Thursday, June 4, 2026 — Wednesday, June 11, 2026

The long summer days are wasted on me. I come home from work, sleep for hours, wake up & it's still light outside, as though nothing is ending. Then after a couple of hours I sleep again through the night. Insomnia is unknown to me. I dream of birds through glass and my hair falling out like grandpa's, but never enough of it. Still sick.

Sunday, May 24, 2026

Some ways that I can tell spring is ending:
- It's hard to write poetry now
- I'm surprised every day at 8 PM when it's still light outside
- I had to rearrange the bedroom windowsill to make space for the box fan
- The earth is more goldengrassed than before, the flowers more prickly
- I feel confused when it's warm & sunny instead of cold, dim, & rainy. Sometimes the deviation from my expectations even irritates me
- I got a little sunburned
- The classical music concerts ended, no more churches
- I finally threw away my Pascha egg

My birthday, 2026

In bed the night before my birthday, I felt homesick for the first time since leaving. It wasn't even my family that I missed; it was the anonymous Texan stripmalls, the stores I would thoughtlessly visit each birthday because there was nowhere else to go. I thought of the thriftstore, the H Mart & bakery, the hot pot place that my dad brings us to for every occasion— all of those stores chains, none of them unique to my home— that it was all so far away & I couldn't go even if I wanted to; and I didn't. That I didn't have anyplace like that here, because everything is still new & it isn't mine. I felt a real & physical sense of distance for the first time, much like the sensation of staring at the sea in Japan, standing on that immense concrete seawall, haphazard-seeming piles of strange wavebreakers below, tetrapods that I had only seen before in Animal Crossing. The realization that my home was across that ocean & that it was very far & very small. And that I was very far & very small.

Then I dreamt about milk. I was trying to fit many gallon jugs into an industrial freezer ( commercial fridge ). As I struggled to fit them all, I was told by a child that the milk had gone bad & that I needed to pour some of it out. I looked at the faint expiration date on the jug in my hands & sure enough, the child was right, so I poured it into the sink. Oddly, it was as clean & smooth as still-good milk, a perfect whiteness. I poured many jugs into the sink, meticulously checking each expiration date on the seemingly hundreds of jugs. Check then pour or check then put in the fridge, all night long. This is what getting older is like.

I took the day off because I have never worked on my birthday, even last year when I spent it sadly & alone, walking in circles. The day was very regular. I cleaned my room. I moved the boxfan to the windowsill because it's becoming hot now. We didn't decorate because the apartment is already decorated in perpetuity, in rainbow, in paperchains, streamers, and garlands like lowhanging vines. We're taking a trip to the coast this weekend to celebrate.

The cake Mary bought from the Russian place was too small, so we only had a few bites each. When I blew out my birthday candles, at first I thought of wishing for this to not have to end, this little life I have now. Then I thought of wishing for it to not hurt so much when it does. But instead, I wished for fruitful writing. I am content.

Monday, May 18, 2026

There's this piece I liked called Thousandth Orange by Caroline Shaw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh27Qv-SHrY) that becomes briefly transcendent in intervals throughout, as though the weather is just right; sometimes the weather here in Portland feels exactly coastal, the cool mist, sometimes it even smells like salt. The seabirds came inland to roost in the winter but have mostly gone away now, except for at least one killdeer. I saw our first killdeer in Vancouver. I didn't recognize the bird & watched it flail its flightless wings in an empty lot, darting wildly, & I felt that I was witnessing a tragedy, but all of it was just a brokenwinged ploy that I fell for; killdeer feign injury to lead predators away from their young. And so quickly I leapt from despair to complete hopefulness. My thought at the time was: LOOK! NOT ALL IS LOST! THE KILLDEER WAS JUST PRETENDING! or some other such thing . . . I wish I wrote it down, but I didn't; I wish I wrote the exact words down. I only started writing again very painfully & slowly & recently. I've learned that the only thing that determines how I feel about my time, whether or not it's been spent well, is whether I've written something I've determined to be good. I wish it were more complicated than that, but it just isn't. I am trying to learn transmutation, so that instead of a simple 1:1 replica of my lived experiences, my little dollhouse that no one plays in, my writing can kaleidoscope out into many different things. Sometimes I worry that I repeat myself, but then I remember that no one is listening.

