I have this weird feeling that I want to stay up all night long, avoiding sleep, and just work on packing and sorting and throwing things away. I think about all the hours wasted in bed.

I am imagining Alex’s studio apartment, no bigger than my living room+dining room, his lack of possessions, his bookshelf full of dusty old thrift store titles like “Gardening Indoors” and “Kon-Tiki” and “White Teeth” and “Siddhartha.” I wonder what it would be like for me to be so austere, to have so very little again. He isn’t a real person, by the way.

Today is hot. I made some progress, packed much of my desk, except for the biggest drawer containing all my file folders. Spent time looking at old greeting cards and notes from friends sent in the past three or four years. You know who is a wonderful friend and letter writer? Allison is!

I have been listening to Chet Baker since I got back from lunch with Rena. It was a nice lunch, I had goat cheese on toast with roasted red peppers and an iced tea. We talked about our formative punk scenes, hers in Santa Barbara, mine in Olympia. Turns out we saw many of the same bands around the same time, why did I never know that about her?

Goals for tonight include packing up bathroom items and moving furniture out of dining room to make way for painting. I will miss these reddish-brown walls. I’d like to recreate it someday, when we own a house.