8AM – i wake at 630. dreams? i rarely remember them. i set the coffee brewing, pills, shower. the swelling and sensitivity of my knot seems to have subsided somewhat during the night perhaps this is simply a result of laying still for so many hours. i mix a caffeinated protein shake for breakfast, and to go with it: a cucumber from the garden, a bag of mixed nuts, a habanero meat stick. coffee into thermos, out the door.

as i am leaving, the neighbor, mike, who is walking his dog and cat, stops me to say hello. the dog has curly black fur that looks like wool and is named bayder, the cat is a friendly orange and scrawny (or perhaps he’d say lithe, if he could) little guy who i met long before i met mike. many months ago the skinny creature appeared crying at the patio glass door, and i gave him a handful of kibble in a coffee filter for a bowl. at the time we thought he was a she, and so called her mandy (as in mandarin.) for months the cat came regularly to our door. and too we’d see her walking around the neighborhood, she’d even follow us on our walks. later, another neighbor said the cat’s name was misty, but finally today mike confirmed that the cat, a he, was named winston. apparently winston likes to visit many of the houses in the neighborhood, sometimes even going inside. mike mentioned that winston has an apple tracking chip in his collar, and that mike could see on gps where the cat went. one time, winston spent two days inside the house four doors down from ours.

then i drive to work. it’s a relatively short commute, 30 minutes or less on most days. i pass two graveyards on the way. one is spread throughout with bright green and well-trimmed grass and shines with polished nameplates on granite walls. the other is cramped with crumbling gravestones and butts up against train tracks. often i see a train stopped there, and its rusted metal face covered in graffiti is such a contrast to the somber headstones that i always think i ought to pull over and take a picture. but i never do.

10AM – there is a message in my mychart inbox telling me i should call surgery to schedule. i call, and they schedule me for a consult two weeks from now. the impression the doctor’s diagnosis had given me yesterday was one of urgency. i feel uneasy with the prospect of waiting two weeks just to have a different doctor tell me yes i need surgery. i have thus written to the first doctor to ask if this seems a safe thing to do, waiting so long for action with pinched and knotted insides…

i have a large window in my office that looks out on trees near and far, as well as the street and the brown grass and flat gray office buildings across said street. while the window seems large to me from the inside,  from without it gives a rather different impression: a dirty portal cut into the side of a flat gray wall. it raises thoughts of prison, or of other neglected and forgotten places that one rarely leaves.

1PM – the doctor has called me, after i messaged to ask if it was safe to wait so long in this condition. he assured me it was safe. if things get suddenly worse, go to the er.

‘writers do not live one life, they live two. there is the living and then there is the writing. there is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.’ so says anais nin in her diaries, the first volume of which i am currently reading. this seems to be true. i often find myself thinking: i shall write of this later, and considering how i might describe the things that are happening to and around me, right then and there as they happen. for this reason, i suppose, i am often told that i am not present.

3PM – i currently have no novel or other writing project, and thus nowhere to direct this literary energy. it is likely that this absence is the single biggest reason i’ve started this blog. for months i have been lacking. i feel i am floundering, searching, grasping. i start things incessantly then discard them. i am pulled in new directions by every book that i read (many of them, in fact, published by new directions.) it is quite possible (i would even say probable) that the only reason i am writing this journal is because i am reading a journal. what will happen when i close that book, and become inspired by the next new thing? will any of my creations survive these shifting whims long enough to be born?

8PM – i return home to find several packages on my doorstep, one of which is a new aluminum bluetooth keyboard that folds(!) into a portable size. it is solid, light, and in its folded state can slip neatly into a large pocket. i hope to use it in order to write anywhere, on my phone. we’ll see if i actually do. for dinner: fried rice with squash from the garden and green beans from the garden. later, when giving the plants their drink, i harvest 3 zucchinis.

winston visits us as we sit out on the patio. i give him some kibble, and he prances about. i bring one of our cats’ toys out for him, a clump of feathers at the end of a wire. after only a minute of me bouncing the toy about, he’s detached the feather clump from the wire and carried it away as if it were a fresh kill. I supposed, then, that such toys were made for the complacent and domesticated indoor cats like ours, with no experience snatching a living bird from the air and feeling it writhe and flutter beneath their claws before biting sharply and quickly through the neck and spine. these feathered toys, for the domesticated feline mind, are not representations of any living thing,  they are truly only toys, playthings  to be pawed at lazily while laying on one’s back, round and soft belly exposed to all.

i wonder if i am a domesticated writer. i do not write for survival. i do not write to hunt, or to kill. i do not have the sharp teeth and the killer instinct, the will to destroy, to be visceral and cruel and overpowering and uncompromising. i write simply for myself, like a lazy cat who paws halfheartedly at a mouse-shaped piece of cloth.

i was genuinely surprised that my post from yesterday garnered so many ‘likes’. i had not, and still don’t, expect anyone to read this. it is only an exercise in documentation, an attempt at habit building, and also a kind of experiment. that is, i hypothesise that this daily posting will improve my writing, and will increase the number of words i produce in general. i think of it like weight lifting. there is no reason for one to be picking up such heavy objects just to put them right back down–and then pick them up again! wearing yourself out going nowhere. pointless? except that the wearing out is itself the point. if i write all day long until i can write no more, then my writing muscle will grow back even stronger. and when it comes time to use it for something meaningful… the meaningless exercise will have all been worth it.