My friend Saddle asked me what I want from writing after I complained that I couldn't write anymore. He said "What is it that you wish you were writing while working full time? Maybe this is a silly question to ask, but what is your “goal as a writer”?" There's this poem that goes "I have to tell you, / there are times when / the sun strikes me / like a gong, / and I remember everything, / even your ears." I want to strike myself like a gong, that's the most basic thing, the perfect arrangement of words to remind me of a precise moment in time, a time capsule comprehensible only to me. About last June I wrote "Walking into the wireheart of the city every day. The uglyheart, across four lanes of highway. My telephone wires transformed into a bad, bad nest. The train, the bakery, the aquarium, the petting zoo. A saccharine parade. Being a kind body. Across parking lots, there & back. Carrying an umbrella for no reason. Concrete heat & then suddenly, school is over." & when Mary read it back, she told me that despite talking to me every day at the time, she had no idea what I was talking about, any of it, but it's the perfect encapsulation to me. Maybe part of it is that I want my own secret code. And I want it to be beautiful to everyone else. I want it to be beautiful to others, but understood only to me. It used to be that writing was a very simple process: I experience horrible tragedy → I make a "good" piece of writing about it → The event is redeemed → I do this enough & my life is redeemed. That worked when I was sad, but now that I'm happy the idea of writing has become a lot more complicated. My purpose is just as desperate, but less clear to me. Now it's: ? → I make a "good" piece of writing about it → ? → I do this enough & my life is redeemed. What made it hard to write after moving is that I became very busy living & very busy being happy for the first time in my life. And none of it seemed to need to be redeemed by me. That & the precarious state of living with Mary that I find myself in.

I just miss you very much. I wish we could talk. There are many things that I can only say to you & not to Mary & not to Saddle & not to anyone else. When I'm stuck writing, I sometimes pretend that I'm writing to you. I miss you terribly. I think of you all the time. I got your letter & it worried me. I feel like I need to say everything to you at once as though I've caught you but you'll outsmart me & float away, or phase through my hands like a ghost. Sometimes I wish I could trap you in a jar like a bug, but I wouldn't really want that either. One of the things I love about you is your independence.

Thursday, May 14, 2026

What a difference a day can make! Yesterday's was October rain; today's was true spring rain. There was something new about it, something subtle and different that could only be understood by forgetting your umbrella & having to walk in it, watching your bus drive away in it. The rain was so cold it hurt, then after a minute or two, with merciful numbness it felt good. My hair was completely soaked. ( One of my least favorite sensations is the feeling of partially wet hair. ) Yesterday's rain was melancholy, little puddles which reminded me of autumn's Venetian canal, the saddest cow in the world & the moldy yellow canvas, the perfume samples. Today's rain was entirely different. It was sudden & frigid. It was coastal. It had an urgent freshness to it, like growing pains, and seemed meant for the new growth on the pines. There were no memories attached to it; I could feel that I was experiencing something completely new.

Monday, May 11, 2026

The remnants of alliinase alongside a small happy feeling make me feel like I could cry, but I won't. Very often lately I am thankful for my life; the vegetable scraps pushed off the cutting board, the colors, the onion swirl. At 11 PM I am not afraid anymore. When I lay in bed at night, I look at the patterns in the ceiling, the streamers and paperchains. When I tacked them to the ceiling, I told myself it was a reminder that every day is a gift, but that's not a reminder I need anymore; truly, they are just decoration. Less and less lately is it necessary to draft my own meanings. Each day I experience a cautious contentment and the fear of things going wrong again, that the wrong things are inevitable and just postponed by a mysterious force, that maybe the force is God, or the new life I've created for myself, or both. My ghostwriter once said I am finally liberated by my own strength and patience and virtuous character & only months later do I trepidatiously admit to myself that she was not mistaken. I feel like a bird that will get stoned immediately after its first flight. I have work tomorrow, but even that doesn't bother me. The current fulltime nature of my job has shown me that there was nothing to be afraid of, that last time was just a horrific misfortune, that there were confounding variables, that the truth of it is that I am a real human being; a real human being. My custodianfriend got hit by a car over the weekend, crosswalk, just like me, but he was completely unfazed by it. He wasn't hurt anywhere nearly as badly as me, but still, maybe there is a version of me that doesn't flinch from the world after the first instance pain.

