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11 June 2020
6:26 pm

I sat down multiple times to write in the last month. Like one of you said, the advantage of writing on paper is that the record stays on paper. If I don't finish writing, I come back to it after the moment has passed and close the tab rather than entering it anyway. Let's hope this isn't one of those. I'll start with the most recent thought, then the first, then whatever I have to say about living in Minneapolis as of two weeks after I wanted to pour it out.

1. bro my hair is so long bro. It's been six years since it was this long, and I think I've surpassed it. Six years? The only contender for longer hair was late high school, so... the length it was when I started writing here. Twenty years. Twenty years. Time was cockeyed before, now doubly so. If I don't give myself a reason to look at my calendar, I lose track of days in a way that is new even to me. And the longer lengths of time, forget it. What was that line? "The days go fast but the years go slow." Doesn't matter, even the inverse is incorrect. Those perceptions bounce back and forth with and into each other. There has to be a word for that feeling. "Of course it's been six years. But how has it been six years?" "The last three months have been a year, now a year and a half." German, maybe. Anyway, we signed up for a four month CSA and I'm hoping that in-season produce will anchor me in some grounding way. Earth, give me strength.

2. Here's some stuff about death. The friend machine reminds me today is the long-time anniversary of an old friend leaving the earth. Or joining it, depending how you think. Not the first one at that point, but the first complicated one. Anyway, that's a coincidence to another death in the last couple days, the third one I've heard of this year, still not close to me, but Cay's close friend. His family was part of the 'group move' to Oregon, and since I thought I'd be doing the same thing, he and I were friends on the machine. I don't think I met him. Maybe I did? They moved first, but came back after Cay. Over the last six years, he'd like it whenever I posted my leftist shit and I was always surprised to see it because the algorithm never put him in my feed. That was about the extent of it. Their community has raised $20k in a day to help the wife and three small children. "A civil war between joy and misery."

Anyway, those dudes aren't the dude that had me writing an entry last month. I can't find it now, but I thought I'd written something not that long about a particular nighttime anxiety. The anxiety of not-knowing, in the form of fear that people who I care about will die and I won't know about it. There are old friends I'm no longer connected with or as strongly. There are people who I don't talk to as often, and I have no other connection to them, through a friend group or family, or maybe they're an internet pal and no one gets the news. There's a whole world of all the people I've ever met and lots of potential for people to leave or join the earth without me knowing. Sometimes you randomly google someone and you find it. Most of the time -- all of the time, I convince myself in the night -- I might never find out. It's not one of the worst wedges on the Wheel of Anxieties, but it ain't great, let me tell you.

A month ago I got the email notification I had a note from orgami. "Cool," I thought. I left him a note after my recent return, surprised to see that he hadn't posted in so long. He was a lasting presence for me here, whether it was the poetic entries he posted, or the entry-like notes he left me even when I hadn't been around for ages. Notes in his own notes. 2900 entries between 2004 and 2017. He was always encouraging to me and there was an age I looked forward to his entries every day. Still, I have no evidence of email engagement. All I know is what he wrote. Someone I knew of, but didn't know.

The note says; "hi just letting you know steven passed away in june 2017." Steven, not Orgami. I guess that's his name. Maybe one day diaryland will go through another round of archiving and Orgami will go down. Maybe whoever left the note will take it down. Who can say? But for now, Orgami remains, a record of every time someone clicked 'done.'

He was someone I knew of, but didn't know. And still, for whatever reason, someone let me know.

3. I am struggling to stay focused and not let this be another unentered bunch of words, especially since this is a topic I already regret not writing about as events were unfolding. But before I started writing, my thoughts on the subject weren't so much words as they were David Lynchian screaming, and that's going to require more focus than I think I have right now. So I'm going to take a break and leave this open with the hope that I will finish it. If not I will enter it anyway and finish up next time.