I swear I read somewhere that your uncoiled intestines can reach the moon.

The ancient Greeks believed dreams enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods.

We stood by the window and watched the howling dark, even though this isn’t what you should do in a tornado.

I’ve been trying to loosen up: fast collages, illegible notes in the middle of the night, and the smudges of a left-hander.

A lone helicopter crossed the sky. The temperature dropped. Dogs barked. Birds stopped chirping.

There is beauty in repetition, the steady accretion that comes with committing to one thing day after day.

I share this because I'm fascinated by the totems and rituals of others.

As I left New York City, the driver played Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” several times and never said a word.

An inauspicious flight number. The sound of the door closing. The metal roar of the engines.

I’m learning to find pleasure in the ultramundane and routine.

At first, I did not want to leave Vegas. Not so soon.

Polar horror is one of my favorite genres.

Eleven years sober and another year older.

I loathe these brutal nerves of mine.

I have a knack for taking the longest, most taxing route to common knowledge.

I loathe the moments when the suffering of others reminds me to be grateful.

There will always be demands and obligations, but they do not need me before eleven o’clock.

We’re deep into the 21st century, yet I still find myself waiting for the future to begin.

The Joshua tree was named by Mormons who thought they saw their prophet pointing to the promised land.

"Virga" is the name for precipitation that does not reach the ground.

Every year I feel a little more vertiginous.

Last night I stayed up late and stitched together my favorite pieces of the Mojave.

Here I am at last, living in the landscape I’ve craved since the first time I drove across the country.

Seven years ago, we debated how the world would end.

Why does the wind leave us feeling so exhausted and harassed?

Woke up the other day and watched a billionaire’s rocket explode.

And it was about the goddamned work of art in the goddamned age of mechanical reproduction, of all things.

She said we were looking at the Bonanza King Formation, which sounds like a doomed band from the 1970s.

I had time to kill at the Las Vegas airport, where it feels like being returned to a pleasant memory of 1987.

The desert silence baffles my Midwestern mind.

A delightful sense of slippage occurs when you can’t decide if something is brilliant or awful.

If starvation was on the table, would you rather eat your own finger or a stranger's?

I had no idea there was so much weather in the desert.

Death Valley is a place where ten thousand acres of scenery can easily go missing.

We need to make robots and zombies fun again

It’s cold in Vegas, and strange material is falling from the sky.

Yesterday C. and I took a break from our screens and drove into the Valley of Fire.

I pondered the idea of a Vegas-themed casino until I gave myself a headache.

These are days of shooting down unidentifiable objects in the sky.

We hit the brakes and followed a dusty road past a gigantic fiberglass ice cream sundae.

After all these years, how well do I know her taste? How well does she know mine?

Messiness will be a crucial tool in the footrace against artificial intelligence.

Time and space get wobbly in the desert. I think I’m puttering along, but the speedometer says 98.

Years ago, an old man in a church basement said, "Stick around long enough, and this becomes a life spent stepping over dead bodies."

A few hours later, we wandered into the desert and touched some cacti.

The desert is littered with bizarre facts, and I often think I invented them, like a fragment from a dream or a misremembered film.

Here in Las Vegas, we’re catching the faintest edge of a weather event that sounds like something from a fantasy novel.

Repetition amplifies humor and pleasure.

We drove home on an empty parkway, feeling futuristic while fireworks burst alongside our car.

This year, release dates be damned. Here’s the music that delivered an unexpected thrill while motoring through the desert.

The unique scent of desert rain has a scientific name derived from the Greek words for stone and the blood of the gods.

Each time I step outside, I feel like I’m on a new planet, and I wonder if I will ever tire of the desert.

As I begin to orient myself in Vegas, I know I’m edging too close to the Strip when the plasma donation centers appear.

Due to some 19th-century railroad logic, Nevada is the only non-coastal state in the Pacific Time Zone.

I loaded a 15-foot U-Haul with our furniture and pointed it southwest.

I enjoyed driving along smooth parkways to a fast food joint that served spicy Korean pork in a cup.

Most Christian churches are located along an east-west axis, with the entrance to the west and the altar to the east.

The Pacific Time Zone is turning me into a morning person, and I do not like it.

We tooled around the city's perimeter, marveling at its sharp edges.

We made good time and hit Vegas a night earlier than scheduled.

When I woke up this morning, I struggled to remember the state I was in.

We woke to the melancholic stillness of a holiday morning somewhere in the middle of America. Even the International House of Pancakes was closed.

The billboards we passed felt like chapters from one big story: automatic weapon rentals, bulk ammo, Jesus Christ, and lawyers.

The road trip kicks off tomorrow, and my packing has been delayed by a much more critical matter: putting together a road trip playlist.

It’s one of those days when it feels like the world’s got its hands in my pockets.

It’s like some mythical creature from the past has wandered into the middle of a twelve-land expressway.

We convinced ourselves our tweets were important, newsworthy, career-making, or, god forbid, agents for social change, and it made us crazy.

My bedtime programming hums with the static of insomnia.

A shift in the light on the running trail. An unexpected connection on page 172.

William Gibson has nothing on the Catholics.

I often imagine my writing sessions should be quiet and humble, like those stern Dutch paintings of solitary women making lace in solemn bands of light.

I still have vivid dreams that my mother is still alive; I find her sitting at a kitchen table in a tiny house by the sea, living under an assumed name.

Combing through eighteen years of digital cruft has led me down an unexpectedly emotional walk down memory lane.

All the leaves are on the ground now, and the bare trees reveal new scenery.

If someone behaves atrociously, we wonder how they sleep at night.

Perhaps it becomes self-fulfilling to imagine the future as stern and forbidding.

We spent a fair chunk of the ride debating whether laws were necessary.

Maybe they’ll wind up on the evening news someday.

Changing the clocks should be the year's biggest celebration with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving.

I’d like to live in a world of apologetic gods and talking satellites.

These summery November days echo my sense of losing the rhythm, of being out of time.

And my mind turns gullible in the small hours, ready to believe anything.

The leaves have fallen, and we crunched over them while dressed for spring.

C. and I celebrated her birthday at the Largest Korean Sauna in North America.

I took an afternoon drive through Indiana the other day, and it was clear that America is not doing well.

I ran from my screen like someone in a zombie movie.

She hummed with the nervy energy of a talented yet unrecognized mind.

I keep this one in my wallet.

Yesterday in twenty-first-century America, I idled behind a jeep with an InfoWars license plate.

I stood in line at the Gas ‘n Go behind a man with a pistol tucked into the elastic waistband of his sweatpants.

The real heroes of this blessed land are the short-order cooks at Chinese takeout joints who manipulate fire, oil, and steel like gods.

I have zero interest in football, which can make it challenging to move through American life.

Service plazas are modern works of art where I can eat slick food next to twelve lanes of humming traffic, lording over a glittering river of steel and glass.

Hill House, famously not sane, bothers the soul because Jackson describes the perception of horror, not the horror itself.

I've been stuck on the last 20% of a story I'm writing about a haunted frequency, so I went to the museum to shake some ideas loose.

The first thing I do with a new notebook is write something stupid and messy on the first page.

Maybe I was primed for horror because I woke before dawn on a Sunday morning.

This morning I fed a robot a few sentences from the novel I'm writing, and it generated some startlingly accurate pictures.

I sneeze whenever I glance at the sun, which I’ve always taken as proof I am a night owl.

The Rockies appeared through the gloom, slow beasts moving across the continent at the speed of time.

“Science shouldn’t explain everything,” she told me.

Maybe you’ve heard the stories, the baroque theories on late-night radio or the soliloquies of sunburnt men who mutter at the traffic.

A heat dome has settled over the Middle West, the moon was extra bright last night, and I saw a rainbow in the parking lot yesterday.

