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dear diary, i wonder how those gnome sculptures sitting by that stream in the peaks of otter are doing today — they look so elated in every photograph i have of them (from every time we broke ahead of traffic enough to slow down and open the window), but i must imagine there is a dreadful monotony to being a lawn ornament in the middle of the blue ridge mountains. don’t get me wrong, diary, when you finally make it through buchanan, turn down route 43, motor your way up the side of the mountain in exactly the jagged fashion in which the road has been cut, and round the corner to drive for ten minutes with an uninterrupted view of the upper goose creek valley, it’s quite beautiful to behold. but i know what happens when i situate myself in just one spot for a little too long, now — the grass starts to sprout greener in bedford. the water is always warmer in the lake than the streams.
dear diary, when i was nineteen or twenty i told a guy on tinder that it would be fitting if the toxicity of darkroom chemistry was ultimately what took me out — i’d breathed enough silver halide sweat at that point, submerged perpetually under amber safelights within the embrace of four matteblack walls, obsidian felt curtains kissing my face each time i brought prints out for rinsing, stepped back into the air-conditioned abyss to adjust the time on my enlarger. what i meant was that when i stumble into an obsession, i know how it consumes me: whole. no remnants. dear diary, is it sweet and fitting to die for one’s obsessions? strip the syllables of their inherent violence — did horace get that one at least half-right? dear diary, there is a fulcrum in the center of my chest and it’s shaped like art school brainrot. pull the lever, now.
dear diary, dead pigeon in the street. dead fish in the harbor. dead rats outside my car door the day after i moved in. dear diary, sometimes i think dead things are an omen — other times i shrug and call it entropy. either way, i’m far too close to all of these hearts that nature or happenstance has unhooked. dear diary, i saw a street cat dart into traffic tonight, convinced myself in an instant it was aiming for the treads of a chevy until it jumped back at the last second, carefully rounded the corner parallel to the car, and slinked away. i’m the cat. i’m the luck that’s destined to run out eventually, a spiteful trick candle — blow it again and again and again and it somehow lives to tell the tale.
