sat 08-08-98 Walking down the stairs, carrying laundry and detergent, change in one pocket and keys in the other, my bathing suit starts to fall off.

sun 08-09 Pinto beans, water, chopped carrot and onion, garlic, vege base, marg, salt, pepper, frozen artichoke hearts, 3/8 cup rice, sliced almonds.
Two bluejays out back. One paused, slightly lower than my open window, in one of the little maples by the fence between the driveways.
Meditation in moonlight. Full moon, door and screen to the deck open. Sounds of insects, traffic, footsteps, voices, wind in the trees.

mon 08-10 Last contact dance class tonight. So far only a bruise below my elbow to match the one above from last week, and my wrists hurt. Perching on a partner, accepting and refusing weight, communicating when to let go.
The moon is on the other side of Jupiter.

tue 08-11 Have been at my target weight, 150, for three days now. Maybe it's real. Light rain while bringing my salad back from star, sun later. Bought rhubarb strawberry preserves on the way home.
The read program for the magic text editor is a line editor. Got most of it working today in mumps. Several days of reading the manual, learning magic, and worrying. Two days of coding.
Almost finished the little book on Wittgenstein. Says the word pain has no meaning since it is an internal sensation that can not be verified as true, except he says the word internal has no meaning either. He makes no sense. Everything is an internal sensation that can not be verified. His work is 50 years old.
Lightening going sideways.

wed 08-12 Started wrong, so instead of going down Beacon, went down Longwood and Huntington to Back Bay Station. Was on the other side of the street.

thu 08-13 In tai chi, my left arm needs to be softer when I bring my hand under my chin, holding the ball.
Walking home, parked on the corner by the convenience store, was a restored black VW beetle, with a little chrome at the bottom corners of the fenders.

fri 08-14 I ate something yesterday I shouldn't have. Falafel or onion rings or carrot cake or coconut chocolate chip cookies or lemonade. I gained four pounds. The lemonade was to cut the grease from the onion rings. I got extra for handing the server a 16 oz cup, and he charged less. They were better when I had them two weeks ago.
It was very quiet in the early hours before dawn. Bright sun later in the morning, and more noise.
My palms itch with small blisters, but they don't come out. Maybe an allergic reaction to the cream cheese frosting on all the carrot cake I've been eating.

sat 08-15 High clouds this morning, then some rain.
Reading more about John in Brown: Nicodemus. Water and spirit are also symbols in taoist alchemy, in Understanding Reality and The Secret of the Golden Flower. Wind is used in Chuang Tzu, the beginning of chapter 2.
Got a honey sesame scone at the bakery in central square. Ate it walking down Brookline Ave, tasted very good, nice texture. Sun was warm.

sun 08-16 Insects buzzing in the trees.
One crow cawing as it flys.
One, two, four, ten pigeons picking seeds off the grass, stop and look up when I hear the clink of a dog tag go by behind me, and sparrows, one just a brown head sticking up.
Tiny ants all through the grass.
A flat brown bug like a twig of leaf on the knee of my jeans.
I brush a bug off my ankle and get blood.
On my back pack:
two white mites and a smaller red one moving on the zipper,
something like a small flat worm glides around on lots of legs too small to see,
two red and black long beetle like bugs but flexible,
and one orange or red beetle with wings sticking out from the ends of its wing covers.
A squirrel hops by looking for something.

tue 08-18 Read Valerie The Color Kittens. Had not realized how much of my life may have come from that book. Fascination with cats, ladders, paw tracks, pinstripes, trains, bandanas, city houses, modern art, triangles, the obvious, gingerbread trim, colors, drawing, factory roofs and chimneys, rooftop water tanks, greek islands, pears, windsor chairs, stars, owls, bears, birds, white flowers, diamond stained glass windows, combinations, and the arbitrariness of boundaries.

wed 08-19 When we come out of the Avengers it's been raining, like it did yesterday. Water on the sidewalk and parking lot in front of the theater. But the evening twilight sky is a clear parish blue behind the trees and telephone wires, and the rest of the parking lot is dry, and there are soap suds.

thu 08-20 Forgot about tai chi after getting home and reading comics. Remembered at 7:20, ten minutes after I usually leave. Hurried and I'm usually early and it always starts late, so I got there after the previous class was over, but people were still wandering around. Started my warm ups and others did too. Bill came in putting on his shoes. Eat my pasta and lima beans when I get home.

fri 08-21 A young woman in rolled up jean shorts and a heavy white long sleeve top walking back and forth from the corner to the door of an apartment building, before I get to Commonwealth. Waiting for her date?

sat 08-22 By the path at Walden Pond, two mushrooms with concave red tops pushing up the leaves. Little pines in the early morning light slanting in under the trees. A new white line down the side of a tree where the bark is gone. Lightening stike? Tai chi on the shore and in the water, swimmers talking across the way. Lots of water bugs moving around the surface, two longer legs in front, two shorter behind. Sneezing, even though I only swam over to the point. Meditating. Birds, insects, airplanes, traffic. People walking and running by stop talking. Two stop and go in the water, the woman swims off, the man talks to a fisherman who trolls by. No one else near, don't bother wrapping a towel around myself when I change. Read about John 18, in the garden.

sun 08-23 Listening to Bach's first partita played by Weissenberg and by Steuerman. In Steuerman the fast parts are not so rushed and the slow parts are not so drawn out. The end of the prelude slows and fades, where Weissenbreg crashes, sounding more like Beethoven. I've wanted to like the the Weissenberg, since there is a lot more on the two disks and I first had the partitas on his LP of the first three, but I have loved the Steuerman since I first had it on tape. I have the six on two disks now, but they are now available as part of two longer disks. Steuerman had some more Bach and a Scriabin disk, but nothing in the last ten years.

mon 08-24 I remembered why I stopped getting poppy seed bagels. The seeds go every where. Worse than the sesame seeds I keep finding all over.

tue 08-25 There is a bird singing this morning, a clear rising note and a shorter falling one and some other chirps. It's a starling right outside my window in the top of the tree. I have never heard a starling sing before. There are two of them, and a few small round sparrows. A knee under a blanket sticking up above the window sill across the two driveways. It was hot yesterday and will be hotter to today. A brown siamese cat goes under a car parked on the flat blacktop.

wed 08-26 Going out to Canton as it got dark to look at an apartment, diving under an tall stone viaduct.

thu 08-27 Some confusion about the meaning of "when you get home."

fri 08-28 I got a call about the other job. It would be at MGH in Charlestown, writing report and display modules for a packaged mumps system, and being a resource for people learning mumps. I have an interview tuesday. It seems strange. I don't know what I would be doing after their people learned mumps and I cleaned up the backlog of requests, which might not take long. I can do reports in my sleep.

sat 08-29 The Coolidge Corner branch library is open sat. They have several of Maxime Kumin's books, but don't seem to have a copy machine. Copied out "Morning Swim" by hand to email Valerie. Still have trouble reading my own printing.

mon 08-31 They were wrong. It doesn't feel good when I stop banging my head against a brick wall.

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