I was running the other night, heaving and hauling myself across 85th Street, when something clicked. I’d been ruminating about the novel I’ve been writing and rewriting for an embarrassing number of years. With each draft, my story got a little better, but something still wasn’t working. When I finally screwed up the courage to let someone read it, she confirmed what I knew: the main character was boring. He didn’t know what he wanted or what he believed. Of course he was boring: the main character was me—or some elderly, nostalgic avatar of myself.

So I went for a run because I didn’t want to start smoking again, and I was gasping and sweating and hating myself because I write so slowly while everyone else seemed to be cranking out new books every few days. I wanted so badly to finish this novel this year. Instead, I was once again dreading the chore of taking yet another stab at improving the main character’s wants, needs, and flaws. Then a thought landed in my head that literally stopped me in my tracks on the corner of Third Avenue: Get rid of that guy. He’s dead weight, so ditch him. Replace him with the lady who’s been lurking at the margins of the story, the embittered Olympic diver whose devotion to a strange ritual accidentally maimed her neighbors and sent her daughter running into the night. She has flaws and wants.

Everything started clicking into place, and I haven’t been this excited about writing in a long time. It was liberating to realize the world I wanted to build would become much more interesting if I removed myself from the equation.

And yet. Here’s the reason I mention any of this: I resisted this idea for two solid weeks because the thought of undoing all that work and deleting all those words was too much for my pride to bear. My ego revolted. Look how much time you’ve spent on this! It’s good enough! But I know this story can be better, and that idea on 85th and Third Avenue was a rare gift, one of those moments of illumination that happens every five or six years, if I’m lucky. And who am I to turn my back on such a thing?

MMMD – Egoismo

Pèkisyon Funebri | Antifrost, 2016 | Bandcamp

An all-time favorite: slow-motion strings and liturgical drones from Athens, Greece.

Sunset: 6:35pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Weather: Mostly sunny with a high of 75, partly cloudy tonight with a low of 54 degrees and a light southwest wind.

I always wake up too early on Saturdays because I’m excited it’s Saturday. This morning I went for an ugly jog and accidentally got absorbed into a marathon-in-progress. For three miles, I debated the ethics of helping myself to the Gatorade-and-banana stations. I declined. Better to run poorly with a clear conscience.

Packed into a tight group, I ran much faster than usual. I suppose there’s a lesson there. And I was struck by how each person has their own shamble and stride, their particular way of carrying themselves through the world, as unique as a fingerprint.

I haven’t been running much at the cabin in the woods. I gave up after a suicidal jog along a loopy stretch of road where monstrous pickup trucks Tokyo-drifted around the curves. This afternoon I drove to a path along the Scioto River, and I thought I’d run an easy three or four miles. Although it had only been a week since my last run, my body creaked and juddered. Even worse, I was bored out of my skull, checking my watch every two minutes and wondering if I should start smoking again.

The body remembers slowly and forgets very quickly. This lesson also applies to writing. A day or two passes without working on my book, and my brains start panting and wheezing the next time I sit at my desk. Why are you making up stories? Let’s do something else instead. The daily routine isn’t poetic or even interesting. There are no flashes of insight, no white-hot burst of motivation that fuels me until dawn. God knows I’ve waited long enough for these things to show up. From now on, it’s just a steady grind.

A heatwave is settling over New York City, and the streets are filled with the silence that heavy heat brings. Voices seem to carry further. At sunset I went for a sludgy run. These days my running soundtrack is an odd mixture of glitch, gloom, and ‘70s rock: Autechre, Fleetwood Mac, The Knife, and Funkadelic. The early maximal albums of M83 are also fantastic widescreen scores for running.

I love watching other people run. Everyone has their own style, like a moving fingerprint. Some are knock-kneed and avian with prancing steps, while others take leaping strides like something from a savanna. My style sits somewhere between scraping and dragging. Sometimes there’s crying. They say you never see a cheetah stretch, but maybe I should. My legs always hurt. I hate running but I admire how it forces me to narrow my focus to a single step and all the life lessons this implies. And each night there’s the sensation of either running from or towards something.

Fleetwood Mac – The Chain

Rumors | Warner, 1977 | More

A hot and muggy Sunday, the kind of day that’s begging for a thunderstorm. At dusk, it finally came, followed by another wall of humidity. We had a pleasant June for a while, but the long mean heat of summer is finally here. Beyond this, I’m losing the plot.

Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers. Pandemic denial despite headlines about surges, spikes, and overburdened systems. People are buying “mask exemption cards” from a fictional outfit called the Freedom to Breathe Agency. You can buy 500 laminated cards for fifty bucks. This morning our president shared a video of one of his supporters hollering white power from a golf cart. And on and on until god knows what happens in November.

Went for an ugly late-night run through the park to empty my head. I still prefer running at night because nobody can see me cry. Last night I wondered about the origins of the words peace and please as I fell asleep, and I became convinced the two concepts were etymologically connected. (They’re not.) Tonight I might contemplate the dynamics between victim and victor.

Recondite – Humid Green Haze

Theater II | Dystopian, 2017 | Bandcamp

An uneasy grey day like a hangover from yesterday’s sunshine. I went for an ugly run, stopping every few miles to ring the sweat from my shirt. Running is one of the few concrete things I can do to prepare for apocalyptic times. Lately I’ve been running to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter” for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Maybe it’s the retro-tragic drumbeat. I thought about my writing and the courses I’m teaching this summer while I ground out my clumsy miles. I puzzled out the best way to approach an upcoming project that needs to offer hope while acknowledging grief.

When I flipped on the news around midnight, my concerns about running, writing, teaching, and everything else felt stupidly indulgent. The police murdered a man in Minneapolis the other day. They knelt on his neck while he cried that he could not breathe. One cop knelt while three officers watched, ignoring the bystanders pleading to let the man breathe. The cop knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds, all of it captured on shaky cellphone video.

Uprisings are spreading across the country tonight. Louisville. Phoenix. Memphis. Protestors seized a police station in Minneapolis and launched fireworks. Reporters stood in front of burning buildings, a gleam in their eyes. Meanwhile, our president dashed off messages quoting racists from yesteryear: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” This will be an ugly summer.

Simon & Garfunkel – A Hazy Shade of Winter

Bookends | Columbia, 1966 | More