January 30

A heavy day in which I seemed to plummet discernibly as the hours passed. The sun & a relatively calm sky to start the morning, lasting through my work at water-sealing the shed’s new tongue & groove pine planking. Three coats, a shower, a drive into town to deposit my check. Somewhere along the drive, in Moran State Park, Cascade Lake placid, the wakes of gliding mergansers tearing quiet behind them, the rings of thick fog appertaining about the distant hills, the precipitation mounting more an incidentally wet mist than a rain. & Eastsound, all of its insular quaintness, its chalkboard signs, its jalopied Fords, the waves audible through the windows of Darvill’s, the hushed banter of employees muttering vitriol under their breath—all of it seemed to coalesce in the worst of ways. Double-charged for an avocado. Run into twice in one aisle by a drunk with a twelve-pack of Sierra Nevada. Cut off in the check-out lane. These things crescendo. Since I took this position & installed myself here, at the bottom of the loop, down the psoriatic tarmac drive that blisters & rots in spots where oil dripped from the car, under these sad looming firs, I’ve always looked forward to the drive into town. Today, as soon as I got there, I couldn’t wait to get out again. & as soon as I pointed towards home, I couldn’t believe I was so quickly returning to this place, this dark & dreary house that stinks of their filth always, of his diaper hamper in the bathroom by the door, of wet coffee grinds & stale dog piss. This gaudy museum with its macramé & needlepoint, its family portraits hung askance, no frame straightened, no face left unobscured by collecting dust. & now, through the window, the gray falling in layers over the water, the shapes of the near islands night-shadows alone. I think this feeling has been waiting for me to find it, to listen to it momentarily, & to then put it aside & step forward into the possibility that awaits me a week from now. I will emerge from this place the better for it, pleased & positive to be opening unto the next bit of this new narrative. But first, I have to dredge through its mire, honestly & with no false front. So tonight I’ll be attuned to it, that tomorrow it can pass.

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