the explicit routine of journaling didn't begin until march of 2021. this
page is a retroactive journal for 2020, created by scavenging through all
the tumblr posts i made in 2020 & never deleted. i will also include
january & february of 2021, at the top of the 2021 page
July
july 1st. i upload the album "the axe is ready at the tree" by tenderness to youtube
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july 2nd. a microburst snaps eight telephone poles near my house right in half! it knocks the power out
for about five hours. i also get minorly electrocuted through my laptop again when it happens. despite all
that, i feel optimistic about july! june turned into kind of a funky month, but i'm gonna do my best to
make july better. i'm gonna make sure my daily routines are more psychologically nourishing
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july 3rd. my new belief is that there are lots of things that i need to know & feel that are in my head as
a big undifferentiated blob of sentiments & attitudes & principles that will make me happy & not destroy
me, & i don't have to waste time separating them & crystallizing them & verbalizing them before i act
on them, as long as i earnestly feel that they add up to a pure & benevolent blob
i have been using this picture as an icon for several months. i call him Silly. today i realize: i found the picture on
eBay, so it's possible that the listing is still there. i can actually buy this guy & have him! i become sort of obsessed
with doing this. i desperately scour the site to find the listing again, but it seems to be gone...
i do find it, though!!! i purchase Silly. Silly costs about seventy dollars. even at the time, i know this is an insane & stupid
thing to put seventy dollars into, & i'm still kind of embarrassed to report it here. i experience some pretty sharp buyer's
remorse, literally this chasmic depressed feeling of dread. it was like i had no choice, though! it felt so urgent. today
i am over it i guess. it was dumb but it's kind of cool that i have this cute string puppet i guess
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july 4th. nine comments from strangers appear at the exact same time on one of my youtube videos. they are enthusiastic about the
music i upload, & specifically very supportive about the post i made to warn people about that crazy woman. i think she orchestrated
it through a network of fake youtube accounts. i'm not sure what the point of a flurry of fake supportive comments is. maybe just
to perplex me. or an attempt to undermine my confidence in positive anonymous online interactions. or she just wants attention.
it wouldn't be the first time she's tried to gaslight me through sockpuppet accounts. i delete the comments. the following
night, the same batch of nine reappears, simultaneously, on the same video, from the same "people." i just don't get it
it eventually comes to light that it wasn't actually her, it was just that
guy she goaded into spying on me. he did it on his own bizarre initiative
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july 8th. i go on a late night walk. i find a mockingbird in a tree
that simply does not want to stop going zonko at one in the morning
i sleep. when i wake up, i spend a while listening to a compilation of early electronic
music called "Ohm" & reading tons of wikipedia articles about the people featured on
it & adjacent topics. that leads to nik sending me a bandcamp page with tons of
realizations of compositions by John Cage, which i listen to all night
i upload "Roaratorio" & "Music for Two" to youtube
i lie in bed listening to "Music for Two," really drowsy but keeping myself just barely awake & envisioning all the
rooms that my elementary school gifted classes took place in, trying to vividly explore them & relive memories
i've otherwise forgotten about. it feels really blissful & it helps me hear the music in a pure way without the
brain worms of thinking of it in a musicological sense of it being experimental or whatever. i fall asleep
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july 9th. i'm in my bedroom. bedroom bedroom bedroom. until further notice i am in my bedroom.
things are being so stupid. blah blah blah. i've had a huge spider trapped under a glass on the
floor for two days because i haven't found the initiative to slide a paper under it. i'm scared!
this state of affairs ultimately persists until the spider dies
i decide to list as many of the objects that are currently in my room as i can
laptop. external hard drive. napkin that i drew the ween quebec album cover on in 2017. elephant figurine i've
had since kindergarten. moleskine journal. some colored sharpies. several dozen painted rocks that people used
to hide in local parks as a fun thing. two tiny handmade minion figurines with weird dangling arms that D
bought in tijuana & gave to me around my birthday in 2019. stuffed rabbit named guthrow. stuffed abra
named abra. stuffed dog named idiot. stuffed bear named untitled. unnamed stuffed cow. unnamed
stuffed mouse [later named Desmond!] wearing a red ribbon on its ear & a red scarf & overalls
& it's holding a sunflower. a tiny stuffed lizard. a tiny stuffed bulldog. a tiny stuffed cat
some fake pine cones. a decorative wooden tiger mask. five dvds of knockoff animated children's movies, gifts
from 2017. a cassette of "human story 3" by james ferraro, gifted by lilith in 2016. a vinyl of "meet the beatles,"
from my dad. a vinyl of david bowie's "blackstar," from an old neighbor. a disused plasma ball. a top hat
containing a rubber eyeball mask containing two white gloves. big decorative cardboard cutout of
the tragedy & comedy masks. "starry night" by van gogh. another painting called "celebration
of friendship" by deborah k mayo. a video camera. a computer keyboard. earbuds. headphones.
