Running In Place @dfalksjdflkaskladsjflas - Tumblr Blog

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i have loved your writing for so long. So no matter how long it took you to post I never unfollowed, hoping I could read you again. Love to hear we can read you once more ♥︎

aw thank you this is so kind! it feels good to be writing every day. i don't know why substack feels better for me than tumblr but i'm just going with it u kno.

instead of a book i am going to just make a substack. it's free forever. link here:

An accommodating little fellow named Mr. Market who is your partner in a private business. Click to read Public Universal Friend, a Substack

i will definitely post once a week, but maybe every day or multiple times per day.

i am publishing a book soon - it's gonna be a free pdf with a small press. it'll be under a pen name bc i can't have anyone who follows me on linkedin finding it, or any of my coworkers, etc. but if anyone still follows this blog, i'll post the link here when it's live. i love whoever's left.

Jim Carrey is Abandoning Love in Favor of Thought

i personally don't worry about jim carrey but i understand ppl who do he has readied his morning portentously, in a kiln, shaped it into something only tangentially related to a morning he will eat a candy bar by a fire and feel jealous for another time, when he was young, didnt know certain things

he is well on his way to becoming a true self the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious uniting conically into a megaphone thru which he radiates out to the world the real real world jim carrey must collect himself it's a rainy monday, and what follows is intolerable: (a rainy tuesday) well okay okay if you smile into a mirror you can convince your brain you are happy some similar trick of synapses must be possible to convince yourself of something even more important jim carrey is drinking kombucha, standing in the static light of the open fridge, the sparse beverages & condiments arranged like a heavyhanded art exhibit about a sad sad man with no wife or children No wife or children no wife or children jim carrey would ever love could accept the impending future: the doldrum of another week that just drums right along and so he simply will not have them there's a foreboding benevolence to loneliness like the woods at night there might be something out there it could kill you you should let it alone it'll lurk & slouch at the windows behind the house of you but it probably won't come inside

poem

i woke up at 4 am today coiled & wet-eyed like a newborn baby schopenhauer enjoyed his childhood learning french and taking languid 2 year breaks from the world, its geometry, its feelings to happily romp through the ascetic pond of abstraction

i would like to do the same but i'm buying a house for my wife i'm buying a path forward for a mottle of children who will trail me behind us like a plume

this hotel room is blanched by progress i'm selling software as a solution to a horde of disinterested researchers and watching them get drunk in canadian bars

one sales guy, sam, used to be a writer before he escaped he told me he has a collection of short stories he's scared to return to i told him i have a secret shameful identity too as someone who believed in angry true stuff and talked about it sweat-mouthed and brutish on the internet every night drinking vodka and V8-splash in my parents living room fishing restlessly in the lake of things

but i really think i've rummaged everything i have nothing to say except i'm in horrible love with a girl who cries when she talks about her mom and sings vanessa carleton in the car and stares death in the face three days a week, reflects our sparse reality unbiased like a nickel reflects light in the sun she said she loved me and i changed my life i dont need to say anything else about art it happened to me all at once one night in a salem parking lot putting my hand on her thigh with big thief on the radio i think then i realized what i'd been cloying at for 5 years in my room was a locked door with her on the other side i can only stay loyal to one thing or another at a time before it was frank now it's paige i have a meeting at 9 am, i have a plane to catch as soon as possible, i have a very good reason for my decision to abandon elsewhere and i've never bothered to explain it to myself

poeooeemmem

taylor is writing a book about a mysterious horrible woman who makes noises like an animal and leaves messages on the phone for an 84 year old man.

she has the stolid disposition of an appliance

paige is sarcastically eating apple sauce.

