The sound of tires

I woke up this morning to the news that there's a bird that's half male, half female. The bird, a cardinal, was reportedly seen in a backyard in Erie, Pennsylvania. Scientists say it may be a so-called gynandromorph, a creature with both male and female traits, a sexual split that's also been reported among reptiles, butterflies and crustaceans. 

Robert Ryman died. I always loved his paintings, every one of them them that I saw, and I don't know why I loved them, which may have been the point. I had the good fortunate to know a lovely Swedish woman, a doctor who chain-smoked cigarettes and was a serious collector of contemporary art, who said it was her goal to own a Ryman. We lost touch, as she lived in Sweden and I lived in California: I don't know if she ever acquired a Ryman, though I heard the other day that she'd died a few years ago. From that point on whenever I see a painting by Robert Ryman or even see his name, I think of her with the thought that maybe she had acquired a Ryman and it was the last thing she saw before she died.

I once enjoyed phone discussions with my friend MH about the last thing we'd see. Neither of us could come up with anything tangible, at least I can't remember anything tangible, but the thought kept us amused for a few minutes before we'd move on to other subjects. I think now that it was our way of talking about death, but in a kind of code that we developed to preserve death's mystery.

When living in France I learned a little about how to think French: the French think as much by thinking about what something is not as they do by thinking about what something is. It's a really neat trick which I've tried to actualize in my thinking ever since

I'm applying French thinking to the road trip I'm considering taking across the US: is the road trip more about the road (the places we'll go, the people we'll meet) or about the car itself? At the moment I'm thinking it's more about the car--the steering wheel, the front windshield, the rear-view mirrors, the gas gauge--than it is about the countryside; that the car itself is the environment. And the sound of the tires, the sound tires make on asphalt at 65mph, is also a real consideration. 

Ibuprofen pills rolling across the kitchen counter, February 10, 2019. Photo by author.