Notes on a Day

Notebook — Right on cue, September comes and the weather turns wintry. Seems to happen every year. Today needed the heater in my truck for the first time since last winter

Waitress at breakfast this morning: “Would you like breakfast, or anything like that?”

I get tired of John Updike’s adulterous main characters, but most of his sentences (millions of them?) are models of keen, elegant, enlightening prose. He always manages to simultaneously  inform you about his subject and  teach you something about deep observation, precise thinking, clear expression and the beautiful possibilities of English. He is erudite but clear. He essays make me feel: “Even though all is not right with the world, maybe it can be.”

Yesterday my sister Linda introduced me to a wonderful little park I knew about but didn’t know was wonderful. A lovely place to walk, a sort of corn maze for grownups — just maze-y enough to add mystery, but not a longer walk than you bargained for — and in places, the wild plants tower around you.

The park contained a nice little book kiosk where I found a book I loved in childhood. Book kiosks are like bird feeders for humans, and how good it is to see people loving the passing parade of other humans.

At breakfast, the next booth had two teenage boys and an old man, presumably two brothers and a grandfather. The voice of the older boy a little too deep and loud, making me wish I’d brought earplugs, but then I got a taste of their conversation. Three people exploring one topic after another, listening to each other closely, trading observations and experience (“To me it felt like...”), and generally having fun in the form of talk. And it was sweet to see the younger boy leaning on his big brother’s shoulder to punctuate some joke with a reminder of affection and dependency, and the older boy reaching around the younger boy for a more than necessary hug of the shoulders. Humans knowing other humans.