Mostly sunny, the heat is building, and there’s a strawberry supermoon. Wall Street fell into a bear market today, and last year’s attempted

Tornado sirens rang the other day while I played mahjong with the in-laws. The sun went down at 9:02pm, the humidity is building, and

Memorial Day in Ohio. Clear skies, highs near 90, and the sun went down at 8:54pm. The moon is brand new, and my computer

The Running Man (1987) is weird comfort food. I find myself craving every now and then, like a favorite meal. I first saw it when

The sun went down at 8:49pm, the moon is in its last quarter, and tonight I'm wondering if the health of a society can be pegged to the nerves of its motorists.

I’ve stopped doing business with streaming music services. The algorithm has transformed music into an endless churn without sense-memory, and the idea of renting

A floppy-eared dog gnawed a bone while a clown smiled above the bed.

My map is upside down, inscrutable, and probably for a different planet.

I put together a soundtrack to accompany the exhibition of Candy Chang’s Before I Die project at Wonderspaces. Built from a bass tone, some

The Night of the Hunter opens with the disembodied heads of five children floating in the cosmos and gets weirder from there.

My first memory of God: I was five or six years old and feverishly rubbing a white crayon into a dark blue piece of construction paper.

They look less and less like recognizable humans, these billionaires buying everything we care about: books and newspapers, transportation and the moon. And now Twitter.

I’m always in a heavy state whenever I see Greenland, usually red-eyed and emotionally shredded.

Mostly cloudy skies with a high near seventy degrees while C. and I sat in the National Gallery, awaiting the results of our mandatory Covid

York to Brighton. Sunny skies, highs in the low sixties, and the sun went down around eight o’clock. I fell hard for this seaside

Bath to York. Drizzle and highs near sixty. The sun goes down at eight o’clock, and there’s a waxing gibbous moon. We rolled

London to Bath. Mostly sunny skies and highs in the upper fifties. The sun goes down at 7:57pm.  As we pulled out of Paddington

One of those fine afternoons when you wander into a dusty bookstore in an unfamiliar city and come across a book by a writer you

I still find myself stopping in the street, stunned by how low the clouds hang on this island.

These have been long days of hanging vinyl and caressing air bubbles with a squeegee as C. and I finished installing a situation in the

London. A chilly Saturday with fast-moving clouds and confusing bursts of snow while the sun shines. The sun goes down at 7:35pm. On the

Clear skies and a high near sixty degrees. The sun goes down at 6:11pm, the moon is full, and I can’t stop thinking

London. A damp weekend of clouds and mist. The sun goes down at 5:51pm and the moon is waxing. Yesterday I saw the birthplace

The photograph of my mom refuses to leave the auditorium. We jiggle the cords, but she’s still there, twenty feet tall and gazing at the water.

A sunny Wednesday morning with highs in the 50s, the sun goes down at 5:30pm, and I’m recovering from an exhibition of Francis

London. Another day of clouds and drizzle punctuated by a few moments of sunshine—an event so rare that it feels like a cosmic event

Damp streets, a stiff breeze, and Bertrand Russell comes to mind: “Eternal objects can be conceived as God’s thoughts. Hence Plato’s doctrine that

Record-breaking wind swept across England yesterday, closing bridges, train lines, and attractions. The nation tuned in to watch a livestream of airplanes struggling to land

I never know how seriously to take anything anymore.

I keep colliding with people in the streets and shops. I just can't pick up the rhythm here.

God, the indignity of getting yelled at while standing in your socks. Getting dressed down because you put your bag in a bin or you

Cloudy skies with a high near fifty degrees. The snow is melting quickly, leaving behind grey-black slush and patches of dead grass: a scene like

Snow-blasted skies and temperatures around zero. The sun goes down at 5:49pm. I thought about Haruki Murakami while C. and I wandered through hotel

Yesterday C. surprised me with a birthday trip into the mountains, and I spent most of the flight gazing out the window, wondering how I

Grey skies and light flurries with dangerously cold temperatures on the way. The sun sets at 5:45pm, and there’s a waning crescent moon.

Last night I watched Hiroshima, Mon Amour, a film I hadn’t seen since my days in college. I remember it filling me with a

Ohio. A snowy Sunday afternoon with temperatures dropping into the teens and an inch or two of accumulation. The sun sets at 5:40pm and

While explaining myself to the grumpy clerk behind the glass, I realized I had no idea where I legally lived.

Ohio. Clear skies with highs in the mid-thirties, sunset at 5:34pm, and it finally snowed last night. Not a lot of snow, but enough

A grey Sunday with the possibility of snow. They’re calling it a Saskatchewan Screamer, this weather system moving northeast across the Tennessee Valley. In

Cloudy skies, still no snow, and a high of 43 degrees.  There’s an old Roman maxim that fear gave birth to the gods. The

Clear skies without any snow, temps in the low forties, and the sun went down at 5:28pm. There’s a waxing gibbous moon and

Another frigid and atmospherically pointless day without any snow. The sun goes down at 5:27pm. My brand new cassette tape arrived. It cost me

Wind chills in the single digits and still no snow. The sun sets at 5:27pm tonight. It took some time to humble myself and

I borrowed the internet of a fast-fashion shop that closed at noon because too many of its workers had the plague.

I woke up wondering if I would live my life any differently if I measured my age in days or hours instead of years.

Sunset at 5:23pm with temperatures deep below freezing. At a meeting in a church basement, I admired a large wooden cross before a bank

Temps in the teens and a light coating of snow, the first I’ve seen this season. Hopefully, there will be more. Tonight the sun

Forty degrees with gusty winds. The sun goes down at 5:21pm tonight. I’ve been spending my mornings at the local library, a dramatic

Ohio. Tonight the sun sets at 5:20pm, and I’m still thinking about my soul. Goodness. What does it mean to be a good

How do you reckon with the internet when writing a story that takes place in the present day or near future? Writing about online living

Sunset: 5:19pm. A cloudy day with highs in the low 40s and a few beautiful minutes of blustery snow. I’m reading Bring Up

The first day of the year, and there’s a new supermoon tonight. Maybe this is auspicious. I’d like to believe in some kind

The end of another year, and exhaustion hangs heavy like a fog.

Sunset: 5:14pm. The blurry days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve stand outside of time. These long nights are tailor-made for dusting off

A warm and rainy Christmas in Ohio. Highs in the mid-60s and the sun will set at 5:11pm. It felt like somebody else’s

Sunrise at 7:51am with lows in the teens and highs in the forties. Omicron is now the dominant variant in America and Joan Didion

After a week of schlepping and haggling, C. and I emptied our flat, loaded our belongings, and pointed a rental truck west. As we bounced

Two days left in New York City. Highs in the fifties and the sun went down at 4:29pm—one more minute of daylight. Tonight

Four days left in New York City. Sunset: 4:28pm with highs around 50, and the weather has been distressingly warm while we put our

Sunset: 4:27pm. Last night I watched C. paint, and she moved so quick and loose, belonging entirely to the moment as she swirled her

New York City. Sunset: 4:27pm. Cloudy skies and drizzle with temperatures in the thirties. Russia might invade Ukraine. The latest variant of the virus

Sunset at 4:28pm with clear skies and lows in the thirties. Last night I was sitting in a church basement when someone’s phone

Sunset at 4:28pm, and a new supermoon is on its way. In two weeks, C. and I will load up a truck, stash our

Sunset: 4:29pm. Cloudy skies and temperatures holding steady in the forties. The United States detected its first case of the Omicron variant today. Christ,

Sunset: 4:35pm. A bright springlike day with a high of 70 degrees and lows in the fifties. Tonight the moon is full. This morning

I was running the other night, heaving and hauling myself across 85th Street, when something clicked. I’d been ruminating about the novel I’ve

There was a flurry of thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch on this November afternoon. Then the sky turned black and exploded with summer rain.