a drawing tablet. white earmuffs. a mysterious & ancient transformers action figure
gifted to me by a childhood friend named shane. a spent candle
we bought in 2017. a bottle of black nail polish
three bottles of base coat & top coat. a weird fake plastic hand. a little car i made in wood shop class in middle
school. a camera tripod. an ancient teenage mutant ninja turtles branded toy katana. a pan flute hanging on the
wall. a plastic bottle that was once full of candy. two empty bottles, of skyy & malibu, each of which i drank
with a different set of two friends. a boyd's bear holding a drawing of it & its mom. a cane, not a walking
cane but like a showbiz cane. seven pairs of sunglasses. the books "slaughterhouse-five," "cat's cradle,"
"invisible cities," "this census-taker," & "up in the old hotel." a barn star. a bunch of bead necklaces
hanging from a shelf. a tower fan. a fushigi ball. a small mickey mouse plush. a red kaleidoscope
containers of scented lotion & body spray & face moisturizer. a little porcelain figurine of a bunny. a poster of
vancouver for some reason. two little plush neopets. a deck of playing cards. a razor. a face mask. a bluetooth
speaker. a long empty bottle of "bai" brand tea. a weird plush banana i won as a prize at a theme park in
middle school. an envelope containing a printed-out clipart image of a girl gardening, which was mailed
to me a few months ago by an anonymous person on the internet who figured out my address from old
youtube videos & stuff. a crumpled up ball of tin foil. my billed hat with pink flowers on it. a lei.
the cabinet i have my laptop sitting in. a rented physics textbook. a mysterious plastic toy car
full of beads & water that my dad gave me when i was very young & made me vow to never lose
a lamp. three three-dimensional carvings of animal heads poking out of little wall-mounted frames. two necklaces
that D gave me, hanging from the frame of the zebra. two sets of string lights hanging from adhesive wall hooks.
two coathangers that i hung next to each other from two of the wall hooks as unconventional decoration. my bed.
my school backpack. a little umbrella. a bead necklace with a little crucifix, hanging from a shelf, right
above a necklace with a gem on it, which is hanging adjacent to a necklace D made for me out of a fidget
spinner. that painted piece of wood that says "burn box." a bunch of scarves draped over my bed's
headboard, two of them gifted by my friends from 2017. a little adhesive nametag with
my name on it in sharpie that i got over a year ago, at a job fair
a little usb adapter that broadcasts your computer's audio to bluetooth speakers & headphones. a little cardboard
sleeve that contained the only thing i've ever purchased off of discogs, an official McDonald's record that i gave
to someone as a christmas gift in... 2017 i think. two glasses. my floppy sun hat that we bought in 2017. my purse.
the box the drawing tablet came in, which i use to this day (june 21st) to prop open my window. my bedside table.
a little heart-shaped dish on the bedside table. a lamp i placed in here the same night in april that i started
spending most of my time in my room. a copy of the "kids & family internet yellow pages," published in
1999. lots of old beanies & a snow hat. some pairs of fingerless gloves. my shoes
a big suitcase that my dad stashed in here years ago that there's no other place for. a Six Flags glass with a cueball
sitting in it (?). an empty bottle of multivitamins that i took in... 2017 i think. the part of the gem necklace that
i accidentally broke off in 2017, which is a little key. two mike's hard lemonade caps from march 2017. a yellow foam
cowboy hat hidden away on top of the cabinet. a billed hat with a cross on it hanging on the corner of "starry night."
