Notes from the
End of the World

Each night in 2020 I’m writing a short post because I want to etch these strange days into my memory before I forget them. Before the world changes completely.

July 2, 2020

Spasm

Tonight I sat in front of a fan while premature firecrackers echoed through the streets. I wondered how to live in a nation that’s circling the drain.

July 1, 2020

Tree

Maybe I should go live in a tree. Learn the phases of the moon and teach myself to cook with the sun.

June 30, 2020

Shadow

Sometimes I find comfort in a two-thousand-year-old myth about a Chinese emperor.

June 29, 2020

Belief

Last night I woke in the middle of the night and wondered if it’s possible to believe in something otherworldly in 2020.

June 28, 2020

Humid

We had a pleasant June for a while, but the long mean heat of summer is finally here. Beyond this, I’m losing the plot.

June 27, 2020

Rhythm

And there’s the sound of someone in the street laughing and saying, “How did we get like this?”

June 26, 2020

Invasion

Aliens could land in America and we would politicize them until they became just another round of ammo in our endless red versus blue battle.

June 25, 2020

Grace

As I listened to a woman talk to the pigeons, I began humming that Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.

June 24, 2020

Sand

They’re calling it the Gorilla Dust Cloud, and you can see it from outer space.

June 23, 2020

Routine

For years I would reach for my telephone the moment I woke up, groping for it with a junkie sense of need.

June 22, 2020

Phase

She made a comment about her life that seems like a solid piece of wisdom for dealing with any kind of history: “I need to look back, but I don’t need to stare.”

June 21, 2020

Radioland

During commercial breaks, I sang along to radio jingles for machines that control your brainwaves while you sleep.

June 20, 2020

Solstice

People are edgy, their dreams infected with anxiety if they can sleep at all.

June 19, 2020

Midnight

I scrolled through streets named after Hank Williams and Big Mama Thornton while the radio worried about leftists and alien abductions.

June 18, 2020

Convulsion

More than ever, surrealism might be the best strategy for surviving these days.

June 17, 2020

Tactile

And I’m reminded that I think better without the screen tugging at my thoughts like a magnet.

June 16, 2020

Reconciliation

I want to square my life with these instructions from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Vow to work for reconciliation by the most silent and unpretentious mean possible.”

June 15, 2020

Wolf

They call it the hour of the wolf, and I think it’s reassuring there’s a name for this time, that others feel it too.

June 14, 2020

Need

Sometimes my mind lands on a jittery thought: screens have become our reality and the physical world simply exists to serve their needs.

June 13, 2020

Texture

This morning I came across a stray photograph from my mother’s things, and something about it looks like a scene from a dream.

June 12, 2020

Liability

It’s a strange kind of whiplash, living in a society that’s somehow becoming more sensitive and cruel at the same time.

June 11, 2020

Saints

Tonight I’m going to play Funkadelic on repeat, dim the lights, make bad coffee, and write some purple prose.

June 10, 2020

Trampoline

And I’m trying to conjure the faith of those fiery manifestos when they believed a particular font, grid system, or color scheme might solve everything.

June 9, 2020

Otherwhere

This morning I was pacing our flat, searching for something I could not find. She told me it was probably “otherwhere.”

June 8, 2020

Mortichnia

Sometimes you come across a phrase that haunts you all day. A few words scraped from last night’s dream, maybe an odd line in the news.

June 7, 2020

Hope

We’re still living through a season that requires the suspension of disbelief, but perhaps it’s possible to believe we’re heading somewhere better.

June 6, 2020

Paranoia

Men with amplifiers delivered gnostic interpretations of the facial expressions of various health officials.

June 5, 2020

Presence

Tonight I came across Tolstoy’s three questions, and they feel especially pressing in these overloaded and disorienting days.

June 4, 2020

Oblivious

My interest in triangulating art, faith, and the day’s events feels increasingly toothless, maybe even oblivious.

June 3, 2020

Alert

The silence was stunning. It had presence and weight that nearly muted the birds and the steady beat of three choppers in the sky.

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