April 7, 2026
Had a dream where my mother was lying face down on the lawn in front of my house. I walk toward her and turned her over and she was completely still. I tried pounding on her chest to bring her back to life. I screamed. My brother was standing at the top of the stairs in shock.
I woke up at 7:44 am with the knowledge my alarm will go off at 8. I couldn't get back to sleep. The voice of my brother in the kitchen prompted me to get out of bed. He was talking to my mother.
Every morning my routine is the same.
The routine is coffee.
First, I fill an electric kettle with 540 grams of water. The recipe calls for 500 but I use 40 extra grams to wet the paper filter. Or otherwise, the coffee has a papery taste to it. Then I measure out 30 grams of beans and throw them in the grinder. I wait until the kettle is at 194 degrees and then I wet the paper filter and grind the beans.
I dump the grounds into the filter which sits snug in a V60. I tare the measuring device and start a timer. I start to spiral pour until I reach 60 grams on the scale. Double the amount of coffee. This is called the bloom stage. Where all the CO2 in the coffee is released. I wait until the timer hits 45 seconds to do a second spiral pour. When I reach 300 grams, I stop. When the timer reaches 2 minutes, I make my final pour until I reach the goal of 500 grams. I watch the water draw down into the grams and my end time is 3:12. Anything over 3 minutes is my intended goal. Some drawdowns are faster than others. Some are slower. Especially if the beans are from Ethiopia. Reason being they are smaller so the finer the grind the slower the water absorption.
At 8:07 I take a shower.
I get out, put on fresh clothes and ask my brother if he wants to continue watching Breaking Bad. He says yes. We sit down in my room to watch the second episode of the final season, titled Buried. My brother tenses at the fight between Marie and Skylar as Marie attempts to take baby Holly.
8:45
I go to Great Clips down the street to get my hair cut. There is no one there so I don't have to wait. The barber is sitting in one of the chairs waiting for a customer. She has green hair, tattoos and glasses. Usually when I'm at the barber the talking veers in the direction of where I work, if I have plans for the rest of the day, etc. Standard questions to pass the time. All of which were asked. Only when it came to passing the time, I brought up how I liked to read. She too was a reader. This caused me to become excited. Anytime I talk to a reader, there is a lot to talk about. So the conversation lasted for the entire haircut. Something that doesn't happen often. I was finished around 9 and left.
9:06
When I got home, I watched The Man Who Wasn't There. The Coen Brothers movie about a barber in the 1940s who suspects his wife is cheating on him. It leads him down a path of blackmail and murder. I recently got the Criterion 4K and watching it revealed how crisp and beautiful Roger Deakins' black and white cinematography is.
12:45
I went to Cooper Hawk in Oak Lawn to grab something to eat. The hostess sat me in the bar area at a raised table. The waitress, Vanessa, came over and took my order. I got the Spaghetti and Meatballs. Can't go wrong with a classic. I doomscrolled on my phone. Letting myself fall down worst-case scenario rabbit holes with every headline, meme and news report. The worst of which dealt with nuclear weapons.
There was a birthday at a table and the lady at the end of the bar mentioned how she was an Aries. The guest sitting at the table by the birthday girl mentioned how they were born on March 30.
The check came and I left.
2:12
Arrived at the Alsip Merionette Park Library with the intention of reading Kanley Stubrick by Mike Kleine. Purchased it because it was acclaimed book from a small press and I try to support small presses as much as I can. Plus it was a play on the name of my favorite director. The premise: A girl loses her shoe and the guy she lives with starts calling their friends to see if they know anything about the missing shoe. Some of them have theories, others don't seem to care. Then the girl herself disappears and the guy goes looking for her.
A vague fucking premise if there ever was one. But enough to hang a slim, experimental, 100-page novel on.
Halfway through the book I had the urge to scream at the top of my lungs in the middle of the library.
The experience of the book felt dream like. Where the landscape of the text became smaller and more ephemeral as it went on. Time and space are fluid.
2:47
Finished Kanley Stubrick.
2:50
Left library
2:57
Arrived home
3:30
Started Chinese Roulette on the Criterion Channel. Slowly working my way through Rainer Werner Fassbinder's rather large filmography. Chinese Roulette has one of the most dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships I've seen in a movie. Like most of his movies, there are no purely good characters. On a psychological level, no one leaves the movies unscathed.
5:30
Made my second coffee. Black and White Coffee Roasters' Diego Bermuda.
6:30
Started my second book of the day, David Kuhnlein's Bloodletter. This one was about a blood cult.
8 pm
My dad turns on Fox News. Emissions of fear, paranoia and xenophobia festoon out of the television. I tune everything out by putting on headphones. I listen to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 and continued to read David Kuhnlein's Bloodletter.
9:30
I finished Bloodletter. Spent the rest of the night writing more of my essay on the American West and the Western. Working on the final segment and planning to do another pass and finishing touches in the coming weeks.
At roughly 8 am, the President of the United States threatened genocide against Iran, a country of 90 million people.
People went to work.
People went to school.
They went about their day.
At around 6:30pm it was announced there was a 10-point plan for a ceasefire.
At 11pm, I went to bed.
