2026-05-02

Saturday morning. Coffee, slow start. M. is still asleep.

Walked over to Hudson Flea Market. I’d told myself I would not buy any more books. I bought a book. A worn hardcover, broken-spined, the kind of thing you can flatten on a kitchen table without worrying about the dust jacket because the dust jacket is gone.

Ran into J. by a stall selling chipped Pyrex. We talked about her dog and her brother’s wedding, and then somehow about a book she’d been reading on her commute. She didn’t have the title in her head; said the author was “the British one, the atheist who isn’t shrill about it.” I knew immediately that she meant J. L. Mackie, and I told her so, and we stood there with our paper bags between us trying to remember the cover of The Miracle of Theism.

What I noticed, walking home, was how much pleasure I take in describing Mackie to someone who doesn’t know him. It isn’t a partisan pleasure. It’s the pleasure you take in a clean piece of carpentry. He sets out the disjunctions, he names the horn you would prefer to take, and he tells you why you cannot take it. He never raises his voice. I think this is rarer than people give it credit for.

J. asked, in the parking lot, whether the book had changed my mind about anything. I gave a careful answer that surprised me. I said it had not changed my mind, but it had taught me what it sounds like when an argument is made well, and that I had been more taken in by the bad arguments on every side than I knew. She nodded the way people do when they want you to keep going, but her dog was in the car and we both had to get home.

Tomato starts went in this afternoon. Hands smell like the soil mix.