Happy Halloween!

The exciting conclusion to “The October Game”…

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

The first Halloween installment, reading perhaps the most classic and scary Halloween tale of all-time:

It is hard to write about depression. It is a cloying, unpleasant feeling and it swallows up most things that are interesting or productive or of the kind that people want to read about. All writing is for an audience and the point of living in public is, in part to have a public out there to hold one accountable to one’s own standards. It is much more interesting to write about such meta things.

Lisha, for example, wrote recently about the nature of personal blogging in public and its balance between furthering communication with objects of conflict or difficulty as opposed to being a tool in some sort of arsenal of self-defense. No doubt both of these are interesting aspects of a personal blog and both have been employed here at times, though I would hope I have leaned far more to the furthering of communication. It is important here to note that sometimes that which furthers communication is not always the friendliest of least provocative statement, however. Often people need to read or see jarring or even accusatory things to be alerted to the fact that communication is necessary, that passive or passive-aggressive acceptance of the status quo is insufficient. Time may have mellowed my approach to such things, but has not reduced my faith in that general methodology.

Which makes Lisha’s own insight about “friend of the project” distinctions so important, I think. Because if one has faith that someone else truly has one’s best interests in mind, it’s a lot easier to hear their feedback. Which is why, for example, feedback delivered in a marriage should be a lot easier to hear than that from someone who is of uncertain status, or has just betrayed one, or what have you. Which makes my own ability to take feedback basically impossible at this point, because betrayal in a marriage creates the certain belief that betrayal is possible, probable, or even certain in every personal interaction and connection. Which leads to unending humiliation, depression, and suicidalism.

It’s not fun or easy to write about these feelings, because they just are what they are. They don’t improve or change. I break down crying in the middle of a walk or almost during a volunteer shift or while reading or watching a movie in my lonely cluttered apartment. This just happens. I stare off into space amongst friends or at a meeting and I’m just a hair’s breadth away from losing it. All the time. Talking about it does little, because everyone’s aware of the situation and everyone has either tried and failed to make me feel better or not tried at all. There is no solution. There is no answer someone’s going to come up with, even me. There is only the steady drone of life unending and uninteresting, punctuated by occasional bright spots that seem shallow and hollow in the context of a failed life. And the buildup of still unpacked boxes, undone dishes, undone laundry, unbought furniture, unsorted papers. It is hard enough for me to motivate myself to set about sifting through these mundanities in the best of times – completely unthinkable in the worst.

Yesterday at the Cafe, the main staff who has been reaching out to me asked me what my deal was now that I’d been there for a few weeks and been coming in once each week. She asked me how I was settling down and how things were going in life as well as the volunteering in that context. And suddenly I just poured it all out, laid it on the line, told her everything that’s happened in my life in these three-plus horrific months, told her what I’m facing and dealing with. She proved that my estimations of other people’s ability to help is a little unfair. Just as Russ had some insight about whatever ridiculous-seeming relationship future I might theoretically muster, she had a way of articulating the concept I’ve been trying to explain about moving parts in a brilliant and obvious way. “It’s like you’re a Rubik’s Cube,” she said. And it was so obvious and so true. One that doesn’t seem to have a solution at all. But this explains how burdened I feel. I can’t contact one of the people on my online dating site till I have furniture and I can’t get furniture till I find something cheap and comfortable and haulable and I can’t do that anyway till I clear out the living room of stuff and I can’t do that till I do the laundry and the dishes and I can’t do that till I care about anything and I can’t do that till I have a reason to care, like a possible online date. Oh boy.

As I told her, as I’ve told all of you, some days are okay and some aren’t. But most days seem a tiny bit okay while they sit on the precipice of the abyss. I am always a half-inch away from disaster. And the cumulative effect of being in that state is, itself, a larger disaster. This isn’t necessarily a cry for help, because that would imply a feeling that there was help. Everyone’s helped as much as they can, but there are limits on all of this. There are limits on everything.