New York City. Sunset 4:43pm. Another bright spring day in November with a high near 70 degrees. Last night, I finished one of Stephen

Sunset: 4:44pm. A high in the 50s and a low of 39 degrees. Last night the clocks fell back an hour, and it’s

Sunset: 5:47pm. Sunny with a high of 53 and lows in the upper thirties. There’s a new supermoon tonight, which means the moon

Sunset: 5:51pm. Partly cloudy in New York with a high of 60 degrees and lows dipping into the 40s at last. Now begins my

Sunset: 5:52pm. A waning crescent moon on Halloween with a high of 64 degrees. I’m back in New York City, where everything is

Twentynine Palms. Sunset: 6:00pm. Sunny with a high of 80 degrees and lows in the forties. The Mojave desert is my favorite place on

Sunny with a high of 80 degrees and a low of 48. A slow day in the desert was spent watching the shadows of the

Mojave desert. Sunset: 6:03pm. There’s a full moon tonight, a hunter’s moon. Like a scene from a noir film, C. and I

The sun went down at 5:48pm, the high was 83 degrees, and the moon is nearly full. This morning C. and I drove through

Moon: waxing gibbous, almost full. A high of 68 degrees and clouds, dust, and a spatter of rain. Scrolled past a Vegas tableau of an

Sunset: 6:01pm. Shocking skies with a high of 83 and a low of 50 degrees. C. and I headed straight to Chinatown for ridiculously

Night flight to Vegas. First proper trip in twenty-two months and my fear of flying has not improved. We crossed a line of thunderstorms along

Maybe it's limbic and hardwired, this desire to see the divine rather than hear or touch.

Sunset: 6:16pm. Moon: Waxing gibbous. A high of 77 degrees because there’s no such thing as seasons anymore. During my morning meditation, my

There are over a thousand responses from visitors now, far more than we anticipated at this point.

New York City. Sunset: 6:20pm. A late spring day in October with a high of 72 degrees. Spent the afternoon meeting people around the

Sunset: 6:20pm. A first-quarter moon. A high of 72 and another humid night that feels like the wrong season. Last night I dreamt that

A drizzly Sunday with a high of 66 and thousand-percent humidity. The clean winds of autumn have yet to arrive. I’d like to read

Sunset: 6:24pm. Moon: Waxing crescent. Cloudy with a high of 66 degrees and a low of 57. Finally, a semi-autumnal day with proper gloom.

New York City. Sunset: 6:26pm. A waxing crescent moon. Sunny skies and a high of 75 degrees. The weather is too chipper. I crave

Sunset: 6:27pm. Partly sunny and high of 75 degrees. It’s much too warm for October. Today I was introduced to the concept of

New York City. Sunset: 6:29pm. Cloudy with 76% humidity and a high of 70, a seasonless day that felt as if it could be

New York City. Sunset: 6:30pm. A new moon. Heavy clouds and damp air, a high of 66 and a low of 57 degrees. My

New York City. Sunset: 6:32pm. A damp Monday with dull grey air, and a waning crescent moon. High of 72, light drizzle, and a

New York City. Sunset: 6:34pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Weather: Mostly cloudy and 77 degrees with steadily increasing humidity and a low of 59. It’

Sunset: 6:35pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Weather: Mostly sunny with a high of 75, partly cloudy tonight with a low of 54 degrees and a

Sunset: 6:37pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Sunny and clear with a high of 66 and a low of 48. A well-earned autumn is finally here

The only way I can understand these uneasy days is to write about them. But finding my own thoughts has felt difficult lately. It seems

Six years later, I have 88,000 words about an elderly truck driver, a frightened voice on the radio, and a very loud god. It’

Fireworks showered the nation last night, in part to commemorate the end of masking and distancing. This is cause for celebration, no question. But it

One of my favorite American moments: the gleaming pumps of the Vince Lombardi Service Area in New Jersey, the last service plaza before entering the

America felt busy and extra-bright as we drove across Florida, wondering if we might be hit by the debris of a falling Chinese rocket. We

Mahjong is my favorite game. Everything is aestheticized: the clack of the tiles, the building of walls, and the language of seasons, flowers, and pork

First proper road trip in nearly two years. One thousand miles from Ohio to Florida for a three-day game of mahjong with the in-laws. I’

Federico Fellini’s 8½ is a head-scraping, memory-swirled portrait of the judgment and shame that comes with creative effort. Tonight it speaks heavy to my

In Steve Erickson’s Shadowbahn, the Twin Towers reappear in South Dakota, wholly intact and without explanation.

A double feature. First up, Nightcrawler. Dan Gilroy’s 2014 neo-noir follows a man without conscience who prowls the Los Angeles night, hunting for footage

A late April snowstorm blew through Ohio last night, quick and heavy, and the sudden shock of snow was a fine addition to my hallucinations

In Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, a woman disappears on a rocky island. Her wealthy friends search for her until it begins to rain. They

One thing I hate about my writing is that it often feels bunchy and tight. I want to recover a sense of play, so I’

I’m attempting to read Gustav Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, his 1874 depiction of the saint’s struggle with vice and distraction

The ancient Greeks believed God was a geometer, but I think Agnes Martin was closer to the mark.

On the first day of this year, I sat in the pews of a medieval cathedral in Turku, Finland, and tried to pray, which is

On the first day of this year, I sat in the pews of a medieval cathedral in Turku, Finland, and tried to pray, which is

It’s like a new form of weather, this atmosphere of everyone waiting for this wretched year to end. Although conditions won’t be much

I remember the hope I felt this time last year, my naive faith that a foolish and frightening decade was drawing to a close and

Without new faces or scenes to cement memories, a rubbery sense of time has defined most of 2020. These final days of the year especially

Two years ago tonight in New York City, a strange blue light filled the sky. We stood at our windows, spellbound by an eerie neon

But Christ, who wants to remember this year, let alone provide the soundtrack?

C. and I spent the evening assembling a jigsaw puzzle of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most vexing images

I woke before dawn on Christmas like a little kid, pop-eyed with excitement because C. and I were exchanging presents, something we haven’t done

My first concept of god came from It’s a Wonderful Life. I was four or maybe five years old, and I remember sitting on

My memories tend to pile up around the holidays, fogging my thoughts with the textures of Christmas seasons from the past. Today I’m in

A billionaire was on television this morning, and he’s concerned about our social fabric. He told us not to buy Christmas presents this year;

Heavy rain beats against the windows. It’s the longest night of the year, one of my favorite moments. I love these long nights when

I often think about an article I read late one night, a study that suggested we might be aware of our own deaths. That consciousness

Lately I’ve been wondering what my brains would be like if I grew up without a television. Would my reference points for the world

We’ve entered a season of revised death projections and hospital bed trackers. Meanwhile, our elected officials debate whether to give Americans six hundred dollars

So much thinking about death these days, yet I rarely think about my own. Maybe it’s the silence in this room tonight or a

Light snow today in Ohio, and a nor’easter is moving up the Eastern Seaboard, promising as much as two feet in some areas. I

Nowadays we hide our dead in antiseptic rooms but not too long ago, we displayed their bodies in our homes. Sometimes we covered the mirrors,

A dull grey Monday here in Ohio, thirty-eight degrees with a sky like a stone. The first vaccinations were administered today as the American death

The vaccine is coming. This weekend was filled with images of pharmaceutical workers in lab coats and helmets packing vials into cold-storage units. We saw

I look forward to midnight when the day’s insults and stresses recede into their proper places. I feel more present in the world at

Three thousand Americans are dying each day from the coronavirus, and two hundred thousand more are infected. The numbers numb. Sometimes I worry I’ll

Three years ago on a Saturday night in rural Pennsylvania, I saw a vision of the future that I cannot shake. I visited an elaborate

Each time I visit the museum, I seek out this thousand-year-old ceramic statue. Known as an arhat, or protector of Buddhism, he sits on a

Electric signs on the highway flashed messages telling us to stay home and stop the spread. Small cars zipped past me tonight as I drove

Even when I put my telephone in a drawer, I am acutely and sometimes painfully aware of its absence. I catch myself patting down my

Five years ago this week, my father was released from the hospital with a new lung, and we drove home from Wisconsin to New Orleans.

