My swaying arms had been in syncopation with the swaying arms of the woman walking ahead of me for some time. Then, with first her right hand then her left, she rearranged or adjusted her hair, and when they returned to her side, our arms’ swaying was out of sync, which I experienced as something uncomfortable. Then they got back into sync, just before she turned off to the side; but now, with her arms’ swaying being perpendicular to mine, I became confused, for the brief moment I could still see her arms, as to whether or not our arms’ motion remained in true alignment.My arms, now neither in nor out of sync with anything (because the lady had turned off) felt as if they had been relieved of a weight. They had been “unbound” and could move freely without needing to be “matched up.” And I recalled how some months ago I had been walking with a plastic grocery bag that held a small dense object in the bottom; and as my left arm swayed forward, the small object in the bag swayed back, and as the small object swayed forward, the arm swayed back. But it was confusing to look at, and it would seem to me (which was not the case) that the arm and small object would be swinging in the same direction at the same time.And I recalled how at that time I’d remembered how I’d been running behind a woman with a pony tail one day, watching the tail in a ball swaying back and forth from shoulder to shoulder, right to left, and how I’d been thinking at the time I couldn’t tell if the ball of the pony tail swung to the left as my right foot stepped forward, or the other way, swinging to the left with the forward motion of my left; and there seemed very little correspondence at all between the right and left of her pony tail, which was one thing, a single pony tail, and the right and left of my feet, which were two things, two separate feet. And I was thinking (this was after the event of the syncopated swaying arms) how the confusion I experienced with the object in the bag was like the confusion I had experienced with the pony tail swinging and how it was not at all like the confusion I had just experienced when I saw the woman’s formerly in-sync swaying arms had become perpendicular to mine — but in fact it was exactly like the latter confusion, I later decided: for the left and right of the pony tail, from shoulder to shoulder, was perpendicular to the left and right of my steps, moving towards the swinging tail.

The detritus in the sidewalk groove at a certain point ceases to be dried leaves and starts to become small stones — which could be a band name: “Detritus in the Groove.” (The keyboardist’s side project.)Snorkel of Snot could not be a good band name, but I briefly thought it might be some weeks ago, having been sick and delirious and unable to breath through my nose.

Customer said good thing about being a seasonal hire was that they didn’t expect much. Customer said the Ukranians say they invented borscht but everyone in that part of the world eats it. You can eat a ton of it and you never feel full and it’s incredibly healthy for you. Q: where was attendant in his history of Napoleon? A: 1790’s. Egyptian Campaign. Customer ordered hot milk with honey. Customers were guys embroiled in discussion of XFL. Long time customer said she had finally had a good talk with the owner: “you know, he’s a really interesting person” –a vet, singer, and such. 

Jogger: in extremely small shorts: muscular, tall, thin, tan.
Idea: that I’d wanted to become an “author” and become a “character.”
Recalled: JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE A CHARACTER DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE CHARACTER had said Harvey Keitel.
Analysis: having character is to being a character as being an author is to being an author’s character. Idea (revisited): no I hadn’t wanted to become “an author” but I had wanted to “write something” which implies becoming an author.
(What Socrates would say: or do we say it’s possible, O best of men, for a person to have authored something without having been an author?)
Stupid: “If you look around the room and don’t see a character, you’re a character.”
Random Shakespeare: How can he know what he is and be that he is?
Observed: man jaywalking in front of the approaching Sheriff’s car, “which I feel awkwardly about — Flaunting it.”
Odd experience: I don’t react to something I’ve been startled by — a sudden siren from an emergency vehicle — and that startling energy, absorbed, contained, supercharges me somehow. (Idea: that’s what it is to be cool, being charged through non-reaction.)

Customer from Surprise, AZ, customer from Success, AR. Customer gave beggar with speech impediment ten dollars. Customer, by way of explaining his sudden use of a knitted mask, said his wife insisted on it, asked if he could take a chair out front.

The theory of recollection was a little startling, it occurred to me, because we often think of learning as a kind of discovery. We discover a new continent, we discover a law of gasses or of gravitation — we don’t recall or remember these things. (The Meno demonstrates the slave already knew the Pythagorean theorem and merely had to recall it — does it demonstrate that Pythagoras himself did?)