taylor will break into notoriety like a named hurricane

with the publication of her first novel

it will be like andrea bocelli discovering he is not a soprano, he's a tenor

and everything changing

paige is blonde and pale like a sigh

in another week i will receive the nobel prize

for playing stardew valley more than anyone else on earth

except maybe georgina

who is at the met, staring at abstract art, missing her ex boyfriend

and writing jokes in the notes section of her phone

she is going to amsterdam to talk with sex workers

about their reasonable demands for fair laws

a movement of which the outside world knows nothing

gertrude stein is not a genuis but she doesn't dismiss anything

anything can be art if it feels like it

and therefore she has a very welcoming and permissible mind

that i will no longer envy and instead embody

daniil kharms was just writing little jokes

im eating a pizza with brussle sprouts

i'm allowing anything today

dont look at this poem

i feel uncertain about it but i am trying not to

as part of an effort to embody gertrude stein

we're all just trying not to break up or get in car crashes

feeling rather lonesome

misunderstanding each other

and trying to eat healthier

poeoem

today i am looking at objects and thinking 'that is a very rich area'

for art, or thinking

i looked at an electric toothbrush in my bathroom and thought

'that is a very rich area'

i looked at a bagel covered in poppy seeds and salt and thought the same thing

i will think this for the rest of the day

in a coffee shop, waiting for a teenager who wants me to help her stop drinking

in a car, waiting for my friend to finish taking her dog out

in my bed, listening to paige sleep, her body silent and calm

as a stone in a terrible river

the stone has lived in the river for over 2,000 years

unmoved by any of the tumult, change, outrage, and love in the world around it

it's a calm stone with resolute convictions

and it isn't concerned about its future or its legacy

it doesnt need a legacy because its mind is made up

and people or rocks who have made substantive decisions that likely wont change

feel secure in themselves

yesterday at 2pm paige said 'i hate this apartment. i'm so done with this apartment. i dont want to hang out with anyone. we shouldn't have made plans. i want a reset. why do i feel this way.' i leaned against the wall and said 'maybe your life sucks.' she said 'what.' i said 'i dont know - maybe your life sucks. you know. it might just be that your life sucks.' she laughed and i laughed and she said 'i feel like we're in a play.'

we drove to a church in leominster. we were going to see the stations of the cross. taylor is catholic ever since her grandmother died, so now we go to easter vigil and we go to midnight mass and we go to stations of the cross. i'm not catholic anymore but i still wear a cross my grandmother gave me for my first communion, so i understand. sometimes it feels like taylor is taking it a little far. but her grandmother is dead and mine is alive, living in an old schoolhouse converted into affordable housing, staring at her ipad and playing solitaire and drinking tiny cups of coffee out of fine china. i'd probably do something crazy if she died to adjust my thinking to accommodate a world where we feel closer. so i cant really say anything.

a cop followed us as we parked. we got out and there was a small colony of old ladies orbiting the church, like little aimless mice. i said 'looks like these are our people,' and paige laughed. in the car i'd suggested she go on a vacation all by herself to remember who she really is when no one is around. i feel like being completely alone helps me, and she's never alone because i'm always with her. i'm alone at least when she's at work. and when she's at work i listen to jazz and write and drink too much coffee and read parts of books and abandon them and feel manic and interested in life. so maybe she would feel manic and interested in life, listening to music and playing guitar and drinking yerba mate. but she said she doesnt want to go anywhere without me.

we walked up to the church and grinned at each other and opened the heavy oak door. paige poked her head inside. a gravel voice pushed out from behind the door, suddenly, like a new wind. she grinned and said 'nope. other door. other door.' we stood in the vestibule. everything was an echo. the floor seemed made of marble, but it couldn't be, and it was covered in a red carpet so flattened by foot traffic it looked like a coat of paint. 'this is the front,' paige said. 'we have to go around.'

we went out and walked over the grass, teal in the aftermath of all that melting snow, and walked up large concrete steps. it was cold for april. i was wearing a jacket paiges mom had got me, and paige had just cut her hair. we went inside and saw taylors back in one of the pews. everybody was kneeling, praying briefly, standing up, praying for longer, then singing briefly, and kneeling again. we filed into the pew, looked at a few pamphlets, and started praying when everybody else prayed. it all seemed pretty cryptic and insane to me, but i could tell it was making paige feel peaceful. she smirked at me and i smirked and taylor looked at me and i stopped. the people around us seemed lonely. i hated myself for smirking. there was an old woman wearing a red sox windbreaker, and an old man who had brushed his combover the wrong direction, so it piled up on the left side of his head and left the right side exposed and shiny, a wound of vulnerability, and there was a young mother and three young boys in a nice dress and nice suits, respectively, and there was an old woman with a halo of white puffed hair who looked like she'd been a librarian before she retired, and they all looked lonely. i imagined them getting ready in their bedrooms before church, smoothing down their lapels with their hands, taking their nice shirts down from hangers in their closets, looking in the mirror in silent homes. it made me want to cry but i didnt cry. i prayed, feeling serious and calm and bored, and looked at the stained glass windows. there were large purple curtains over the statues of jesus on the cross. there were about three statues of jesus on the cross throughout the church, and they were all concealed - even the one suspended from the ceiling. that must have taken a lot of work. i wanted the mass to be 2 hours, since all those people had gotten so dressed up for it. i wanted them to feel worthy of good things that they would actually get.

