Walking around like a zombie today. Feel vulnerable. Almost infantile. No idea why, though I think that the apocalyptic reality of Donald Trump accepting the nomination for President of the United States might have something to do with it. I remembered how, when admitted to the emergency room last year, an orderly asked me to name the President. It’s a routine question they ask to see if you are sane. I don’t know the fundamental logic behind that question except to assume that if you answer “Martha Stewart” and not “Barack Obama” then they might think you are nuts, but they might also think you are just fucking with them. I can’t find any direct explanation for this custom on the WWW, but it’s a question they’ve asked for so long I guess it needs no explanation. It illustrates, I think, that the significance of the office of the President is expected to be in the fiber of every American. I believe that it is, whether people claim to be political or not.

I had a wild panic attack at the post office. A UPS person was delivering some packages to the USPS post office. A woman asked the UPS how long they had been doing that (they never used to deliver UPS to PO Boxes). He said he’d been delivering UPS to USPS for a few years now.

Something about his movements scared me. I felt threatened, though he was doing nothing wrong. What he was doing was stepping on to the spot where I stood in December, 2009, the moment my mother died. Or rather the moment I got word from my sister that she was gone. The call seemed to have come virtually as it happened. The news was hardly unexpected but still came through as a sorry surprise. I dropped some papers and stared at them sitting on that piece of floor for a few moments.

Today I was waiting at the post office for a clerk to bring me a couple of packages with silly gadgets which should connect USB devices to this tablet or my phone. Needless purchases but cheap enough not to worry about the impulsiveness.

I got a sandwich, thinking that would make me feel better. It tasted like dirt. I only got through two-thirds of it before dropping the rest into a trash can. $7.49 for that shit. I crossed 5th Avenue fearing all the stopped cars would casually move forward as I entered into their paths. They did not. I entered the Trump Tower, which is now surrounded by cameras and reporters seemingly all the time. I did not make it up to the Garden, my favorite place, but sat by the ice cream stand downstairs, with a police officer sitting nearby. I imagined this tower being targeted by terrorists. Security seems barely to exist at the place, which is surprising all things considered. You’d think they would go yard on the theater of security as needlessly practiced by security goons at countless other less targetable institutions. I thought of Trump promising “law and order”, and how that comment was one of many to which I responded “What are you talking about?” I remembered security crew at Citi Field a few weeks ago, confiscating my bottle of water and throwing it into a trash can. It felt like I was not even dealing with Americans. The America Trump has tapped into feels like nothing I have ever known.

I don’t know how much of today’s feelings of dread were heat related. I felt like I did not want to exist, or rather I felt that I already did not exist. I could have been felled by the flick of a finger. I felt better after getting home and sitting on the couch, but needless to say I got nothing much done today. So far, at least.

The arts funding meeting yesterday was terminally boring but necessary if I intend to go through the process. Actually they showed an example of an application that was approved, and that was actually useful for me. There’s a language to writing grant applications. But all in all I would rather have seen the therapist for our usual twice weekly meetings. I cancelled that because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get from there to the arts meeting in time. I do feel a little lost without the two meetings per week.