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