Last night before bowling with the debate kids, which was fun and a good distraction for a while, the power went out while I was watching a movie at home. It was terrible enough, but the worst part was that an insidious beeping of two hallway smoke alarms began. They were each on their own pace, so the irregularity of the smoke alarms’ beeping created a piercing and unpredictable cacophony that conspired to ensure maximum annoyance. I sat there, trying to lie down and maybe nap or zone out, while the beeping went off in the background. And it hit me, after about an hour of torturous terrible thoughts and memories, that this was a metaphor for everything I’m going through right now. I am sitting in the dark with nothing to do, no power, no light, and every effort to do something else distracting (I could have possibly read or maybe talked on the phone) is derailed by an incessant and unpredictable beeping in the background, which is of course the feeling of self-loathing, anger, and pain that has arisen from my betrayal. Being able to exist in that state for an hour or two was massive evidence to me that I have a stubborn will that is the only reason I’m still alive. But every minute was torture.

Seemingly obvious solutions at the time might have included going for a walk, though it was rainy and I had absolutely nowhere to go, which also enhances the metaphor I think. And I could have destroyed the smoke alarms, or at least unplugged them, but there’s no way to do that in the metaphor without chemical shortcuts that will probably do more harm than anything else. And even then, probably the beeping is just dulled, not eradicated.

I am going to the Cafe again today, having booked a regular gig for this month before I go home to New Mexico for most of December. I am going to debate practice. I am maintaining my various online projects. I am going to a tournament this weekend, where I get to be in a tab room. All distractions, all good choices, all the union of my stubborn will and my best efforts and the best suggestions of my friends. Unfortunately, it’s all belied by an underlying truth that is omnipresent and devastating…

I am not okay. I am not okay. I am not okay.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

This one is an oldie but a goodie – the first on-the-fly story, of which there will be many. This will be familiar to most of you, so bear with me, but these types of stories are some of the most exciting parts of this project… the opportunity to record for posterity the slate of stories I’ve come to tell frequently in my own interactions with people.

Yes, this means The Caterpillar Story will probably be forthcoming at some point too…

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

The first original story on Blue Pyramid Stories, though this one is quite old. Watch for an unintentionally humorous/dramatic moment late in the video:

I took the train down to Philly this weekend. Except not really “this weekend”, because I didn’t leave till Sunday night and I didn’t get back till just about now. So the “weekend” can be Sunday through Tuesday in this frame of mind. Such are the hazards of not having a job or a schedule or a life.

I spent a ton of time with Ariel and Michael and a little time with Fish. I ate a lot and spent a lot on meals. I took a lot of photographs, many of which will appear below. I walked a LOT. I enjoyed the train rides and stations and my book. I have nothing pithy to say that sums up this trip, except that I was very sad for a lot of it but also really enjoyed the company of the three people I saw, especially in 1:1 interactions. More and more, it is clear that one-on-one time with anyone is the best way to get to know and understand them. Clearly there are limits on the viability of knowing someone from one-on-one time who either changes rapidly or refuses to be known, but assuming a reasonable level of sincerity and earnestness in the interaction, then one can best learn and understand from solo matchups.

Which is not to say that larger groups don’t have their place. They assuredly do, as a platform for boisterous good times and fun. But to emphasize those at the expense of individual experience is to miss out on the real connections that form the basis for any lasting communication.

I sound rambly even to myself, already, so I will perhaps say it in pictures instead…

The platform in New Brunswick.

One of the many lonely small SEPTA stations between Trenton and Philly.

Clouds and wires.

Bustling city.

Perhaps my favorite shot of the trip.

Train station at night.

Bridge.

Time.

The trains run on time.

Poster that hauntingly reminded me of my honeymoon.

Fish at the South Philly Tap Room. This had to be retouched because the lighting didn’t come out well when I uploaded the photo, but I love the expression.

Uber Street!

The last line cracked me up for some reason.

Horsehead poles – this looks more like I’d expect Britain would than Philly.

It is October.

A treeward nook.

There was much discussion this trip about the inability to escape noise in modern civilization. Here we see the watchful eye of radio waves.

Brick.

Bird unwired.

The city’s pillars and its supports.

Cat penitentiary.

I fell in love with this building that rises high above part of downtown Philly.

Here’s a closeup of the balcony atop said building.

Fall.

Alley, window on the world.

The goat!

How I roll.

Structures.

Miles walked in Philadelphia: 14.4
(+1.8 to and from train station in New Brunswick)

The good news is that the audio issues from episode #2 seem to have been resolved. The bad news is that they’ve been replaced by some blurry video issues. All will be ironed out eventually. Anyway, here’s the exciting conclusion to the first BP Story:

I was alone all yesterday, a Saturday. I’m not making that mistake again.