at the end of the mass, the priest said 'next time, bring your friends and family.' we left and paige said 'that was good. i feel grounded.' taylor said 'yeah, bruh. it's good.' we drove to taylor's house and i took a picture of a painting she did of toni collette in 'hereditary.' we ate cheese and bread and talked about how will is doing. i said 'i'm gonna publish will's book of poems whether he likes it or not.' taylor said 'what about your book of poems.' i said 'after will.' she said 'why. just go.' i said 'no. him first. getting him to publish is my life's work.' i can't explain it. i asked if i could read her novel and she said yeah. her boyfriend eddie came home with prosecco and beer and a raw hide of lamb and we watched passion of the christ. paige said 'i love jesus.' after the movie. i laughed. she said 'i do! what. sue me.'

we drove home and listened to the songs we're going to play at cocktail hour on our wedding day. we listened to 'god bless the telephone' and we listened 'slide' and paige put her head on my shoulder as i drove. i said 'i'll do anything you ever need to be complete. you understand. that's my job now.' she grinned. the moon was small and muddled by a cloud. it looked like a lightbulb behind a thin cloth lamp, in an old house somewhere. the highway was empty and rushing, and we were the only one's alive. paige said 'i'm gonna say something stupid and i dont care. you know the perks of being a wallflower, when they're driving. well, i feel infinite. it's stupid and it's true and i don't care.' and we didn't have to have a reset, or throw our whole lives away. we just needed a drive, on an april night when the moon looked like something besides a moon.

i ate a mango this morning. i stuck a fork in the core and ate around the core. i'm wearing these new pants i bought paige, called 'dad pants', which we both agree we don't like. but i'm trying to like them.

last night gracie asked me about the five worst things i did in childhood. one was that once, playing baseball with a group of neighborhood boys, i pointed at this one boy, derek, who i didn't like, and said my team was gonna 'kick his ass.' he said 'okay, do it then.' he was standing at first base. first base was my baseball mitt. when my team was at bat, we used my mitt as first base, and when derek's team was at bat, we used this kid brandon's. brandon was kind of the captain of their team and i was kind of the captain of ours. me and my friend eric were both the captains. there was a fast wind in the trees. it was april. i had just gotten back from soccer practice, still wearing my shin guards. i'd gotten yelled at by the coach for being offsides, and felt pent up, agitated, worse than everyone, and vengeful. derek was looking at me down the bridge of his nose, like he always did. it was probably just a nervous tick but i always took it personally. i was at bat and i hit a line drive and i ran and derek tagged me out at first. i said 'you better be careful. you better be careful.' he said 'yeah, ok.' i said 'i'm serious. i'll kick your ass.' i was 10, maybe 11. we were all in middle school, feeling strange and alien at school and invincible at home. we all ran out into the middle of the neighborhood every day at 3pm, eager to prove ourselves in the stark bloodless arena of boyhood. i wasnt a boy but everyone pretended they didn't know, because i was good at sports, and i was grateful. eric said 'what was that derek?' derek said 'nothing.' eric said 'no - what did you just say?' i said 'he thinks i won't kick his ass.' eric came over with the bat. this boy jonathan took the bat from him, started beating derek over the head. jonathans parents were never home, and his family moved around a lot. he beat and beat and beat derek. i stood there wanting to stop it but not wanting to seem like a wimp. i said 'okay, okay.' but they didn't stop. my arms felt fuzzy and electric. i looked around, at the street, at dylan's house. we were playing in dylan's front yard, but his parents weren't home. acorns scuttled across the street. there were leaves moving on the sidewalk, in the trees. nobody was home and nobody could stop us. but me the most. i was the most helpless to stop us, of everyone in the whole world.

