"I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water." Marie Howe


08/29/2024; When I woke up this morning I found a dead roach in my bed.

08/27/2024; The sky & the breeze, already gone.

08/26/2024; There were raindrops on only one side of the bus.

08/26/2024; The AC was out this morning when I felt sick to my stomach.

08/24/2024; I saw a great, big owl.

08/23/2024; I watched a woman cut my father's hair. I felt an authentic & meditative love for the woman that I did not know.

08/23/2024; I felt better after school today.

08/17/2024; I saw a car with a license plate that read: TITHE

08/15/2024; This week I learned to sleep on the bus.

08/10/2024; I saw a pair of geese in flight yesterday & a patch of sunflowers today that reminded me of my friend, (a different kind of bird). If you are reading this, I love you!

08/09/2024; I wrote a grocery list in my new journal.

08/08/2024; I bit the nail on my left pinkie so low while studying that it started bleeding.

08/07/2024; My dog likes laying on my bed when it has a pile of clean laundry on it.

08/06/2024; One of my comforters is blue & the other two are white. The blue one is always on the bottom.

08/05/2024; I drove on the highway for the first time & three people honked at me. I could have wrecked the car.

08/04/2024; There was a sudden rainstorm while I was driving. I saw pigeons huddle together under an overpass.


07/31/2024; There were little rainbows sprinkled across my room like confetti when I came home from school today. I've never seen so many.

07/30/2024; I saw found a purple paper crane. I saw a deer in the park at night.

07/22/2024; I saw five deer out the train window.

07/21/2024; The moon was pink last night. I played a game where I would stand in spots so the moon looked like it was perched on the telephone wires, like a pigeon.

07/20/2024; A green onion blooming in the garden: Scallionhope.

07/19/2024; There are five flowers blooming outside my window. The moon was so bright that I started seeing spots.

07/18/2024; There is one flower blooming outside my window.

07/16/2024; My bed hasn't been made for two weeks now.

07/15/2024; It was hot enough for me to feel my heartbeat.

07/14/2024; I woke up last night with a tight chest. I thought I saw something nondescript outside of my window, a floating spot.

07/10/2024; My computer screen & the lenses to my glasses are always dirty, smudged, normally imperceptibly (to me).

07/08/2024; I had an intense sense of déjà vu at school today. Then it felt like I had lived this day in a dream.

07/01/2024; Looked for deer out the train window & only found homeless camps.


06/25/2024; A burning feeling in the hands. A month is a long time & it’s not a long time at all.

06/19/2024; The telephone wires are different here, like Chūya's poem.


05/31/2024; The aching in my fingers feels deep, towards the bone, ebbing & flowing with my heartbeat.

05/30/2024; The rain was so soft that I thought the sound of it was wind.

05/30/2024; I held a washcloth over the bath & watched water drip from it. Some of the drips were steady and some were unsteady.

05/29/2024; A straw cast a shadow so dark & so clean over my hand that for a moment I thought it was drawn on with marker.