Barring a major change, I’m going to be booked the next 26* Saturdays:
30 October: UPenn tournament (Philadelphia, PA)
6 November: American tournament (Washington, DC)
13 November: GW tournament (Washington, DC)
20 November: Fordham tournament –> Greg’s band’s show (New York City, NY)
27 November: Thanksgiving with Friends in Philadelphia, PA*
4 December: UMBC tournament (Baltimore, MD)
11 December: Albuquerque, NM
18 December: Albuquerque, NM
25 December: Albuquerque, NM
1 January: Albuquerque, NM
8 January: Middlebury tournament (Middlebury, VT)
15 January: Dartmouth tournament (Hanover, NH)
22 January: Bates tournament (Lewiston, ME)
29 January: NorthAms tournament (New York City, NY)
5 February: NYU tournament (New York City, NY)
12 February: GW tournament (Washington, DC)
19 February: Princeton tournament (Princeton, NJ)
26 February: Rutgers tournament!
5 March: West Point tournament (West Point, NY)
12 March: Brandeis tournament! (Waltham, MA)
19 March: William & Mary tournament (Williamsburg, VA)
26 March: BU tournament (Boston, MA)
2 April: UVa tournament (Charlottesville, VA)
9 April: Swat tournament (Swarthmore, PA)
16 April: Bryn Mawr tournament (Bryn Mawr, PA)
23 April: Nationals tournament (West Point, NY)

Twenty-six Saturdays*. That’s half a year.

This also indicates that, as you may have noticed, I’ll be spending a month in Albuquerque. 7 December – 5 January. Very excited about that – a long-term homecoming is long overdue. This also means that, unless something surprising comes up in the next couple weeks, I will likely be suspending any sort of job search until 2011. I’m just not convinced I’m up to it and I’m more convinced that I need a month at home than I need income right now. It’s only six weeks till I go home anyway. Once I come back, hopefully I will be restored to the point where I can consider employment.

Anyone got ideas for 30 April 2011? Who says I don’t plan ahead?

*Edited 26 October 2010 to add Thanksgiving weekend in Philadelphia. It’s actually 26 Saturdays booked, not 25 as originally reported.

One of the driving fears of having a website like this is that it paints a huge target on my back. Really, on my front. It reminds me of the old “frontstabbing” technique that Schneider & Gris used to use in Diplomacy in those early years in New Mexico. It was so predictable and obvious what was coming that they didn’t even need to backstab other of Europe’s great leaders (our friends) when it came time to dispose of them. They could inform them the turn that they were going to do them in and by that time, the victim would be haplessly powerless to stop it and half the time make the job easier in exchange for the dignity of knowing it was coming.

That’s a bit of a digression, but one that I think illustrates the profound vulnerability I subject myself to by putting myself out there this much. And yet it’s been my insistent reaction to experiences that have dictated that I either give up essential parts of myself and my being or simply find a way to not care about the vulnerability that remaining myself engenders. It’s easy, in some ways, to not care about being vulnerable, especially in times like the last few months, when I am newly liberated by the idea that I’ve hit rock-bottom and have nowhere to go but up. Or at least sideways. But it also makes me wonder at what cost I might be able to dig myself out. There is a fear, for example, that someone could contact me through the site and claim a connection of one or another kind with me of incredible depth that was the product not of sincerity but of research. And I am particularly susceptible to such claims of connection at the best of times, let alone in this desperate madness of profoundest rejection. And yet, it all seems worth it anyhow.

It’s worth it for a couple reasons. One came in tonight, not long ago, a detailed and thoughtful communique from an anonymous person who may have known me long ago. Experiences like that alone are worth the price of admission on this blog, worth the tormented risks of returning to the mill each night to pour my soul out in measured vials of linguistic distillation. But of course, there are larger issues to discuss when one talks of vulnerability, of the original sources of that vulnerability, of the whole historical reason that drove me to be so passionately committed to living in public, in truth, in the first place.

The artist, if you will, formerly known as PLB. Formerly? I’m trying here. We met, yesterday, Friday night that is, for a four-hour coffee split amongst two places in my new hometown. Her former hometown. You know, where she lived for years before going to Princeton. Because that’s reasonable. Insert repeated platitudes here about my writing fiction so I have something believable in my life.

