TODAY ON THE TRAIN:

kids playing rock paper scissors, in which scissors can beat both paper AND rock.

reading AHBWOSG

man missed the door by just a second

listening to a mix from kenny

girl next to me listening to Big Band.

THINGS I USED TO DO (but have since ceased doing)

make friendship bracelets and wear them myself

also used to make: paper flowers, collages, posters, knitting needles, flibbertyjibs, treasure maps, believe

play basketball, soccer, piano

dream about

want to be margaret bourke-white

read about how we define the sounds we make

put on crazy clothes and dance

stay up late surrounded by scraps of paper and pens

drink peppermint tea, ginger beer, milk

protest

calculus

drive

be changed by what I read or saw

forget what time it was sitting in that blue armchair

use up one pair of shoes in two years

jigsaw puzzles

invent projects

THINGS I DO NOW (that I never did so often before)

walk

ride trains

make diagrams

put on normal clothes and wish people were dancing

cut my own hair

eat things made out of pumpkin

worry about

drink beer, coffee, water

write letters, send packages

be changed by what I write or say

use power tools

have nostalgia

regard language with respect

use up a pair of shoes in one year

find projects

go to privately-owned galleries

think about america as a whole of parts

BUT. even so, I always have this sinking feeling that I'm not doing enough. I'm not talking enough. I'm not reading enough. I'm not occupying public space enough. I'm not engaged enough. I'm not focused enough.

I think this is okay. It's like approaching infinity. We're never gonna get there, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have numbers with elegant names like duodecillion, googol, one thousand septillion.

But I've always had this problem with doing, finishing, accomplishing, documenting, cataloguing, finding, where I feel that these verbs are all independent of each other, instead of slipping past one another, pulling at each other.

I will never be a part of the mobile generation. I have too much nostalgia. I like keeping scraps of newspaper and tin cups and sewing machines around. I know that I inherited this nostalgia (probably the only way to acquire it) from my father. And I get nostalgic about things that happened yesterday, about things that happened 60 years ago, wanting to somehow capture and relive these things, trying to squeeze everything I can out of them and into this life. I look at the photos of the flint hills and I can't believe how black and blond and brown your hair is. I can't believe how the fields are that color. I can't explain that color. I want to have that color somewhere and sink into it.

I still think that the only way we're gonna make this life livable is through acting human. I met someone yesterday who was dreaming about Tel Aviv. His girlfriend is there. He would lean back into the couch cushion, breathe his smoke into the lampshade, run his middle finger in arcs around the rim of his glass. He told me that in Jerusalem everything is very heavy, but in Tel Aviv, you float around the city, gravity like on the moon.

This accomplishes nothing, but it's nice to be around.