July 30, 2015

Watched the sunrise from the whirlpool at the Racquet Club. It was very purple.
   
After work-out went to the Charlotte Street Starbuck’s and wrote. Starbuck’s ruins what is potentially the best writing venue in town by blasting bad music so loud outside that the speakers distort. I suppose they do this on purpose, to discourage loiterers, but it makes all other pursuits impossible as well. You have to creep around to the front, the soundwaves being thwarted by having to go around the corner. The morning seems so long ago that I forget I had written well until I sat down (just now) to look. Painting afterward, in the studio where the last flood pool had finally dried.  Happy for a whole morning. Not sure whether the housecleaner was finished yet, I drove to Jesse Israel and bought ferns and an anemone and oregano to set down in the garden. Did so with a maximum of sweat.
   
Waste time looking at videos of police brutality on the Internet. There is no end of them. New ones every day. The fact that so many are revealed by the ubiquitous cellphone camera implies that there were thousands and thousands before, and the cops never– as in never, ever– being called to account gave them a sense of impunity. The last one today was SEVEN grossly overweight cops beating and tazing one skinny black man, whom they grabbed from a room in a hospital (it seemed to me) while he was getting prepared to come with them peaceably. They beat and tazed him unremittingly, adding to their number as time went on, because he wouldn’t put his arms behind his back. He didn’t put his arms behind his back because he was trying to fend off blows of fists and batons aimed at his face. At one point the fat cops had to stop and catch their breaths, and THEN returned to beating on him. People were watching through a glass partition, doing–what? The little man kept crying “sir! Sir!” and begging for his life.  There must be something better to do about this than shed tears of rage.
   
Went into a trance watering the back garden. It was sweet.