a big mirror leaning on the wall. a smaller mirror that's about 80% of the height of the big mirror but fits perfectly
in its frame so it's just there for no reason. two billed hats hanging on the corners of the big mirror. one is sort of
a scratchy material, with scratchy design of dark green & orange. the other is pink & see-through & has rhinestones
on it. a smaller mirror. a little dealie with a rod of porcelain in it, for sharpening hair-cutting scissors
hmgrhnmgrngmhng, i miss the nature trail, the park, the mall, the coffee shop, the movie
theater, the rooftop access annex at the top of the library, the nature preserve, the bar
what other locations do i miss in a more general sense?
the cabin in the state park, my childhood house, my elementary school that got destroyed, all the park play structures that
got destroyed, the neighborhoods that got destroyed, the library that got shut down, even the basement in st. louis, & the
freaky hotel we got stranded in, the hotel room of march 2017, the hotel room of april 2017 (deeply linked to the smell
of caffeine from a vape pen), the mutual friend's basement in binghamton, the dad's basement in binghamton, the house
in binghamton, the park in binghamton, the apartment they initially lived in, the apartment in this same building that
i used to live in, the convenience store nearby that shut down early this year or late last year, the coffee shop i went
to as a tiny baby that also closed when i was a tiny baby, the candy store that existed last year & had a piano, Sweet
Frog, my childhood friend Shane's old house that got demolished, the defunct portrait studio my mom used
to work at, the antique store near my house that closed, the first house to follow my childhood
house, the second house to follow my childhood house
the basement my dad once lived in, the two-story building my dad once lived in, the apartment my dad once lived in, the
houses my dad once lived in, the apartment my dad's girlfriend once lived in, the apartment my dad's wife once lived in,
the churches i once attended, the churches i only visited once, the parks in other cities, the interiors of my elementary
schools, the interior of my middle school, the interior of my high school, the park gazebo that got destroyed, the hazily
recalled book store that closed down, the apartment i lived in for a time with my dad & stepmom
Silly isn't my icon anymore. this is:
i call this one Dummy
i stay up until about eleven am. i decide i might as well be quick on the draw about trying to flip myself back to diurnality.
i decide to walk to a convenience store & buy coffee. i told myself i'd try to entirely stop drinking caffeine, but i'll make this
my only one for at least two weeks so that there's no chance of it making my brain chemistry funky. hey, why am i journaling
on this site again after a month or two of being relatively quiet? i don't know! come up with your own theory
it might literally just be the icon change. the cat just feels more personable & verbal. it's strange, but the icons
i use truly feel like they augment my personality a bit sometimes. sometimes i'm scared of reusing particularly old
icons because i worry they'll make me undergo some kind of unconscious personality reversion. but
yes, the moment i became dummy the cat i could feel the tendrils in my brain
oh, & the first paragraph for this day was once pared down
from its original state. this is what i originally typed:
ok, no more typing. it's a freakin' mistake! ok, ok, no it's not. i'll type more.
actually, nevermind, i'm not gonna freakin' type stuff anymore. i'm through being
exposed to you freaking people, it's a mistake! i don't know, on the other hand,
i guess i'll type more stuff. i'm in my bedroom. bedroom bedroom bedroom. until
further notice i am in my bedroom. things are being so stupid. blah blah blah.
