Welcome to Naval Gazing, Season 1, Episode 3. I'm John Dickerson.

We're two episodes in, and I'm grateful for all of the feedback from those of you out there in the Naval Gazing Corps.

We will rummage in the mailbag at the end of this episode.

But for now, let's follow what the notebook has to tell us for this period of time that we've got under the microscope.

Notebook 75, page 5, September 5th, 2021.

I go to the morning alone.

This is a note about our dog George.

After he died, I noted the posthumous nudges that would hit me during the day, just as I took note of the changes I felt after our son left for college, fielding little scraps of observation in an attempt to tie down the day when it started flapping.

I wrote, I go to the morning alone because George was my companion in the dark before anyone

else in our apartment stirred or before the elevator jerked awake for the first time in the day.

I love the day before the world is alert, before the bustle and importance.

The email inbox is still.

I don't have to reply to anything, so I don't interrupt myself to see if there's anything I need to reply to.

I have not yet handed myself over to the algorithms of social media.

The lesser cataclysms

of my job have yet to pile up. Squatting like a dragon on Times Horde before the day has begun.

That's how Robert Lowell put it in the poem I mentioned in our first episode.

In the morning, you are the author of your day as much as you are ever going to be the author

of a day.

You control even the aromas of the world, which you perfume with the smell of ground

coffee beans and the magic they produce.

The Hungarian mathematician, Alfred Rengi, understood coffee perfectly.

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