11 June 23:34

One difficult aspect of musician-bohemianism is that my life, though it may seem poor, is actually unfathomably expensive. In needing to attend a wedding tomorrow on 24 hours' notice, I'm suddenly faced with the need for a dress, and find myself stumbling over the complexities of retrieving clothes I need from my subleased apartment in Astoria. Actually, were I to live with the ideal of seven items—attainable only by fashion renunciate-saints—I would surely end up dropping cash on this-and-that: the right hat for the TV appearance, the right skirt for the gig, the right coat for the weather (I am aghast at my own priorities, looking at the order of these). The irony here is that in order to live frugally and monastically in today's society, one must have access to and freedom with cash that one might buy and dispose of freely. My years of accumulated things, conversely, are what have enabled me to swish my way stylishly through years of freelancing on a wasp-waisted household budget.

Still, like many a nerd, I dream of sailing through life with seven perfect items of clothing (and, of course, seven pair of shoes).

Rain on the boat woke me last night, a thrillingly loud downpour, and I was like a little kid seeing an elephant for the first time to experience the din.

13 June 9:39

Last week's heat has entirely broken, and it seems as if we are reeling backward into early spring, or perhaps fast-forwarding to autumn. Just sitting up on the bridge, I could probably spend a good part of the day studying the patterns of the sky. From this perspective, figurative painting and the study of light and colour seems like a worthy venture. I suppose artistic minds had a good deal more free time in the nineteenth century. It also does explain all those cheesy little boat portraits and bad boat art that one finds surrounding marinas.

The pace of life is much slower here. Something about being on the water, even within the larger area of the City, requests the mind to be calm.