Invented · from a test run
7 weeks of Ka, invented.
Ka answers when something in what you wrote seems to matter, and its rarer lines take weeks to come, so one day of it tells you little. Here are weeks of it, to read in a few minutes.
The person is invented: a researcher in Sofia whose paper has been almost finished for a year. We wrote their diary to test Ka, and Ka read it day by day, as it reads yours.
Monday 17 August
07:10
4am again. the ceiling thing. lay there writing the conclusion of the paper in my head, the whole paragraph, it was perfect, and now it's gone.
07:12
You lost the paragraph, not the fact that you had made it.
22:30
Mira made the lentils. we ate in front of her laptop, some series about a lighthouse. I want evenings where we just sit. we never just sit anymore. I said that out loud and she said "we are sitting". fair.
22:32
You were both there, but the laptop had the evening too. “We are sitting” answered the fact, not the thing you had said you wanted.
days left out
Saturday 22 August
11:20
Pancharevo. Ivo's garage smells of his dog and two-stroke oil. started sanding the transom.
13:05
under the white on the stern there are letters. took the paint back slowly with the fine paper. Н И Н А. Нина. someone called her Nina. and then someone else painted over it. who was Nina. a daughter, a wife, a girl on the dam in 1978. Ivo doesn't know, he got the boat from a man in Samokov who's dead now.
left the letters. sanded round them.
13:07
You could not recover who Nina was, but you chose not to erase the only thing here that says she was.
22:40
said seven. got home at ten. Mira had eaten. she wasn't angry, which is worse.
need to get the hull done before October, Ivo wants the garage back for his car when it gets cold. didn't finish the transom either. left it at the nearly-there stage, where it's still going to be good.
22:42
October is the deadline, but the pressure behind it is Ivo wanting the garage back. The hull’s schedule belongs partly to his car already.
Sunday 23 August
10:15
garage again. home by seven. meaning it this time.
10:17
The garage is already in the sentence; seven is still only the part you mean to keep.
18:40
didn't call. snoozed it. tomorrow. he'll be watching the news anyway at this hour, he doesn't like the phone during the news.
18:42
The call moved to tomorrow, but his dislike of calls during the news came with it; the hour has not solved that.
Monday 24 August
19:50
called dad. eleven minutes. the weather in Gabrovo, his knee, the neighbour's walnut tree that drops on his car. he asked about "the article" and I said nearly done and there was the little pause. then "nobody pays for almost". he didn't even say it mean. he says it like the weather.
days left out
Tuesday 1 September
04:20
four twenty. same soup. Mira breathing. the fridge doing its thing. I keep thinking I'll get up and do the figures and then I don't.
04:22
The figures are the only part of this scene that exists as a future; everything else is already here.
22:00
two days without the boat and I'm like a dog in a flat. walked round the block twice.
22:02
The boat isn't only taking your time; without it, the flat has nowhere to put you.
22:20
told Desi I'd read her chapter. she didn't ask for a date and I didn't give one.
22:22
She didn't ask for a date, and you didn't give one. The promise is yours; the missing date is being described as shared.
Wednesday 2 September
21:35
Mira said it tonight, not angry, just said it: "you've been somewhere else all summer". I said it's the hull, it'll be done by October, then it's winter and I'm all hers. she said "you said that about the paper at Easter".
21:37
October is carrying the promise that the hull will give Mira back her evenings. She remembers Easter, when the paper was supposed to do that.
Pressed: that is not me
22:00 · Ka's answer to “that is not me”
She set October beside Easter herself. Both came up when you told her when you’d be more present with her.
The person pressed “that is not me” on a line. Ka answers with the smaller thing it still stands on.
days left out
Wednesday 9 September
05:00 · from elsewhere
Kintsugi touches the hull in a literal way: lacquer is part of the repair, and the repair stays visible. That sits against the October promise, where finishing the boat sounds like a clean border: before it, you are elsewhere; after it, you are all hers.
But the cinema hand and the starboard side were already together in the same dark, and the pond evening came without the hull being finished. The summer doesn't vanish when the work is done. Maybe the part you haven't named is that being present with Mira cannot be the reward waiting on the other side of a repair.
