It is the second day in April. It is 9:43 am. I sit in my bed in Iowa City. I have a computer on my lap but I want to get up. I want to go over to my work- station in a different room, the first room you encounter when you enter into my apartment. It is where I write, supposedly. What feels more true is that it is where I fail to write. My iMac rests idly on its desk for most of the week. In that room I have my art tools, my craft table, my exercise machines, a rack for my shoes. When I picked up pole dancing last summer, it was there that I installed my precious shiny steel bar which I soon deinstalled because the ceiling could not handle its weight. I want to pick up my journal from that room but I feel too tired, too unmotivated.
- Things Turn And They Turn
Because my journal is out of reach, and because the practice of marking time has now become something important to me, and because I am tired of writing what is not the essay I began yesterday, or the small novel whose draft I should complete before the last day of May, and because my therapist likes to remind me that I can always begin again, and because the gaps take up at least as much space as the text, and because the list is a form of beauty.
Here are some of the things I have done or failed to do in the past three months:
1. Damaged the screen of my Macbook. I am now struggling to write this. The glitch, much as it pains me, feeds my interest in the aesthetic qualities of computation, its limits. In the analog, digital and hybrid formations. 2. Nearly 20,000 words into what I intend to be a 35,000-word novel about failure. The writing keeps on going although I would like for it to be done.
3. Developed a terrible itch from the swimming pool that basically fucked up my life. My brain became my skin (or vice versa) and that is the foundational plot of a horror story I may never write. I am now losing my phobia for (un)predictable patterns which was one aftereffect of the dermal hypersensitivity. 4. Fell in love with quinoa, eaten stir-fried with eggs and meats and vegetables. 5. Got published on Triquarterly and received a print copy of my words in Black Camera. 6. Lost a book (delivered to the wrong address. I hope I find it.) 7. Attended numerous ‘hangouts’ and readings and birthday parties, usually with members of my MFA cohort / program. 8. Started applying henna again. Discovered that the black kind I used in Nigeria must have been significantly synthetic and dangerous for my skin. 9. Went an entire stretch of time (months?) eating salad or soup for dinner and right now I have made a hard pivot from that lifestyle, hopefully to return to it at some point in the future. 10. Worked with really intersting students for my rhetoric class this semester, as in the past. 11. Started and failed to keep a field note for my outdoor observations. In time. 12. Developed a cinema-going practice alone and with friends. Tried to update my Letterboxd as much as I could. Watched very few TV shows. 13. Learned to swim. 14. Panicked about PhD programs and their disciplinarity. 15. Developed a strong subject line (interiors) for my next writing project (thesis and beyond). Adapted the above to an intermediate creative writing course. 16. Secured my dream third reader and PhD applications advisor. 17. Called my friends. 18. Planned a research trip to new york. 19. Called my parents. Made a difficult condolence call to my father whose only sibling died suddenly. 20. Enjoyed the days, as they passed, with my lover. 21. Forgot many things, and hopefully they will return one day, perhaps soon.
What luck, what luck.
At the beginning of March, I was very eager. I had set myself a deadline to complete some major writing by the end of the month. To reach this goal, I would write everyday, I had told myself. Five hundred words. A reasonable target. So I ordered a pretty planner in burgundy (to match my iPad and my bag) where I would document my progress. I was also trying to spend as little amount of money as possible throughout the month so that I could create a small buffer for the major expenses I foresee in the coming months. My daily budgets and expenditure would go into the planner. I was several weeks into guided and independent swimming lessons. I wanted to get really good at swimming. The idea was to leave the recreational pool as soon as possible, and begin to swim laps at the natatorium, with the pros. This required a daily practice which I would also record in the journal. I have a vague sense that the burgundy book might be in my burgundy bag which might be on my green-accented grey craft table alongside shreds of white cloth from my recent sewing attempt which, as these exercises tend to go, failed. The last time I had anything recorded in the journal may have been about a week ago or so. I imagine the last phrase to be something like, go to the pool.