wow, gracie said. that's bad. i didnt think you were gonna say you beat someone with a bat. i didn't, i said. but you didnt stop them, she said. yeah, i didn't. you're right.

we ordered BLT's and walked to the meeting. there were about 40 people there. the speaker said some variation of 'everything is alright. we're bad people. this is bad people club. but everything is alright now. we just have to stay here, and we won't hurt anyone anymore.'

after the meeting i called paige on the drive home. i told her one of my sponsees was over an hour and a half late to meet me. paige said 'don't let her take advantage of you'. paige knows i will do anything for anyone for no reason. it's not for no reason. i'm making up for something. maybe it wasn't jonathan with the bat. maybe it was me, standing in my shin guards and nikes on the lawn, hunched and sweating, holding the plastic orange bat above my head and watching derek cover his face and head with his arms. he was saying something. what was he saying?

it's fun to assume everyone is lying to you -- everyone is inventive, malicious, curious of their preferred reality

i am going to edit this poem into a single word that means everything i want it to mean

i have a meeting i'm going to pause this poem and resume it when the meeting is over Ok, the meeting is over my life is a book of paintings i only open occasionally -- when i remember -- when i'm in a certain mood --

i should read alma mahler's diary there's a dichotomy inside people of the loving soul and the calculating soul as you get older your choices collapse into a thin particular i watch an interview of a failing actor and remember something important: it doesnt matter how you get there as long as you get out

every morning i choose to wrestle paige over & over on the playful gridiron of the only plane we know about i continue to choose her and she continues to choose me it is very beautiful 'i love you' is a promise that aches

and anyway i have nothing taped to my walls anymore so perhaps i have changed

i dont do enough normal stuff right i dont empty the dishwasher enough and i dont line the shoes up the way they are supposed to be lined up on our shoe rack and i dont vacuum enough and it is driving paige insane and it is affirming something dull and melancholic in my parents but there is a scene from girls that i know you've seen i want to use to explain myself to you

hannah gets in a car crash and her boyfriend adam flails into the emergency room sweating with a bike helmet strapped to his back he stands in the hall wiping his face with his t-shirt next to hannah’s mom and aunts and doesn’t say much and even though he doesn't know how to help and he doesnt know what to say i need you to understand he ran all the way there as fast as anyone can

paige said you should've met rusty. he has a brain tumor. he can't talk or anything, everything comes out as word salad. but he really likes the song 'brown eyed girl.' she said she played it for him, and he started tapping his foot and bobbing his head. it was the only coherent thing he did while she was with him.

i felt pretty lonely in the apartment by myself all day. paige was at work, and i was sitting in front of three monitors doing whatever it is you do when you work for a company, and i didn't really think anything the entire day. and that's a lonely feeling - when you're not even interested in your own thoughts. it was a loneliness like hunger. hunger is one of those oblong funneling feelings. when it hits, it feels too expansive to solve. but it can be solved. and with something as stupid as a cheeseburger.

so anyway, i didnt worry about it too much. sometimes i worry about loneliness too much, around 2pm. suddenly the day slacks in the middle - it just gives out. and i cant crawl up from that usually until paige gets home. and i get worried. but anyway, i didnt today. because i knew something stupid would solve me, at some point.

when paige came home, she said a patient beat the shit out of one of the nurses. he was blind and terrified, she said. like a baby of any species. steph, the nurse, was in the room with him for maybe 40 minutes. when she got out, paige asked what she was doing. her and the other therapists had heard human animal noises. the private thunder of a fight on the other side of a closed door. 'we were armwrestling,' steph said.

i have a new sponsee. she was about 20 minutes late to the meeting. when i met up with her, she said 'i love my mom but she doesnt understand. i'm so grateful she doesnt understand.' after the meeting, we sat at a thai restaurant and i asked what she likes to do for fun. she said 'i dont have fun. i wait for 11pm, when the liquor store closes. that's all i do all day, is wait for it to be 11pm, and if i can make it, i know i'm safe for the night. but i usually don't make it.'

