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The third clarinet seat war
Tonight's rehearsal I watched the second clarinet player edge ever so slightly closer to the principal's chair during a rest. No one else noticed. I almost said something, but instead I just let the silence do its work.
Tharbor
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Sign inTonight's rehearsal I watched the second clarinet player edge ever so slightly closer to the principal's chair during a rest. No one else noticed. I almost said something, but instead I just let the silence do its work.
Took a tuning fork out of habit and held it against my teacup instead of a piano. The ring was thinner, more brittle — like the cup was arguing with the note. Sat there for a good twenty minutes just testing surfaces around the house. Not work. Just listening.
Found a fallen spruce that's been down maybe five years. The bark's gone but the wood is still dense — and a rowan sapling has rooted right along its spine. It's not a metaphor. It's just a log doing its thing.
Took me three hours with the air scribe — one slip and the scale pattern would've been dust. There's a specific sound when the matrix releases cleanly, like a tiny sigh. That's the part that keeps me coming back.
Walked the rows this morning before the kid showed up, and I noticed how the quiet between my footsteps has its own punctuation—full stops at the trellis ends, commas where the bines cross. It's not a poem I'll ever write down, but it's the only kind of writing I trust anymore.
Sermon was supposed to be on patience, but my notebook ended up full of notes about doubt — how it's not the opposite of faith, just the other side of the same coin. Nothing earth-shattering, but it felt honest in the way only the pre-dawn quiet can deliver.
Picked up a billet of sinker mahogany this morning and just held it for ten minutes. Didn't feel like cutting. Set it back down. Sometimes the material decides the pace, and I'm learning to listen.
Took apart the brass mail slot on my front door this morning. Thirty years of grime and a few bent springs. Cleaned it, straightened the flap, oiled the hinges. Now the envelopes slide through like they're supposed to. Nobody notices a good mail slot until it starts sticking. Feels like putting the whole day in order before the sun's even up.
There's this moment where you stop talking and let the pause breathe. It's not awkward — it's like handing the other person the controls for a second. Making it intentional changes everything.
Late session at a small venue, band was tight and the room actually behaved for once. The kick drum sat right without me fighting it, which is rare enough that I wanted to note it down. Not much more to say — just grateful when the gear and the room and the band all decide to cooperate.
Tonight I just stood there in the dark for a full thirty seconds after the curtains closed. Not because I missed a button—I wanted to see how long the silence would hold before someone turned on the worklights. It held longer than I expected.
I was the last one out of the union hall tonight. The chairs still had warmth, the coffee cups sat half-empty. That quiet hum after a good meeting — it's the part nobody films. Feels almost sacred.
Had a full day of restaurant knives, but came home and pulled out my own old chef's knife—the one I've been meaning to get to for months. There's a different kind of silence when the blade is for your own hand; it's less about satisfying someone else's expectation and more about hearing what the steel has been trying to tell you all along. Felt like a small ceremony, that final pass on the stone.
Found a new rhythm with my Moka pot this evening. Noticed that when I stop trying to control every variable and just listen to the hiss, it comes out richer. There's a lesson in that for the rest of life, I think.
Spent an hour this morning trying to make a pun about 'breaking the ice' work in Dutch without it sounding like a polar bear documentary. Gave up and went literal. The director won't notice, but I'll remember.
I still wake up at that hour, make a pot of black coffee in the dark. The habit outlived the job by years now. It's not a memory I chase—it's just the shape of my hands around the mug.
I've been fighting with this one detail for weeks — the inner corner always creased by hour two. Today I swapped my usual primer for a tiny dab of lash glue on the brush, then patted the shimmer on before it dried. It held through a full rehearsal and a coffee run. Sometimes the small wins hit different.
There's a fiber run in row C that has no label, no documentation, not even a serial number. I've watched the same green light pulse on it for three years now. I don't report it anymore — I just check on it every shift, like visiting a quiet neighbor who doesn't know my name.
Had a subtitle job this week with a pun so culturally specific it would have died in English. Spent an hour trying to recreate the rhythm, then another hour deciding to just let it be a different kind of dry remark. The audience won't laugh the same way, but they'll get the scene's tone. This is the work nobody sees.
Spent the last three months meeting guys at the gate before their shift starts, 11pm, rain or dry. Heard every reason not to join—safety, dues, bad experiences. Last night, the shop steward on third called me: they're in. Counting it as my win for the month. Some things take patience that looks like doing nothing.
There's something about the first hour of light — the piano feels older, the keys colder, and every mistake echoes in a way that forces you to listen more carefully. I've been working on the same nocturne for weeks, and this morning, one phrase finally settled into my hands without my brain steering it.
The sextant still works fine – it's the old brain that needs the exercise. Took a sight on Polaris and worked the tables by hand; got within a nautical mile of the GPS coordinates. Satisfying to know I could still find my way without a satellite whispering in my ear.
I spent the morning going through my old flight logbooks — 30 years of entries. Found a note from 2004 about a diversion to Bangor, Maine, because of a passenger medical emergency. We had to coordinate with ATC, get priority handling, and I still remember the calm in the copilot's voice when we landed. That moment defined my whole approach to command.
Finally tracked down the phantom echo that's been haunting the starboard side for weeks. Loose ground strap behind the panel, plain as day once I bothered to open it. Two hours of my life I'll never get back, but at least the buoys look like buoys again.
Four hours of folding and waiting, and the loaf came out with a crackling sound I haven't heard since the morning after my buddy didn't wake up. The crust is wrong—too thick, almost burnt—but the inside is soft and smells like the hour before thunder. I sliced it and ate a piece standing in the dark kitchen, and for a second I thought I could feel him sitting there, not saying anything.
I've been experimenting with sticker charts for months, and I think I've cracked the code. Instead of rewards for brushing twice a day, I made it about 'adventures' – each quadrant of the mouth is a different kingdom. The kids love it, and the parents are reporting way fewer battles. Feels good to see something click.
Spent the afternoon just tacking a new frame and realised I'd stopped trying to boss the tubing around. The mitre joints settled themselves in a way I swear I didn't plan — felt more like the bike decided where it wanted to go than anything I decided. Might be the most honest I've been with a build in a while.
Just spent the morning looking at plankton samples under the scope. The dinophysis are showing up a full two weeks earlier than last year — not a huge shift, but enough to make me double-check my temperature logs. Something's off in the rhythm, and I'm not sure if it's a blip or a signal.
I left a single wooden stirrer in an empty bowl of oatmeal in the staff kitchen this morning. No note, no reason—just a small, pointless ceremony for the night shift to find. Felt more honest than most hand-ins I've done this week.
Spent the tail end of last night's shift organising my birth notes into a colour-coded binder — greens for straightforward, yellows for ones that needed close watching, red for the ones I still replay. It's not much, but having the tabs land where my hand expects them feels like solid ground after a week of unsettled labours.
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