Monoliths have been appearing and disappearing in Utah, Romania, California, and the United Kingdom. But there is no mystery or wonder; nearly every event these

I’m reading P.D. James’s Children of Men, and the novel is a remarkably different animal from the film, particularly in how it

Nearly three thousand deaths from the virus yesterday while we wait for a vaccine and a new president to appear. Questions have emerged about whether

Shortly before he died, I took my father to the museum. I watched him drag his oxygen tank through curtains of plastic string that dangled

The first day of the last month of this nightly journal, and I’m thinking about the value of this exercise. Back in January, I’

Light snowfall here in Ohio, and the weather report was mixed with grim coronavirus forecasts. I want to believe things are moving in a better

The first days of the holiday season often remind me that I don’t have the type of family that appears in commercials and television

C. and I bought an artificial Christmas tree today, another unexpected development in 2020. We haven’t celebrated the holiday in years. This wasn’t

Tonight an old friend in New Orleans reminded me that even if I’m wrestling with the idea of faith, I’m in conversation with

Thanksgiving. Tonight I am grateful because I have a safe place to sleep, food to eat, and the freedom to make my own decisions. Sometimes

Hunkered down somewhere in Ohio, and there’s not much to do except finish my book. I’ve made a commitment to wrap it up

This morning my meditation tape asked me if there’s an observer or just the act of observing. I have no idea what to do

It’s been a long year of predictions: infection rates, election outcomes, the future of cities, and the nature of work. This year has also

Today we packed up a rental car and drove to Ohio to hide from the world this winter. We’re going to hunker down and

Last night I dreamt about a world where we were required to wear plastic bags over our heads. A dead man sat in the backseat

These have been days of long walks through the city with friends before the weather forces us indoors. Our conversations loop and wander, fueled by

My mom would have turned 68 today. I never know how to mark this day. Growing older means that more and more days on the

Cold today, wind chill in the twenties. I’m getting crotchety. I increasingly find myself squinting at the world and wondering if maybe dignity disappeared

The president still refuses to concede the election; he’s firing his critics as well as the few remaining officials who tell the truth. An

This morning I wandered through the museum with reverberated gloom in my headphones. I wanted to visit my favorite statues and paintings before things begin

Or take the word disaster, the inversion of astro, a term that means a negative star, a kink in the heavens that leads to catastrophe.

The Pope is praying for our relationship with technology. “Let us pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind,” he

We knew it was coming. They’ve been telling us for months, and now it’s here: a dark winter as infections explode across the

I sympathize with the sleeping figure in Valentin de Boulogne’s Dream of Saint Joseph, a portrait of a weary man unaware of the angel

A peculiar stretch of November summer has faded into grey skies and rain. My mind is fragmented tonight, flicking around the room and batting at

The philosopher Herbert Spencer believed the first gods appeared in our dreams. These visions gradually became ghosts that haunted our stories. After all, the word

Got my first coronavirus test today. Figured it would be a good idea after spending seventeen hours in a middle school gym on Election Day,

After the election results were announced yesterday, a burst of spontaneous cheers gathered steam until people were dancing in the streets, celebrating in a way

The networks called the race for president at 11:26 this morning, and the city erupted in cheers. Horns honked, voices hollered, and pots banged.

An unusually warm and sunny day in November, seventy degrees with a light wind. And we will have a new president after the counting is

Patchy sleep and fever dreams about narrow margins and outstanding ballots. But the line between sleep and waking life feels awfully thin this week. Reporters

Last night a friend gave us a package of red-white-and-blue Oreos that were produced for the Olympic Games that did not happen this summer. Now

After so many months of isolation, working the polls for seventeen hours reminded me of something important: New Yorkers are beautiful and insane. Through the

One more day until the election. My head is garbled with stories about yard signs booby-trapped with razor blades and news that the White House

We stopped the clocks for an hour last night, and even though we do this every autumn without much fanfare, it still feels like a

I’ve never enjoyed Halloween because it reminds me that I’m not very fun. Maybe it’s my childhood memories of fake cobwebs, canned

It sneaks up softly, then twists sharply: the realization that it’s going to be another sleepless night. There’s a rhythm to it. First,

A friend in New Orleans said the power might be out for several days after last night’s hurricane, the fifth to hit Louisiana this

Today the White House declared victory over the coronavirus while infection rates continue to soar and people suffer. But this is the spirit of our

While puttering in the kitchen, I heard the television say that voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania hold an unprecedented amount of power in human history

A medieval judge was confirmed to the Supreme Court tonight, sealing this country’s fate for years unless the Democrats can find some spine. The

A friend sent me an article about a helmet you can buy that creates its own microclimate of filtered, customized air. It inspired me to

Eighty-five thousand new cases reported in America yesterday, another record smashed in a year with too many records broken. Here in New York, people are

Returning to the city, I felt a familiar drain on my attention as I drove down the FDR to ditch the rental car. I wasn’

I surprised C. with a trip to the sea for her birthday. This morning I woke before dawn to watch the sun rise over the

We took a night drive through heavy fog, aiming toward the ocean. Reverberated guitars washed across the dashboard while we admired the smudged headlights of

I’ve been thinking about the connective tissue between the fragments of writing I’ve generated over the years. How to stitch everything together in

I had a dream about frightening beasts called Fahrenhogs. They were spiky piggish creatures that loped across the edges of my dream on two legs

Infections are increasing across America and Europe. They’re talking about “pandemic fatigue.” The signs at the park that instruct us to keep six feet

Saturday afternoon at the museum. 25% capacity, masks, and decals on the floor reminded us to keep our distance.

As I walked past a shuttered café this afternoon, I realized how much I miss writing in public. There’s an interesting shift between writing

Last night I had a dream that I found my father in a parking garage. I hid behind a car and watched him from a

Day three of the confirmation hearings of another retrograde Supreme Court justice, and it’s a simulation of government. Nobody will deliberate. Nobody will listen.

I’m fantasizing about the desert again.

October weather at last. A blustery evening, damp and grey. Maybe it’s the remnants of a tropical storm. While running through the rainy dark,

“The television screen has become the retina of the mind’s eye,” says Professor O’Blivion in Videodrome. “Therefore, the television is part of the

Sometimes designing a website can veer into unexpectedly existential terrain. Who am I? And what do I believe? That’s what happened today when C.

There were no foiled plots today, no shocking revelations or newly infected politicians or footage of horrifying violence. Just another hurricane in the Gulf and

Authorities charged thirteen men with plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Another hurricane is bearing down on the Louisiana coast. It will be the

A fly sat atop Mike Pence’s head for two minutes and three seconds during the vice presidential debate. This headline appeared in the New

I woke from a dream where I was frantically searching for the unsubscribe and unfollow buttons while a giant mouth kept telling me the news.

