The shirts hanging on the wall look like children that have been beaten down to empty skin. This country is either veering leftwards or rightwards without being aware of it, or so I infer from the people passing outside my window. The monosyllabic agitated words piercing through the walls like a pencil tapping through taut paper make it clear that thanks to short-sighted immigration policies numerical superiority on this hallway has been lost to the Chinese. I remain reluctant to concede that my headache may have been an inside job. Persian rugs are becoming the only acceptable form of art to me, because you can walk all over them. I think I’m going to start wearing glasses and contacts at the same time–20/20 vision is mediocrity by definition. As long as you’re careful to keep your books facing the wall, you can read most of them in three words or less. Sometimes I think my eyes can wear down the things they most often look at, like a beaten path through the grass.

Out on a run I noticed they’ve started planting dwarf palms in the traffic islands in Medford. There are a lot of Brazilians up that way, they’re probably trying to make them feel more at home. I don’t know, maybe that’s why they’re ripping up so many of the sidewalks too. Later, I ran by the famous Gehry building at MIT, and realized its only real problem is that it doesn’t fit in with itself. Still, I like artists plagued by frequent collapses and declines–the most common sign of attempted flight. In my room, on the other hand, it’s all clean, bare white walls, since Massachusetts fire regulations only let you cover 10% of your walls. It’s like living inside the blank pages of a diary–but at least it’s not inhabiting someone else’s words.