Of course, there are those among you who’d be forgiven for finding a more nefarious explanation for her life path. That was always the trouble with her – it was never clear whether she was the Black Magic Manipulator or the Helpless Reckless Confused Child. There were always clues in each direction, plenty of fodder for speculation and further ambiguity. The fact that one among my friends actually went so far as to say she placed herself in Princeton in the anticipation that Emily would someday return is a testament less to the paranoia of my friends than the powerful example set by a person who convinced an entire elite school she’d penned a 900+ page book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict slated for publication by Harvard University Press.

The coffee itself was remarkable. Here I do not refer to the liquid proffered by Highland Park’s various caffeine dispensaries. It was remarkable for its strangeness, its ease and comfort, its ability to take assumptions and narratives about life and turn them sideways like a coin on its thin end, then give them a good spin till everything was blurred. It felt, ultimately, like a timeout from life. Perhaps I’d spent too many years imagining the fateful meeting, imagining replacing her final phoned reassurances before she flew to Scotland with language that wasn’t about our permanent future. None of them, of course, looked like this. This felt more like a discussion out of the bounds of reality, out of the bounds of life, maybe at a crossroads in some post-mortem purgatory or dreamlike missive dispatched after a spirit quest. Not a mundane overlit table at a Dunkin’ Donuts where not 24 hours earlier I’d joked and chewed with my debate team a few blocks from my new house.

We talked about most everything. She apologized, profusely and with apparent sincerity. She acknowledged, fully for once, all the things she’d done and, far more importantly, the real significance of the emotions we shared. She cried a lot. I cried some too. She had not drawn up this meeting to come at a time of profound imbalance in our relative romantic lives, but rather as a meeting of two people ensconced in loving and permanent marriages. But a funny thing happened on the way to this year, and the rest is history. Emily asked me, when we spoke about it this morning, whether I’d discussed with her how much of her shadow cast darkness on aspects of our marriage. I realized that this was something we’d talked about almost the least, for while I found it difficult to trust Emily in the wake of what – gulp – Gwendolyn had done to me, it’s a pretty sorry excuse Emily’s trying to use that this contributed to her need to betray me and disappear on me. The fact is that Emily was just mean and thoughtless sometimes. Did I react to this worse than most people would have because of my history? Of course. Should Emily have still not been mean and thoughtless, even if I’d never had an issue with trust in my life? You betchya.

This little vignette and my mildly wounded declaration of dignity illustrates one of the most darkly upsetting aspects of the whole meeting with Gwendolyn and its historical conflict. As I told her, crying, toward the end of our hours together, I’d spent time in May discussing with Emily what she was thinking and whether she was crazy. And now, that night, I’d spent time discussing with Gwendolyn what Emily was thinking and whether she was crazy. I don’t know what it says about me that these people who I have loved so deeply have found such deplorably massive ways to hurt me and have been so uncaring about their decisions to do so in the moment they did them. Both, now, have spoken about the nature of assumption in play. Gwendolyn assumed I had no idea she was lying about anything and that I would correspondingly be unable to forgive the lies, when in truth I’d spent almost two months trying to figure out a way to confront her about what I knew without chasing her away or putting her on the defensive. Emily contrived a way to assume that I would leave her someday, convincing herself that the dissolution of our marriage was not only inevitable but that I knew it to be so, thus making her actions somehow excusable or unsurprising to me. What both of these speak to, more than anything, is a lack of confidence so deep it can override any and all evidence of love, affection, hope, or solace, no matter how much I was willing and able to offer it in both cases.

Which is not to draw too many parallels. While the emotional depth reached is at least similar, a one-year relationship does not measure to a seven-year marriage. Which helps explain Fish’s remarkably callous comments as he was falling asleep last night that nothing I could get from talking to Gwendolyn matters much because I “have bigger fish to fry.” Which, ultimately, is probably about a lot of things, ranging from her doing a good job convincing everyone that ours was just a trivial high school relationship devoid of serious meaning, all the way to the fact that I just have a more thorough emotional memory than most people seem to care to. But to not see this point in my life as a time to examine all relationships and all love I’ve experienced, to reweigh and take stock, to examine on a plane of new perspective, seems foolhardy at best. After all, Emily herself tried to convince me that there was something about the way I communicate with people that just makes people want to betray me. That I am at fault for being left overnight, twice, by the two people I’ve thought I’d be with forever.