i've had a huge spider trapped under a glass on the floor for two days because
i haven't found the initiative to slide a paper under it. i'm scared! unrelated
to the spider, i kind of hate myself & it's a sinister sort of self hatred that
intertwines itself among all the reasoning that could be used to dispel it or
something. i am deeply repentant. blah blah blah. i feel metaphysically
surrounded by the general other that is the internet all the time
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july 10th. i upload the album "the end of music" by morusque to youtube
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july 11th. in the early morning, i become able to put on my wrap skirts again after somehow forgetting how to
do it right for six whole months. i accidentally fall asleep while i'm getting ready to intentionally fall asleep
i briefly wake up in drowsy autopilot mode & grab a piece of dove milk chocolate from my bed & eat it. being in drowsy autopilot mode must let
me taste it in a more pure or undistracted way or something because i think at that moment that it is the best thing i've ever tasted. maybe the
drowsiness makes me really dumb at ranking tastes. then i fall asleep & have a dream that my can of pepper spray is spraying uncontrollably
& i am having to hold it & try to turn the nozzle so it won't spray & i am getting covered in it. then i wake up & eat raisin bran & finish my
second listen of "the lamb lies down on broadway" & finish a set of three youtube playlists & submit an edit of a garfield comic, where
garfield bites jon's whole head off & eats it, to "square root of minus garfield" & compare the sugar content of fanta, dr. pepper, & a&w
root beer. i make the startling discovery that a&w has the most sugar, when i had always unthinkingly trusted it to be "less soda-y than
soda." i'm going to receive a check for eighty-five dollars from my school soon because of the cares act. the toothpaste that we have
right now sort of tastes like fish. faintly, like fish-flavored sparkling water. okay, that's all that i have to report until tomorrow
or so i think, at least. i would have cut the last sentence if i hadn't been attached to the "tomorrow" hyperlink. so what
else is going on on july 11th? i'm letting C borrow my camera tripod today. i said she can come & pick it up whenever
it's most convenient. that has a side effect where i'm obligated to stay up until some random hour. it's grueling,
but i set it up this way on purpose to shift my sleep pattern forward. i feel almost delirious
i am sincerely excited about the probably one minute tops of face-to-face human interaction i'm
about to have while conferring the tripod. a gnarled cartoon hand unlatching seven deadbolts
the sky is beautiful
i have nearly eight thousand followers, mostly because of jokes i made a long time ago. i barely
make jokes on the internet anymore. i have a really low tolerance now for the inherent performativity
of it. i have a few that i like, as i type this. but i had to make myself keep those up. it feels impossible
to unpromptedly tell a joke without implying that i expect someone to laugh. & there's nothing
wrong with doing things with confidence, but still, it makes me sort of uncomfortable
i had cognitive dissonance about it for the years that i told jokes. i associate it with a confrontational attitude.
like constantly trying to prove oneself. i don't know. jokes are good, laughing is good. i'm glad that people who
aren't me like to tell jokes. i just want to um. personably tell stories about my day-to-day life & do whatever
else it is that i do now, i guess. maybe some jokes are ok & i'm just thinking about jokes in a weird way
in 2011 i tried to flop onto a computer chair that wasn't there. i plummeted & slammed my elbow really hard
into a cabinet. i sat there crying for a while. the impact jostled a small stone bird on top of the cabinet. it fell
& landed a few inches to my right. i am sort of convinced that the bird had enough mass that if it had landed
on my head it might have killed me. so i am glad that the bird did not land on my head. in 2018 an actual
bird landed on my head plenty of times & i am glad for every occurrence of that bird landing on my head
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july 12th. i receive an email from Chriss Sutherland of the defunct band Cerberus Shoal. i had e-mailed one
of his bandmates asking if he had any comments on the gibberish lyrics of the song "Wyrm," from their album
"The Land We All Believe In" which is one of my favorite albums of all time. here is what Chriss has to say:
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july 13th. july 3rd is the day i become fixated on buying Silly, but today is the day
i actually commit the wicked deed of devoting seventy dollars to the endeavour
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july 15th. i listen to the song "prophecy loved a child" by zoviet
france. it makes me feel physiologically blissful. i fall asleep
my futile crush on _ lingers on...
i wake up. i accidentally fall asleep again. i wake up. i drowsily resolve to throw away an empty coffee bottle, because ants
are little maniacs that'll go crazy for tiny drips of coffee. i feel satisfied that i've privately described them as "little maniacs"
even in my drowsiness, because it displays effective naturalization toward processing the world through cute descriptors
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july 16th. i wake up from a dream about hugging my fifth grade teacher. it's the second or third one i've had recently
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july 17th. the smell of decaying garbage comes from my apartment's air ducts when the a/c is on
i consider attending a music show at an arcade bar. i am just so desperate to go to anything! i don't think there will be too many people.
& i intend to wear a mask. & rubber gloves. & i have proven adequately neurotic about maintaining six feet from others. i might feel kind
of snobbily riled up because the musician will be one of the billion people here who make indistinguishable lo-fi hip hop. i will try
to not feel that way, but i very well might, while feeling sort of dumb for it. it just lights a fire inside me! but it will be okay
it is today that i accept that we probably won't find Tica. i had her since about 2008. i didn't cry & scream like a baby this time.
in fact, i didn't cry at all. i don't think anyone did. we loved her, & no one expected her to just vanish out of the blue, but she was
still very old. so maybe we were more prepared for her passing than Roxy's. Roxy was my Norfolk terrier who was hit by a car
on April 20th, 2020. she had many years left. & she was such a playful & affectionate dog. that doesn't make Tica less deserving
of mourning, but. i don't know. i think there is still a difference in my visceral response that makes me feel guilty. love you tica
my photo id disappears from my wallet, so i have to go get a new one. i hope to score a new, pretty
portrait. but ultimately i don't actually get to take a new one. during the car ride to the dmv, i see
one of the small signs littered around my city that only say "ALTERATIONS" & a phone number
my futile crush on _ lingers on...
