Friday

Aug 9th

I wake up and work on the book then I swim in the sea and come back to the house with salt on my skin in little sharp crystals that hurt when my clothes press up against me. I sit in the front room with my manuscript and work and I sit out on the balcony and work. At dusk I light glass candles—the saint kind but without the saint labels—and I work. When I can’t anymore I open a bottle of cold white wine and go outside and lie down on the half-pipe in the dark and listen to the sound of the freeway—and, as it gets later and people have gone home, the quiet hush of the sea. It’s day six or five now of my deadline. I’m not sure.

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