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.
Need
Sometimes my mind lands on a jittery thought: screens have become our reality and the physical world simply exists to serve their needs.
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.
Liability
It’s a strange kind of whiplash, living in a society that’s somehow becoming more sensitive and cruel at the same time.
Saints
Tonight I’m going to play Funkadelic on repeat, dim the lights, make bad coffee, and write some purple prose.
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.
Otherwhere
This morning I was pacing our flat, searching for something I could not find. She told me it was probably “otherwhere.”
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.
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.
Paranoia
Men with amplifiers delivered gnostic interpretations of the facial expressions of various health officials.
Presence
Tonight I came across Tolstoy’s three questions, and they feel especially pressing in these overloaded and disorienting days.
Oblivious
My interest in triangulating art, faith, and the day’s events feels increasingly toothless, maybe even oblivious.
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.
Curfew
I say hello to an old man with a power drill and a bucket of screws. Everything’s coming so fast and ugly this year.
Desecration
A news anchor said, “We are descending into something that is not the United States of America tonight.” I’m not sure if this is true.
Vacant
The White House went dark tonight in response to the protests across the street and spreading throughout the nation.
Dissonance
The presence of the police introduces the prospect of violence like a promise, and that promise came true by nightfall.
Pain
A man stood before the crowd of reporters, his eyes filled with pain and conviction.
Haze
When I flipped on the news around midnight, my concerns about running, writing, teaching, and everything else felt stupid and indulgent.
Accretion
The amount of incense smoke that darkens a temple’s ceiling demonstrates the popularity of that particular god.
Market
I’m fantasizing about a sprawling network of night markets and bazaars that reclaim the streets and devour the cars.
Memorial
After sixteen hours of talk radio, interstate winds, and screaming into metal boxes for food, my grip on the world grew slippery.
Bell
Riffling through my small box of family memories, I came across a note written in an unfamiliar hand.
Recursion
Thinking about the blurry line between media consumption and my soul.
Time
Time is a concept. Time is a flat circle. Clocks only measure other clocks.
Babble
Each morning I wake to the imaginary babble of fully-formed news reports and television clips while skating across sleep.
Cracks
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.
Dark
I remember watching the darkness in my bedroom when I was small, hypnotized by grey-pink flecks while I waited for sleep.
Weird
Maybe we’ll have a vaccine soon. Maybe the president will poison himself. Things can go either way these days.
Genre
The Chinese takeout spots along First Avenue have pulled up their metal shutters. The florist is open.
Symbols
We might remember crouching on the sidewalk, frantically trying to gather the teeth falling from our mouths—not the circumstances that led us there.
Grass
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.
Mono
An otherworldly landscape of alkaline and soda towers surrounded flat waters without a single ripple.
Remember
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.
Scramble
Someone down the hall has been practicing “New York, New York” on their piano for the past hour.
Next
The triggers for fear are largely universal: loud noises, fast-moving objects, and the sudden loss of orientation. The loss of orientation has been sudden this year.
Seeds
I find solace in these instructions from Epictetus: do not say something is lost, only that it is returned.
Season
Time feels like an increasingly fictional concept as these weeks and months bleed into one very long day.
Opera
“I will create a world from the past,” she said, and she painted an audience on the walls and danced for them every Saturday night.
Mystery
“Everything’s a mystery and I’m just another small part of it,” said a woman at a gas station in Barstow.
Horizon
It’s becoming a nightly habit: scrolling through desert scenery while fantasizing about horizons, speed, and possibilities.
Options
People keep talking about a return to “normal,” as if there’s such a thing.
Coherence
My grandmother was tradition personified, a west side Polish Catholic who served Saturday night dinners of kielbasa and fried smelt.
Scold
There are advertisements on street corners and bus stops for events that will never occur.
Saturday
I wonder if I’ll ever get accustomed to the uneasy combination of sunshine and masks, as if we’re afraid of a perfect spring day.
Headlights
You can never see further than your headlights—an old slice of trucker philosophy that makes more sense with each passing year.
Outline
I’m beginning to understand why so many novels and television shows are set in the past.
Compound
Night walk to the corner bodega and I nearly forgot to wear my bandana.
Smile
The smile is the expression that can be seen from farthest away.
Diner
Tonight I miss sitting in diners and listening to people murmur and jive, scraping their forks and stirring their coffee.
Glum
Maybe I should work on my resume. Instead, I press on with reading The Plague, dropping the book every few pages to marvel at its resonance.