June 2026

June 18

There's a moment in the evening when the sun, as it begins its curvilinear descent beyond the mountains, meets my west-facing window, and the light - in its golden form - flares throughout my room. The light becomes the room. It fills the imperceptible pores of the otherwise pale walls, and only the shadows of objects on my windowsill that bend and lengthen with the hours are hidden from the light. The light then deepens as it's confronted with nightfall, as if the darkness clings to light with a fused, gilded weight. A heaviness that turns the light from a fortunate, polished straw blonde before the hours darken by the enveloping shade.

June 19

Outside my window is the train depot—a deep reddish-brown brick building, built in 1902. The main brick terminal is encircled on either side by a courtyard enclosed by rows of buff-colored brick columns that connect the terminal symmetrically to the separate baggage and restaurant buildings. The last passenger train stopped at the depot in 1979; today, the depot acts as an event center and pop-up museum. A freight train passes in irregular intervals, springing between tracks like a steel tide. I stand by the window and watch graffiti art painted on the sides of train cars. Often, the train's moving too quickly, and so I can make out only a torrent of polychromatic slides. And suddenly the train is gone, the torrent with it, and only the steel tracks, surrounded by black, polished rocks, are left shivering in the wake.

June 20

I've made a suite in an historic hotel my home for the last four years. The same historic hotel whose echoes include the footsteps of Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Harrison, Dave Matthews, Jimmy Buffett, Jeff Bridges, Robert Redford, Tim Egan, Colum McCann, Waylon Jennings, Michael Keaton, Gregory Peck, Terry Tempest Willimans, Rick Bass, Leon Redbone, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Shepard, and others. Sam Peckinpah used to live in the room above me, decades before my time, but nevertheless. I can still hear his footsteps.

I haven't always been fascinated by history, at least not in the context of who might also have walked the same halls, until I started thinking about how our experiences shape us and the small, unconscious things that influence us in ways few recognize. 

Sam used to fire a pistol into the ceiling of his room. People come from all over to ask about the bullet holes. In my hand, I hold a slug pulled from a hole in the wall. 

June 21

I spend my days writing, almost exclusively. I work the front desk of the hotel for a few hours at night before turning down the lights, taking in the last moments in the darkness of the lobby, and tiptoeing up the 122-year-old marble steps to my room in the earliest hours of the morning, and drift to sleep. One of the marble steps was kicked loose by Trigger, when Roy stayed here. I know where to step to silence the rattle, but sometimes I like it. I wake up after the sun rises, fairly late, usually between ten and eleven, and quickly get through my morning routine before settling in to enjoy my tea; often, while sitting on the rooftop patio, before I start writing. I don't stop writing until around seven when I make dinner. After dinner, I plan the following day's work, then meditate, and wait for my late shift.