My father would have turned 72 today. He taught me about grace during the year we spent together, waiting for a lung. Sometimes we snuck

The president’s condition remains a mystery. There he is, waving at his fans from the backseat of a bulletproof Chevrolet Suburban. Now he’s

Some enchanted evening. Room full of roses. How high the moon. For some reason it broke my heart, watching an elderly man slowly type the

Today the president went to the hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. Three days ago, he stood on a debate stage and mocked his

C. and I returned to the Met this afternoon. It’s my favorite activity in the world: wandering the halls of a museum with her

Heavy rain fell last night, and it felt like a much-needed shower after the degradation of the first presidential debate. Today was my training session

Tonight’s presidential debate was a fitting spectacle for a degraded nation. After ten minutes, C. left the room and shut the door because she’

They’re talking about new spikes in Brooklyn and Queens. They’re talking about the president’s taxes, how he grifted, dodged, and only paid

Ran five miles for the first time in weeks and it was ugly. I can deal with the new creaks and pains; it’s my

Back in New York. After six weeks away, I thought the city would feel different when I returned, that I’d feel overwhelmed or awed

We’re leaving the Ohioan wilderness behind, night-driving back to New York. It’s been a fruitful time. Found a solid morning-writing groove and added

As I stood in a superstore parking lot before leaving Ohio, I watched some geese fly south and remembered my parents’ relationship with birds. My

Three moments in America today that reach beyond my ability with words, striking only the rudimentary language of grief: Six months ago, three white cops

Autumn equinox and the light matches the dark. We’re standing on the verge of an uneasy fall, unsure just how high the curve will

The Lake Forest Oasis Service Plaza on Interstate 94 is one of my favorite moments in America. It’s a modern marvel where you can

Last bonfire before we return to the city. I’m going to miss how the darkness presses closer out here, erasing the rest of the

Insects buzz in the trees like bad reception, but the nights are finally cooler and crisping up.

Looking at the state of the world today, perhaps we need more architectural details designed to scare away demons. They’ve run out of names

Five thousand years ago we began outsourcing prayer and devotion to statues that would worship on our behalf. Human nature hasn’t really changed, and

Today the president shared a fake video of his opponent playing “Fuck the Police” from his telephone. This seems like a sentence that should be

Tried to write a better blurb about myself that explains who I am and what I do. Thought I’d bang it out in a

Sometimes I fall asleep thinking about the ancient atomists, lulled by the image of a world composed of particles endlessly falling like a curtain of

Heavy rain last night, and it seeped into my dreams. I had another dream about running through a flooded parking structure, looking for everyone I’

After five weeks in Ohio, the bright lights and sheer acreage of its suburban supermarkets still enthrall me. The aisles are so wide you can

September 11. Nineteen years ago but it still feels like it was just the other day. Its cascades have reshaped the world, from a hallucinatory

The first leaves are falling, and I’m eager for early dusk and deeper nights. Last night I dreamt of hammerhead sharks. I was swimming

California’s wildfires have dimmed the sun, transforming San Francisco’s skies into a Blade Runner scene, a never-ending twilight. They’re calling it a

The first Christian monks believed dirt was proof of faith. They walked around caked in mud with lice in their hair, which they called the

Labor Day. Tornado sirens rang for an hour here in southeastern Ohio. The sky dimmed, the temperature crashed, and leaves boiled in the trees. No

The first chilly night. I stayed in the woods, switched off my devices, and reckoned with the fat neverending stack of index cards I’ve

I spent the morning watching the light flicker in the trees. The buzz and whirr of insects sounded electrical, like power lines and transformers and

“His soul is that of a coward,” said Biden after reports that our president described dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” With two months remaining

I enjoy skipping through frazzled sermons, nutritional advice, alien abductions, financial planning, and light drizzle at the airport.

Just after midnight, a metallic voice began to flicker through the radio static.

Speeding through dark prairie with only the pale green glow of the dashboard, I listened to a midnight preacher rattle and roar, talking about how

Struck by this interview with the novelist Amitav Ghosh about the value of working with paper and pencil, and it’s always good for me

Tonight I contemplated the animal quality of fire, the way it hunts for fuel and moves like it wants to live. I also pondered two

I miss the golden days of Twitter when I discovered new music, scrolled through lyrical babble, and made genuine friends. But no matter how hard

“He understood for the first time that black-and-white was the only true medium for film as an idea, film in the mind. He almost knew

The other day I drove past a church sign that said: What’s missing from CH__CH? UR. I keep thinking about all the interesting

In Wisconsin, the police shot a Black man in the back. Seven times. In front of his children. Protests collided with gun-wielding vigilantes. Two protestors

Each day the American brain becomes more scrambled. People who believe the world is governed by a secret cabal of satanic cannibals are winning elections

If I hadn’t been absently flipping through an old journal tonight, I might not have remembered that my mom died eleven years ago today.

What is the power of a first memory? They are such peculiar creatures, these fuzzy impressions and garbled snapshots that teach us how to see

For a glimpse into the brainpan of America, you can’t beat late-night AM radio with its paranoid callers, heavy-breathing preachers, and baroque debates about

The great American eclipse was three years ago today, a cosmic event that covered the nation coast to coast. I remember how the temperature plummeted

Yes, I wept during Biden’s convention speech. And I was annoyed by my tears, even a little ashamed. But why? I wanted to flatter

Somewhere in southeastern Ohio, I drove past two ranch houses sitting side by side with tidy sidewalks and neatly mowed lawns. The house on the

A woman at the supermarket kept making a noise I could not decipher. It was a sound that reminded me of the thin line between

Somewhere north of Columbus, we tuned in to the first night of the Democratic National Convention. News anchors repeated the phrase “unconventional convention” again and

The body remembers slowly and forgets very quickly.

Ohio. Storms today. Maybe it’s because I’m back in the Midwest, but a memory flashed to mind that I haven’t thought about

We’ve entered the last stretch of summer when everything is overripe and so green it feels obscene.

Each night I drive twelve miles from the cabin to a nearby town where I can pick up a signal and join the grid. I

I’m writing properly again now that I’ve retreated into the woods and yanked myself from my internet-induced slumber. I’ve dragged a table

Last night C. and I sat at the kitchen table and did a jigsaw puzzle that depicted a hallucinatory American scene of hardware stores, red

The neighbors have been firing guns all day long. Crack crack crack from noon until six o’clock. Occasionally there’s a triumphant shout. We

Arrived at the cabin yesterday. It sits on eight acres of hemlock, birch, beech, and tangled vine and fern. C’s brother-in-law showed us the

C. and I drove along backroads dotted with the occasional farm or cabin, many of them flying Trump 2020 flags alongside the Stars and Stripes.

A ten-hour drive out of New York into the woods of the Midwest. I’ve missed the heat and hum of the road. I even

New York City. We’re packing for a trip of indeterminate length. Our plans to log some time in the Mojave got scotched this year,

This journal will probably begin to decay through August. I’ve lost the thread of this nightly exercise. Maybe it will disintegrate into fragments, stray

A tropical storm blew across the city today.

There’s a full moon tonight. The Farmer’s Almanac calls it a Sturgeon Moon in August. I should understand the rhythm of the moon

Tonight I jogged past the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stopped hard in front of its grand steps. Sometimes it hits like a fresh slap,

Max Headroom holds up far too well thirty-five years later. Every few years, I think about the 1987 signal hijacking at a Chicago television station

I smoked my last cigarette three years ago on July 31 in a motel parking lot somewhere in South Carolina. There was a half-moon in

The heat is finally ending tonight. The rain came an hour ago, and C. says it feels like a fever’s breaking. News about the

When I consider the man I want to become someday, I often picture myself as someone who prays. I have no idea why this impulse

Today’s headlines featured terms like “demon sperm” and “the umbrella man” because we’ve slipped into a psychedelic hell this summer. There’s a

North Dakota snow. Aural destabilization. Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes. William James and “the educational variety of religious experience.” Bohren and Der

The heatwave continues. Going outside is like walking into a hairdryer. People teeter in the street, sweat staining their masks. The pandemic has stretched from

Every day feels like the same day, an endless smear of Sunday and Wednesday. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and a caravan of motorcycles

Finished Stephen King’s The Stand today and, even at 1152 pages, I was sad when I read the last sentence, as if a friend had left town for good.

Last night I flipped through the first few pages of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. People have been telling me to read this

And for a moment I wonder if it will keep raining until everything is washed clean.

