It was a muggy and unusually warm first day of November here in the Middle West. The leaves have fallen, and we crunched over them while dressed for spring. Meanwhile, Iran is shipping a fresh batch of Loitering Kamikaze Drones to Russia, pundits are wondering if words are dead, and American elections are becoming extremely American. In Arizona, a group of paranoiacs known as Clean Elections USA agreed not to carry guns or wear body armor within 250 feet of a ballot box, and they’ll stop screaming at voters within 75 feet—which creates an interesting 175-foot zone of getting yelled at without worrying about getting shot.
Three weeks until C. and I point the car west and search for a new home in the desert. I’m determined to finish the novel I’m writing before the year ends. I’m midway through another line-by-line edit, and every sentence looks so ugly, riddled with commas and gerunds. I’m becoming aware of my tics in sentence composition as well as my thoughts, and perhaps this is good and necessary, even if it’s irritating. But there’s a thin line between vigilance and neuroticism.
Insomnia has hit me hard lately. You can almost taste it, that bright metallic sensation that floods the brain when it decides there will be no sleep tonight. I tried sniffing lavender and eating melatonin. I even tried watching The Phantom Thread. But no luck. I toss. I pace. The upshot is I’ve learned to appreciate thirty-minute-long vaporwave tracks, thanks to Sasha Frere-Jones’s recent reviews.
