I only just now remembered that I had not posted this yet, and then I got confused about what day of the week it was, which is pretty common for me at the moment. Earlier this summer I went to a dentist appointment the day before the actual appointment. Whenever I try to schedule anything, my initial guess as to my availability is off by anywhere from an hour to a week. It’s fine. The dentist is only ten minutes away, and I didn’t have any cavities for once.

Paul is snoozing on the carpet beside me, and it has been cloudy all day, even though I doubt it will rain; I’ll always take the clouds. The sunsets are fantastic. I finally learned to tell a hawk’s cry from the rest of the bird chatter in my neighborhood; a lot of the time, when I am on a phone call or a Zoom, the person I’m talking to stops at some point and asks, “What is HAPPENING with those BIRDS?” And I will realize I hadn’t even heard it, or rather I did, but as the cool white noise that exists in the background always, birds and traffic and wind and little flakes of eucalyptus bark drifting to the ground from the trunk of our tree, which is now almost naked.

Sometimes I do see bird fights, but most of the time I don’t. I’ve lived here long enough to have lost perspective on whether the birds are truly more energized—whether they are warring, whether they are maybe on club drugs—than in other places. Whatever the case, they have something to say, and in my calmer moments I do try to listen.