Which I guess gets us back to vulnerability. No doubt Emily will be upset for me baring so much here, will try to take things away. I told Russ a long story a couple nights back in an ultimately revelatory conversation about my parents taking things away to protect me in my upbringing and the fiercely resistant attitude which ultimately culminated in utter disaster at a place called Broadway Middle School. Now my parents will be upset with me about this post. And Fish too, for he’ll probably say I mischaracterized his comments. He was pretty tired, after all. Why do I write all this about people again? Why do I live so openly when it only seems to provide opportunities for alienation and discord?

Because you all know that I feel and think these things. All of you. And I can’t live any other way. I don’t want to live at all, really, but I really don’t want to live with the feeling that I can’t tell you what I’m thinking. And I do this in the hopes that it becomes a two-way street. A seven-way street. That everyone opens up to this extent, fully and without reserve. If everyone had in my life, I would never have been betrayed. Maybe, at worst, I would have been frontstabbed. But even that seems unlikely. I’m with Kant and the categorical imperative on this one. There may be some extra bumps and bruises upfront, but they’re so much less significant, hurtful, and deep than the wounds we carry from the secrets others hide from us.

I am perhaps too fragile and weary and uncaring about my fate to close this ramble with a message of “Bring it!” to the universe. Perhaps too superstitious, too, or at least wanting to refrain from being wanton. The real message, the real pulsing mantra I would broadcast from my own personal SETI dishes, is more that I don’t care what the cost is. That seems inane, crazy, totally bizarre in the wake of losing a marriage and confronting the prior ex whose psychic impact was so damaging. But it’s true. I’m not going to live starting to care what people think of me, or how they could use me against myself. I’m going to live the way that I feel is necessary, would stand up to the categorical imperative, would give this species the best chance of living, loving, and somehow not destroying itself. Even if it destroys me. Damn the torpedoes.

It doesn’t look pretty most of the time. I can be as defiant as I want, but the truth is that I didn’t leave the house today and didn’t answer most of the phone calls that came in. I didn’t have anything to say, anyone to see, anything to do. I didn’t bathe, didn’t change clothes, didn’t do a single thing that could be labeled as productive. I wasn’t even spending a lot of mental energy processing things, so much as just defaulting. I was, in all ways, a wreck today. Not a crying-on-the-floor-in-a-heap wreck. More the depressive numb wreck akin to my sophomore year in college self who didn’t leave bed for days at a time.

Maybe it’s good that tomorrow I’m planning on leaving New Jersey for a bit, on staying with friends for the first time since the worst of the early days of this now fully three-month-old crisis. I’ve lived alone a lot. It feels like years already.

There is no final summarative conclusion, still. Not for a meeting that broke a thirteen-year audio silence. Not for a crisis that continues to unpack itself to me in new stripes of denial, bargaining, anger, fear, and resignation. Not for the commitment to be vulnerable in the wake of continual battering. Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of us.

There is only today, the way that I feel, and the probability that there will be a tomorrow. And for all the days I can imagine ahead, that’s all there will be. And the pale numbness of that low ceiling, that probably makes me feel the most vulnerable of all.

Postscript: It is worth noting that I was almost killed one year ago today. I was so happy to live through that experience, so grateful and full of hope. Many times since this crisis began, I have told people, including Emily, that I wish that car had hit us more directly, had knocked me into the next world. It would have spared me so much, would have ended our marriage in a way that both of us could feel infinitely better about. But, believing what I do, there has to be a reason that is not how things happened. Maybe it is merely to provide this realization of how quickly and vastly things can change. I hear you in the back there, what you’re saying. It could change back just as easily. Maybe. Who can say? I look forward to the day when I can once again relate to the jubilant relief that my year-ago self wrote about early in the morning of last October 24th.

Still working some of the kinks out with the audio settings, but here’s the second installment:

Tonight, we introduce a new project in the annals of the Blue Pyramid. It’s the first video project undertaken by the BP, and it involves me reading or telling stories, mostly original, but occasionally written by others. Many of them will have to be told in parts because of YouTube’s 15-minute limit.

Here, to begin, is part one of “Tomorrow’s Child” by Ray Bradbury:

There’s no debate this weekend. Not because there’s no scheduled tournament, but because that tournament doesn’t serve the purposes of the Rutgers team. It’s in British Parliamentary style, designed to prepare American teams for competition on the Worlds stage, with all its crazy four-on-four structure and rhetoric trumping analysis and lack of flowing. Rutgers would love to compete at Worlds (this year in Botswana!), just as much as we’d love to go to Stanford this year, but it’s not in the budget. We barely have a budget to get to basic regular tournaments when they give us deep discounts, let alone scurrying about like a team funded like the 7th-ranked team in the nation. Which, uh, we are.

