Lamma Island, 1:00PM – Muggy.

Entry 89

Conclusions from not leaving the apartment for a week: Ants do not like lemons. Leave a lemon slice on imitation Finnish porcelain bought from a cheap Japanese supermarket and they vanish from the kitchen.

The longer I stay in the apartment, the bigger it feels. I could be shrinking.

Balconies are a godsend. And godsend is a weird word. We say “God-given” and we say something is “a given,” with the past participle, but we don’t say something is godsent or a sent, or do we? Who invented godsend? We do say “heaven sent” though. God, English is weird. The more you think about it, the weirder things get. And before you know it hours have gone by and all the ants are gone.

An invisible knife in the sky scrapes the clouds over the hills like butter over burnt toast. I sit in the chair by my balcony window like my grandfather used to sit in his recliner. Perched. Hopefully, I’m not as mean as him. But seeing as I am alone, as he was, I am protected from learning the answer to that question. Is that why some people are alone? To answer their own questions? Probably, yes.

If we could talk to animals, we probably wouldn’t eat them. Think of all the animals we don’t eat, a lot of them we think we can talk to, or at least communicate with better than others. Maybe. Someone called me one evening and told me that in a meeting their colleague said they can talk to animals. They took a course on it. They weren’t joking. This was an executive-level meeting of a global cosmetics company. After I hung up, I went to check on my lemon slices in the kitchen.