8:05 AM – i wake at 6:50, late, maybe i should appreciate when the cat annoys me in the morning. dreams? yes, for once i remember pieces of one… i’m on a raft crowded with people, all is grey and rainy and everyone is in rags like refugees.. i get up from bed, pills, shower. i mix up a protein drink for breakfast, along with a slice of banana bread, a cucumber from the garden, a bag of mixed nuts, an orange. i forget my coffee. 

on the drive in to work i pass an unsightly and uncommonly large pile of trash marked off by orange traffic cones. perhaps the result of a roadside cleanup project. it has been there at least two days. 

more of the dream returns to me as i drive. we are, all of us in the raft, taking part in some kind of survival reality show. an unseen showrunner offers each of us a key which will grant some kind of advantage. however, accepting the key means agreeing to be locked in a small container under water for four hours. to accept the key you must take it into your mouth from the offering hand. only two accept. one is a small child of indeterminate sex, a dirty face and ratty long hair. the other is hikaru nakamura, the famous american chess player. i remember thinking that surely he would succeed at being locked away for four hours, because that is often how long a chess game lasts…  

when i get out of my car in the parking lot i am pleasantly surprised by the coolness of the air. the sky is cloudy and gray. i even imagine i feel a raindrop, though i can’t be sure. a reprieve from the summer, finally. i miss my gray skies when they are gone too long. the lot is nearly empty, many people are taking friday off, it seems.

12:30 PM – i walk to the Subway a few blocks away for lunch. i eat there more often than i’d like because it’s one of only two restaurants within walking distance. inside, the three customers and two employees are all speaking spanish to each other. i am somewhat encouraged to find i can understand them, however, when it’s my turn i can’t bring myself to attempt my order en español. reading/listening and speaking are such vastly different skills, and even after more than seven years of teaching myself the language i still cannot manage to speak beyond the very basics. 

of course were i to be thrown in the midst of people who only spoke spanish, i’m sure i’d learn very quickly. or if i only had spanish books to read, in that case too i’d learn very quickly. but it is quite hard to artificially isolate oneself like that. especially when you are someone as impatient as i am. my intention in learning spanish has always been to read spanish literature and poetry. as of now i have read only several books in spanish, and none in the past two years. i can feel the language falling out of my head from disuse. it would be a dream to read books in many languages, but i don’t know if i have the skill or motivation to reach that point. perhaps it’s time to pick up the pen and dictionary and dive back in. if one wishes to be good at anything, it must be done every day…

8PM – home, and dinner is ground chicken with onion, garlic, green beans from the garden, basil and broccoli leaves from the garden, all cooked with various sauces and eaten with rice. then watering the plants, and trimming back the tomatoes, which have begun to choke themselves with far too many leaves and intertwined branches. then I grill some of the plentiful zucchini on the bbq, with a bit of oil, salt , pepper and lemon juice. delicious.

i recently purchased a giant dictionary, webster’s unabridged, published in 1979. It has 2129 pages of words, and a couple hundred more of other stuff. i have never owned such a huge book. it weighs nearly 10 pounds. i have yet to lose the excitement, every time I open it feels like sifting through gem-laden sand. what lovely new word will i find this time… 

sudorific: something which causes or increases sweating… that’s a free one for you. I have collected perhaps a dozen interesting, useful, pretty, or otherwise appealing words in the past weeks, and i intend to use them all. i may even let them guide my writing in directions that would allow their use. that is, if i can ever begin to write any fiction again. oh so many words saved up, and nowhere to use them. I continue to hope that this constant writing about nothing will somehow unlock a flow of useful words, words about something, words going somewhere… 

but for now, I remain aimless.