Today seems alchemical in a way that I can’t elegantly express: like it is the confluence of things, like the world has developed some kind of consistent rhythm. In the UK, women are coming across rooms named after plants that are also named after people. In Whistler, disparate points in my scatterplot of friends are aligning in fiery Olympic spirit. Different men are finding different women in inexplicably similar ways, in places where they never thought they would. In Japan, salient names are appearing in English lessons where they had no right to be, and off Abashiri the expected Siberian pack ice is nowhere to be found, the victim of a possible early end to this glorious winter.

And throughout it all, this song is echoing inescapably in my mind, playing like an eerie, repetitive soundtrack for whatever this all is.

This sudden alchemy

has got me holding on