i said your problem is you're lonely. i know that because that was my problem. you're lonely, and that makes you bored. and boredom is what makes you drink. that's the last enemy of the stable mind. boredom makes you think you want to create chaos, and you want to get drunk, and you want to stomp your foot through a glass coffee table, and you want to watch it dissolve into a freezeframe of shards. it makes you want to watch glass break - how it moves like water. it's really beautiful, how glass breaks. have you ever broken a really big glass thing? like a door or a table?

no, she said. okay, i said. well make friends. tell them you're miserable. it'll make you like them. admitting you're miserable to someone makes that other person seem kinder, even if they're not.

poeoeom

You must restore order. Our situation is like a mountain lake we are trying to swim in, starting from different shores.

it was curiosity, then, that did me back in i was sitting on our green couch looking intently at nothing ‘succession’ was on the tv and i felt agoraphobic & ancillary to the world and its sopping perversions that paige loves to watch me ogle at

the future is a withered father whose child just discovered the internet and doesnt talk to him anymore and it’s waiting for you to log off already

(it was an apocryphal carnality that spun me out then i have a secret for my past self it all gets a little weirder and better with age)

and so yeah i ordered a couple books online from my rancorous years haranguing the hillsides of connecticut

i forgot all you have to do is get in the car and not get back out of the car and eventually somewhere will happen

Do you want us to meet later on? We can talk more calmly. Do you... Do you need more time? What...? What do you need? What has happened?

everything is thawing and the ceiling of my warmer feelings is a bit higher - i stood by the river behind my apartment building with no music on

will was a mirage of disorder over the phone, like a voice tumbling through a dryer

Did you sense or detect weariness in him? No. A correct appraisal of the realities. Is it making him bitter? No. Greedy.

“note the time”

i have to check my email

there’s little else

i just woke up but what, but what

it was the week a train in ohio exploded into a plume of toxic smoke. i was in south carolina, and will was typing poems on the internet. he was writing about an old man polishing his guns in the driveway, under the blank wide face of the sun. he published the poem on a forum called ‘the end of the internet.’ i was playing with a baby and looking at paige imagining her as a mom someday. i was thinking ‘she will be such a good mom,’ and drinking coffee, and trying to catch her attention. when i caught her attention i was smiling and trying to say something to make her laugh. her eyes shined the whole week. but in a basement in connecticut, will was smoking weed and crying and writing poems. and above ohio, a seep of waste etched itself into the water cycle in permanent marker. and we all got cancer, someday. there was a new pinprick in the tapestry of our little human timescale. but i didnt worry, because paige’s eyes were shining, and her face was a little red from talking fast, and she was leaning over the counter talking about anxiety with her brother, and he was doing funny voices. i was quiet in my head.

i guess that week a boy will knew lit himself on fire. he scaled a parking garage, looked out over the edge, and the wind blew right through him. and he realized none of us exist, so it is all going to be alright. and we dont have to do this anymore. if it’s fun, you can keep doing it, but if it’s not fun anymore, it is alright to stop. he thought about how the only way past terror is through an unknown of some kind. you have to do something you thought you would never do, and then terror will be above and behind you, like a plane you’re not on, heading somewhere else. so he covered himself in a slick of kerosene, and he lit a match, and he burned slowly. will cried over the phone saying ‘kerosene is a slow burn.’ he read me a poem the boy had written about a dog, how they slobber, how he loves them and he loves their drool. will said it was a suicide note.

i didnt understand it. but i was in my apartment with paige, and we’d just finished holding each others faces, and i’d just finished moving slowly and then faster until she turned red and glassy and burst into tiny beautiful pieces, and we molted our argument, and we remembered something very, very important that i can’t explain to anyone, and won’t try. so i couldnt understand the poem. because will was a real planet, and i was a large moon pretending to be a planet. i didnt want to be a planet at all because i know someday all planets grow water, and then protazoa, and then human viruses, and then they heat up and die in a fever of progress. and i had decided, maybe two years ago, that it was alright to just be a moon.

