Weeknotes: August 10–14, 2026
Monday, August 10
The strobe flicker of pre-dawn lightning tattoos the bedroom wall. Esteban gives a small cry from the foot of the bed. I welcome the stormy morning and put on Nina Nastasia's The Blackened Air. While its gothic melancholia soothes the kitchen, I brew coffee and gaze out into the still-dark morning.
Before work, I play my guitar to see if anything is in there. I write a couple lines to something simple in G Major, but it feels too straightforward and vulnerable. Where is my cape of abstraction?
Tuesday, August 11
A husky trails its lead through the empty post office parking lot. I pause my run, looking around for its owner, and notice a woman across the street doing the same. As I yell over to her, another voice from the porch behind me interrupts to say she thinks it belongs to the family whose yard it has just wandered into. I cross over and hatch a plan with the other helper: I'll knock on the front door while she keeps an eye on the dog out back.
A couple minutes pass before a woman cautiously cracks open the door. She's Hispanic, with very little English. I recognize the threat I likely pose — a white male stranger knocking on a brown-skinned immigrant's door in Trump's America — and recompose my body language to convey benignity. I'm drenched in sweat, a total mess, but I smile and tell her "I think we found your dog." Confusion. "Are you missing a dog? We think it's out back." Finally, comprehension. "Husky?"
I step off her porch and she follows me around back to be reunited with her laid-back dog, who seems to have gone on a brief Rumspringa around the neighborhood. I'm not sure if she even knew it was gone. "Nice teamwork," I say to the other woman before resuming my run.
Wednesday, August 12
The solar eclipse cuts a black path through Europe. I follow its dramatic images online: Björk DJing a rave in Iceland wearing a gown of white balloons, figures on a high ridge in Spain silhouetted against a massive fiery ring. Denise messages from England to say she viewed it through a colander. I remember my own excitement watching the 2024 eclipse here in the U.S. That feeling seems so far away right now. Lately, I feel like I'm on the wrong end of a celestial hex. Is Mercury in retrograde?
All week I've felt listless, grayed by a late-summer gloom that won't dissipate. I've done a lot of laying around on the bed with the animals, neither of whom seems to mind my ennui. My attention skims across various projects, though nothing seems to catch for long.
Thursday, August 13
After months of fretting about it, I report to my community college's testing center and take the CLEP exam for College Composition. It's a timed two-hour exam with 50 multiple choice questions, followed by two essays which I have to bang out on the spot. It's a little grueling, though I wouldn't necessarily call it hard. I’m a professional content editor — I write in greater volume than this almost every day, though not usually in such a time crunch. Assuming I pass (results won't be known for at least two weeks), this will shorten my academic journey by a full semester and allow me to graduate next May.
Friday, August 14
I lay in bed thinking about making an ambient album. Islay pads into the room to offer her gentle "please get up and feed me" whine. I counter with my customary "uh-uh," and buy myself another 12 minutes in bed. It's 6:42 — the bedroom light is charcoal gray. I get up, put on a forest synth album by Ulk, and begin the day.
Reading:
Weird Walk, Issue #7
Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk - John Doe
Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
Stegosaurus Moon - Scott Beal
Drinking:
Roos Roast Rich French Neighbor Dark Roast
Many cans of coconut water
Manhattans (still without Luxardo cherries)