Notes from the End of a World
Each night in 2020 I wrote a short post because I wanted to etch these strange days into my memory before I forget them. Before the world changed completely. And 2020 delivered more than anyone could have bargained for.
Each night in 2020 I wrote a short post because I wanted to etch these strange days into my memory before I forget them. Before the world changed completely. And 2020 delivered more than anyone could have bargained for.
Suffuse
Words that haunt the unconscious: Trilobites, moonfish, and gorgons.
Spirit
In the beginning, God was only “a permanently existing ghost.”
Test
Shops are removing the plywood boards from their windows after barricading for riots that never came.
Shift
Yes, I wept as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden gave their acceptance speeches in a Delaware parking lot.
Catharsis
The networks called the race for president at 11:26 this morning, and the city erupted in cheers.
Endless
Meanwhile, we wait for a signal, a 72-point headline or a glossy cable news graphic that cements and formalizes.
Goo
Patchy sleep and fever dreams of narrow margins and outstanding ballots. But it’s not much different from waking life right now.
Razor
A slow-motion drift in Pennsylvania. Refresh. A lot of places are sold out of nicotine gum.
Election
After so many months of isolation, working the polls for seventeen hours reminded me of something important: New Yorkers are beautiful and insane.
Gesture
I was mortified by just how childish I’d become, that I would allow any man to crank my lizard-brain into full swing.
Hour
The end of Daylight Savings Time is my favorite holiday because it creates more night.
Halloween
America hit nearly 100,000 new infections yesterday. Britain declared another lockdown tonight, joining Germany and France.
Devil
My first understanding of how media hysteria works, the way it creates a dark scoreboard with a record begging to be broken.
Wind
“Sometimes I think they are graceful like ballerinas,” he said as we drove. “Other times, I think they are wicked.”
Mirror
It looks like half the country is burning and the other half is freezing.
History
It’s an uneasy sensation, knowing something massively historical is one week away.
Court
I will channel my anger into becoming a morning person this week.
Safe
A friend sent me an article about a helmet you can buy that creates its own microclimate of filtered, customized air.
Up
Eighty-five thousand new cases reported yesterday, another record smashed in a year with too many records broken.
Lights
Returning to the city, I felt a familiar drain on my attention as I drove down the FDR to ditch the rental car.
Ocean
So we listened to the sea, and it gave us much better information.
Fog
We admired the smudged headlights of oncoming traffic, the fleeting sense of driving on some other, better planet.
Landscape
I’m endlessly rewriting, forever shuffling scenes and squinting at the possibilities.
Monsters
Why would my brain invent monsters to terrify itself?
Fatigue
What is the line between fatigue and acceptance?
Monument
I’m always captivated by Louise Nevelson’s monuments built from pieces of furniture painted black.
Noise
I miss being around sounds I can’t control.
Watching
Maybe the question shouldn’t be “Are you still watching?” but “Why?”
Simulation
He stood in front of an airplane flapping his hands and crowing before a sea of red hats. All those red hats like angry sores.
Slate
A place where only the occasional shredded tire or dilapidated cabin would interrupt my fantasy that I’m driving on another planet.
Pictures
While running through the rainy dark, someone stepped in front of me and took my picture for no apparent reason.
Drome
More and more, it feels like trying to critique the sky.
Spare
When you cut something down to the bone, every decision becomes much more dramatic.
Silentium
And I realized this was because of that rarest quality of all these days: silence.
Landfall
Lately I’ve been having a dream about a weatherman grinning in front of a map while talking about a hurricane of bullets.
Creature
The fly felt like a portentous symbol in a year that has reached the caliber of myth.
Kite
I once saw an old woman in a red sundress flying a big yellow kite down a busy street.
Dust
As if I’m doing something wrong just by living in such an embarrassing time.
Extreme
This year has made conspiracy theorists of so many of us to some degree.
Oldies
I find myself craving the days when a 303 sounded like it contained all the mysteries and possibilities of the world.
Positive
Today the president went to the hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Ritual
A mixture of marble and steel that looks like a collision of the past and future.
Training
“You’ll be working at least seventeen hours on Election Day,” he said. “So bring a sandwich.”
Shame
Tonight’s first presidential debate was a fitting spectacle for a degraded nation.
Dots
If I’ve gleaned anything from keeping this glum journal throughout this year, it’s that I keep returning to the language of grief.
Converge
It’s my mind that kills me, the constant looking at my watch until I remember how to forget about time.
Lull
But tonight there’s light rain, our windows are open to the city’s hum, and there’s something dark and slow on the radio.
Homeward
We’re leaving the Ohioan wilderness behind, night-driving back to New York.
Birds
Standing in a superstore parking lot this evening, I watched some geese fly south, and I remembered my parents’ relationship with birds.
Shatter
Three moments in America today that reach beyond my ability with words, striking only the rudimentary language of grief.