one. bus rides, sun settings, circular tracks spiraling into boston proper, under multibillion subterranean tunnels, zeroing to this place I temporarily call home: where my suitcase is.

two. feeling that familiar sourness behind the eyes after every chapter of 'oscar wao' as my eyes prepare to get ready for starting to tear, and being astonished (but not ashamed) at this sudden welling of emotion.

three. biking along the charles, just during sunset, the contrast between orange sky and shadowed ground reflected in a thousand different ripples and so strong as to be nearly black and white, monochrome journey along this central artery.

four. the last few times I've been walking/biking along the Charles I've been thinking of that anne sexton poem I read a few years ago probably sometime in junior year in high school. here it is:

five. sitting on a rooftop in the east village looking around: other people on other rooftops, all having their own parties, as far as the eye can see, it's a second city up here tonight, watching the indirect glow of fireworks reflected off of faraway skyscrapers, through the smoky haze. in another city this would be youtubed and uploaded, distant thunder tolling and telling of revolution and revolt, masses moving, change in the air, the bottle and rag that constitutes a molotov cocktail suspended hanging at apogee, moving along air-resistance-deformed parabolas. here it's a joyous mockery of this all, over there you see people clumped predictably like ants along the edges of a faraway rooftop. sun sets amongst water towers. I want to cry, almost, everything's set in this glow, I wonder if it's just me or if most people understand this rooftop and this sense of higher-up-ness (is this really just another word for the sublime?) and if so then why people aren't crying out or throwing themselves off the edges of these rooftops in sheer overwhelming awe feeling other monstrous creations of brick, cast iron, and concrete spike up around you watching the sun die westward;

six. new museum, younger than jesus show. it's the middle of the day and inside a gallery but somehow with headphones on watching a video of these dudes dancing around and the sound of soles against snow-crusted asphalt surprisingly loud I all of a sudden have the sense that I am inside, up late at night, watching this video with my face illuminated with the glow of an led (formerly see are tee) display, watching this impromptu dance and feeling like I've touched something sacred in the midst of the profane (not to reduce popular youtubery to the profane or anything but I just wanted to talk about this sensation of passing through to something _else_, like the first few waves of cool air breaking over your face as you step outside that restaurant to the crisp night air and taller buildings) and I think, william gibson would like this, don delillo would like this, this early morning conspiracy, this aligning of stars, this syzygy, tearfully brief moments of coherence,

seven. did I mention tearing up while reading oscar wao?

eight. the crunch of caramelized pork rolling around my mouth at the second bite of banh mi having just hopped off a bus, having just come back to my city, oh one of my cities.

nine. staying up all night working, making. we are in the process of building cities and organizing routines, establishing phenomena. changing people, the dictatorship of having people conform to a space, or vice versa? these questions. one thing that I think about all the time lately is how architecture in this studio, at least, is like studying done through pataphor, controlled free fall, endless spiraling-offs maintained through twin tenuous leashes to a) functionality and b) core vocabularies or orders. the blockage of creativity in the face of orthodoxy and convention means that you step off stepping offs; orthogonal angles off of orthogonal angles no longer going parallel, drifting off, doing some sort of random walk akin to a situationist derive going away, exposure to liminal states and the breaking-beyonds of these liminal states -- and so on. controlled free fall, I just said. in the midst of this self-adjustment processes comes inspiration and creation and that's really why the reason these exercises are done in the first place, I think; this is what I think; the silent reason behind these things that isn't mentioned ever this way and most probably so because to each h(is/er) own, you trace out the surface of your own metaphors, your own carvings above your doors, rice flour kolams marking the dawn of each single new day.

ten. managing half-deliberately to write about everything but that which is most important: dancing around the core of that-which-is-going-on, the whats-up, around that which really shakes me now. buzzing. sitting alone or lying awake I wonder: did I do this right? there are no right answers, she says, and I suddenly imagine myself with a machete bushwhacking through a jungle, finding paths wherever I see an annihilable plant or tree. to which way? I don't know. there will be ceilings to stare at and maybe a few more cigarettes to be smoked or something and I wonder and I wonder and maybe I'll find some sort of grace in all of this, some sort of peace and grace in the midst of all of this where there is no right answer or no unifying internal coherence that lends this disorientation and confusion some systematic unified rationality. what happens makes things happen. I am walking around and stopping and turning around and stopping and thinking all the meanwhile. I walk to 110th and broadway and jasmart is fucking closed and I can't find any more ramune and all of a sudden I am very sad just because, somehow this little supermarket having embodied all of the other 'ethnic' supermarkets in the iowa citys and lawrences and greenfields and miltons that meant home, a little improvised home -- but not only that because of something else that I can't quite pinpoint, something that goes with the impossibly good weather and the lingering remains of a hug and the skies (always) impossibly higher thanks to its surrounding buildings. et cetera et et cetera.

I would like to know what to do and where to go and things are slipping out from underneath and I am doing the sleeping. on the subway today (new york, not boston) I dreamt of a cat and I flung my arm out to stop it, ended up throwing my phone on the ground. as I stretched out in a newly awaken haze to pick the phone up I got this taste of my mouth that said something like "hey me, drifting me, this is a now in which archetypes and memories are being formed: new york summers laced with emotion." where to? I'd like to know.