“It was a bad thing for me that I regarded my scanty intellectual attainments as a substitute for a regular trade. It lay at the root of so many of my wrong ideas and evil actions.” Cesar Pavese (trans. A.E. Murch),

—“Wedding Trip,” in Jhumpa Lahiri, ed., The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, 138

Up 8:30. Felt a lot better - cold symptoms seem to have gone. Read a little Ginzburg before I got up.
Coffee, breakfast.
Worked for an hour. Need to find Lee Hays biography to check on “zipper songs.”
Joined the harmony lesson late (had the wrong time); went through a couple of my exercises, got a short précis of what comes next in the book, since we’re taking a break.
Did some cleaning w/ Bree, since we’re expecting visitors. Mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors. Put on Hassan Ibn Ali, Metaphysics - quite good, tough quartet jazz w/ v. original heads by the pianist, an elusive Philly figure who made one record, also of his own compositions, w/ Max Roach but was otherwise undocumented, until this lost album turned up. Will listen more.
Went to Stand Alone Cheese to get some snacks to take to Laura’s. Funnily enough, they were playing Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Let’s Talk About Us” (Otis Blackwell), which we’ve played, when we walked in.
Came back, showered, cleaned up the bathroom more. Read the story quoted above, and Lahiri’s intro to the anthology.
Put on disc one of the Julius Hemphill box set and waited for Mark and Christina. Read 2 Ashbery poems.
They showed up around 6:15, brought in the keyboard, chatted until Laura said we could come up. Walked over there, hung out in their garden (unmasked, all vaccinated) until a neighbor came out at 9:30. Really pleasant, and Christina was able to give Bree some advice about finding a composer.
Got back a little after 10, went outside for a short walk, found the wine had hit me hard, drank some water before bed. Read a few p. of Dogen.’ve run out of steam for this for the time being.