will is watching ‘under the silver lake.’ he’s about an hour and ten minutes into it. his friend gave him a $480 device that makes smoking weed a contemplative chore. you have to plug things in, and then heat them up slowly, and be mindful of how you grind the weed, or else it won’t work. but when it works, it works better than anything he’s ever smoked. he said it’s a ritual. i said ‘like grinding your own beans for coffee.’ he said ‘no.’ some things aren’t like any other things.

will asked me about my job. i told him. he said ‘that doesn’t make any sense.’ i said it’s not supposed to make sense. businesses are big containers that half-people fall into, and we’re safe there. i’m a half-person and you’re not and that’s why you live in your parents basement and i live in an apartment. you’re a full-person, and full-people suffer for their art, because it matters, and half-people fall into the benevolent terrible gape of a company, and they rest there. because they have nothing important to say, and no good reason to watch movies. will said he understood. like that boy on the parking garage, he was a full-person. that’s right, i said. if you’re a full-person, your brain eats you. my brain only half-ate me.

it’s springtime. nobody worry, it’s springtime. i’m gonna call will and tell him not to worry. anything could happen again. we could get dogs, and walk and worry over them. he could avert the cliffside i know he’s always thinking about. the toxic waste in the Ohio river could grow arms and legs, and it could tear our cities apart, and it could tell us doom is a sublime silver arch marking a free way out.

poeoeom

there is a project manager in texas that just wants to go home

i thought and then wrote down ‘brunt wind’

i punctured an orange fruit with my thumb and drank its brain out

some days i look in the mirror and i know that i am beautiful then i look at a picture of the girl i’ve been thinking of every day for almost 4 years she is beautiful in a way that seems deliberate and soft and aware my way seems accidental and fast, like something i stole

occidental ontological i dont know what that means

im trying to know what it means though

i dont want to play the game of myself anymore or go to insipid rooftop parties in boston and pray for things looking out over expensive awnings, into the private windows of other people

it took ten minutes for the windshield to defrost two weeks ago i woke up slowly and looked at the long beams across our ceiling and felt lucky now we’re in a fight

i’ve abandoned all loyalty to what wanted to kill me in the grass, in the backseat of a car parked and unlocked in my parents driveway

my problems are smaller and sharper now rollicking in my stomach like little ninja stars

i have little in the way of personal artifacts only a view of a high window that is not quite beautiful showing nothing but a note i wrote myself ‘remember what you saw here-- a wide-eyed life blown apart with love and fear’

i’m supposed to guide her in the right direction, invisibly, like a brunt wind. but i can never think of the right thing to say.

‘what if we live in a simulation, and all of this is a joke to somebody. none of it matters.’

we do live in a simulation, i said. none of it matters. that doesnt change anything.

‘okay. but what if we die in 20 years in a global disaster. from climate change.’

we will. who cares. hey, if it’s the end of the world, i promise i’ll relapse with you. you, me, muse, mae, georgina - we’ll all get together in a church basement, somewhere identical but different to the ones we hang out in now, and i’ll do lines right next to you. but it’s not 20 years from now.

‘okay. but we’re all gonna die. what about that. i’ve been thinking about it, and i should be maximizing fun rather than maximizing efficiency.’

you dont even know how to have fun, gracie. you told me that. you said ‘i dont know how to have fun, and i think of that as a problem for future gracie. present gracie is focused on getting work done.’ so get work done. this is work. not drinking and not doing coke is your work, and i’m telling you to get it done.

she really liked the thing about the party at the end of the world. she said if we can all have a party at the end of the world, i wont drink. okay. good enough.

i drove home listening to ‘teeth like god’s shoeshine.’

