Chinese medicine calls viruses “Pernicious Evil Influences,” which sums it up pretty perfectly. They are all three of those things. But while viruses are nasty, the anxiety they generate is worse … much worse.

Before we zoom over Thanksgiving on our way to Christmas/New Years/Spring Break/Next Summer, I would like to pause to consider the most basic and greatest of gratitudes: that we have the privilege of being here at all.

f you are one of those lucky people who knew who you were and what you wanted to do from the time you were seven years old, this column is not for you. Furthermore, I don’t ever want to talk to you and please don’t write me.

As I look back over all the essays and blogs I’ve written, I’ve never once addressed the subject of loneliness, which is really rather strange since loneliness is epidemic in our culture, and since I’m on very familiar terms with it myself.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Not the When Harry Met Sally sort, or the infatuation/lust/heartbreak/revenge tedium on the radio that makes my 10-year-old daughter ask, with a look of pure nausea and disgust on her face, “Why are all the songs about love?”

Trust is tricky. It’s all very easy to have trust when everything is going swimmingly; it’s another thing altogether to maintain total trust when you’re hanging on by your fingernails. Or fins. Whatever.

I am late to the party at Downton Abbey; I only just began watching it two weeks ago on DVD and I just … can’t … stop. It’s distressingly absorbing. Yes, the acting is superb, the writing spot-on, the sets too much to be believed. The peek into turn-of-the-century Edwardian life—a life so radically different from our current age—is mesmerizing. I could stop there and say that I am ensorcelled by all of the above, but it’s more than that, I fear.