In the night I woke and could hear, through the window that opens onto the courtyard between the building in which I live, and the walls of the buildings that face the street on the far side, the sound of laughter and conversation from a party I’d been able to hear, also, when I’d first fallen asleep, though now the sound was quieter, and more relaxed, as if many of the partygoers had departed, and the only ones remaining were those who'd been in each other's company long enough that they'd begun to feel as though they knew each other better than they had when they'd arrived, and thus had formed the pairings, or groups, that would sustain them until they too went home, and no more noise drifted up to me, in the room in which I lay.
diary /
After the aircraft on which I was a passenger had rolled back from the jet bridge, but before it had taken off, so that it was still waiting on the tarmac in a queue of planes that now and then inched forward, as whichever plane had been first began to hasten down the runway and lift into the sky, the woman who was seated beside me, and who'd chatted to me about the destination both of us were headed toward, fell asleep against the window, though she woke when our plane reached the front of the queue and began its own thunderous acceleration, so that she was looking out the window, and was mindful of our surroundings, as the ground and the buildings and the roadways and the vehicles began to appear beneath us, and to recede.
diary /
One of my students asked me, after I'd shown them, on the screen that pulls down in front of the white board, an image of a painting by the painter Paul Cézanne, why I thought the artist had given this painting the title he'd given it, rather than some other title, to which I’d replied that I did not know, though after I’d admitted as much I’d begun to speculate as to what the answer might be, and in fact had become so carried away by the question, and what my thoughts were with regard to it, that I spent the remaining minutes of class on that subject, without arriving at a conclusion, so that after the hour was over, and my students had gotten up from their seats and had gathered their things and had left, I was still looking at the image of the painting, where it had been projected onto the wall, trying to articulate something about it to myself.
diary /
In a church I went into in the afternoon, in a neighborhood where I do not live, but to which I sometimes walk on days when I'm not working, and am thus unoccupied by the tasks and responsibilities that, when I am working, can relieve me of that restlessness that comes from not having a place to be, or a thing to do, or a person to attend to...yes, in this church I went into, while I was thus conscious of the passage of time, or of the way we must all proceed through time, I saw in a pew near the front, kneeling, so that I couldn't see her face, and could only imagine what had brought her here, if one could say that anything had brought her here at all, a woman who was much older than me and who at no point, while I remained there, became aware of my presence.
diary /
At the beach, after I’d been swimming and had returned to the shore and had made my way up the sand to where I’d left my towel and my flip flops, but before I’d started toward the boardwalk, along which I needed to wander to reach the stairs that led down to the sidewalk that separated the seaside from the neighborhood in which was the train that had brought me here, I saw at my feet, while I was drying my torso and my legs, a shell from which emerged, when I picked it up to look at it, a crab or a crustacean that scurried away before I had a chance to drop the very object in which it had been hiding.
diary /
I couldn’t sleep, so I got up in the night and made coffee, and sat at my computer with the screen on, so that the only light in the room came from the object toward which I was looking, though after I’d sat there for some time, without writing anything, but rather thinking of what I might write if I began, the monitor went dark, as the screensaver commenced, and I was faced with the choice of either nudging the mouse, to return the computer to life, or leaving it alone, and conceding to myself that this interval of waking would not be, and did not have to be, productive.
diary /
Last night I watched a movie that is meant to be unsettling, and that was unsettling, or that anyway did unsettle me, although after I'd finished watching it, and had closed my laptop and had slid it away from me, so that I wouldn't roll over it in the night, while I slept, I thought about the movie for only a minute or two more before my mind began to wander, and I began to think of other things, like what time I would need to get up this morning, and what I was planning to do, and which persons I was expecting to see, or to hear from, and with regard to what pleasure or concern; although, after sleep had overcome me, and I was no longer engaged in conscious thought, the movie returned to me in a dream, though it was different than it had been when I'd watched it, although I did not realize it was different until I woke, and understood that I'd been dreaming.