I open my front door and the air is thick with the scent of citrus blossoms. The hills outside the house are shrouded in mist and it's cold again. Rainy today, suddenly cold again - I miss my morning meetings because, reluctant to get out of bed (it being around 55 in the house when I wake up), I fall back asleep after I cancel my alarm. At the river, trees lie capsized in the now-shallow flow after weeks of flooding and birds have returned to the riverbanks. Every tree in bud, soft lime-green leaves showing out while drenched roses bloom.

New baristas at the neighborhood shop, a twinkish boy with a chain of organic pearls, and another with impossibly smooth skin. Today the latter sings along under his breath with the Smiths while making my coffee. Hearing the Smiths I am reminded always of a video I saw where a woman, under the influence of a chemical that suppresses sweetness, tastes a variety of things — coffee, vanilla icecream, chocolate — and experiences them anew and finds the unbound flavor notes surprising. The Smiths remained undiscovered by me during adolescence, Tori Amos and Björk and any number of gay divas more than following the gas law and filling their container, so I hear them today without the unifying top-note of nostalgia that seems to inflate their impact with my friends. I find myself bopping pleasantly along to a ridiculous song that surprises me by turning out to be "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" — a title I've seen tattooed on more than a few friends and former lovers alike and cannot believe this is the song that has changed them so.

Been thinking about the inevitability of death the last couple days again (who needs the Smiths?) I began regularly taking my meds this week so we may just be able to conveniently chalk this up to the newly surging levels of Buspirone and Escriptolam in my blood, along with today's unpleasant eyeball pressure. In any event, there it is just under my last email of the day: you'll die; there it is after dinner: one day this will all just stop. Fortunately, there's always another email, and dessert, coming up.