Diary 06

09.16.20

My brain lurches towards opposites, contradictions, antonyms. I dwell on the thought of a hearth while winter’s whip lashes my back, pulling from memories of spattering oil and hot curling irons. I lick my fingers and pinch the wick of a candle. Though the soil under my feet is firm and iced-over, I’ve realized I can live inside of memories that warm my frozen bones.

09.18.20

Dreamt of swimming naked in a hotel pool. People watched me but I comfortably continued, knowing that my figure was muddled by the water.

09.21.20
Fiction preserves me, allows me to escape from the most violent traumas. Lately I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate it into my own writing for the sake of healing. It seems everything on the surface can be rearranged, recreated, entirely destroyed, illusioned, condensed. Feels a hell of a lot easier to create from the top layer, when you don’t have to dig into the parts of yourself you really don’t want to know. Think some of the most powerful writing comes from digging, though, so I’ve been pushing myself to write more from the abyss.

09.28.20

The desert reveals itself to our cabin. Utter silence except for the whirling of hot wind. Lizards scuffle in the sand and we dart our heads in their direction, but never catch them. Fast critters they are.
The yard is marked by a wire fence, haggard and caving in some places. But as I look at it now it doesn’t seem to be a fence at all. Sure it marks the property, but I don’t recognize it as a boundary. The entire desert is our yard. I feel real free looking out at it all, the vastness, the whole expanse of the landscape stretched before me. No adrenaline rush, just nature taking me in, opening me up, offering me space to roam.
Dan and I ate watery, hot oats this morning, flavoring our bowls with cinnamon and honey. Then we gathered our things. Picked up odds and ends flung across the floor, folded our clothes, zipped-up our luggage, closed the curtains, took the trash out, and loaded my truck. We collected our things like soil lapping up rainwater I thought to myself, then left feeling nourished by our temporary home and our abounding love for one another.

Joshua Tree/Misc entries