Customer didn’t like shows like Tiger King — as a member of law enforcement he dealt with “white trash” everyday and it wasn’t new or interesting to him. Customer ordered cold turkey sandwich, small americano, a scone. Customers, ignoring social distancing protocols, collaborated to fit a basket on the back of a bicycle. Pedestrian accosted customer for not wearing a mask outside, don’t you even care about yourself? — “masks don’t do no good,” he replied. (He went in depth into the kind of masks you would use when working with serious chemicals and the tests they would do to ensure the masks were securely on — test them with smoke — “and those things they knit at home aren’t that.”) Customer remarked that customer and attendant were not six feet apart as they worked on an unemployment application together. Customer briefly entered into six foot radius of the attendant to deposit his credit card, then promptly hopped out.

Customer said that the problem in this country was that people lived too long. Customer couldn’t recall who was the wide receiver on the other side with Art Monk (Gary Clark?) Customer was wished a happy Easter but he wouldn’t be celebrating until next week.

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The Se e’rThe See’rThe See’r
…a armados armados n……pC B
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enfrentamientos armados —
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blecloth outofa papernapkin

Passive Subject (Schopenhauer, Proust.) To make of oneself a mirror and empty vessel filled only with the thing observed.

Inframince/ Duchamp. If it seems boring to you, you are not considering slivers of time or space that are small enough, the bullet between gun and target.

Epiphany/ Joyce. Ordinariness, according to him, could in moments erupt into significance that needed careful transcription. But perhaps any given arrangement of matter, stripped of the attribute of Time, any given moment, would be found to hold such significance.

Situations/ detournment. To play pranks on civilization so as to find the buried spirit beneath. (Corollary. The great soft underbelly of civilization seems to be the media. If the media were like a Fellini film, it would be “the hard underbelly” of civilization.)

Conservative or punk rock approach. Accept the obvious. If an activity is dull, don’t perform it. If a place is dull, leave it. If you can not, for any reason, do these things, you yourself are dull and to be left.

Daughter, mom and grandma: a light lunch and ice cream.

Customer conflated one well-known proverb with another during impassioned speech — physician, know thyself!

Short adult customer inadvertently squirted hand sanitizer in own eye — “is high pressure is why.”

Poor writing: as I see my stupid thoughts materialize, as I watch my inane ideas take form, I think — “this is my brain” (whereas good writing would involve satirizing my brain).

I feel that Dostoyevsky’s Possessed makes this point already, but there is a real cartoonal aspect often to people who make poor moral choices. Along with the toughness, the transgression, as a shadow, is foghorn leghorn, yosemite sam.

Dont kiss me with that snout
cause I know where it’s been
don’t kiss me with that snout
cause I know where it’s been
I was behind you walkin
And seen what you dipped in

Walking down by the mill stream
and up through the park
Walking down by that old mill stream
and up through the park
Pulling at the end of the leash
I seen you hit your mark.

Don’t kiss me with that snout
but I’ll go rub that back
don’t kiss me with that snout
but I’ll go rub that back
Put you out in the yard
now you sniffin at the shack.

Holder of Masters degree made regularly to lift heavy boxes at work. Friends tell her she should say no. Feels like she’s paid her dues and shouldn’t have to: been waiting tables or whatever since fifteen. At one point, managed receiving dock (but she called it something else) at a Barnes & Noble.

Attendant “really upset” by his personal defects in the morning — stupid passive creep — then worked a lot for twelve hours, and it no longer mattered. (He had “earned being the way he was,” he drunkenly diagnosed.)Attendant “felt pang of despair”: what he had just cleaned is suddenly littered afresh; is “total chaos”: uncapped jugs, opened bags, multiple spills, infinite crumbs…. Attendant “felt despair”: that person who always orders the least convenient thing at the least convenient time and never shows any appreciation or leaves a tip yet is obviously a kind and even uniquely admirable person has just walked in….. Despair, he calls it: “I need a second to a regroup, I’ve needed one for an hour or two, now another customer walks in. That chime!”Customer’s nominee for President would be Justin Amash. Customer confided she’d gotten “encasements” on her bed.

Idea: what if all of history had been written by the same person.

(Idea: in the future, technology will be that same person, that one voice.)

That we have already been heading in that direction: the technological in us being given more and more expression or “voice.”

Idea that there can be something old-feeling and old-fashioned about ancient history that goes beyond the subject matter, as if only old people wrote ancient history (which is not a criticism but characterization of “voice.”)

Idea that this is the way Cheever sometimes seems to write a short story: he has a character in view, he writes two or three adventures or situations with that character, then at a certain point he asks himself what the common thread of these situations has been, and that’s his conclusion, that’s the short story.

Idea of reimagining of practice of Kintsugi as “showing one’s code”? (All our thoughts on blogs show nothing of the code that’s behind their ordering and transmission. These lines of code are like the cracks in the pottery that Kintsugi may beautifully highlight.)