While researching a few details for my novel this afternoon, I came across a declassified CIA document about detaching from time and space through experiments

A pair of heat domes have straddled the nation, and I imagine them as two great translucent, shimmering beasts. One has settled over the Pacific

This is a requiem for the late nights we spent rewinding, replaying, and studying a VHS copy of The City of Lost Children until the

A heatwave is settling over New York City, and the streets are filled with the silence that heavy heat brings. Voices seem to carry further.

Spent the afternoon in Chinatown, and it was so reassuring to see the woman on Mosco still serving cheap pork dumplings like nothing’s changed.

Of all the philosophers, the Scholastics speak to me the clearest. Anselm, Abelard, and Aquinas. These medieval Catholics were haunted men who desperately wrestled with

Lately there’s been a great deal of handwringing about “cancel culture” as evidence of increasing intolerance, even a rejection of liberalism. Instead of addressing

There’s a strange dynamic to this nightly journal, this sensation of writing against time. Or more precisely: writing for myself in the future. Each

Nobody died from the pandemic in New York City the other day. The Northeast has returned to the infection levels of early March, those faraway

Last night I dreamt that I discovered a substance called ‘onesium’, which is the substance used to clean the soul and wipe away difficult memories.

Lately I’ve been torn between the possibilities of fiction—and the mental reprieve it affords—versus my compulsion to record each day’s events

Returned from New Hampshire’s mountains to the city heat, and it took a moment to readjust to the sight of so many masked mouths

Why is fire so hypnotic? Hours evaporate whenever I sit before a burning log. I stare and stare like it’s my favorite television show.

You can almost taste it, that bright metallic sensation that floods the brain when it decides there will be no sleep tonight. Last night I

In 1901, John Muir said we are “a tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people” who need to reconnect with nature. And so today we walked along clearwater

New Hampshire. I dreamed such vivid dreams last night in the White Mountains, a series of bizarre scenes that arrived with the force of revelation.

C. and I escaped the city for a few days to see some space and light. We joined a few friends for a trip into

A degraded and muffled Fourth of July. The prospect of celebrating America these days feels like a dark joke. Last year the president threw himself

Sometimes I dream about tollbooth operators, the half-glimpsed faces with cigarettes nodding on their lips, their left hands forever clutching a quarter and a dime

A ninety-degree day in New York, bright and trashy. Is there a word for the tendency (or desire) to leave one dish unwashed, one bag

Scrolled through the day’s lunatic headlines and screamed into my hands. It wasn’t a single piece of news that broke me, just the

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

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

A hot and muggy Sunday, the kind of day that’s begging for a thunderstorm. At dusk, it finally came, followed by another wall of

Sometimes I’m hit by a mad urge to capture everything at once. The traffic lights and dramas playing across the city on a Saturday

Seems like aliens could land in America and, after a day or two of awe and panic, we would politicize those poor Martians until they

This morning in the park, I sat across from a woman who was talking to the pigeons gathered around her feet.

A massive plume of desert dust has crossed the Atlantic. It began in the Sahara after a heavy rain. Now it’s tinting the skies

I’m working on stealing my brains back from the claws of algorithms, clickbait, and social media’s two-minute hates. For years I would reach

The second phase of reopening began today in New York City. Outdoor dining, barbershops, and real estate. Churches and a bit of retail. The pandemic

At the California Institute of Psychics, only two of every one hundred applicants are selected, so you’re guaranteed a good reading or your money

The longest day of the longest year. A day when I feel like I should be deep in a forest, communing with the sun while

Midnight in Montgomery, Alabama. Six years ago, I parked in front of the First White House of the Confederacy and sat in the dark, staring

We’ve built such a humiliating world. Facebook banned our president from sharing Nazi imagery after his campaign posted a red triangle used to identify

I admire C’s life choices lately, her decision to focus on the tactile and textured rather than pushing a cursor around the screen. Her

Last week, footage circulated of a 75-year-old man knocked to the ground by the police in Buffalo, New York. Blood poured from the man’s

Lately my nights have been filled with patchy dreams and idiot head chatter. Garbled headlines and pandemic waves. American hallucinations and the Sturm und Drang

In 1928, the poet Paul Valéry had a vision of the future: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far

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

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

There are so many things I wish I’d asked my mother. Tonight I’d like to know about her favorite saints. I want to

My feeds are broken and everything’s glitching. Each time I look at the internet, it reads like one long scream, even though I agree

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

Sometimes you come across a phrase that haunts you all day.

Still so many helicopters over the city. Some orbit around Midtown, others hover above a single point in an eerie state of suspension. Monitoring. Recording.

A note from the margins of today’s rally in Washington Square. As thousands gathered to reckon with racism and brutality, the usual fringe groups

Tonight I came across Tolstoy’s three questions, and they feel especially pressing in these overloaded and disorienting days: 1. What is the best time

This morning I thumbed through a six-year-old notebook and came across a bit of nostalgia for the golden age of blogging: I felt so much

We gathered around the mayor’s mansion and sat in the street for thirty minutes of quiet. The silence was stunning. It had presence and

The curfew has been moved to eight o’clock because some people looted Macy’s last night. Today I learned that curfew comes from an

There’s an eleven o’clock curfew in New York City after last night’s violence by the police and the looting of some luxury

The White House went dark tonight in response to the protests across the street and spreading throughout the nation. The symbolism needs no comment, leaves

Last night someone vandalized the enormous CNN logo that stands in front of their Atlanta headquarters. It was a strangely encouraging sight. This afternoon on

More uprisings across the nation. More clashes with the police whose very presence introduces the prospect of mad violence. Flipping on the news, I watched

An uneasy grey day like a hangover from yesterday’s sunshine. I went for an ugly run, stopping every few miles to ring the sweat

The amount of incense smoke that darkens a temple’s ceiling indicates the popularity of that particular god. I learned this last year in Taiwan,

Haze across the city this morning, giving the skyline the effect of a painted backdrop. Warm weather is coming at last. I’m fantasizing about

Today is Memorial Day, and my screen is more schizophrenic than usual. Remembrances of lost soldiers and advertisements for summer sales collide with visual shrapnel

Riffling through my small box of family memories, I came across a folded clipping that said my grandfather’s grandfather was appointed the postmaster of

I’m slowly forging through High Weirdness, Erik Davis’s inventory of 1970s mysticism. He writes wonderfully about the feedback loops between our image world

Time is a concept. Time is a flat circle. Clocks only measure other clocks. These ideas feel more valid than ever during these days of

Last night I dreamt that I was on a massive ship with skyscrapers. We could not leave and we would never reach our destination. Every

Life has locked into a tight loop. I wake up and perform my morning ablutions. I tune into the governor’s morning briefing that veers

I remember watching the darkness in my bedroom when I was small, hypnotized by the grey-pink flecks that seemed to dance in the air while

The stock market spiked in response to encouraging test trials for a vaccine. Some say it might be ready for the public early next year.

They’re taking down the makeshift hospital in Central Park. Someone put masks on the status of Romeo and Juliet. Masked icons have become a

Last night I dreamt that I could not read. Every book was filled with gibberish. The words shape-shifted and flickered between shades of red, white,

An eighty-degree day at last. We spent a few hours in the park because it’s almost possible to forget this pandemic while hiding in

Fantasizing about the road again. I’m craving the sensation of speed and possibility like the time C. and I spiraled out of the mountains

Flipped on the news and I swear to god someone named Dr. Bright said this might be “the darkest winter in modern history.” At this

And what does reinvention look like? I suppose it starts with giving up plans and letting go of ideas. But my brains are too mushy

I did not think the future would begin with drive-in theaters, tennis, and landscaping. But our governor says these are the first steps towards reopening

Today is Mother’s Day. There are still so many emotions that I will not or cannot unlock. I planted some tomato seeds in a

Time feels like an increasingly fictional concept as these weeks and months continue to bleed into one very long day. Even the weather is confused.

