Commute music. Tuesday morning, I heard a man play "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" as a polka on his accordion, in the Civic Center BART station, in San Francisco. I imagined people dancing to it in polka dancing clothes--pants and shirts and circle skirts that are not shy. One has a repeated drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge about the size of a polka dot. Another has a pattern of alternating little cable cars and stars. Others have repeating hearts, red hearts, blue and green hearts with swirling fog, hearts covered with rainbow colors. Spending time with you is a spacious pot of gold.

The outdoors knows more than the indoors because it's been around longer.

The bishop didn't care about how statues were used in the church. The bishop cared about the bishop climbing the ladder. At that particular moment in the Catholic Church in England in the 1960's, climbing the ladder of power meant being for modernization and against old-fashionedness. So the bishop wanted the big statues of saints in the priest's church taken down. The bishop saw that the priest was old-fashioned in a number of ways, so he told him he was going to send him a curate to shape him up. The priest hadn't had a curate; it was just him and the housekeeper. A curate is a kind of assistant priest, and normally the priest would be the curate's boss, but that clearly wasn't what the bishop had in mind. The new guy arrived on a dark and stormy evening. The housekeeper was shocked when she entered the fron room where the new guy, Fludd, and the priest were talking . She was shocked because the room was warm, quite warm. The room was heated by a fireplace. The priest routinely kept a fire in the fireplace that looked like it was about to go out, and the room stayed cold. But with Fludd around, things were different. The priest and Fludd hadn't been talking long when the priest said what he hadn't said to anyone before--taht he had lost his faith years ago. Fludd said, "And then you started to enforce all the rules fiercely, didn't you?" It was true. The priest didn't believe in old-fashionedness anymore than the bishop believed in modernity. Traditionalism was just what he knew how to do in the absence of the unpredictable heart moves of a believed-in God. The village the priest and Fludd were in was a Catholic village. The village as a geographic unit had both Catholics and Protestants, but the Catholics were all about each other. And they were stuck. The priest was going through the motions. The nun who headed the school was good at being as unpleasant as possible on all occasions. The school head complained about how ignorant the people were, and Fludd said, "And whose fault is that?" Fludd heated things up. He got the molecules of the town moving differently and moving more. If you've ever been in a fairly small group of people that was stuck, especially a group stuck while mouthing ideas, the book, "Fludd" by Hillary Mantel, implies and shows that change is possible. Fludd didn't bring a brass band or a big announcement, but things warmed up and became more human and more divine. You couldn't do it like Fludd did it, but maybe you could be the occasion of different and transformed and the kids having a chance to be something else because everything isn't frozen, but is awash in possibilities.

The battle of "Is it worth it?" includes atrocities versus flowers and songs.

Walking warms.

Something feels odd below the skull-top and between the ears. It might be a need to think trying to take over.

It might be a need to think in a new way about things you haven't thought about before, because you know all that.

Quick! Change the subject. Make a joke. Mock the person who said or did that which started the strangeness inside you. Then you might be able to get out of the moment feeling your sameness is intact.

Tick, tick, tick.

We remembered how to grow fast, and it became Spring.

Skateboard boards without wheels that have never been skated on, that have been painted on at an art school with cogs, machine cogs that kind of have the feel of flowers because the shape is similar and because the painter loves cogs so much and because they sometimes have a green background.

Three such boards casually laid criss cross with each other make a kind of triptych at the Academy of Art Gallery on New Montgomery between Market and Misson.

The skateboards have no wheels, and the cogs painted on the skateboards wouldn't be good wheels; they would bump. But the beauty of the cog shapes may partly come from the joy the painter had while skateboard wheels went round and round under him.

My country, my planet, my problem.

Jack Nicholson, the actor, said he wished everyday life were like making a movie so when you messed up you could say, "Take two," and have a whole other chance.

"That's not a bug; that's a feature" is an old computer programmer's saying.

Markus Persson, in writing in the February 2011 Game Developers magazine about making his computer game "Minecraft" didn't quote the saying, but did illustrate it. He said when he tried to make some pigs, they came out looking like "tall pillars with short stumpy legs," and they moved very oddly. He colored them green, and called them creepers. Some people like them so much they've become a symbol of the game to fans.

I think I miss some feature opportunities when something doesn't come out like I planned. I get annoyed at my lack of total foresight and control. Meanwhile, I could be asking questions forward. What color? Give what this is now, what is its true name?

Lark on in. Larks sing while they fly. Not everyone does, but larks do.

--"It's getting hot."

--"They're going to notice he only prescribes that one drug."

--"They think he's a doctor, but

--"He's a dealer."

--sidewalk voices, two men

--"You can't drive it the way it's meant to be driven."

--"Dude, I can drive anything the way it's meant to be driven."

--sidewalk voices, two men.

I am liking my muffler, which is warm, which is new to me, which is covered with dots the size of quarters which are pink and purple and yellow and orange and light green--all colors looking brighter because they are on a black background.

I am liking the big library book "Gothic" edited by Rolf Toman with appropriately Oh-my-God beautiful photography by Achim, especially the photographs of red and green and blue and yellow stained glass windows, the colors looking brighter because of the vast outdoor light from the other side and because the lines between the pieces of colored glass are dark.

I am liking the fairly new painted flowers on the asphalt of Russ Street, an alley in the Tenderloin between Natoma and Minna, flowers mostly red and yellow with petals like daisies, all ultimately coming out of a central stem that goes up and down the whole stylized, clear work of art, all the colors of which look brighter because they are against dark asphalt.

The Russ flowers won't get worn down nearly as fast as other, more functional painting on asphalt because that half block of Russ has been closed to traffic. It's next to a playground and the whole thing seems child-centric in a way that cities, and this city aren't so very often.

There are other pieces of art, vertical art, around the horizontal flowers. The fince around the playground has attached to itself many animals cut out, with playful animal love, from flat pieces of metal. They include a crocodile, an armadillo with a bird on its back, and a three-frog band, the frogs playing stand-up bass, drum, and accordion. The bass and drum remind me that the sounds frogs make in real life are often deep and almost always rhythmic. I decide the accordion ripples the sound of the water frogs are in or near.

There are tiles on building walls near the brightly colored asphalts with kid's words in printing kids might have done with a letter set that pushes letters into clay."I am a fish. The ocean is my best friend." "Rule 4 Know what you want." "You get in a fight. Go to jail." "I move by bouncing. I am a basketball." "Rule 8 Follow the colors."

When I see bright colors put together in a way I particularly like that's particularly intense, I think of you because knowing you is having colors intensified, including things I didn't know were colors and that I didn't know could be intensified. I'm getting warmer.

--"I should've just kept on. When your spirit don't feel comfortable, there's a reason."

--sidewalk voice, one man to another