Last night I picked up my acoustic guitar and wrote out the chords for a new song.  My watch stopped working.
     This morning the radio announced that I-5 southbound was closed at Kent, so I veered into the valley and followed 167 through the fog that's filled in along the Sound the last few mornings.  The detour added thirty minutes to an hour-long trip.
     I saw an espresso stand called Smoking Hot Espresso (which I assume to be one of those that sells espresso by paying girls to work in swimwear or similar) in a part of the Puyallup Valley that seemed otherwise utterly desolated, an effect probably amplified by the fog.  I saw a tobacco shop called Chief Cottonmouth in a dark strip mall.  Those are small businesses where people make a living.  In places like those it's challenging to conceive of a deterministic universe.
     And at times like these abstraction functions well as a political tactic, but otherwise seems more like a coping strategy than an aesthetic decision.