After spending the morning
dawdling in the kitchen,
you cannot help but
come to resent
the frequent engagement
of the fridge's compressor...
How many of these things
are running in the world, you wonder
and quickly Google the answer—
1.4 billion plugged-in refrigerators;
1.4 billion spinning motors,
cooling milk, meat, raspberries, cucumbers...
savagely burning 300 million year-old coal...
perhaps to preserve the priceless medicines
which save the lives of countless strangers.
How is it, then,
that you could still think
one off-day, or one idle hour—
one unclean utterance,
or even a single undisciplined breath—
doesn't matter?