Today would have been my parents’ anniversary, and I might be the only one who still remembers this. I do not want this information to

Whenever I get into a car, I want to point it toward the Mojave desert. I don’t think any photograph can capture the sensation

Wendy’s has no meat for its burgers. The virus can change the color of your toes. People keep talking about a return to “normal,

Five years ago today, I attended a funeral for my grandmother in the same church where she was baptized in 1918. “Her life was coherent,

We live in a culture defined by putting on a mask before taking a selfie and then removing it again. Some people seem to take

An uneasy combination of sunshine and masks, as if we’re afraid of a perfect spring day. Everyone at the park complains about how everyone

You can never see further than your headlights—an old slice of trucker philosophy that makes more sense with each passing year, the way I

Another grey day of rain, wind, and trying to ignore the news. I spent the afternoon outlining the nineteenth draft of the book I’ve

Scene from last night’s dream: I told my beloved if she gave me a fork and a knife, I’d follow her straight to

A clear and warm day at last. The park was crammed with people sunning themselves while wearing surgical masks, an unsettling sight that renders so

Tonight I miss sitting in diners and listening to people murmur and jive, scraping their forks and stirring their coffee. I miss the mumble of

A rainy Sunday that underscores these days of suspension. New York is reporting fewer dead each day, and there’s a sense of exhalation at

Strange how something you’ve heard a thousand times can suddenly knock you over. Maybe it’s a shift in the light, a stray fragment

How many times do I need to remind myself not to look at my telephone in the morning? Woke up to a message about freezes,

Flipping through an old notebook last night, I came across a page dedicated to the first time I saw a painting by Hubert Robert. Such

Heat-mapping cameras are being designed to scan our distance from one another in workspaces and on the streets. Our infection status will be logged and

First proper thunderstorm of the season in New York City. A crack of thunder rattled the windows and its violence reminded me of a cruise

Today the price of oil went negative for the first time since we’ve started keeping track of these things. There’s too much oil

A world so quickly and thoroughly changed. I find myself frequently returning to a century-old line from The Surrealist Manifesto: “Let yourself be carried along.

Dreamlife and reality feel as if they’re blending a little more each day. Last night I woke before dawn for a sleepy pee and

I can’t stop staring at this photograph. I zoom deeper into these faces bunched against the glass, as if I might find a reason

Difficult mood today. I watched footage of thousands of protestors swarm Michigan’s capital to chant “Lock her up” because they don’t like the

Time blurs. Every day feels like it’s either Monday or Saturday. Why is there something so heartbreaking about the sound of someone you love

The Western States Pact. The Midwestern Coalition. The Northeast Pact. America’s states are forming regional coalitions as they chart a return to life after

Heavy rain and wind today. I stood at the window and watched raindrops slide down the glass like I was six years old again. My

It’s hard to remember there was a moment when the novel coronavirus was finite, when patient zero’s immune system might have wiped it

My thoughts return to the stars again because there’s nowhere to go on a Saturday night during a pandemic. Consider the word ecstasy in

I’ve gotten in the habit of walking to the river each night to look at the sky. Lately I’ve been overwhelmed with the

Last night I dreamt about a god who was angry because the noise of humanity prevented him from sleeping. This dream followed me into the

These days I walk to the market like I’m about to commit a poorly-planned crime. Even if our bandanas and scarves do fuck-all in

They named the virus corona because it looks like a crown. Each night I join the rest of the city in dreaming garbled dreams about

Sitting by the river on god-only-knows which day of this pandemic season, I watch a little boy say hello to a bird before it flies

The park is crowded today and it’s an awkward but kind dance among strangers, six feet apart. A woman bickers with somebody’s face

Another day of sirens punctuated by the daily seven o’clock cheer. For a moment each evening, the sound of emergency is overlaid with determined

It’s a disorienting sensation, knowing we are living through a season that will be written into history books, a before and an after. The

Now they’re saying the virus spreads by talking and breathing. We can kill each other just by being a person. One million infections worldwide,

Passing each other on the sidewalk, we hold our breaths like children in a graveyard. The numbers have shifted from coherent to numbing. Over 200,

This is the last day of the longest month many of us have ever known. I stood in a Soviet line outside a Walgreens, waiting

Taking a cue from Italy, each night at seven o’clock, we cheer for the nurses, doctors, grocers, and transit workers in New York City.

New York City. Another blank grey day when nature is still figuring out how to get to spring. We live among scenes unthinkable. In Nevada,

We check the death tally each morning like the weather report.

His spirit runs through nearly everything we hear today.

Each day is a copy of the last. Make coffee. Make phone calls to make sure nobody has a fever. Watch the governor’s briefing

A late-night walk through the city to pick up some supplies and leave them outside my elderly neighbor’s door. I knock lightly and walk

A hush fills the city, a sense of bracing for a blow. We know things will get worse. We watch the governor’s briefing each

This is dedicated to the nighthawks and graveyard shifters, you beautiful enemies of sleep. My schedule has drifted into the late-night hours during this season

Each new headline reads like something from a schlocky dystopian thriller. A senator who hates the government has tested positive for the virus. So has

Like the stages of grief, denial leads to anger. For two months, our government denied what was happening before our eyes. We watched the infections

We shelter-in-place while the television counts the infections and the people who’ve died. They keep the numbers in the corner of the screen like

A few months ago I wrote: “Somebody could tell me tanks were at the Canadian border or the entire Eastern Seaboard has been quarantined and

I used to be so shy. There was a time when I would count how many words I said each day. At night I logged

These are long days of suspension. Brittle energy fills the city as we retreat inside for safety. Yet there are no storm clouds in the

I woke late and began my day by scanning an article that said gun shops are seeing a surge in first-time buyers. Head still on

Starbucks has removed the chairs from its tables. News anchors wear gloves to model good behavior. We saw the coronavirus coming for months yet our

These days I feel better with the television news playing in the background, even though it’s nothing but nonstop dread and pharmaceutical advertisements. I

Friday the 13th and the city feels like it’s emptying out. I feel a twitchy need to assign significance to the date nowadays. I’

Crushing lines at the supermarket and the shelves are empty. The streets hum with a hunter-gather energy like the days before a hurricane. Except there

Infections continue to spike, throwing daily life into a state of suspension. There’s no other story in the news, there’s nothing else to

The coronavirus continues to spread. Classes have been canceled and events are postponed. One thousand cases in America now and our government doesn’t seem

How to concentrate when the economy is crashing and our government does not care about the spiking number of infections? Walking past the television to

Went to an exhibition about the countryside that felt like walking into a Wikipedia entry written under the influence of heavy-duty stimulants. A robotic Josef

Visited the annual Armory Show at Piers 90 and 94. Ticket prices were outrageous but I managed to slip inside with somebody else’s credentials.

I remember standing before the gods on a rainy Monday morning in Taiwan. Once again, the question that haunts me when I approach any kind

We wash our hands constantly like we’ve done something wrong. We try not to touch our faces. The man sitting next to me spritzes

One of the finest things I own is a lamp with a stern brass pirate, one hand on his hip and the other gripping a

Another chapter in this endless season of passive-aggressive battles in hotel lobbies and gyms, their flatscreens cycling between Fox News and CNN. After a breathtaking

There are more seats on the subway than usual today and the library is extra quiet. Everybody’s taking care not to sniffle or cough.

A confirmed case of coronavirus in Manhattan. These are days of hand sanitizing lotion and being told to sing “Happy Birthday” twice in your head

A leap day. A reminder that if we can make extra days, we can do whatever we want. But today I’m reading headlines about

A woman was visibly upset in aisle six because they were out of antibacterial hand-wipes.

