Writer's Diary
11/5/24
So I didn’t sleep much, but I didn’t really feel tired. I woke up naturally, which is rare for me. I haven’t been eating much. I’m not even sure if I’ve been sleeping much the past few days. My body and soul are agitated. I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee.
My sister and I could smell fire from the Blue Mountains on the drive to Pennsylvania Sunday night. The whole Northeast feels like a tinderbox because there hasn’t been any rain.
This warm, golden, beautiful but too-warm, too-dry day is auspicious.
The past week, on a personal level, has held massive surprises and changes. I thought I’d be in Vermont on vacation today, but instead I’m in Pennsylvania, in a sort of state of recovery. I go for long walks around town, weening myself off heartbreak—detoxing.
The thing about heartbreak is that it makes you so much more sensitive. My senses are heightened. Emotions I usually hold in reserve now sit on the front lines, ready to charge into that no-man’s-land between my eyes and reality.
The past four and a half years have felt like one long, blurry year. I think it has to do with seasons becoming less distinct, less archetypal. It’s 70 degrees today—and it’s November. It also has to do with the infinite scroll, which scarcely demarcates the passage of time—which lacks segmentation.1
I’m trying so hard in my life, I think, to balance and synthesize all these conflicting different perspectives and potentialities and values.
Why not be as healthy as possible, I think? Why not have casual sex? Why not imagine being a father? Why not pray? Why not meditate? Why not believe in nothing?