"I am not allowed much danger Keep in line you're an old friend stranger.’

i keep in line, alright. i messed up again. i told paige i didn’t email forest back when she asked me about her cyberbully. i didnt want to upset her anymore. it upset her enough knowing an ex had emailed me and wasn’t already blocked. i just didnt think to block her gmail account. all i said was, ‘i think it was lester. i think he’s been bullying you probably for two years straight.’ i said it wasnt me, and it definitely wasn’t paige. i just wanted to clear our names.

we didn’t talk much before bed. i rolled over to a rush of images. i should take paige and leave the country. we could go to colombia and eat that garish orange fruit and drink flowery coffee and look at the craggy mountainside. i’d be a farmer, finally. i’d think of nothing but my hands, and every night i’d wash them carefully so i could touch her.

last night at AA i talked about how bad i was at making friends at my company. i was quiet most of the week, but when i did talk, i came out with something weird. i sat in my room for most of it, fiddling with the drapes, trying to let more sun in so i could feel illuminated and better.

i have people i’m responsible for. i have to look out for gracie, and i have to show paige the right way to be loved, and i have to build a world around her, and it has to be beautiful. i have to get my car inspected, and i have to call victoria back. i have to jump into the swelter of work and deadlines and approval processes and project management tools to keep the lights on in the apartment, and so i can buy paige the house of her dreams someday. a fireplace and a wrap around porch. a fireplace and a wrap around porch. i am drinking green tea and leaning forward into a saline focus that burns my nose hairs off.

gracie said ‘i just need to turn my brain off. how do you turn your brain off?’

i don’t. you dont actually need to. who told you you need to?

The best part of this trip was a rotund, mottled orange fruit with a long yawning stem. When you pulsed it open with your thumb, you revealed a netting of black seeds encased in tiny translucent pouches. The tour guides said they were in the passionfruit family. I forget what the fruit is called. I doubt I’ll ever encounter it again in my life. I ate four of them quickly, in a way that made me sure everyone at my company could instantly tell I am an addict at heart, and at brain, and at liver. we were on a coffee farm tour. The guides were kind and knowledgeable. We all sat there stupidly, not asking questions, looking at the astounding bucolic scenery, its languid reaching trees with branches drooping toward a distant white sun. I felt calm and deranged.

None of my coworkers seem to understand my deal. Paige says that’s alright. I think I look like I’m going to be one way, and then I’m squelched, anxious, overwrought, like a wound-up jack-in-the-box that only detonates when drunk, and I don’t drink anymore.

Angie is going to help me with my presentation. She said my persona on zoom is fine for presentations. I said I don’t know, I think I talk too fast, and I memorized my presentation, so it sounds canned. She said ‘it’s alright, you have a good aura.’ I don’t believe her, or else malika would have opted to sit next to me at the soccer game.

The events at the soccer game opened a spigot of self doubt. It was a whole thing. And it didn’t twist open the spigot, it kicked it apart, and a deluge of self doubt exploded across the walls of my head in a lash. basically, malika, our sales ops person, was supposed to sit next to me at the game. But then as we filed into the stadium and confronted our seats, she decided to dart away and go sit next to Austin and Brooke. i’d thought we were having a good conversation on the walk over, but I guess not. And then the rest of the night I thought about how intentional of an act that was. To dodge and dip up the stadium steps away from any possible conversation with me. I don’t know what I said. But I took it all pretty seriously. I decided not to talk for the rest of the night. It’s possible my personality is incompatible with sales people.

Anyway, it kind of ruined the trip. I miss Paige, and I miss AA, and I miss my room, and Charlie Parker, and my books, and the electric silence of an empty morning where I have no responsibilities but writing and drinking coffee. I guess I really don’t like travel. Or it hasn’t gotten any easier for me to meet new people, which is alright. I thought I was in the right mood to navigate all this. But there may not be a right mood. There may simply be a right person, and I’m not it.

I’m sitting with an engineer on a concrete riser arranged like a grecian theater. I’m reading Garielle lutz and waiting for the day to wane, so I can go up to my room insociably, eat snacks from the minibar, text Paige and Vinny, crowdsource a sense of reasonable acceptance from the knowledge that other people are also in their rooms napping or watching Netflix on their laptops, calling their girlfriends, kneading their heads apart so they can sleep, and it won’t be a weird thing that I’m alone. Being in public is a marathon of nervous systems orienting against each other. it’s a gradient of warring ideas for how to live and how to be and how to present yourself, and certain people win out, and other people don’t, and there isn’t actually a reason. I need to stop trying to find it.

Come to Ptown this summer?

so u can kidnap me no

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