July 27

Surreal day, waking late, day-blurred, the ripping wind & slate-grey sky patched with pauper blue & salmon-ridged clouds roiling over the ridge. My mind stubborn against wakefulness, catatonic all afternoon. My body’s torpor today a kind of falling apart—throat sore, voice barely here, back nearly out, enervated completely, my weight stubborn & severe against the mattress. A stumbling day, recuperative against these vague agents of exhaustion that constellate me, mind & heart, day into night & night into day. & worst, no exercise, no escape from the cabin, no reprieve from cabin’s company tonight other than withdrawing into my room for long hours of tenuous & stunted alone punctuated & intersticed with throat-clearing hacks & protracted bouts of flatulence just discernibly muted through the sheer plywood wall, wails from some distant, tortured place. Where is there rest from it. Where is there peace from life in life. For a moment, I seemed to have a handle on it, a kind of agreement that scaffolded the days, propped them up, some buttress of sense barely tenable but grounded yet. & now the ropes loosen & slide & the architecture collapses, some house of cards erected in a whirlwind. What can appertain but the recycling present? I build on shale, on scree, on sand & of sand, & cannot stay the breeze. & so. Here I am. & again, here.