I really can't find it within me to write the two things I want to write right now. Here's a list of the records I listened to today instead.

On the bus: Emergency & I. At my desk: Zorn's Circle Maker, the first disc. Then that again. Then Laughing Stock. (Every time I think of "Mark Hollis" I can't help but hear the part from the Beavis and Butthead album where they meet Run DMC.) Then the second Circle Maker disc. Then more Dismemberment Plan. Then - oh. I screwed it all up. First this morning there was All Hands on the Bad One. After the second Circle Maker disc it was Chairs Missing. Tonight when I got home it was Hot Shots II then Coltrane's Blues and now the Musical Offering.

No, I don't really have a point to that all being related in a confusing fashion.

The Zorn was the best thing I played all day. I think I just stumbled onto the moment where it moves from being somewhat familiar and enjoyable and beautiful etc. to me to my becoming more and more intimately familiar with it and loving it on a deeper level. Maybe. I mean the string trio disc, by the way. The other is nice but we're not there yet.

I also felt today as if I am slowly coming to understand what Wire's deal was.

I played the Zorn last night and "He Loved Him Madly" a few nights ago but otherwise there's been lots of Bach at home for sleeping lately.

I said I didn't have a point before but obviously I do, I just felt cheap about having it: yes, things do seem this disconnected and flat right now. I'm very busy and having trouble thinking about anything but all kinds of things that I would rather not have be the only things I'm thinking about.

If you sent me mail during the downtime, then I probably didn't get it, so if you can then send it again. Thanks.

Everything appears to be OK again here. Tell your friends that we're back.

Jess is right, I wrote a lot more in the old days.

I hate papers.

Because I want to write differently about them this time around, it's been a while since I wrote on any of the 69 Love Songs. And I've only done Abigail and Absolutely Cuckoo, and when I can I want to write something new for the latter because I'm not happy with it. But anyway. I can't write about the songs in alphabetical order, be happy with everything I write, and finish before I receive my Ph.D. So I'm scrapping the alphabetical part.

Well, I sort of fixed my problem by running across a hardcover dual-language edition of the Investigations that was cheaper than the paperback version, so that I could not feel chumped paying the price I paid for it. I still would've preferred to have the English-only paperback though - it's much smaller.

Most striking thing in my life today, on the anniversary: the unexpectedness and brevity of my confusion, crossing I-94 on the bus and seeing the sky not charred black or horror-movie red, but plain old late summer midmorning bright.

Most emotional thing in my life today: later on the bus, the lyrics in the middle of the Magnetic Fields' "Meaningless": "and if you feel like keeping on kicking feel free". This was not an unusual reaction; there was no connection to the anniversary.

Yo La Tengo, "We're an American Band"

There's something characteristic about a number of guitar solos that go on for a while, but I never hear that here. Maybe because it mesmerizes me, so that once it turns into a squall, I'm surprised. And the squall sounds unpredictable (still), otherworldly (still). There are so many beautiful things that make me cry now that it's probably not worth my time to enumerate them. But this is still one of the worst (best).

(I told myself I should write more about this album, since I hardly ever do for how much I like it. But this is all I came up with, at least that I'll show you now.)