09082023

Work has been going really well. Not only has the work itself been getting done, but I feel a great sense of fulfillment getting it done, even on days like this, when the actual measurable progress feels so slight. It’s the strangest thing; as if suddenly, the long fog that’s so thoroughly eclipsed the past two years of my life cleared away with such abruptness that I find myself astonished to even recall it was ever there. I’m so terribly happy that I was there to share in its witness, but I think it’s over. No one’s coming back, I’m sure of it now, and I can no longer be moved to leave. The city’s emptied out, the nights are getting cooler, the summer will soon draw to a close. Things will never be like the way they were again. I have to find my place in all this again, and I think my place is right here. I’m plummeting through my memories. I know I shouldn’t have done it but the other day I found myself on the L and by the time it’d passed by 1st I’d already stepped out into the evening, careening, against my better desires, the trees far greener than I remembered and the light warmer, and by the bitter brine waters I sat down and from deep within my lungs I heaved forth what felt like the last of the winter, all winter, pooling across the parkway. It catches up to you, I guess. I don’t think people change anymore so much as they just seem to fall apart, unravel, first at the atomic level, and then in whole systems and tectonics. No one seems to take circumstance seriously until it’s the only thing they’ve got left to talk about. I felt it again tonight for the first time in a long time, you know, the real thing, lying there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what the night breeze is like right now in Austin. It wasn’t fear, or heartache, or longing, or even sadness, really. Just plain loneliness. Ah, man.