A day to rest, mark time, post song demos, brace for well wishes from family and friends and loose-tie links. Surprisingly few firework blasts in this year’s wake, and our second matinee in a week felt luxurious. Now to commit to more motion, and to residual resonances from doing and feeling better.

The wheel of the day and the month spin differently for me than a few weeks ago. I spend more time alone, awake, separate, focused on the task, the screen or the road in front of me. Nothing like the thought of tomorrow to tighten your grip on the wheel that surrounds you, not the one in your hand.

Today was good, even if I stayed too long at work, because the music was good coming and going, and when I was at work there wasn’t music so much as silences, spaces, distances. Oh, talk still happened, things still got done, gravity still worked, the shift’s still mundanely, miraculously the shift.

We saw “Past Lives.” What a delightful, thoughtful meditation on relationship, memory, technology, creativity, identity and agency. No subtitles or CGI, just solid acting and directing choices, gorgeous cinematography and framing, and a lambent, glowing soundtrack by Grizzly Bear members.

There was bunting hung against the bar, and men of military bearing, some marching or at parade rest or at ease, greeting each other like friends mostly, wearing their rank like their clothes, warming to beverages and warmed by bonhomie, making the most of a Monday among fellows well and wishfully met..

There I was, briefly boxed into a parking space in front of a purple Monte Carlo by an SUV waiting at a stoplight in the Bayview, and about to be irritated over it. Then I remembered why I was there, simmered back down and waited a little longer until I could figure out how to pull away under steam.

I don’t mind things ending so much as how they end, whether or not it’s their time, who might be at fault or at least inadvertently culpable. It’s a day ending in “y,” ending with not enough why, or at least not enough to satisfy whatever focus I can find in a sea of dizzying distractions.

Back in the chair again, waiting out the pain and scribbling in cursive in my little black book, then stopping by just in case my favorite hat was back in stock, and getting it and a new lanyard before hiding out from the day’s new interpretations of law with consumption of art that references them.

What a weird month it’s been, even though it’s not over yet. So many things doubling over, sitting off in unexpected directions. Some things I can seize and grasp in familiar ways, while others I used to be able to do things about come to me muffled, distant, less of a drain and drag than they were.

On busy days, I don’t usually spend time thinking about how I look, but yesterday’s fun, thought-provoking session with a staff photographer led to a selection of photos for a professional headshot. I chose the lone one where I didn’t smile, and had my arms folded, and that’s provoked more thoughts.