is not really canon for the species. Elongated leaves which I guess could mean either it takes a long time to leave or to be left, if it meant something other than what it does. Oh yeah I'm looking stuff up, you think I carry this around with me? It is described as slender although I'm looking at a picture here and that's not the word I'd use, I mean it's no oak but it's not a birch either, more like the gnarled hands of an old woman than a bunch of teenage eyes, is one thing. Pliant, it says here, which is certainly true sometimes. When it's healthy it's agreeable up to a point, which is the point of the roots tearing and then it's a hard no, a refusal to yield. I like that it is both flexible and tough, tender and tenacious. Like, it's crying all the time sure but also you can't easily bring it down. The flowers are surprisingly uninteresting, it is simply what it is, no seasonal surprise of ginkgo stench or linden delight. I'd like to say something here about shoots that hasn't been said before but I can't think of what. In the olden days you could keep your hands busy on mindless tasks, weaving over and under until something useful emerged, a basket to carry things in, a fence to keep things out, a beautiful functional object. The bark cures a bite, or most basic pain I guess, including possibly the one you're in right now, though sadly not mine. Google wants to remind me that there's also an 80s movie of course there is where would I be without the 80s. Okay we're done. 

It feels like some kind of torture, some kind of crazy cruelty so perfect it would have to be planned. First, for one marvelous measure of time you glide across the globe of your mind, the depths of the oceans and the peaks of the mountains all equally beautiful and rich. Then it starts, and the pain pulls you so far into yourself you can't imagine a world beyond your skin and you reel inside this wail and claw, wish you believed in prayer so you could pray for it to be over but you have no breath to pray with anyway. It ends when it ends and you gasp out of it and shake your head and count your fingers and toes and blessings and make jokes, as you do. Then it sucks you in again, you blacken every thing on your mind's horizon and take a deep breath because it will surely be your last, this one, and you fall and you fall. With the distance you can manage, you try to be scientific and measure the pain on scales, measure the blood, measure the tears, try to put words on it, try to stay silent, try anything. And then it's over. You're losing your mind probably. In the sweet breaks between, you scour the internet, take online tests, talk to friends, change your diet, put on warm sweaters and take them off again in endless cycles, suck the sweetness and softness out of what you have by questioning why it isn't like that all the time, why the bitter and sharp tear. You assign yourself stoicism, after all you were the one who sliced through and set fire, and why not continue but then when the pain is there you remember that you cried then, too. Count your blessings. Count the people who have it worse. Count the length of the pause. Count how far you have come, how much less far you have to go. Count on your strength. 

There is a cabin in the woods somewhere, or maybe out in a wide empty field, maybe a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean. The point is that you are isolated there, no other people, only a landscape to interact with. Can you see it? No internet, no cell phone service. No luxuries really at all, just the basics. There's food somehow, and it's comfortable enough — not too hot or too cold for your taste. There's no particular danger, no attacking animals or whatever. 

Im thinking about irritations, specifically my own irritability. I am more easily intensely irritated than most, and I am less able than I would like to blow it off, ignore it, move on. My irritation is irrational and thus does not heed logic, it is physical and pure and it hurts me and I cannot stop. I get irritated by someone more than a few times and I'm done with them, I can't move on so I move away. To a certain extent, this is logical. It's like my irritations with books: I will never have enough time to read all the books I want before I die so why would I waste five more minutes reading Pat Conroy or Philip Roth? Some books I will give a second try on the recommendation of a trusted friend but it only works out sometimes. Same with people. 

And so I have built a life that treats my irritability as something like an allergy. I've chosen a job where I rarely work directly with others, thereby minimizing the likelihood of them irritating me. My social life is predominantly one-on-one meetings with people who delight me. So reading is a pleasure because I don't bother to continue with books I don't enjoy. And eating is a pleasure because I manage to avoid allergens so my primary reaction is to be nourished rather than poisoned. My life is a pleasure because I have eliminated most of the encounters with people who irritate me. 

From time to time I read something horrible or eat something that causes a bad reaction. And from time to time I have to deal with people who are toxic to me. And because I have largely eliminated that from my life, it causes a pretty dramatic reaction. I have no tolerance. 

I don't think I should change; I think the logic of my decisions holds up generally: Don't read books you don't like. Avoid foods that make you break out in hives. Steer clear of emotional vampires. Nevertheless from time to time I am splotchy and red-eyed, swollen and in pain in reaction to one thing or another and I can't help but wonder in such moments if there isn't a vaccine, and if so how to get it. 

This is a doll and this doll wants to make a nest with you. That is why it is called a nesting doll. You have heard some other reasons maybe but here we are talking about a nesting doll that wants to get cozy with you in the most homey way. This doll rolls into your life quite round and shiny, I mean it is not edgy or rough at all, it is just rolling along with whatever you want to do. This doll is agreeable. This doll is also lovely and just having it around makes things more attractive. Every day you look at it you feel a bit happier. The surface is so shiny that it reflects you. Like a spoon, except instead of a distorted pickle of a nose you look even better than in a mirror. One day while gazing at your reflection in the doll, you notice that there's a small crack in the shiny surface and when you run your thumbnail into the groove you find that the doll breaks quite neatly and deliberately in half and inside of it there is another doll. The second doll is pretty much exactly like the first doll, it is smaller obviously since it was fitted inside of the first one but it has the same happy smile, the same shiny surface, the same easy balance. The same reflective quality, although in this one your eyes are even more thoughtful, your smile more pleasing. And the fact that it's smaller means you can almost fit her in your hand now, hold her on your open palm,  show her to other people. Use words like mine. This one is also cracked and since you opened the first doll so easily and no harm came of it it's not long before you crack the second one open too. Inside is another doll, the same in most ways because this is a metaphor and metaphors involve a certain amount of consistency in order to earn your trust. But a little different, because obviously this is a metaphor founded in truth — each time you open the doll you have, you find another one inside, and each one is smaller and it is easier to imagine fitting her into your life simply from that point of view, but also, you can't help but notice that each subsequent doll is a little harder to open, that each one is rougher, less smooth. And each one is less perfect or to put it another way more flawed. The lines less straight, the paint wavery in places. It's difficult, probably, to paint really well on something so small, though you've seen drawings on grains of rice so it's more like poor workmanship. The third doll's eyes are just slightly smaller, but it looks almost like she's been crying, and your reflection as you look at her seems not quite so attractive; it seems more like how you really look. Still, eventually you get to a doll that fits right inside your pocket, part of your daily life if you want, there whenever you reach for her. You realize that the larger, prettier dolls were always rolling away from your fingers, more than you could hold, but this one is just the right size for you and you still like looking at yourself in that shiny surface and you like that this one seems more real, not quite so flashy as the first, like a doll you almost don't feel weird about loving. What happens next is predictable I guess, since even metaphors can't go on forever. You see the crack, you open the doll, etc. until you're at the last doll, the one that isn't hiding anything more. This doll isn't even a doll, it's a mess, a paint blob and a poorly lathed imitation of the others. There is nothing to love here. You can barely work up pity. You can't throw it away so you put it back inside the previous doll and try to pretend you didn't see it. But you did, you saw it because you looked, and now you know what's inside, rattling around inside the doll that comforts your fingers when you're nervous, inside the doll that reflects your better self, inside the doll that just rolled into your life and made everything, including you, more attractive. She opened because you broke her open and now you know. So what happens now.