At Brighton Beach I watched a young red-headed girl in a denim jacket sit on the railing and jump down a great height to the sand, only a brief hesitation before the leap and landed perfectly in a squat. Far above her the clouds looked like the ones in the miniature landscapes in the background of old Flemish portraits. The right side of me was warm from the sun. 

The last hour of the morning I had slept with the window open and the fan off so the pale pink sky leaked in. With this heat it’s dream season now day and night, I sigh every time I wake up. 

I spent all day yesterday going on my back — laying on my black leather couch after short bursts of work, then on the beach ignoring company and rolling onto my side as if to sleep, later at night on my floor reading Mysterious Mozart, the plastic wrapped book hovering above me while my bones stuck to the hard wood.

In the morning I walk long empty sidewalks lined with trees weighed down by dew, large houses with columns and balconies and a flame burning out front, a porch made of dark wood and long grass in the yard. An old apartment building with metal entry arches like ivy painted white. Quiet quiet deserted as if it’s always late afternoon. Sound of a small ball bouncing.

I had a dream I was being stabbed in the back, and I kept waking up throughout the morning to groan and itch my head.

LA was burning so my brother came down to San Diego with his ex girlfriend and we camped out at our grandparents’ old house in the suburbs with the overgrown lemon trees in the backyard. 

I stayed in the room my grandpa died in and in the dresser there was still a notepad that our family and his nurses used to communicate with him when he was dying since he couldn’t hear. 

One page:

(mom’s handwriting)

We just measured Max and Hayley

Max - 6’-[?]”

Hayley - 5’7-3/4”

(nurse/dad/grandma’s handwriting?)

WHERE IS PAIN

In the bottom drawer of the same dresser were bunches of white socks and white handkerchiefs.

The bedroom had a sliding door that opened onto the deck so every morning at 8:30 when I couldn’t sleep any more I crawled out and sat on the warm splintery planks and took my vitamins and stayed there sitting leaning against the house until I was blinded and my forehead was burning. Tired of waiting for the others to wake up so I’d go walk through neighborhoods to get breakfast in some shopping center and all the roads and sidewalks on the way there were empty.

At the house there were a lot of records mostly jazz but also some classical compilations, the kind people buy to educate themselves or maybe because they really liked them. We put on Beethoven cranked it up loud so we could hear it from the backyard where we’d sit in the sun and smoke and try to read. 

In my grandmother’s room I found an issue of Elle from November 1995 that had an article interviewing little girls about clothes they liked and one of them was named Hayley, she said she thought boys should wear braids. In the margins my mother’s handwriting testing - Halley Hailey Hailea Haylei Hayley

One night we felt like going to a bar so we took a car to this place called Parky’s Saloon in the same shopping center where I got breakfast. It was old and small and looked like a cave inside and was just what we were looking for. Old men with bandaids on their faces and a bartender named Becky who ate a lollipop and called them by their first names. Later we told my dad we went there and he told us about how his childhood friend Jerry Dollar’s mom was a city bus driver and every night she’d give Jerry a Dollar for dinner at the Jack in the Box and then go to Parky’s and stay all night. My dad said he never went to Parky’s because he had this idea that Jerry Dollar’s mom might still be in there.

On my last day we wanted to go to the ocean so my brother drove us to Mission Beach and on the way we saw the old wooden roller coaster against the sky so we decided to ride it for some excitement, since I didn’t get to go shooting in LA. Behind us in line to get on a boy scampered up whose flat hair and nerdiness reminded us of the 1950s. 

falling asleep on a couch in a hi rise

falling asleep on a couch in a suburban house all the curtains drawn

4/13 - silver/blue/late godard/boredom/self less/running

silverblue nothing

9AM lunch break overcast so I went to the hot tub to read Balzac fairy tales with landscapes like my dreams lately

the sun came out and it got so bright I couldn’t look at the pages anymore

then a storm cloud rolled in it rained for five minutes I hid in the water

then bright again blinding and silent

a crow cawed

I sat up and bit my arm gently

It feels like it’s been night for months everyday I’m under white lights or the dark, and there’s a quiet roar outside. Turning my face to the dark blue

I’d like someone to gather my hair into a ponytail and pull my head back

Last night as I was falling asleep and waking up I kept thinking of a river running through me.

In my dream last night a lover was helping me pronounce a name or a word in a foreign language.

Thinking, when I’m drinking wine alone and not at home I want it to be somewhere that feels like a cafeteria or a grocery store, clean and unromantic and well lit, with paper cups. (Ikea Cafe, Pret, airport cafe, Whole Foods?)

Remembering myself a few days ago crying over a friend that had gone feels far away from me now but I like who I was in that moment.

Had a dream that started with me sitting in a car with an open roof that was filling with snow.

Tonight I met someone who happened to know the first person I ever kissed.

The word ‘research’ has given me comfort lately.

After a long period of feeling, trying to feel, being addicted to it, rediscovering the joy of thinking.

Nothing worse than ‘just a little tired’.

Dodging identity like arrows !

Today imagining my interior as a bunch of unidentifiable plastic figurines scattered across a dark blue carpet, or arranged chaotically on the sand  A day like this, an interlude between days when everything  feels locked in its place, is valuable in its own way. Pieces that will click in later, maybe

Abstract shapes in the sky passing by out the train window

The food I’ve been eating lately is the size and shape of these little plastic objects

Finding large indoor structures I can wander around in freely - museums, department stores, indoor malls. Dream to be able to get up from bed in the middle of the night and walk inside somewhere like that undisturbed. (Hotel, my own large house, a castle, lime works)

Walked around today uptown trying to get glimpses into the townhouses and private clubs. A doorman with a baseball bat was practicing his swing but stopped when he saw me looking at him. Went to the Bergdorf Goodman and talked to the perfume sellers asking them oddly articulated questions (couldn’t think of the word ‘synthetic’) and now my arms smell strongly 

Dreamt of driving down a highway and hundreds of people were selling fruit on the sides

Dreamt of a circle of life size figures made of white sand burning and turning black. One was speaking to me but I don’t remember what she said.