"How Was Your Day?"

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

A woman is beautiful, a lion is beautiful, a hot day is beautiful, and sometimes they’re all beautiful in the same way. They might destroy you. They must be contended with. They will not be ignored.

Triple digits hit the dashboard thermometer yesterday, four hundred miles ticked over on the odometer, chicory by day and air thick and sweet by night. It grew hard to tell where the stars ended and fireflies begin over the mountain pass. They both vied for space in the treetops.

I had a cup of hot coffee and Merle Haggard tunes (and some silly pop ones too) and kicked the gas pedal on the way out of town. What a joy all of this is.

“It could be a lot hotter” I had said earlier to my fellow world news white-knucklers with an apocalyptic wink and a nod. Gallows humor is antiquated. We have atomic wit.

So then we talked about Beethoven, and I almost interrupted the 9th symphony with some inane commentary, but I didn’t, just let it play.

A little lady who helped me pronounce Heiligenstadt peered at the video subtitles. I handed her a copy of the Schiller poem, German and English, and she floated away on the melodies.

Then I drove home.