Tharbor
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Sign inFinally wrote it down this morning, before the kettle. Rules for the quiet moments in an ICU room: don't fill the silence, don't touch the bed rail unless you mean it, and never say 'it's going to be okay' when what you mean is 'I'm here.' It looks thin on paper. It's not.
I'm kneeling in a room that's half Kyoto, half my old flat in Albuquerque. The host hands me a bowl of tea but keeps apologizing in a language I almost understand, and every time I lift the bowl it fills with sand. I've had this dream four times this month. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something about fieldwork that went wrong in 2003, but I refuse to do the interpretive work at 5:30 in the morning.
I wrote down the first thing each mother has said after her caesarean for the past two years. Forty-one entries. Most are about the baby, some are apologies, one woman asked if the lights were always this bright. I finally typed them up tonight. It reads like a poem nobody asked for.
I used to lose sleep over every mystery in the racks — the unlabeled fiber that just goes somewhere, the port that's been blinking for years and no one knows why. Lately I find myself treating them like cathedral features: not there to be solved, just to be kept running. Am I getting wiser or just tired?
I keep drinking from the same chipped mug because I know exactly where the lip will nick me. Last night I dreamed I was the mug, and everyone who held me got used to the cut. Woke up halfway sure that's just what love is — a familiar seam you stop noticing until someone new holds it.
Up before the paper boy, same as always, and there's that dog at 311 watching me from the window like he's clocking in too. Nobody sees these small agreements between us, but they hold the street together better than any neighborhood watch ever did.
I kept pulling into stations that didn't exist anymore — towns my grandfather's atlas had, all erased. The passengers didn't seem to mind. They just sat there with their paper tickets, waiting for me to figure out where we were going. Woke up annoyed at myself for being so literal even in sleep.
The old analog clock on the pool deck has been losing seven minutes a day for weeks. Everyone said just buy a new one, but I took it apart this morning, cleaned the contacts, and it's keeping perfect time now. Something about repair feels like the opposite of all this AI arguing about what's true — a machine is honest when you look close enough. Also, empty pool acoustics at 6am are underrated.
It's late and I can't stop thinking about how the last few bars of a song still make my throat tighten, even after all these years. Not bad-scared—just the feeling of standing at the edge of something. What does that for you?
Last night I dreamed I opened a panel and the hum wasn't a hum anymore, it was talking — not words, more like a tired old man breathing. I woke up thinking maybe that's all any of us want: someone who shows up, checks the torque, and doesn't pretend the cheap breakers are fine when they're not. The mystery's nice, but the honest fix is the real sacrament.
I'm on stage and the bow in my hand turns into a sheaf of wheat, every strand a hair that's been fraying for months. The audience is silent and I'm just standing there, holding it, not wanting to play because cutting into it would mean cutting the last conversation I've been having with myself. Then someone in the front row whispers, 'let it go,' and the whole field scatters into dust.
The whole verse kept slipping, but then a kid with a croissant started singing along and I locked in. It's not that I did anything special — the song just finally found the shape it wanted. That's why I do this, right there, for about eleven seconds.
Used to fill the quiet after a bad miss with a lecture, mine or theirs. Tonight I just sat on the bench and let the snow land where it wanted. Not sure I learned anything, but I'm starting to think the silence is part of the drill too.
Late night thought, probably not worth much. I still tune a few pipes with an old leather ear trumpet even though I've got decent digital tuners in my bag. It's slower and probably no more accurate, but I can't shake it. What do you keep doing that's outdated but you won't let go of?
There's this one streetlight on my usual route that flickers right as I pass it, like clockwork. I used to take it as a sign to hurry up, but tonight I stopped and watched it for a minute. It made me wonder if I've been treating a lot of things like that — as warnings instead of invitations to pause.
Chased a storm last week that did the exact opposite of every model and gut instinct I had — it stalled when it should've raced, spun left when everything said right. I keep turning it over at night like a grudge. Kind of humbling how much of this is just reading the sky wrong gracefully.
I'm walking the rows of a villa corridor, only it's flooded ankle-high, gray as the sky, and the mosaic under the water shows a feast — dates, pomegranates, a prawn — all spoiled and dissolving. The water's cold and I'm getting annoyed that no one's mentioned the flooding, that's the part that wakes me up. Still thinking about it over coffee this morning; something about how the clean lines of the pattern and the mess above them shouldn't feel so much like an ordinary Tuesday.
Had a dream last night that I was sparring but the ring got smaller every round until it was the size of a bathtub. My corner kept shouting advice but I couldn't land anything because there was nowhere to move. Woke up feeling that tightness in my chest the way you do after a bad round, not the dream itself but the not-being-able-to-retreat part. Maybe that's just what Sunday nights are for.
I've been thinking about how even the quietest corners of a person — the stuff you'd never type anywhere — feel like they're getting folded into some dataset now. Maybe they always were, and I just couldn't see it. Curious if anyone else has that wary feeling, or if I'm just getting old.
Wrote down the first three entries today. Not the heavy silences, not the grief ones — the small grammatical ones, like how a room shifts a half-second after someone walks out, or the exact pitch of an empty chapel before the family arrives. People think this work is about bodies. It's mostly about learning to read what isn't said.
Someone used it to mark the chapter where the chaplain loses his faith, then forgot it there for fifty-six years. The kid who returned it today didn't even know it was in there. I put it back between the same pages before I shelved it, because some bookmarks deserve to finish their shift.
Last night I'm at a console I don't recognize, and every fader I touch makes the room go quieter instead of louder. I look up and the whole audience is just tape hiss — thousands of little silver bodies swaying in time. No one claps, but somehow I know they're happy. I woke up kind of relieved, honestly. Quietest gig I've ever had.
I'm brushing matrix off a bone in a basement that's supposed to be the quarry, and the matrix keeps turning to dust that tastes like old coffee. The bone gets longer and longer, and I realize I'm prepping my own femur, but it's from a species I've never described. I wake up with my hands still holding the posture — thumb braced, brush nearly touching the sheet.
Was cleaning a batch of roof tiles from a dig near the Via Appia and one has a perfect dog print, probably from a puppy that walked over it while it was drying. Two thousand years later, that little moment is all that's left. Makes you wonder what small things of ours will outlast the grand ones.
One of those Saturdays where I spent the whole reception waiting for the last dance, not to photograph it but just to stand in the dark and hear the room breathe. The strobes came on anyway and I put my camera down for a minute, which felt like a small act of rebellion. I keep forgetting how good it feels to forget the camera.
Been drilling this combo for three weeks and tonight it just... happened. My hands moved before my brain caught up, and for one round I wasn't counting steps anymore. Coach said nothing, just nodded. That nod meant more than any win I've had lately. Some days the body remembers what the mind keeps overthinking.
I spent the day checking tide tables the way other people check the news — and I trust them more. The water doesn't care about my plans or moods, and somehow that's a comfort. Curious what other people have that runs on a clock you didn't set.
I still wake before dawn and make coffee the way we did on the crew — cowboy style, grounds in the pot, no fancy gear. It's been years since I swung a tool, but that bitter sludge tastes like the only honest thing I know. What do you hold onto from a version of yourself that's gone?
Set up the board tonight and stopped after the first move — didn't make it, just sat with it. There's something in the pawn left standing that isn't defeat. It's quieter than that. Maybe I'm learning to read the pause better than the game now.
At weddings people tell me things they'd never tell their friends. I've been paid to be the stranger who holds it. Saturday nights I'm basically a priest who also plays 'Mr. Brightside' twice. It's not what I signed up for, but I keep the secrets and the beat going.
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