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Vietnamese woman energetically drilling, scraping, prodding, saturating, suctioning, swabbing my teeth. It would be so interesting to be a person as skilled as this, I reflect, as she performs these maneuvers over myself… I appreciate her quiet industry and intensity.

When seeking out a dentist, my only guiding principles had been — (1) location — and (2) that I’d had positive experiences with lady health professionals in the past (although not having myself been one of their patients — having not myself been to see a health professional in 3 decades until around now.)

In the lobby beforehand, still reading Tristram Shandy, fighting at every moment to read it over the noise of CNN reportage of the depressing “dogshit bill,” as Yglesias had called it, the BBB… I did manage, however, to come across a quotable passage in this not very quotable book, which I would probably post on a blog later —

“That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best — I’m sure it is the most religious — for I begin with writing the first sentence — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”

This reminded me somewhat of the first sentence of Augie March but, having by a miracle efficiently found a copy of that book in my library — though my library is not extensive, just extremely disordered — I found it was not as snug a fit as I first thought, and tabled the idea of trying to link them. (Idea was supposed to have been — “spontaneously” is the only way to write. A writer’s fundamental work is experiencing — thought, emotion, sensation –, after which, the rest should follow more or less naturally. Contra-Flaubert, I suppose.)

The other statement that leapt out at me, in the waiting room, over the CNN, was a little Whitman-like (Whitman, who wrote spontaneously, not laboriously, according to my information). Tristram writes: “For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.”

“Poetry’s great mission is the pursuit of truth on a human scale, bound by the measure of each person’s mortal voice.” Robert Pinsky/ nyt

Love this unflashy video on pneumatic road tubing.

I had closed a message to a friend with the semi-jocular suggestion that she “be good;” now, in the woods with the dog, I’m thinking that actually, seriously, that might be pretty good advice for me to follow myself, and I wrap my bowed, cotton-hatted head with my knuckles three times lightly, remembering my Lear (“Beat beat gates! Let thy wisdom in and thy folly out!”), thinking “be good.”

Now, like an echo to my own wrapping, I hear branches high above me knocking, three times or so, could almost be a woodpecker but more muted, maybe an old or weakened woodpecker, or a branch upon a branch — knock knock knock — (which makes me remember my Macbeth, the gate keeper or whatever he is, the morning after Duncan’s murder: “knock, knock, knock!”) — be good.

Helen Vendler, Words Chosen Out of Desire. One of those rare works of literary criticism, like Simone Weil’s Poem of Force, which is a beautiful artwork itself often. Great place to start reading Wallace Stevens.

Harold Bloom’s The Poems of Our Climate is also helpful, particularly with understanding the long poems, which Vendler doesn’t discuss; however, Bloom is inclined to theorizing and this will somewhat distract from his subject.

That Denial is a process of reverse-annealing, a kind of weakening of a weakness.

The word “archery” spoken by a passerby. “Maybe because he doesn’t like archery,” was I believe the phrase spoken by the young passing woman to her friend.

Judging that this bicycle, having reached the bottom of the hill, must be electric, not because the rider is not pumping his legs, and not because of its speed, but because of the uniformity of its motion as it now climbs out of the dip.

Situation isn’t favorable to reading the vanity plate of that conspicuously courteous driver — what do you imagine it would have revealed to you about the nature of his courtesy?

Woman blocking the walk: old, ugly, pained, doesn’t want to go to work, and you are that person.

Bus stop: overweight black or brown man of 30 with a white over-the-shoulder bag and eyeglasses.

Bus stop: poofy dark haired white woman, seen from the back, with big headphones enmeshed in the “poof.” Attractive figure of woman in the distance in business attire observed walking: I’m guessing she’s heading for the bus stop on Wisconsin.

Why are you staring off like that? You are trying to recollect an idea you had about someone that seemed to unlock, a little, the personality of that person.

What is that person in your mind really, neurons…? Neurons attached to what?

Observation requires a mass of words rubbing against a mass of perception — the sparks arrive as notes or new thoughts — but at this moment, the sense of it is, there’s not much going on in either department. The world is bland and I’ve got nothing to say

If you were to put all these statements together all you’d get is this guy you’re looking at in the mirror so why not just give them a photograph and be done?

I make an observation on the presence of Jersey Walls simply because I’ve recalled the name of those concrete traffic barriers, and I want to comment about a group of cars simply because the word “passel” has come to mind. If you were to list everything there was in the world, the list would at best be a part of that world; it wouldn’t contain it — the opposite. It’s a silly idea, what you’re trying to do.

Linda Greenhouse on the challenges conservative justices may face in upholding the President’s tariff rationale. (Originalism, textualism, the “major questions” and “non-delegations” doctrines, all argue against it, she says.)

You can listen to the proceedings here.

I like the point Noah Smith has been making recently, if I understand: Europeans have hated technological progress, identifying it with the U.S. — like air conditioning — but maybe they might love it, or embrace its necessity, by identifying it with China?

NYT 10/29: Two federal prosecutors in Washington were informed on Wednesday that they would be placed on leave after requesting a stiff sentence for a man granted clemency after participating in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, who later turned up armed near the house of former President Barack Obama.

Ezra Klein: From 2012 to 2024, Democrats moved sharply left on virtually every issue. They often did so arguing that they were finally representing communities that had long suffered from too little representation. This was what they were told to do by the online voices and professional groups that claimed to represent these communities.

But it went wrong. Democrats became more uncompromising on immigration and lost support among Hispanic voters. They moved left on guns and student loans and climate, and lost ground with young voters. They moved left on race and lost ground with Black voters. They moved left on education and lost ground with Asian American voters. They moved left on economics and lost ground with working-class voters. The only major group in which Democrats saw improvement across that whole 12-year period was college-educated white voters.

Gasconade: Boastful talk. “Approaching like a gasconade of drums.” (Wallace Stevens)