In the summer of 2019, after a few years commuting to and fro from the city to Providence to the city and elsewhere, I settle back in New York and plan recruiting friends to write a collaborative novella. Each participant must first propose that we do something together. It can be anything, from hosting a listening session to doing something we’ve never done before, like going fishing in the East River, picking a subway line and exploring the areas around each one of its stops, kayaking to Ellis Island, touring monuments in the five boroughs, going to a silent disco, or sneaking into a convention at the Javits Center. Our experience will be the basis of each chapter. The novella will be a love letter to the city that is home to many of the people I love. Summer goes by too fast. I run out of time while trying to finish a book on repetition. I’ll get to it next year, I figure.



In the summer of 2020, I watch Palm Springs—a sci-fi film that’s somewhat of a remake of Groundhog Day. The lead character is stuck in a time loop and wakes up to the same day over and over again, readying himself to attend the same wedding each time round. His behavior changes every iteration of the main plot, but nothing has consequences since whatever has happened during the day erases itself at night and the present keeps rebooting to same day. Awareness of his entrapment is his freedom. I write this in an email to someone who’s asked how my summer went, but I take it out before pressing send since I’m not sure exactly what I am relaying. The question remains open: Did I advance my learning of helplessness or did I teach myself to resist it in 92 days? For what it’s worth, I realized that by adding fifteen words to this paragraph I could match the count of the one above.