080118 I am eight minutes late. This is not going to be easy today. Why not? Because my mind is elsewhere. It’s on the contrast between blue and blue when staring at the Janesville Road and Martin Road street signs against a blue sky. The lettering is white; the clouds are white. But it’s a few million shades of both blue and white. The sky is bigger and farther away; usually what’s farther away looks smaller. Maybe my perception is messed up somehow. Or maybe the assumptions we make about vision and perception are entrenched ideograms instead of some reliable representation of what might be going on around us and within us. You can always sound, my brother said, profound. It’s easy to *sound* deep. Anyone can *sound* as if he’s plumbing the depths. Just pick out a few stock phrases. When my French teacher in 7th grade said that Chuck Mangione said the midrange was his money notes. She also said that songwriters fall back on “stock phrases” and I didn’t want to believe her. I thought she was dumb. I thought she was from *MUNDANIA,* man. Obviously no self-respecting *acutal* *creative writer* would ever be so pedestrian as to use a stock phrase. And then I read, just last week, about how Paul Simon, a songwriter much admired by others and by me, says he relies, not just lyrically but also musically, on stock phrases sometimes—not because he’s weak, but because he’s giving the listener a break. Giving them a comfortable old couch to relax in, between moments of being challenged or having their curiosity stimulated abstractly. It kind of makes sense. Like how Chabon’s astonishingly needle-precise metaphors and similes are sometimes just too much. It makes the story sit up in your forehead. A few more frequent lapses into the mud of folksy ideography can actually help the story sink down into your hips, can let the bass drum of the parade thump rrrrrright along in your chest, old school, oak and dark as an old church in the woods. I am in the middle of the woods, and there’s no escape in sight. Saucer-eyed fauna of allegory gather around me and stare expectantly. Sorry guys. I got no roles for you to play today. I’m sick of trying to make my life profound by turning it into a bunch of new-age tarot cards. Not everything’s a symbol, OK? You all can just go on and be yourselves. Be animals. Go... do... whatever it is you would be doing if I weren’t here watching you. But like the proverbial sheep when the sheepfold gate’s left undone, they just mill about and chew. They’re used to me. I’m used to them. The wolf is like, dude, you can’t just leave the gate open. It’s no fun if I can just waltz right in and start slaughtering. And the sheep are like yeah, at least make him work for it a little. The second-to-youngest sheep starts doing this little wiggle dance, and it makes the other ones laugh because she’s just barely old enough for it to be risqué, and layered on top of her still-prevailing innocence, the effect is of joy and sunshine. “Every girl likes to be pursued a little bit!” She chants in teasing minor thirds, “oh yeah, oh yeah!” And everyone—the chickens, the squirrels, and especially the wolf, cracks up. The woodpecker in the persimmon tree laughs so hard he slams his face into the trunk repeatedly, and he’s pecking and laughing at the same time and he says, “Oh fuck, that hurts!” and everybody laughs some more. Nothing is sacred anymore, mutters the farmer. His wife smiles the smile that says I’m a put on a green dress tonight, and you better wash your fingernails before you take me out. And he will, but he won’t get them perfect, and she’ll be secretly glad of that. She likes her farmers a little bit dirty.