The mere prospect of some books lightens my mood; but then I set out to read.

Lately when I am told about the plot of a book, or a movie, I find I care little about the particular details, so that if someone tries to give them to me I take it as a sign that the plot is not all that interesting. But if it can be described to me in what are practically generic terms - it's about a girl detective, it's about a private eye in Nazi Germany, it's a picaresque about an astronomer and a surveyor crossing colonial America - well then I'm interested.

In order for me to write at any length (and for any length of time) here, I seem to need to start from a great wealth of significance, a felt connection to a body of important things, ideas, moments, experiences, which all provide the background against which I can focus on some small detail that moves me to write, typically when I am struck by a sense that only through centering around that detail do all the things in the background make their real importance known.

I am constantly aware of this, and constantly feel that the background is not there - and so I am continually at sea (where there is no background because it all looks the same).

'And satisfaction is not had, and philosophy is not done, once and for all.'

I woke up with a theme from the Orb stuck in my head, but it was stripped of all its menacing sexual overtones.

I think I've found a use for Villalobos.

'I believe what is most worth telling is always what cannot be told.'

'Like money into the bag, should one be able to sweep truth into the head?'

On the second quintet records Davis and Shorter often sound like people practicing (stretching, warming up, playing, fooling around, exploring, testing, trying, preparing) - alone or off to the side in a room of others - quieter, muted, quick, casual, alone.