The last few days have been about as eventful as any days are for me these days. Days, days, days. They cascade not like a waterfall or something glorious to be beheld so much as the drip in my bathroom sink. Day, pause, day, pause, day. The passage of time has become an annoyance, something to be swatted away like a lingering mosquito. There are moments each day that are almost okay… a good debate round or a fun practice, a moment of volunteering or walking that sparks imagination or hope, the second the heat started coming on in the apartment yesterday unbidden. But they’re rare and their ceiling is low. For the most part it’s a long trudge to school, uphill both ways in the snow. Sludgy, dirty snow, not the good kind.

Things are happening this Friday too, things I’m loath to preview here lest they raise concern from the worriers among you. It’s a long overdue meeting with my past, I can say that, and it comes at a time when the risks are low because I have nothing (almost nothing?) to lose. It’s something much better discussed upon reflection than anticipation. So I guess I’ll flag this post with a “Keepin’ It Cryptic” and move on. All will be revealed at some point.

Similarly, I have an upcoming project about which I’ll also be vague until you can see what it looks like. It’s adding a new dimension to the collection of things here at the BP, and it’s a major experiment. With any luck, it’ll be something that at minimum creates an archive of moments in time in a new and exciting way that can at least serve some posterity. At maximum, it could, like anything done serially on the Internet, become a phenomenon. So I’ll let that whet your appetite and, again, soon there will be much more to actually evaluate.

I have this last bit merely because of the Zen state of mind that came from tearing leafy greens from their stems for literally 150 consecutive minutes. This was my assigned task at the Cafe yesterday – I actually showed up an hour early because I’d misread the e-mail confirming my time, and thus was drawn up to the sink with a gargantuan box of greens whose name I never ultimately caught. Spinach? Arugula? An obscure lettuce? It was something like that. The repetition and the small satisfactions of working one’s hands against the bounty of the earth plunged me through the worst aspects of the mental void and into a deeper place where I could contemplate connections and possibilities rather than the mere horrors of the past. And it was in that state, not unlike a shower or even some of the better walks, that I was able to stumble over the obvious project I’m on the verge of launching. This was more of what I hoped for when I pictured volunteering as a key component of this year.

Of course I never really pictured this year and my subconscious is really having trouble catching up. This morning I awoke from a terrifying and disheartening dream that, while I was working at Glide and Emily was at the Labor Fed, she’d decided overnight to go to LA for six weeks straight. She was endlessly unconcerned about the toll this might take on our marriage, couldn’t seem to care less about my loneliness or missing her or anything of that ilk. I could detect, vaguely, in the dream that there might be someone in LA she was trying to see or some deeper thing to fear from this sudden trip arrangement which she was announcing to me the morning before she left. I panicked more and more as the dream hurtled toward her departure, clinging to her presence that I would soon lose for so long.

I awoke to a reality that made the dream look more ideal than nightmare.

Miles walked Wednesday: 1.2
Miles walked yesterday: 2.8

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

I’ve been up for almost a day now and I’m ready to get unconscious again. I’ve been waiting to have something wise or summarative or conclusive about the day, but that’s not working any better than me having something like that to feel about my life generally. There are no conclusions – there is only time in its impervious march toward oblivion.

Shortly after walking home from the soup kitchen early this afternoon, I came upon a couch exactly one block from my home. It was outside, ratty, retaining a little water from the morning’s rains, but perfectly suitable. It seemed like a heartening sign, though I was so downtrodden. But soon I discovered that the timing was bad for people to help me with it, and by the time they could, the couch was gone. Who knows why it was outside? Bedbugs, possibly, or the holes and tears were more systemic than I thought. It probably wasn’t worth the trouble. But the appearance of the couch, initially seeming a metaphor, paled in comparison to the metaphor of its rapid subsequent disappearance.

I am impossibly tired, the kind of tired when it seems legitimately challenging to walk from one’s desk chair to one’s bed. And yet I revel in the idea, because sleep has become my refuge. I just can’t tell you how bizarre that is for me. In a life turned upside-down, the consistent desire for sleep may be the most obvious evidence thereof.

Miles walked today: 5.5