Bellow
4.22-9.22
April 6
A peaceful morning. Wonderfully blue. Robbins plump, tiny out there. They are orange and vigorous. Seeking. It’s time to woo.
Spring, however inchoate, is here.
April 7
Difficult because of how we differ. We are in union but so sudden in our emotions. Fierce. Roguish. It is instantaneous. Any idea of peace feels tangential. Foolish. The harm is sharp — though all things may smooth.
Even love cannot keep the blood in.
April 9
11:01 am
I can’t find certainty. Can’t keep it. My thoughts bob like apples, morphing in the dark.
April 10
8:03 am.
Simple matter. Particles. We have more to give, of course.
Everything Everywhere All at Once. Daniel Kwan, Scheibert. A revelation in form. K loved it and felt exposed.
April 12
7:45 am.
The pleasure of anything is in awareness. I lack it wholesale—often.
I tangle thoughts and visions and resist my experiences. Instead of living, I reflexively eschew.
Cogitate. Endure. Cogitate.
It is perilous.
3:28 pm.
A bright and expansive day. I went to Gables— the slow trail, the water. A couple had their cat in a fuchsia harness. Black. One-eyed. A single orange iris amid the fur.
By the water I was alone but for an elderly women on the bench across the mulch. Heat waves layered above the bay. Greenish, frosty floes of ice warmed and shifted. Simple islands. The slow march and mingling of their demise — like immense glass.
As I left, birds exchanged melodies. They were hidden up high. I couldn’t spot them.
Nature’s promise of renewal. A feeling as good as any.
April 14
5:18 pm.
I have many obsessions and am creating more. I invent them persistently. I move willingly into them. I find some critical importance and dilemma. I can’t understand why. If there is something I want to do, I curate everything—methods and nature and cause. I winnow away the least apparent, least appealing. Whatever modes are left I ruminate to the bone. I ensure zeal, efficacy, aesthetic, potency—whatever. Then I bludgeon one with the other. I raze and temper and implore. I can’t make peace. I can’t make decisions or live concisely. It leaves me tired, and without time. My purview is (always) bifurcated. My choices are never sure. I feel no serenity.
April 17
5:19 pm.
Ignorance is our natural form. We are curious. We have intuition. Instincts. Senses to refer, abet, avert. We are not mighty. Not endowed. Instead, we make ourselves up. We are the makers of a sly and infinite illusion.
Feel healthier today. Read swathes. Enjoyed the air. Robins, finches — lives of the feather. Out and young. Nest discernment. Defense. Came in before sundown. Cold creeping back with the shade.
April 20
7:56 am.
Capricious climate. Snow and bluster yesterday, Spring’s glow today. I’ll go walking. Work is benign yet draining — why? I’ve got the boys here, vigilant, hunched at the window. They seek the gulls and finches. The grass is coming back. Greener?
April 22
7:53 am.
Bright morning. Fen is better. Still fevered. Slackish.
Cancer is a universe of itself. Mukherjee is clear. Of its very fabric, refractory and immortal—master of growth. Master of death. Within us. Science and human rigor make the difference. What resilience. Sacrifice. Fear. We are living out the future; hyper-accelerated everything. My mother could not have come along. Her body failed. It was, I see now, an impossible reversal. Human beings can not yet cure doom.
April 25
7:19 am.
The Northman was tremendous. A blunt, cunning dream. The work and vision of obsessed artists.
Tired today. Tired.
K’s birthday felt realized. Rain and sequence, but she was happy. The day was gentle. Unrushed. She worries about age, the merit of age. The slippage. Of course. It can all spill over. Life feels like such a sudden mess.
April 27
8:29 am.
My impulses strain me. I am pulled. I am pushed. It feels difficult to bear.
I seek friendship. I want aloneness. The day is both fresh and already dead.
Duplicity gnaws; I offer it too much to chew.
April 28
8:15 am.
