629 days, 10 hours, 8 minutes, 25 seconds

Claremont Stables closed over the weekend. They'll no longer hear horses walking home from Central Park along 89th St. She thinks of the individual stalls on the upper floors. Empty now.

629 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds

Manhattan Mini Storage has the best ads. When her husband's friend moved back to the city twenty years ago, they helped her get her belongings out of a storage place in Harlem. They walked through the corridors, lights coming on as they neared, found her place, and slipped inside. They decided, if they ever married, that's where they'd like to have the wedding.

Too late now. They married at City Hall. Word is all these storage places, in Manhattan at least, are going to be turned into condos over the next few years.

629 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes, 57 seconds

( Bus Stop, 81st & Broadway)

God, closets! When they first moved in together they wanted a workspace built for her. And someone told them about a company that did work in her aunt's apartment: California Colsets. And they thought what a good name for a company that works in small apartments. Only it turned out they only did work in closets. And it turned out they hired them to transform a walk-in closet. After that was done they searched for someone else to build her workspace.

630 days, 0 hours, 18 minutes, 37.6 seconds

Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait an hour. Hurry up and wait in line. Seven movies in eleven days, plus one reading, one party, one play, one concert, and teaching four classes. She's out of her mind. Her father says so. Then the iced cappuccino she had with lunch, she realized after she drank it, was from a machine and probably already sugared. Up up up the blood goes. Ten bad headaches in eleven days. She thought, with this an independent festival, it would be different than just going to a movie any time, in any suburb. The whole festival's spread out now, only two of their movies are in Tribeca, the air quality's bad everywhere.

633 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes, 30.1 seconds

She can't help wondering if it was a red Ford Escort. She almost bought a red car once, when the Datsun dealer claimed to have the car then claimed he'd get the car then said a maroon car which she knew was just a fancy tag for red. She can't stand red, the gaudiest vehicle on the road. She did have a pink car once, the Dodge Shadow. Slowest moving car she's ever driven. She can't even remember its name now.

633 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes, 18 seconds

So: An 81 year-old woman pulls into her driveway and notices a bull in her garage. The angry bull rams its horns into her Ford Escort. She blows her horn. The bull chases her car as she drives to a relative's home to call the cops. This happened yesterday in Hebron. Rural Washington County, the paper says. About fifteen miles from her own home. She doesn't know what to say except to record this here just as it happened. And to note she has no family in the area. She drove to a neighbor's once when the gas didn't work and the phone didn't work. No bull.

633 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes, 27 seconds

She got up. She turned on the computer. She went downstairs for breakfast. The usual routine. She took her pills, ate wasabi peas instead of a breakfast bar, since her head still hurt a bit. Then she realized she'd just aimed a bullet directly into her skull. She'd never changed her pill compartments. She'd just taken Glucophage. An innocent enough mistake.

In the news last January, there was a piece about the Tigger character at Walt Disney World supposedly hitting a child "on or about the head" while posing for photos. It's not the first time. In 2004 a different Tigger was accused of groping a thirteen year-old girl, but later found innocent.

633 days, 12 hours, 22 minutes, 16 seconds

Mickey Mickey Mickey Mickey Mickey. The little boy runs up and Mickey Mouse reaches down to hug him. Just the person I've waited my whole life to meet. Then the tv goes back to Law and Order.

633 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes, 16.7 seconds

What she's not writing here is that her father's sick. Or thinks he's sick. Angry that she's traveling all over the country and hasn't made time to see him,to go over all the possessions in the house, when he just gave her all that money. When he's sick. When she says they've been over all this already. When she says she doesn't want anything.

633 days, 20 hours, 46 minutes, 19 seconds

The last thing she wanted was yet another sickness journal. Then again, the last thi ng she wanted was this much pain. Oh, she can make excuses, can say her state mirrors the state her country's in. Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman exposed as military feel-good myths. The Dow Jones higher than ever.

