Ftrain, by Paul Ford

I am working on the "month" view for this web application. I should be working on other things, but I figure I've given up enough health to work and it's okay for the flow to be reversed. The real nature of this project is revealed when you can float above the moment. When I look at my table of days I am no longer engaging with particular foods or wants, or even moods, but watching my actions and consequences in their purely mechanical nature, which of course is what this is about. How did I reach 2,800 calories on that day? (Kung Pao chicken.) I am ultimately a simple machine, a set of inputs and outputs; in the moment it's impossible to realize that. That's a payoff of being a writer-- composition is actually a meaningless activity, filling a bucket. Editing is where the action is. Seeing the month all at once is like that, except of course instead of prose or stones, it's flesh, copious, soft, moving in directions its own, that must be wrangled.