Diary 54

Aug 5

07.05.25

Spent the 4th with friends, eating a scandalous amount of cheese & drinking paper planes.

Paper Plane:
bourbon + aperol + amaro nonino + lemon juice
(equal parts, ~3/4 oz)

Midsummer Hike

Hours amass. Scent of
dried sweat, river water
musk and horse shit.

Notice more body— almost mechanical
mosaic of light, momentum
affixed to shadow. Blithe in the absence of voices, the absence
            complete for once: all-engulfing and serene.
Movement begins to disassemble the vapid
             architecture of shame.
I often feel I’m on the brink of the world, along the curve
where sorrow and beauty merge.

07.27.25

My family from Illinois is renting a house on the coast of Oregon this week so I’ve spent every day in their company, temporarily relieved from the perpetual ache of homesickness. This morning I went for a run on the main road— past grazing cows and horses, wild blackberry shrubs, old farmhouses with piles and piles of wood in the yard. No music. I’ve had my phone turned off for a few days. Just got to quietly observe things as they are. Watch the clouds moving. I listened to the distant rumble of waves crashing on the beach and could hear the approaching car a mile down the road blaring country music. Really felt at peace in the vast lonesome beauty of the landscape, knowing I had my family to return to afterwards.

07.29.25

Questions to bring to reading:

What is the correct ethic for reading this work?
How does the text ask to be read?
How does it want us to make ourselves available to it?

07.30.25

There was a tsunami warning last night and the house my parents are staying in is right on the water, but perched on about a 30-foot bluff overlooking the coastline. Everyone received an amber alert that said, verbatim: “You are in danger.” But after some research we realized it wasn’t a significant threat. Still, it made the indoors feel different, charged by the potential storm. There was a certain warmth, a closeness that maybe we all experienced, or maybe it was only me, produced by uncertainty and the understanding that if something did happen, at least we were together. Later in the night I walked outside with my sister and studied the ocean— it was calm, unchanged, marked by the dark austere glow of the moon reflected on its surface. We all slept soundly.

08.01.25

I’ve been fiddling around on the piano again. I love how physical it is. My hands start to tremble when I’ve played for too long and my fingers can’t reach as far as I sometimes need them to, but I like the coordination and patience it requires. Just a few chords played in the right timing can sound so lovely.

08.03.25

Themes from late summer / early August:

-diversifying the things in my life that give me meaning
-valuing privacy
-getting hands dirty
-intuition over logic
-lightning storms
-the smell of algae
-sandalwood body wash
-an ice-cold honey kölsch
-extra-charred sausage and sauerkraut
-drumstick ice cream cones

08.05.25

My friend recently did a workshop with Alec Soth, and encountered this poem printed on his studio door.

Heart/mind
by Laura Kasischke

A bear batting at a beehive, how

clumsy the mind
always was with the heart. Wanting
what it wanted.

The blizzard’s
accountant, how
timidly the heart approached the business
of the mind. Counting
what it counted.

Light inside a cage, the way the heart—

Bird trapped in an airport, the way the mind—

How it flashed on the floor of the phone booth, my
last dime. And

this letter
I didn’t send
how surprising

to find it now.

All this love I must have felt.