633 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes, 19 seconds

She thought she had it down pat: one Glucophage in the morning, one at bedtime = some of the worst migraines she's had. One day off, and just a little headache, easily overlooked. But then, just as her husband suggests maybe only one pill tonight, she gulps two pills and ten minutes later that sharp pain running down the right side of her head again, as if it never left.

633 days, 20 hours, 54 minutes, 29 seconds

Mouskop. Mouse cap. To have a doctor with the head of a rodent her father has hunted down. A neurologist, no less. Except he's Russian, not German. Given the magic he's worked these past three years, she prefers to imagine him pulling Cinderella's carriage. The lead mouse.

634 days, 12 hours, 26 minutes, 25 seconds

Her head's back to where it was four years ago pre-botox. Headaches every single day. For 16 unremitting days now. Tylenol not helping. The neurologist asks first if she can wrinkle her forehead, then if she's on any new medications. But she'd already figured that one out. The headaches unbearable within a few days of her splitting the glucophage tablets, one in the morning, one at night. Two at night she seemed able to tolerate. At the moment she couldn't care less about diabetes, she just wants to die. Don't tolerate, exterminate. Please.

634 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes, 15.6 seconds

She drops the car off. She wants to say she took a bus home because of what the cab did. Her husband even gave her one of his transit cards. But the fact is she only walked to the bus stop because she didn't think she could get a cab. She didn't get a receipt for the car, either. Avi wasn't there.

635 days, 0 hours, 9 minutes, 10.5 seconds

Claritin. Tylenol. A muscle relaxant. And still her head's killing her. It's been the same for over a week now. All she can think of is Awakenings. Especially at bedtime.

636 days, 11 hours, 48 minutes, 39 seconds

And 9,337 miles on the car, not quite eight years old. Blink, oops, bang, stop. She's become the master of little accidents like this. Never anyone hurt. Probably her fault, she tried to turn left past a cab sitting at the curb. Forget insurance, it would cost her more in premiums. Probably someone can hammer out the bumper, get a new light, a few hundred dollars. She gets the super to tape it up for her. Gets her husband to go find an auto body place with her. Any body.

638 days, 11 hours, 53 minutes, 22 seconds

First she lectured her husband on the benefits of Echinacea. Then she gave him one of the two bottles she had. Then she finished her bottle. Then she bought a new bottle in Sacramento. Then she came home and took the bottle she gave him from the kitchen up to the bathroom where he can't find it. She hasn't unpacked yet.

638 days, 12 hours, 21 minutes, 35 seconds

That's the Particle museum she could have sworn Mary said, pointing to a round building visible from a park at the top of Marin Dr., overlooking the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. This is where the Manhattan Project started, where they split the first particles. It's part of UC Berkeley's astrophysics department now. And maybe not a museum, or at least not open to the public. That was nine days ago now, hard to remember the description exactly. Her head splitting.

638 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes, 46 seconds

A bomb is a bomb is a bomb. There are so many bombs. Last night, for example. Her head splitting. She took Percocet for the first time in three years, and it was nearly midnight. Resting awhile, working awhile. She read old email, then two migraine articles, an article on the homeless, an article on a Long Island man who collects Pinocchio figurines . Finally the pain almost gone. The nausea set in then. God knows how out of date those pills might have been. Can't sit here worrying.

638 days, 12 hours, 53 minutes, 12.9 seconds

Baghdad Police
Station Hit By Car
Bomb
The headline says. Read it as poetry, a pause t the end of each line, bomb on a line by itself. So many interruptions. A car hits the police station and bombs. The car hits the station and the bomb goes off. Or bombs, fails to go off. The Baghdad police stage, station, or plan the hit. Break a leg actors are told before a performance. 52 minutes, 0.3 seconds now. The clock's ticking. Can't sit here worrying about what or where the next bomb might be, especially when they seem to have brought this on themselves.