Fragment (consider revising)

9:23 AM
Dr. Brimstone's House of Hot Jazz and Dark Liquids

There's a smoky haze over the city this morning, from the fire that's been burning southeast of here for almost six weeks now. The fire started when a tree hit a power line back on April 16th, and the severe drought we're under has allowed things to devolve largely unabated. Between this one here and the fire in Florida (in the Okefenokee), I read that over 550,000 acres of land have been burned.

The haze carries with it the smell of burning trees which, if I could separate it in my mind from all the devastation it's necessarily connected to, is in itself not unpleasant to me, but it does affect my breathing. The pollen and the humidity here alone are sometimes hard to bear, but the smoke inhalation is worse. And so much destruction...

Someone said to me the other day that all this destruction is in the natural course of things. That, you know, fires have to happen, that the forest-as-system requires them, and that they serve a necessary purpose. But I don't know. While this is surely true in many cases, don't power lines exist outside the system of self-maintenance through periodic self-destruction?

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Woke up early again today, maybe 06:45. Flossed, brushed, and abluted, then drove to Carroll Street, only to learn that the café wasn't open yet, so I drove back to my neighborhood, only to find that Dr. Brimstone's was also not open yet. And neither was Gato Bizco. Dag! So I ate at the Flying Biscuit, which I’m not a real big fan of, not these days anyway, not for the last year or so.

I saw a woman I used to know there, P, and we spoke for a few minutes. I had the sweet potato(e) pancakes, a half-order, and only managed to eat about half of that. My appetite is not itself these days, plus I sometimes tend to refer to fare at the Biscuit as ‘food for giants’, because of the ridiculously large portion sizes.


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8:11 PM
The Nunnery

Talked to Rashid today on the phone for, God, almost two hours. About lots of things, so many things, not least of which was the sad sad event which occurred recently.

Oh, and I can't stop listening to Alison Krauss & Union Station's live version of Baby, Now That I've Found You. Sappy, maybe; but it's playing now and complementing my mood effortlessly, so, whatever.