.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Squirrel’s scrambling path describes trapezoidal pattern when I approach –each corner a reconsideration– then clambers up ornamental tree.

Looking away from staring at a stranger (middle-aged white woman putting stuff in the back of her parked car at the Quadruple A) to discover I am myself being stared at by a stranger (young Latino garbage man in full-on reflective gear, appearing out of the “alley” by Quadruple A.)

Oddly tone-deaf Sherwin-Williams ad on truck side. It seems to enjoin us to “cover the world in paint” and portrays a globe being immersed in a paint can.

Customer had studied library science in school but didn’t do anything with it. Worked at Marriott for thirty years. Now part time as parking attendant.

Working at the post office is stressful, said customer, somebody’s always over your shoulder. In my town as soon as four o’clock rolled around you saw a long row of them jeeps they use outside of the local bar.

Customer said he spent hours listening to this philosopher the attendant would really like, Jordan Peterson.

Customers ordered two iced soy lattes, an everything bagel with nothing, just toasted, and a plain bagel with cream cheese.

Customer didn’t need anything. Just came into say, Happy Thanksgiving.

Customer wanted a chocolate chip muffin for herself and a chocolate chocolate chip muffin for her sister.

“Thanks for everything,” was phrase that was heard. Brought to mind the same phrase being expressed in the movie “Mr. Roberts.”

Customer wore Jamestown Virginia shirt. Customer advised that he could unsubscribe from unsolicited advertisements in his emails if he wanted: you just have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the email where there’s a link that says “unsubscribe.”

Attendant wanted to explore the difference in the mindsets between those who leave the light on and those who don’t, those who close the door after them and don’t. Was it imponderable, was it irrelevant? The person who didn’t close the door behind them, for example, seemed a person who didn’t believe in doors at all. They had no use for the concealing or defensive properties of doors and saw them as just walls that may be busted through, easily beaten aside walls, which why would you build a wall up again after you’d just torn it down?

Customer had achieved goal of reading all of Agatha Christie’s novels.

Husband had thought his wife needed more oversight when with the kids on school projects, he began to say, but on reflection, felt it was actually his oversight that could cause the problem.  (She did a great job if he left them alone.)

Customer with fiance: our first date was here. Med decaf breve, medium au lait.

Today the family was just going to go into the city, have lunch and walk around. A long time since we’ve done that.

(CHANCE SWEEPINGS)

Man watering garden plants in same careless manner you’d hose anything down — mud from sidewalk, soap off car — loose grip on handle of nozzle; a sort of motion so lackadaisical it could either be intended as circular or side to side; sprays lawn and perimeter fence as much as garden .

Toddler walking in the grass nearby. Though so small, he seems to walk like a giant, raising his feet much higher than necessary.

“Same angular velocity”: as my head swiveled toward that woman across the street, that woman across the street raised her thermos to her mouth.

Plastic bag that had come into my possession actually made it into recycling bin. On my way to the vaccination center, a plastic bag blew down the path and didn’t slide off of it and down the path but actually attached itself to my foot. To have not picked it up would have been alright, I supposed, but now it was indisputably in my possession, and to have simply kicked it off would have been littering, and so I put it into a sidepocket of my backpack and moved on.

I got my shot, walked to work, walked home from work, spent a night in feverish chills and aches –which I enjoyed mind you, a nice break from myself — a rare point of egress from my routine– walked back to and finished work again, still feeling bad; then hitting the grocery store on my way home, I happened to notice the bag still in my backpack, and tucked it into that the bag recycling dispensary, which was right by the door, as I left. That had worked out surprisingly well, was my feeling.

I liked this comment. I too think of there being many equally good 19th century authors but only one real Elizabethan author. However, if you think of Montaigne and Cervantes as being Shakespeare’s con-temporaries, rather than Marlowe and Johnson, it doesn’t really hold.

Shapes; Quotations; Odd Ideas & Writing; Ngrams & Mysteries; Autobiography of my prime; Politics and Film; French Passages; Greek Passages; Concordances.

“Water lowers the melting point of rocks, similar to how salt lowers the melting point of ice, and could increase the amount of magma generated.” (*)

“A work that is as encyclopedic in its triviality as it is mundane in its history…” Premise: my life over what I call the years of my prime, aged 30 to 50 say, has been extremely repetitious and uneventful: work at the coffee shop, walk to and from the coffee shop, sit at the computer at home. Does anything of note exist within that repetition and ordinariness? What separates one very similar day from the next? Is there a clue of some kind to be found in these differences? “As Thoreau set up his cabin my Walden, the author has set up his cabin — by a deep lake of extraordinary Sameness.”

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY PRIME (a history of the mundane)

I. Chance Sweepings ( Appendices: A , B , C , D, E )

II. WLK: Study of Sounds (long fragment) (fragment)

III. CPU: Ideas (fragment) (fragment)