For graces received, cont'd:
For the last few rainy and cloudy days, when there seemed to be a generally evil vibe in the city, I've been surrounded by very peculiar and threatening persons. The absurd extreme was at the philharmonic lobby jumbotron when some genuinely frightening characters sidled up and stood over my chair as I looked through the program annotations. But also elsewhere.
And now, today, the sun breaks through, and as I try the patience of the baristas by plugging away at the the piecework that flew in through the transom on the holiday, I realize the fellow next to me is speaking Serbian, and is a film director of some kind, and he's speaking to an amiable LA film type in for a visit. And then two French women in town for a vacance raise the civilization level of the nearby tables a few notches. All with the sunlight. Deo gratias.
Perhaps I should have cornered the very nice LA film type and pitched something, but I haven't yet figured out the dramatic angle on Hegel's Logic or Dewey's complete works. And I'm in no place to be making friendships. Eyes on the tabernacle, writing in the notebook.
This city is evil -- but the nature of the time will change with the sunlight.