Again today, the writing and the photographs don't have anything to do with each other. The photographs are from my bike ride this morning... Pacific Beach and Mission Bay.

THE WRITING FOR TODAY comes from my 1991 journal. When I was looking this afternoon for something I thought I had written around 1990 or 1991, I didn’t find what I was looking for; but I came across this poem I had written on Monday, August 9, 1991. I don’t remember the circumstance that prompted its writing. Perhaps I made it up, as they say, out of whole cloth. I imagine, however, a mother asking my help in trying to convince a son that he should try to organize his life around school and family.

THE SMELL OF BREAD

What I want is a source of income,
not employment,
he said.
There is no delight in being at someone else’s beck and call.
Life on the Arctic plain has a certain appeal
because clocks are irrelevant there.

Of course, I understand,
he said,
that everybody has to eat and sleep,
but is the schedule,
the routine,
the circling round and round essential?

His mother answered,
there is beauty in a thing done twice
or three times
or every day.
The smell of fresh baked bread is what it’s all about.