Kintsugi · en.wikipedia.org · searched with: companionable silence, Japanese tea tradition
On something the person keeps coming back to, Ka brings thinking from another field or century, with its source and the general words it searched with. In a test run the search is answered from a short list of real pages, not by the live search.
10:30
cancelled the Petrov reminder. I'll send it when it's ready. no point the phone nagging me about it.
10:32
You have removed the hour, not the condition: it goes when it’s ready, and readiness has no date here.
Pressed: that is it
days left out
Monday 21 September
21:40
back. a week I didn't write anything. abstracts done, Mira back from Ruse, the flat is sold, she's quiet about it. I called dad yesterday. on the Sunday, the actual Sunday.
I'll call dad every Sunday. let's see if it holds.
21:42 · a promise noticed
You said you'd read her chapter. I have read nothing about it since.
Ka kept where the person said they would do something. When its day has passed and they have written nothing about it, it says so once: what they said, and that it has read nothing since.
Tuesday 22 September
05:00 · something gone quiet
There was something here about sanding the transom. I no longer hold what it was.
Ka says once that something the person wrote about has gone quiet, or that it has let a note fade.
22:10
Mira said she liked that I was busy with something that wasn't the boat last week. then she said she didn't mean it like that. I don't know how she meant it.
22:12 · a pull
The boat is set against Mira's liking you busy with something else, but she takes back the meaning, leaving the contrast in place and its meaning unclear.
Pressed: say more
Two things this person holds that do not sit together. Ka names the pull and picks no side.
22:35 · a pull
You keep arranging the week as if putting the hull aside would give Mira those hours. But what she said doesn’t tell you that those hours are what she wanted.
days left out
Sunday 27 September
05:00 · an older entry, brought back
Back then you had to add “meaning it this time”; tonight, you only report that you were on time. The sentence has lost its defense.
Overnight, Ka sets something older beside something written lately.
18:35
called dad. Sunday. he's finished the birdhouse, sent a photo, it's very good, better than it needs to be. he asked about the boat. told him the hull's nearly there and he said "nearly" back to me. just the word.
18:37
He gave you your own “nearly” back, without adding anything to it. The birdhouse, by contrast, is finished better than it needs to be.
days left out
Friday 2 October
05:00 · a longer piece
The boat is not just the thing taking evenings away. You sat beside it for an hour without touching it, then returned to put on the last coat; under the white was a name someone had bothered to paint, and someone had covered. Finishing it brings the boat to the point where it has to meet water, and where that old name can be seen again.
With Mira, the hour was good, but the clock kept making it feel borrowed. You have written both wanting evenings with her and wanting the hull done, and at Pancharevo you let her think you were at the office without correcting her. In your writing, the two claims do not meet in the same conversation: the boat stays at Pancharevo, unmentioned, while its time follows you into the kitchen as clock-watching. One presence is with Mira; the other stays unnamed, but not absent.
Rarely, after weeks of a pull, Ka writes a few paragraphs that hold both sides and pick neither.
20:45
Mira and me at the Chinese place on Rakovski. she asked about the paper, I told her about Desi, she said "finally" and then "sorry, I mean good". it's fine. she's right.
20:47
You let both words stand: “finally” for how long it took, “good” for what it is now.
Saturday 3 October
12:00
didn't go to Pancharevo. went to the market with Mira instead. bought too many peppers. she's roasting them now, the whole flat smells of it.
21:40
peppers were good.
Sunday 4 October
05:00 · an older entry, brought back
In August, you wanted an evening with her and spent forty minutes reading about epoxy. This time you went to the market together. The evening began with doing something together, not with trying to make room for it.
18:45
called dad. third Sunday. told him I sent the paper to a colleague. he said "to a colleague" and then "well. it's out of the house". more than I expected.
18:47
You gave Dad the destination, “a colleague”; he answered with the departure. The paper being out means something different in his mouth.
22:10
nobody pays for almost. but somebody reads it, maybe. Desi hasn't written. the bow is still not done.
22:12
You put “almost” between being paid for and being read. Then the bow gives it a place outside the paper.
Your own weeks
Ka does the same with whatever you write, at its own pace, and forgets honestly. It is in beta, and free while it is.