The White House went dark tonight in response to the protests across the street and spreading throughout the nation.
The presence of the police introduces the prospect of violence like a promise, and that promise came true by nightfall.
A man stood before the crowd of reporters, his eyes filled with pain and conviction.
When I flipped on the news around midnight, my concerns about running, writing, teaching, and everything else felt stupid and indulgent.
The amount of incense smoke that darkens a temple’s ceiling demonstrates the popularity of that particular god.
77 minutes of pitched-down techno classics melded with reverberated vocals from Bobby Vinton, the Paris Sisters, and the Moody Blues.
I’m fantasizing about a sprawling network of night markets and bazaars that reclaim the streets and devour the cars.
After sixteen hours of talk radio, interstate winds, and screaming into metal boxes for food, my grip on the world grew slippery.
Riffling through my small box of family memories, I came across a note written in an unfamiliar hand.
Thinking about the blurry line between media consumption and my soul.
Time is a concept. Time is a flat circle. Clocks only measure other clocks.
Each morning I wake to the imaginary babble of fully-formed news reports and television clips while skating across sleep.
I write and work. I step outside and look at the sky. Sometimes I go for an ugly run. I make phone calls. I tend this journal. Repeat.
I remember watching the darkness in my bedroom when I was small, hypnotized by grey-pink flecks while I waited for sleep.
Maybe we’ll have a vaccine soon. Maybe the president will poison himself. Things can go either way these days.
The Chinese takeout spots along First Avenue have pulled up their metal shutters. The florist is open.
We might remember crouching on the sidewalk, frantically trying to gather the teeth falling from our mouths—not the circumstances that led us there.
We spent a few hours in the park because it’s almost possible to forget this pandemic while hiding in the grass beneath a tree.
An otherworldly landscape of alkaline and soda towers surrounded flat waters without a single ripple.
I’m writing these things down tonight because I want to look back in a few months and see if any of these dire predictions came true.
