To give mind to machines, they are calling it
out of the world, out of the neighborhood, out of the body.
They have bound it in the brain, in the hard shell
of the skull, in order to bind it in a machine.
From the heron flying home at dusk,
from the misty hollows at sunrise,
from the stories told at the row’s end,
they are calling the mind into exile
in the dry circuits of machines.

—Wendell Berry, collected in The Peace of Wild Things and other Poems

Couldn't row this morning so I took a long looping walk through downtown. I think my walking playlist is getting pretty good. It's big enough now that putting it on shuffle and heading out is starting to provide surprises.

It did occur to me that with my luck, I'll get hit by a car and bystanders will catch me with I Can't Wait by Nu Shooz blaring out of my earbuds.

What can I say? It puts pep in the step.

Every morning @5 am, I look out my kitchen window to check this flag. I can see it even at night.

I check for two things.

1. Does it look like it does in this photo? (Straight out, wind from the south.)
2. Is it a Chinese or Russian flag?

If the answer to both of these questions is no, I proceed with my day as normal and head for the river.

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

—Margaret Atwood

Socked in like a New England lobster fisherman. It looks like snow blowing by but it’s actually fog. Some run-off foam in the water just adds to the allure. (Yesterday morning.)

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.

—Philip Larkin

"Bang. You're dead."

I called her beautiful, although I don’t believe she heard it.
But others did, and so began, a little trial with a verdict.

Please demonstrate you understand her journey and her dreams.
And did you consult this 12 point list of all that beauty means?

I was called out I must admit, I spoke before I thought.
I stand corrected once again, as often as is not.

I hemmed, I hawed, I dropped my gaze, I was really on the spot.
Let me re-phrase, I begged the court, I meant to say, “She’s hot.”

d.j.-2021-03-18