Last night Z pointed how I've been using with people rather than by myself. A diversion from my usual pattern of behavior. It's been so long since I've sat and typed like this, the longest it's been since I've started, over three years ago now.

When I visited the typewriter with M I wrote about what it would be like to use while using it. Now I feel my fingers fly, but I backspace, I correct errors. Such actions would be much more difficult under those conditions. Things would be different. I wonder how. And I could find out.

My recent reads have been because of M. Before they were because of H. Reading in relation to recommendations, prescriptions, from those who know you. I have been meaning to email A. I could, in this condition, like before. But I don't want to because I don't want to write unhappy things. About my unhappiness with work. Or my failures to find work elsewhere. The same reason I don't like talking to my mom: only speaking of my failures.

At the office with T today, thinking of legibility and production. What I have done across my names, what each one stands for. Prescriptions of advice. It was the second office of the day, 30 stories higher than the first. I didn't get to look out the window. I was offered water and drank sparkling. I wonder what impression I gave, with my clothing, with my missing tooth. With what I said about Derrida, West Africa, Heidegger, and so on. A flurry of words, muddled, he wanted an identity, a throughline, I was not prepared to give him that. And I wanted to interject at points, but he didn't allow the space. But I wasn't there to interject I was there to listen. When I tried to find a job, he explained that there was not one.

My heart races and I drink my drink. I wonder how much I will write. There is much to do in preparation of tomorrow. J and L's wedding, I am the DJ, I'll play the music. They gave me some songs and I need to put them on my USB. The process will take some time. I am getting paid to do this. And I still have to go to work in the morning. It is not close to the morning yet, it is just after midnight, different than other times, when I've gotten lost in writing, in producing as the night dwindles. I remember I should text H, to see when he is free to hang out. I don't know how long he is here for.

Z talked about Kerouac and how he would type onto a roll of paper. What I do here is a close analog, but it is not the same. Still, when I refresh the page, I'm given an image of progress, or perhaps an image of production. I have not produced much this summer. I didn't plan to. But after reading The Jokers (M's recommendation) I've begun to reconsider. Questions like what if I am destined for a life of relative material poverty, with relative material riches in the life of the mind. Or the tradeoff, how miserable would I be? And the matter of the joker, I used to joke more, it was all a joke, almost, when I was paul (from bible), now I've made it more serious, it stopped being house money, it started being real money (and abstract capital). I miss the past, knowing I can't go back to those conditions. And I know how untenable the current conditions are.

But there is still this matter of who I am, what gives me joy, or at least distracts from the matter of wanting to kill myself. I've found myself wanting to kill myself more and more over the last few months. I try to chase the thought away. I know the causes, the causes are temporary, things could change. Things will change, such is the nature of things. But for the time being, it is a struggle. It is life. This is my life, this is the matter of things, at this moment in time. At a point in the future, this will be a memory, and this writing will be a record of that memory.

While I was picking up, he brought up the idea of producing for me. Supplying capital to make something, with no expectation of return. An action of generosity, maybe I would do the same in his position. The absence of letters makes it feel like a fiction. As I read all this fiction, I think of writing a fiction. Something that I have struggled with. I return to my life, I return to this form. Maybe it's a matter of discipline, or it could be a matter of personhood. Or it could be a matter of machine.

The typewriter made me think of all the texts written on typewriters, but my attention swung to screenplays, Classic Hollywood, but also Coppola, Schrader. That diagram. And Z talking about Stephen King, stuffing his nose with tissues, to keep his blood away from his pages, his writing. Sacrificing the body, sacrificing health. For the text. M was there, we wrote together, but we did not share our writings, at least not formally. But we talked after, concrete poetry made sense. This is one of my close friends now; the newest close friend of this sort. I think about the dynamic, I talk a lot, I explain things, but he asks questions, he asks good questions, that make me think about what I'm saying, that sometimes challenge me. I think about my friendship with M, gone now, a reversal of this dynamic. The ways that living in the city has changed, the places one goes change. G moved to Elmhurst. Maybe soon I will walk there. Or we'll walk somewhere else.

I'm empty and hit some of what I found in the bathroom earlier. Finance Bro bar is what I say. K labeled the bag 'FB', I took a bit, earlier she did a bump. It's probably fine but there's a risk; the risk makes me anxious, like when I took the addy without knowing exactly where it came from. And then the mind makes the psychosomatic feel so real, heart pounding, or lack thereof. Instead this sort of spaciness. I tell myself it'd be smart to go to the store, to buy another drink. It runs through mine, it's inevitable typed, the idea of typing last words. And then I feel it, the heartbeat, the anxiety. A good feeling, given the circumstances.