Saturday, May 9, 2026 — Wallowa Lake Monster

Parked next to Misery in the Fernhill Wetlands & searched for birds: Cedar waxwings— And like the cedar waxwing, she was drunk all day— sandpipers, Canadageese with goslings, longbilled dowitchers, American robins, many redwinged blackbirds, common merganser, coot, European starling, & an unexpected tree swallow ( a perfect blue ).

Even more beautiful than the birds were the translucent snowbanks of cottonwood, unmelting ice. The breeze would cause it to snow again, the seeds floating in the air like ash or dancing in wisps around our shoes like Grandpa's sand, our own simulacrum after global warming's denial. ( A few months ago, a teacher told me this was the first year there were no weather-related school closures, but that I could still hope for late April snow; then it was the warmest Easter in a decade. )

Tomorrow is Mother's Day & I still haven't written her card. Earlier this month was her birthday & I still haven't written her card. There used to be a laminated Mother's Day assignment of mine that hung on the wall beside her rarely used craft desk. "All About My Mom: I don't like it when she yells at me. I like it when she hugs me. My favorite food she cooks is hamburgers." The text beneath a handdrawn portrait of her in young child's symbolism, a pointy woman with a triangle for a body. When I brought it home she got upset with me because the aforementioned hamburgers I had filled-in-the-blank were freezer-food, not anything she homecooked— though she rarely cooked anything from outside the confines of a box— which was interpreted as a slight against her, so she yelled at me. I never understood why she kept it next to her desk if it upset her so much . . . On her birthday I told my priest about the unwritten card, that she used to beat me & worse, & asked how to forgive her. He told me that we have to try over and over again not to let resentment cloud our hearts. That's it. Try to move on, pray for her & ask God to help make you a better person.

Sunday, May 3, 2026

Sitting in the church basement as the others took communion, quiet prayer in dim. Greyblue, suffusion like the abbey–monks' voices. It was automatic & attentive at the same time; I had been mistaking the two as mutually exclusive. Then the children's concert with Mary. So much to write poetry about; a five syllable list: Wilting church iris. Roadside ditch daisies. Poppies through chainlink. Our coastal playground. Horse herd's mountain song. School day waterfall. "God is dot dot dot . . ." Blindfolded masturbation. Dollar store pink & lilac streamers. Rainbow piano with stomach-laying children, feet kicking through air. I was high-up enough that I saw a pigeon glide instead of flap for the first time. The day & night were hot. I felt tired from smiling today. My mind feels overtired like when you spend too much time in the sun. Work tomorrow. I cleaned my room anyways.

Saturday, May 2, 2026 — Colorful, polkadotted world: HAPPY STAR.

Now that it's May, HAPPY EASTER became HAPPY STAR, wrapped in a gel bow & Snoopy changed into an astronaut costume; I turned the calendar page & for the first time I had to mark my days off instead of days working, having indentured myself for the rest of the school year. Flowers started sprouting from the ceiling today. I thought they looked like the guts of Saint George's dragon, but she said they were like flowers: streamers in every color. Yesterday I got spools & spools from a church rummage sale for a couple of dollars. I had wanted streamers for a while, to hang alongside the paperchains I made. ( Inspired by a very intense erotic experience I recently had. ) It looks like the ceiling has its own complex ecosystem now. Too, I found a long paper border— the sort used on teacher's bulletin board—of trumpeting little bears in jester's costumes, waving a flag declaring HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, which I tacked along the bedroom baseboard, our own little parade. And cellophane, half clear & half polkadotted, against the windows. Even though I'm working more now, it's easier to do the dishes and to hang colorful things in my apartment. My dreams are vivid enough again that I am often living two lives & carefully, I try to write each day like I am holding a bird in my hands. Today in a letter, my friend asked me: Michael, have you got your "change" yet? Yes, yes I have. Fireworks brighter than New Year's.

Sunday, April 26, 2026

I feel very tired lately, and disappointed with myself; the feelings are connected. Things that used to be simple are difficult. I feel anemic of faith. The poem I'm writing stays stuck like a jaw. Very often lately I wish that I were something more.