i came to this country, 1849

I like watching leaves fall one at a time.

Songs of the week:
"Saro," Sam Amidon
"The Book of Right-On," Joanna Newsom
"Blindsided," Bon Iver

Books of the week:
Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
Native Son, Richard Wright

One cup of tea, two apples, three successive errors on the front page of The Daily Tar Heel, four meetings today...

Most days I am not very good with people. But most people are uncommonly gracious to me. More than I deserve. I do want to go home. To sit at the kitchen table, motionless, without having to explain or justify myself.

The floods have lifted up, O LORD,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.

The pale yellow apple has gray freckles and two adjacent bruises beneath the skin. It is smooth and still, inviting. I recognize that I do not love most people. There is a shelf of clouds in the space of sky I can see, diffusing the blue into white, easing the day into evening.