10.

a cloudy, cool morning. fog in the trees, or is it smoke? i have smelled hints of it in the air all weekend. even so, the cool air is a wonderful treat. i even take a hoody with me.

on the way in i am thinking about music. i listen to music while driving to and from work, and almost always something new, i constantly am searching for the next thing, and i have come to find that there is endless music, endless and varied and of all genres, and unlike with books, a majority of it seems to be good. i could listen to a new band every day for life and it could all be good. but what even is music? what are these sounds, and why do we listen to them? it seems music must have originated as a way to remember, melodies stick in your head, (but why? our endlessly patternseeking brains?) so music could have evolved as a way to imprint messages onto the community? but these days in our modern world there is so much music that almost no one listens to the same songs. if i named ten bands that i listened to recently, probably you wouldn’t know most of them, and the same for me if you named ten you’re listening to. there is too much music for anyone to even bond over it unless you make an effort to seek out people who like one specific group.

but what does music do? what makes it good or bad? all other sense pleasures seem to be evolutionary in nature: taste is obvious, food that is good for you tastes good, bad tastes bad. sight: pleasurable sights include fertile landscapes (or fertile individuals) safe places to hide, ripe and healthy food, etc. touch: there is the obvious sexual touches which are pleasurable for obvious evolutionary reasons, and painful touches which are unpleasant for safety reasons. smell: the smell of healthy and good food is pleasurable, the smell of rotting food is disgusting and repellent for obvious reasons. but sound? there are of course the evolutionary ones, like a roaring lion being scary, or a screaming baby being upsetting, or a sexually appealing voice- but music? what is it doing for us? what makes it so indispensable in almost everyone’s life?

i don’t know. an evolutionary quirk perhaps.

as i stopped in line at the road construction, the person at the front of the line started to drive past the man, who held out his stop-sign like a talisman. the driver then braked, and reversed back and continued waiting

11.

much time was spent in the garden these past few days. a giant cucumber hidden beneath the leaves, growing and growing, unseen until i cut down the plant. it weighed 2.3 pounds. i juiced it with some apples. there are so many tomatoes, we can’t make sauce fast enough.

when stepping out to grab some berries, i met eyes with winston, the neighborhood cat, with a bird in his mouth. he froze, as if caught, then dashed away under the tomatoes with it. i watched him sitting there with it, chewing. i went back inside to drop off the berries, and when i returned not more than two minutes later, the bird was gone but for it’s head (in profile, beak open as if chirping, one shining black eye looking up at me from the dirt) and one wing, and winston was lounging in the sun on the patio, eyes closed and a satisfied smile.

12.

sitting on the couch at the end of the day yesterday, trying to read, my eyes close, blink, close, my brain fogs, slides left and right and disparate connections are made in the half sleeping underworld where we all go when we fall asleep, and for half a moment something clicks. eyes open, what, what… but it’s gone, and it’s absence is huge and aching, but what was it that i was just thinking? it was so important and now gone, and all i can catch is the glimmering flick of its tail as it vanishes into the oceanic deeps of my subconscious. it’s too strange, these half waking thoughts that slip away, like all dreams, but to watch it vanish while awake is an unsettling feeling. experiencing, in the moment, understanding being removed. and was it real, i wonder, that thought? was it something that made actual sense in the first place, or was it only a dream feeling of sense, doomed to be ‘lost’ because it was never real?