She's not a girl who misses much

"In June of this year patient experienced an attack of vertigo, nausea, and a feeling that she was going to pass out. A thorough medical evaluation elicited no positive findings..." 

[...] 

The patient to whom the report refers is me. The tests mentioned [...] were administered privately [...] in the summer of 1968, shortly after I suffered the "attack of vertigo and nausea" mentioned in the first sentence and shortly before I was named a Los Angeles Times "Woman of the Year." By way of comment I offer only that an attack of vertigo and nausea does not now seem to me an inappropriate response to the summer of 1968.

— from The White Album, by Joan Didion.

Mushroom and Child, by Seana Gavin.

I had my own not inappropriate response to various personal events at the close of 2015. We all have our seasons. But on a societal level, surely 2020 is the year when no event can surprise us, to which no response is unexpected or inappropriate.

My houseplant sprouts more beautiful mushrooms. I wonder if there's a way to preserve them before they shrivel back into the soil. And what of the spores?

I learn: Als ich wieder zu mir komme, bin ich in einem großen Raum. I wonder if I will wake up from this.

Last night I dreamt I was in a big room, and while I was working, a man was taking impressions, like mini casts or moulds, of small parts of my back, smaller than the palm of my hand, such that most impressions were near blank, with only a barely discernible curve. 

I am watching I Love Dick, based on Chris Kraus's novel, which I am considering rereading because I feel I have yet to glean all I can from it. I want to make art of sex and desire, in the things I write and sculpt and maybe in the way I live too. 

Didion writes of the illusion that "all human endeavor tends mystically west." I think about looking for god and whether the search has any value when I know I will find nothing, I will be confronted with more nothingness, the nothingness is endless. I know the destination, but I know this journey too, I've taken it before. I think of Don Draper while I hum the Beatles and think about the taglines I need to explore for a project at work this week.

There are lights on the exterior walkway in front of my west-facing apartment. As I draw the curtains one night, I feel sorry for my tomato plant there, it must not be able to sleep. The plant is five feet tall now and has fruited several dozen green globes. It must be so tired.