My head feels cottony, like a taxidermist did it, and my throat is tender. Still, I know I'm not all the way sick because I am still craving and drinking coffee. The siltiness of french press, where you touch your teeth together to feel it almost tacky.

I saw a remarkable thing today. Or maybe not remarkable. In any case I'd never seen it happen before so I am remarking upon it. As I was driving up a neighborhood street, I saw I think it was a catbird flying along pacing the car, swooping at about eye level in the airspace above the oncoming traffic lane. And then it just dropped out of the air and bang landed on the pavement like it had died in flight. It didn't even skid when it hit. I hesitated and passed the bird and then looked in my side mirror to see it lying still on the asphalt with I guess a wing sticking up, the elbow of it. Then after maybe three four seconds it abruptly rolled to its feet and took off all in one motion. It was gone before I was really done looking at it trying to figure out how and why it fell out of the air.

It's hard to see something that you don't understand or can't make yourself understand even with a plausibility. There's a condition from brain damage called agnosia that's something like this, in which a person recognizes common objects as such but cannot recall or figure out the word for or function of that object. It must be unbearably frustrating. Or else the ultimate relief and calmness, aside from death.