Clear morning. Frosty. Yesterday, a dumbbell crushed a boy’s foot. He was composed because of pride but the damage was clear. Swollen. Blotched. Red. Blue. Evident injury. I said he’d likely broken a bone. He shrugged. I said the pain would come again. His friend was nervous. The dumbbell was his.
K has a headache. Asleep. I feel sluggish. Urested. Fatigue is nothing new but bitterness envelopes.
April 30
7:55 am.
Inner life is capricious. Today I will set the tone.
May 1
9:26 am.
I realize how uncherishable I am. I can see my deep ugliness.
What is this value? I am nothing. Nothing to anyone.
May 2
8:30 pm.
Redolence today. A sweet, affectionate scent. I could nearly taste the memory.
How can I justify this isolation?
May 10
A beautiful birthday. K and I to the city. The AGO. Medieval gilded tankards, ivory icons, crucifixions, Hals, Thompson, Richter, Rembrandt, Cezanne, Kjartansson. I felt melded with the world. Grateful. Curious. Enlivened. Her love, her attention, is a plunge. It is unbearable. I can’t accept or fathom it. It presides over me. I fear its nakedness—another word for truth. It is the best I have. Being loved defeats me. It exposes a gaping place. A woundedness. She cradles with her (unknowingly) my injured weeping ecology.
May 17
7:16 pm.
Wind like bellows. Bright, clean verdance.
There is so much to say. Words fail, and I fail them too. I dream hard and wake affected. My emotions reek. I want for understanding. I want for touch. A hunger unlike the hunger I could describe.
May 23
2:07 pm.
I battle to be present. I battle to attend. Shuck the chatter. Breathe. Reach for the texture of things. Watch. All to feel in union. To feel living and becoming. To escape this gnawing; this tension that will not leave.
May 26
3:47 pm.
Shame because I hope. I hope better. I hope stronger. I hope kindness and gentleness. Always open-eyed mercy. The vast capacity for relief. Patience. But I am less. And I can only offer less.
I confess that it hurts.
June 1
Imagination is my foe and my beloved.
Bad sleep. Heat was crushing. Dreams lucid. I can’t remember them end to end. Only fragments, soaked in feeling.
Summer. New sunshine.
See it through.
June 3
I feel as if I am wading clouds. Too much nearness. No discernible shape.
June 5
6:36 pm.
Tear this fog away. A thrum of answers. A sky of poise.
The mark of obsession is full and deep.
June 7
4:21 pm.
Darkness today. Think of who you are.
June 13
8:22 pm.
My body deserves better. This stress is poison. Tension, pain. Derecho after derecho. I am a self-inflicting machine.
June 23
3:07 pm.
There is so much to make, realize, feel. Other minds to learn. Other hearts to breach. Death would be a waste.
This sadness cannot be forever.
July 13
2:46 pm.
Edges of what is to come occur to me now. It isn’t cunning. There is no cloak. It is a flat, impersonal impression. The future. A sudden body. Cold. Pressing. It says: I am this man. Tomorrow I will be this man. So far, I have failed to know it. My name is a sound. My skin is a moment. And I am again a gesture of what is inevitable, a nature I live but cannot meet.
Aug 15
1:29pm.
Inertia. Crippling sameness. Loop unending. This vapid hollow forgoing of life. I must finally believe the who, the what, the why. Critically the who. Undergo the crush of how.
Aug 29
3:15pm.
The ceaseless building and breaking of tension. This is a juncture. Say the unsaid words. Wash them in sound. Break open. Soothe the fallout.
Sept 3
9:01am.
August was a trial. Generous, but very difficult. It was a strange moment for me. My life falling. My sense of everything. My emotions. I was sad without relief. I was grey with this sadness. Days like blows upon the spine. I lay my inner life down and felt empty. I don’t know.
(August) Notables…
Books:
Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash
Films:
Tripping with Nils Frahm, Benoit Toulemonde
A Hero, Asghar Farhadi
Albums:
Distancer, Hiatus