succession goes flat, the characters seem lost, something happened in the pandemic. what was so titillating in the episodes before, when i lay in bed conducting the orchestra and whistling the theme? i wonder what is the thing i'm grappling with, what is coming from the perceived and what is coming from me. i'm a lost character too. it began before the pandemic. it was always a search and a struggle. what is different now? the story seems to disintegrate in the telling. i need to lighten up. yesterday i rode to the pebble beach. on the concrete block where i go i read a sign saying LAND BACK. i do a double exposure.

there's another sign over my face i wish away but it's there and can't be erased. the pebbles are coming back and covering more of the crumbled sea wall and the poured concrete. pebble beach wants to be a beach again like it was before the city came. the water is alive yet and wants the land back. the light is already behind the powhatan building and i start to leave to sit somewhere in the sun and read. i see a friend who looks blankly at me and then removes her earbuds and recognizes me. we look different. difficult to recognize. we've changed in the pandemic and we can't quite say how. we acknowledge how we are struggling without saying how. a car goes bang and drives on and we walk closer to the guardrail to see but there's nothing, just a burnt puff of acrid air, and the driver drives on. we say some more things, i feel after i don't ask enough, and riding to the point say i should ask more, just ask, because i am curious, and i mutter too much sometimes, and see the attention receding before goodbye. at the point i see another friend and he's pensive and i sit down waiting and feeling the expression waiting in him. then i ask and he says there's a health issue, then i ask is it life threatening and he says between you and me it's prostate cancer. as we talk a swimmer gets dressed, i ask how cold and she says 48 degrees. i say that hurts, and she says it doesn't hurt. then she's on her phone, then she's crying, her sister who just visited her and her mother in assisted living has covid. the light is so gentle, warm and peaceful, in it we're luminous and dark.