At an academic mixer, a consultant from Brussels asked everyone to draw the shape of their lives on a Post-It note. I made a scribble

Woke from a dream that I was pounding on a counter demanding a cash-back rebate because my soul was damaged. This surreal sensation continued when

Maybe we don’t need to have a president. Another chaotic debate among the Democrats, another feast for television pundits. They talk about jabs, attacks,

Sixty degrees in February, and it’s never going to snow this winter. Twenty boxes of salmiakki arrived from Helsinki today. Salmiakki is Finnish salted

She scrolls through websites that sell protective face masks while I half-watch a conspiratorial documentary about our hyper-mediated world. The coronavirus is spreading. 150 new

They’re caucusing in Nevada today. Voters organize themselves in the corners of gymnasiums and hotel conference rooms. The networks were not happy with the

The motel manager was unnervingly chipper when I checked in, a shine in his eye that could have been religion or drugs. Now he’s

A man studies yesterday’s horoscopes on the train. He carefully highlights a line that says today is the day to take action. Somewhere in

Debate night in America. We tune in because we need to know: Who can withstand the punishment of live television? Put anything on a screen

I remember sitting in a cathedral on a snowy February morning and watching an elderly couple hold hands. They looked at each other until tears

Today I learned about the metaphor of the shark’s eyelid. Sharks have a transparent membrane that allows them to see despite the blood and

You can feel the geography shift when you see all that big pine and cold water.

Why are so many visions of the future cast in cool tones? We watch science fiction movies and look at renderings tinted in blues and

New York. Cold today, the kind of cold that has people cursing in the streets. It’s the first day in weeks that’s felt

Woke with a yelp from a tense dream of standing on a Russian coastline while pieces of my life washed onto the shore. Will I

February, a month that sounds like a bruise. The weather in New York City feels like one, too. Purple skies and an endless string of

Three recurring dreams: 1) a murderer who creates traffic jams in front of ambulances; 2) The “dishwasher episode” of a critically acclaimed drama; and 3)

My screen delivers footage of strangled sea turtles and disoriented walruses plummeting off a cliff. The United Nations says we’re on track to extinguish

A man had a heart attack at a Starbucks the other day. I keep thinking about his glasses, fedora, and newspaper on the table next

Some people worry the American president won’t cede power if he loses the election this year, an observation that would have been unthinkable four

Another day of headlines that describe people blasting, slamming, firing back, shutting down, lashing out, and tearing into one another—the overheated language of a

One of those mornings when I put two contacts into the same eye. You really have to pay attention. On Lexington Avenue I heard a

Today the president was acquitted of abuse and obstruction because we live in an exquisitely detailed form of hell. This feels like the only logical

It’s unseasonably warm again, with a late April wind blowing through early February. An old woman on the subway platform belted out a Marvin

One of those days when the moon is perfectly visible in an empty blue sky. It’s unseasonably warm for February in New York. Riding

Birthday. Maybe it’s an auspicious one: it’s the first time in over 900 years—since 11/11/1111—that the date reads both

Flipped on the television to watch live reports from sites of pandemic anxiety: confused scenes from airports, schools, and hospitals. A fashion magazine ran a

A grim alignment like some rare cosmic event: the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union occurred on the same day the last glimmer

It’s a strange sensation, living a life divided between these days of pixels and a childhood defined by magnetic tape. My first impressions of

Note to self: You will never remember to write it down later. And so this journal continues. Today I started reading Italo Calvino’s Six

This morning I went jogging for the first time in months because I signed up to run a half-marathon in May for reasons that remain

I’m struggling to return to the rhythm of New York after spending a month on a dark island in the Baltic Sea. But the

The volume is louder in America. Voices and sirens, the televisions playing in empty lobbies and waiting rooms. We talked about not staying in New

The turbulence began the moment we entered American airspace, crossing from New Brunswick into Maine. The airplane shuddered and rocked. We fastened our seatbelts. It

At the Rijksmuseum, a crowd gathered in front of a plexiglass box to photograph a robot scanning the fading canvas of a Rembrandt. A glimpse

One last train through the Helsinki gloom. I will miss this city’s dignified buildings and straightforward sensibility. What shapes the personality of a place?

I’m starting this new decade—and this journal—by revisiting the places where the last one began. Strange how a chunk of time takes

I was shaken by Helene Schjerfbeck’s self-portraits at the Finnish National Gallery. Taken as a series, these paintings grapple with mortality, isolation, and disappearance.

I spent the day returning to scenes from a decade ago, starting with the place I once lived: 33 Uudenmaankatu in the neighborhood of Punavuori.

Looking at the sky tonight, I think about Origen of Alexandria, the philosopher who believed the stars were rational creatures and the sun could sing.

Alone in Helsinki. The sky is pure gloom with rain that hangs in the air, refusing to fall. It’s the weather of moody seaside

The idea cohered on the train somewhere between Turku and Helsinki: take a photograph and write at least three sentences every day to etch these

Last day on the island of Korpo. Spent a remarkable evening with some of the people who live in the archipelago, and our conversations left

This season is shaped by muted Bergman films projected on the wall in the hour of the wolf. I can’t shake the first six

White caps on the Baltic today, and the wind was like radio static in the trees. I came across moments in the forest that felt

We took a ship through the Finnish archipelago towards a small island in the Baltic Sea.

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

An artist led us across boulders covered with electric green moss and worried about the lack of snow this season, something she hadn’t seen

Maybe the universe is sympathetic, after all.

Traces of frost in the moss. Ice on the rocks. Will it finally snow? There has been no snow yet in the Finnish archipelago, which

Woke from a dream in which I discovered my consciousness was powered by someone else forced to run on a treadmill. Low sun and a

Walking along the empty road of a remote island in the Baltic Sea, I remember driving down Interstate 75 twenty years ago with the Detroit

Calm water on the Baltic Sea and a low January sun at noon. For a moment I can feel the warmth on my cheek. She

After my mother died, my father spent his days wandering through discount department stores, fixated on tracking down the correct size, exact model, or shade

Alone on an island and the silence is like walking into a wall. These short winter days feel like a permanent sunset, the way the

When we landed in Helsinki in January 2009, Candy and I watched the inauguration of Obama from our hotel room at one o’clock in

Wandering through Turku’s streets and museums, I cannot stop marveling at the low-hanging sun: an endless magic hour that casts everything in Caravaggio light.

Now begins the season of Arvo Pärt and private hymns for a better year. On New Year’s Day, I sat in the pews of

Pictures, songs, and paragraphs wash across my screen one minute and disappear the next.

I woke up with Melancholia on my mind. Six days after watching it, I cannot shake the airless world of this film that lives between

Here is another book that describes the end of our world. I did not want to spend 228 pages thinking about climate change, so it

Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night is the best film I’ve seen in years. Built from red neon, broken clocks, haunted

The endless churn of the digital jukebox brings to mind Adorno and Horkheimer’s phrase from 1944: “the freedom to choose what is always the same.”

Blade Runner is a story about god, a fever dream about grabbing your creator by the throat.

Meanwhile, we fight amongst ourselves, slinging hashtags and hysteria.

I spent the month of February in Iceland as part of the NES Artist Residency, where I worked in a little café by the Arctic

The choral drift of Popol Vuh’s ‘Aquirre I Lacrima di Rei’ sounds like glaciers, mist, and devotion. After listening to this song six times

Slow-motion strings and liturgical drones from Athens, Greece.

On January 5 I walked along the sea in Crete and remembered my father who died on this day last year. The things I should

Finally tracked down a clean hardcover copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy, which might be the book I return to the most. Something

Published in Moscow in 1918, this short manifesto first thrilled me as an undergraduate student when I began drifting from my studies in film towards

A jittery man with long blonde hair and a tight leather jacket warns me about the desert. “When you go out there, don’t listen

A dusty ballad plays in a grand old ballroom filled with tailored men and elaborate hairdos. The singer’s baritone drifts from the dashboard of

Writing about technology is tricky. The language is hideously undignified (tweet, google, blog, etc) and the landscape shifts by the minute. Many novelists skirt the

About two miles southeast of the Salton Sea, make a right turn on Main Street and keep going until the stink of dead fish fades