Diary Entries July 2022-December 2022
I left my journal which contained my musings and remembrances January 2022- June 2022 on train 666 headed from Harrisburg to New York. It was discovered in Harrisburg by an attendant cleaning the train car. Unfortunately, I cannot justify a trip to Harrisburg, PA for the sole purpose of recovering my diary. For this reason I can only provide entries from July 2022-December 2022.
7/19
In a horrible sad mood, there are dead flies in my apartment hallway. They are crumpled up I piles. They died mid-flight because someone in the building sprayed the air with Raid. Which I was ultimately grateful for, because the fly problem was getting out of hand. Tomorrow I will sweep up the corpses so things look pretty for visitors again.
7/23
Today I’m sitting by Pine Meadow Lake in upstate New York. The lake is so quiet… it’s been so long since I’ve been somewhere this quiet and remote, I can’t remember the last time. It glimmers in the sunshine. No cell service. It’s cool, clear, and deep. Not a cloud in the sky. It’s so quiet. The lake. It’s so so so quiet.
7/29
In the podcast, Dragonetti said something about how art-making is about immortalizing a fleeting moment and making some part of it last forever, because life is so changeable, and nothing endures, and there’s sadness in that fact. Isn’t the urge to use the internet driven in part by that fact? The difference is doing something creative requires much more effort and energy, and it makes something well formed and long lasting because the thing (object, piece of writing, music, etc) itself is precious.
9/1
Melting burgundy candle wax onto deposited and aged white candle wax, like sin staining purity?
10/6
As the sun was setting speakers were blaring Christmas songs in early October. The sheer volume would suggest the tunes were coming from industry-grade speakers. Either a car with its windows down or PAs in front of a store. As I walked from the train, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You blared. Once I arrived home, I opened my windows, and laid down to take a nap. I heard Blue Christmas by Elvis quietly trickle in. It was very hot and humid in my bedroom. It smelled like my roommate, another body.
11/1
The Hudson is rippling constantly in small wave forms today. The arc of the waves are short. The Hudson is a steely grey blue color, mirroring the overcast color of the sky. I can hear it gently touch the docks and stone walls of the promenade.
I keep thinking about:
11/2
Walking beside a mother, daughter, and son speaking Norwegian / Finnish / Danish / Swedish. I get so accustomed to hearing their springy, fluted speech I feel sad (like I’ve lost something) when they turn the corner and are no longer a few steps behind me.
The Chinese fisherman aren’t catching anything today. One has jingle bells at the end of his rod.
11/3
Nene’s taqueria removed the Covid plastic barriers from the deli counter, and it makes the ambiance much warmer.
11/9
My head hurts and I’m sleepy on the J train. Going to copy a Paul Thek poem in here:
To go out. Praise the Lord.
To see the sun. Praise the Lord.
To do the shopping.
To mail a letter. Praise the Lord.
To talk with some people.
To buy a paper.
To come home.
To go to work.
To work.
To have lunch. Sing praises
To notice the light changing. Sing praises.
To see a cat. Praise the Lord Sing Praises.
11/15
On the bus considering how my boyfriend thinks the bus feels slow because the train is so fast. The bus is more direct and takes roughly the same amount of time but the sensation of traveling feels slower because you are often moving physically slower than the train due to traffic lights, pedestrians, bikes, making small stops, etc.
11/30
When I am bored at work, I like to revisit places from my childhood on Google Maps Streetview. I had no idea my cousin’s home was so close to the ocean. All the hours I spent there, playing in the park in the middle of a circle of Cypress trees draped with Spanish moss and we never walked to the water once. Instead we walked to the convenience store for mango Jarritos.
12/6
A man in a suit walked past me, holding his cell phone out in front of him. He said “I don’t demonstrate sagacity” into the microphone. I’d never heard that word before so I looked it up. Sagacity is the quality of being sagacious. Sagacious means heaving or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment. He was signaling to me that he has clouded reasoning ability and wants me to pursue him whole-heartedly. He is not capable of denying my advances.
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