I don’t think about the back of my hand. It’s just always there, holding everything together, usually out of sight if I’m cupping something or counting or doing some other task. Even when I’m actually looking at it, I’m looking through it instead, my attention on whatever I’m writing, keeping the head of the pen or pencil on the paper in front of me. No rings, no tattoos, no fingerprints, just bones and veins, nails and skin and melanin, always behind everything I grip or let slip.
I did a genuine double take at beating the rain to work, then spent the rest of my day slowly shaking my head, waving as the water headed eastbound and uphill, worrying about its potential, then winnowing my way through its impact, then winding my way home and watching it hang over the city and then the hills even as the western skies teased a toning up and a timing shift.
Traffic was slow enough after this morning’s rains that I could listen to the first album of a famous trilogy years after its release, and find it surprisingly abstract and more rhythmic than expected. Now to see what reviewers found in it before firing up the other two albums during this week’s drives in.
The systems that spin and surge around us, send up vapor and serve up solidity, are the stories we tell ourselves, the only narratives that matter, and everything rests on getting them not only right but truthful in a way that matters beyond any individual attention span.
A slow and purposefully late start turned into a mild disaster outside, a slow loop back home and a stressful day trying to stay in too of things in all too familiar constraints. Not the most auspicious resumption of a familiar regimen, but still reboundable with some focus and care, I’m hoping.
Since I knew the rain was coming, I could ignore it and focus on brighter things, like the library books and the literal walk in the park and the appointment across the street. But I couldn’t ignore it, much less the people who were bound and determined to ignore it and use it at the same time.
When you don’t leave the friendly confines, part of you expands to full in the space with responses to events. You retrace your steps, weigh stretching your legs before deciding against, rifle through paper stacks and plan for more action to come: maybe a massage or a brief blitz for errands before the regularly scheduled lineup resumes.
I’ve got instruments set up the way I want them, but I’m not sure when to start taking them off the wall and switching them into the rotation. That goes double for a certain coffee machine and triple for other machines around here which Shall Not Be Named.
Back at it again, through heavy morning rain and light email responses, siding headlines and staving off headaches, beating back cravings and not getting up often enough for sunshine or a walk. My rhythm is better when the week is longer, when there’s more bodies in the room. That’s what tomorrow’s for, so let’s see!
I sat on a bench and talked to a nice photographer from Pacifica. As others milled around us, craning their necks and trying to take in all the beauty on the walls around us, he mentioned that one thing some of the art made him feel was depressed. I asked if he found it sobering instead, and he seemed to concur. A few minutes before I noticed a sign identifying the exhibition as a triennial, I said something about how it’s been a tough last three years. Oof!
