circle with the hole in the middle

oh it's a-gonna be warm today, well on its way to 60 °F or more. unseasonable, i know: there will be plenty of cold and damp, and even ice at times, through april. but i'm digging on today, thank you.

this morning while waiting in a long line of cars on miller, backed up from the light at first street, i had the somewhat mixed pleasure of being passed by a fellow on a fixed gear bike, bullhorns pointed to the sky, slipping to the front of the line like he was a courier carrying the critical revisions to the master plan. once the light turned green, and traffic (by "traffic" i mean cars and bicycles) started moving again, i gained steadily on him, strictly legal, until we reached the red light at fifth and ann, on opposite sides of the one-way street. whereupon he veered left onto ann, through the red. it wasn't really a race; i mostly wanted to get a look at his bike. that and demonstrate that the jesse james act doesn't get you where you going substantially sooner. it is just one of those things, that those of us who give a fuck have to deal with those who don't.

so it looks like those hooded mergansers that were hanging out in the front pond have moved on; i haven't seen them all week, or at least not since monday. i have a shitty zoom picture i took one morning, that almost provides proof that i wasn't hallucinating, and i might upload it, but really, who cares? i don't have anything to prove. the mergansers have come and gone again for the year. what i should do is go around the back, to the big pond, and see if there are any buffleheads, because they usually show up around now. anyway it is the tall waders i'm really waiting for, the herons and egrets. the red-wings serenade me every day now with their ok-a-leee song, and that's a pleasure.

last night i sat and read stage band charts with a rehearsal band, on a borrowed and unfamiliar alto saxophone, but the trip was that my older son was reading the second tenor book, including a chart i had played when i was in high school, although i was a year or (more likely) two older at the time. talk about your full circles. i don't know if that means i haven't accomplished enough (because i am still here doing the same things after thirty years) or if i have instead accomplished exactly enough, having brought things around to where they belong, so they can keep going like that, because damn it is all about making circles, isn't it? squaring the circle bedeviled mathematicians for years, but maybe their problem was they shouldn't have messed with the circle in the first place. because the circle is about as perfect as it gets.