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.
Solitude
It seems perverse that a deeper sense of community would come from living someplace remote rather than among the crowds of the city.
Retreat
This season is defined by muted Bergman films projected on the wall in the hour of the wolf.
Scale
I came across moments in the forest that felt ceremonial, the ancient rites of geology operating at scales beyond my comprehension.
Cabin
I stared at the empty cabins along the shore, half-wondering if I was still dreaming about my father.
Sermon
I went to a 700-year-old church on Sunday morning and the service was purely tonal because I don’t understand Finnish. It was the most moving sermon I’ve ever heard.
Climate
The town’s priest also apologized for the warm weather. “This new climate is beyond me,” he said.
Crying
The tears of things. If I squint at this phrase a certain way, I catch a glimpse of how I might better relate to grief.
Screens
I want to commune with nature but I do not know how. Some lizard-brained part of me wants to pull out my telephone and look for new headlines, new information.
Intoxicated
For years I’ve nursed elaborate fantasies of living in a remote cabin or better yet a double-wide in the Mojave desert. But would isolation make me more sensible?
Nostalgia
I remember believing the world would make sense when I grew older. But it never did and it probably won’t.
Consolation
I wonder what the effect will be in the long run, bearing witness to so much handwritten pain. “First let this be consolation,” she says. “Then let it be courage.”
Information
I try to see the world through my father’s eyes, his sense that everything looked like science fiction.
Silence
Today I came across the phrase “algo-seance scene” and realized I’m losing track of not only the future but the present.
Bookends
I try to imagine what I would have thought if someone had described the decade to come while we watched Obama wave from his motorcade.
Ash
“The bottom line is we’re all prisoners of the universe.” This becomes the coda for Jia Zhangke’s Ash is Purest White, where a dangerous romance downshifts into existential longing.
Cathedral
Now begins the season of Arvo Pärt, of private hymns and trees that look like old gentlemen.