PopWars

Someday I thought I might design a T-shirt with the slogan “I Can’t Believe It” on it. I would wear it.

I’ve had that idea in a text document of notes that I carry around, a nearly random collection of things that seemed too important to just slip by. I weed the list out from time to time and save the document with a different name. I was using the Pages app for this, but not anymore. I had the document open on two devices, had a problem with one, and got a message that read, “This document was deleted in another location.” I was given the opportunity to click “OK.” I’m switching to the Notes app and reconstructing the list from past documents.

The idea that 1950 is considered the start date for the Anthropocene era. The concept, first proposed by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, defines a new geologic epoch in which human activity has profoundly impacted the Earth’s ecosystems and geology. Peggi and I were born that year, so it got my attention.

This news item seemed worth rereading: “Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has recommended that the agency reverse its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, according to three people familiar with the decision. That would eliminate the legal basis for the government’s climate laws, such as limits on pollution from automobiles and power plants.”

I have a friend who has been creating music with AI, and I was going to pass this note on to him: “The AI-generated song ‘Walk My Walk’ by the artist ‘Breaking Rust’ recently hit number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, sparking debate about the future of music. The track, created using the AI music platform Suno, features a gravelly vocal performance and has garnered millions of streams, raising questions about authenticity and the impact of AI on the music industry.”

We saw a Ribera painting in Bilbao where he depicted three saints in one painting. St. Sebastián lies naked, his arm still suspended from the tree on which he has been tormented, while St. Lucia extracts the arrows and St. Irene prepares to apply healing ointment to the wounds.

I kept this social media post from the president: “So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country. NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST.”

I wanted to remember how much I love the drums at the tail end of Miles’ “He Loved Him Madly.”

There is a good argument to be made for club soccer being better than national team matches. But then the World Cup comes around again and we get swept up anew. For now we are enjoying every minute of the end of La Liga’s season.

We follow three teams in Spain’s top division, and they all finished in the top four. As I have mentioned before, we have taken to perversely rooting against one of them, Real Madrid. With the world’s top talent they were unable to play as a team. They fired their relatively new coach and will likely dump the next one when the season is over. And when you root against them you inevitably grow to like their scrappier opponents. Celta Vigo is one of our favorites now.

Barcelona had already won the title, but they weren’t holding back against Alavés, from the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Rioja region. Alavés needed points because in Spain the bottom three clubs get relegated. They are kicked out of the league, and the top three teams from the Segunda División move up to the Primera División. Alavés outplayed Barça, and we loved watching them defeat the champs 1–0 and move out of the relegation zone.

None of our teams played yesterday, so we tuned into Girona vs. Real Sociedad in the beautiful Catalan city just an hour north of Barcelona. We were already fond of Real Sociedad, from one of our favorite Spanish cities, San Sebastián, but Girona was in the bottom three with only three matches left. We went with Girona, and they outplayed La Real, tied them 1–1, and with that one point moved out of the relegation zone. It was one of the best matches we’ve watched in weeks.

When the division title has already been decided, La Liga still provides an exciting race at the bottom—no position more important than seventeenth.

The good thing about psychedelics is that you don’t have to do them over and over again? I tied most of them when I was nineteen and I feel like I am experienced. A tune up would be nice but not necessary. My last trip was an overload, a wildly strong LSD capsule, but back then you could never be certain what it was you were taking. I wound up in the college Health Center and woke up in a hospital gown after a shot of Thorazine. I had no idea where I was and I walked to the window to try to figure it out. The parking lot below was full of cars and they were all bending and moving in slow swirls.

I was reminded of that experience when I put these two photos together. Both were taken on recent trips, the first from our hotel room in Toronto and the second from our hotel room in lower Manhattan. The building across from us in the Toronto picture was all mirrors so all those wrinkled buildings you see in that photo are not really there, they were behind us.

The building in the Manhattan photo was as plain as could be, an industrial building of some sort with only four small windows. The pattern you see on that building is all reflections from the glass windows of our hotel. The pattern went away when the sun went behind a cloud.

A few erratic warm days and spring goes into high gear. The yellow comes first—witch hazel, winter aconite, forsythia, daffodils, cornus mas—then the cherry blossoms and magnolias, all of it already waning. It is all the more glorious after a long winter. But the winters aren’t long anymore. They fly by. When someone—anyone—starts going on about the winter, I cut them off. I don’t want to hear it anymore.

We have a patch of mâche in our garden that wintered over. We’ve been eating it for a month or so, but after that 80-degree day it just shot up—grew all stalky, with almost an inch between leaves. We’ll let it go to seed and sow some new seeds right on top. It is our favorite of all greens.

We walked through the arboretum and then the fruticetum in the park and down one of those paths to Durand Lake. We turned toward Trott Lake and saw trees newly stripped by beavers. We heard a splash and thought surely it was a beaver, but it turned out to be turtles sunning themselves.