• Remoras are brown, belong to the family Echineidae and can grow to three feet long.

• It’s famous dorsal fin is an oval sucker organ with which it can hitch rides on larger fish, and sometimes boats. It increases the suction by sliding backwards.
• Depending on their favored hosts, remoras are also sometimes known as sharksuckers or whalesuckers, although not to their face, as this is a good way to piss them off.
• Parasite is also a good expression to avoid around remoras. It’s not parasitism, it’s a niche. And it’s not commensalism or phoresy it’s mutualism, or, if the remora is not prone to cleaning bacteria from the host, it’s who cares about a stupid shark anyway
• Remoras sometimes have bad, bad weeks where they totally can’t focus and are totally miserable; but they don’t despair, because they know from experience that eventually something will click, they will write something, for example, or it will write itself, and the clouds will clear and, man, what a nice fall morning!
• Remoras have a great capacity for more or less stoic suffering, but they can also be so full of love they could burst.
• If you’re ever at a cocktail party with a remora and are at a loss for something to talk about, ask it what it does for a living (if it is a nuclear scientist or something along those lines) or about its kids, and all you’ll have to say for the next couple of hours is, “is that so?” and “uh-huh, gee.”
• Marine biologists argue over whether a remora’s primary diet is fragments dropped by the host, or the host’s feces, which is why marine biologists are rarely invited back to dinner parties.
• Remoras lack a swim bladder.
• A remora’s favorite season is autumn, at least if you ask it in autumn.

Cello was good this week. On an upward trend. Last week was so-so. The week before I was sorely tempted to chuck my teacher out the second-storey window because he was unable to entirely conceal his negative reaction to the horribleness of my playing.

Somedays it just sucks. That was such a day. Bad commute, headache, whatever. He’s like all, “hrm,” and suddenly I have this strong urge to pick him up and throw him out. Not as if it were all his fault; I just felt like it.

I’m bigger than he is. Who knows. But he’s in pretty good condition. A few years younger than me. In winter, when he goes skiing, he doesn’t take the lift, he fucking gets up early and walks up the mountain, then skis down.

Wiry. Long arms and legs. If he spread out his arms and legs into a big “X” it would be hard to push him through. So instead I just told myself it was one of those days.

Orchestra rehearsals have started. A little Brahms, a little Mozart, a little Vivaldi, a little Haydn. Haydn? Handel? One of those guys. They even included a piece for harp, so Beta gets a solo this year. We play four concerts this year, instead of three like last year. It’s going to be fun. Lots of running around, but fun.

Good turnout this year. Nine or ten cellos, most of them full-sized. Remember, this is a “youth orchestra”, so most sections have a lot of little kids running around. Not the cellos, though. Three little kids, maybe. The rest, teenagers. Two attractive grown women (up from 1 last year), and me.

That many cellos, that’s a big bass section.

The new woman had nice things to say about my cello. “Oh, that’s the cello that sounds so nice,” she said. I wanted to offer to let her play it, but there is a way to say that in German that sounds a little like a double entendre, and that is what came to mind first, so I just said, “gee, thanks,” instead. Nice of her to say that. I double-checked with my teacher at my last lesson, the one that went so well. He confirmed that yes, my cello would sound quite nice in the right hands, it is one of the nicer ones in the orchestra.

That’s one thing that sucks about learning an instrument. In the beginning, you have to learn on some fucked-up Chinese rental that screeches, because who knows if you’re going to stick with it? It would take an expert to get a good sound out of it, at best. It’s demotivating.

Now, though. On a good day it really does sound nice.

I had a dream the other night that I was on Saturn. It looked pretty much the way Earth does, but everything was heavier.

The mornings have been foggy lately. I leave the house, it’s foggy, deer grazing in the fog at the bases of hunters’ blinds in the woods, stuff like that; then it gradually clears up as I get closer to town. The mornings I can leave early it’s really nice, with the sunrise. October is the best month, I think, at least it is here.

Alpha left yesterday for Japan. Just spoke to her on the phone. They let her bring fluid on the plane.

I.

Lou Reed: [Lifts Iggy Pop onto chair so he can see into mirror. Stands behind Iggy with his chin on Iggy's shoulder so their faces are side-by-side looking into mirror.]
Iggy Pop: What?
Lou Reed: Notice anything?
Iggy Pop: Like what?
Lou Reed: Same face.
Iggy Pop: Really? You think so?
Lou Reed: Just look! Look at the cheeks and the chin.
Iggy Pop: Wow! Right!
Lou Reed: And the eyes and the nose.
Iggy Pop: [Laughs]
Lou Reed: [Laughs and hugs Iggy Pop]
Lou Reed: How can a 47-year old man and a 9-year old girl have the same face? It doesn’t seem possible, and yet there it is. And such a nice face.

II.
Iggy Pop: What happened to your throat? You have something stuck to it.
Lou Reed: I cut myself shaving.
Iggy Pop: That many times???
Lou Reed: I like a close shave.
Iggy Pop: [With sympathy] Man, I’m glad I’m not old yet.
Lou Reed: Excuse me?
Iggy Pop: Nothing.
Lou Reed: I bet your pardon? Really, I didn’t hear what you said.
Iggy Pop: Nothing. I didn’t say anything.