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july 18th. i rediscover a really cute letter that i received some time between 2010 & 2012. the gift that came
with it was a handmade Jack Noir fridge magnet, which is on my fridge to this day. "this day" is june 24th now
i'm sitting in a coffee shop. in about two or three hours i'm going to play one of my songs at an open mic
Silly arrives. that night, C acquires me in her car & zips me off to a place with people & music
she lets me use the aux cord during the drive over. i play "stray here with you" & "aaa powerline." i sit in the arcade bar with her
& her boyfriend, drinking a strawberry lime soda & making myself laugh a lot by thinking up nonsensical yo mama jokes. i wash
my hands with rubber gloves on, with soap, just because i feel like being demented. i keep getting emotional twinges where i feel
like i'm back in New York, back in 2017. when i'm with people at a place, i tend to aimlessly walk around, stare at things feel,
like a young child. i try my luck at a claw machine. i don't win. C does, though. she wins, & gives me, this abhorrent thing
the place is a bit embarrassing, themed around the most listless 80s nostalgia you can imagine, & we are indeed there
to hear a completely listless lo-fi hip hop act, complete with projected visuals featuring chromatic aberration
on the way back, they let me try smoking weed from their vape pen. i had already tried & disavowed pipes & blunts
in 2017, for their horribly unpleasant effect on my airways, with such total absences of any desirable effect. this is
basically the same, & it serves as the nail in the coffin regarding me swearing off ever smoking weed in any form
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july 19th. i upload the album "spot what scooter" by kimsumass, aka my friend janis, to youtube
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july 21st. i make a song called "Arms"
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july 23rd. i write this in my moleskine journal. writing in the journal always helps me stop feeling weird.
handwriting is very satisfying. slowly & carefully constructing each letter. sharing what my handwriting looks
like is nice. i don't think it always matters so much what i write, as long as it's expulsive or forcefully
positive. the third sentence feels kind of silly, which is ok, but in observation of the silliness i take
the extra step of signing the page with my own name as a joke. then i draw a person. the end
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july 24th. i curl up in the sunlight on a lawn chair on my back patio with my feet on a stool & my eyes closed & the light
filtering through my eyelids making my vision a sheet of #ff0000, listening to the song "hey moon" on repeat, & a loud buzzing
noise by my ear scares me because i think it's a wasp but i turn & it's a hummingbird. re-entering my apartment, i somehow
bang the exact location of a scab on the side of the sliding door & a lot of blood starts oozing out. a blissful memory
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july 25th. i order a shirt that i'm absolutely thrilled to own, i can't wait to share it once it arrives
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july 26th. i keep walking to the same gas station, buying two cranberry almond bars, & eating them both
in less than the time it takes to walk home whilst i think about how i keep walking to the same gas station,
buying two cranberry almond bars, & eating them both in less than the time it takes to walk home
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july 27th. i'm getting very tired of this thing where five consecutive periods of sleep will consist of me unexp-
-ectedly passing out & finding myself waking up four or five hours later in a stupor. it's getting very tiresome
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july 28th. i turn twenty-two in eighteen days. i start my fifth semester in twenty days. i have three classes, totaling
nine hours. it will be the least amount of hours i've taken. my first two were fifteen hours, the second two were twelve.
that's ok, it'll be more relaxed. one is even online, so that's only six hours on campus each week. two of the classes
seem like they will be kind of disenchanting. "microcomputer applications" & "principles of financial accounting."
oh well. it'll be ok because everything is enchanting & i will only treat these classes as exceptions to the rule
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july 29th. i experience a nameless condition i've been periodically experiencing for about five years, where i feel spaced
out & sunken inside of my head, & i don't want to look at lights. i've considered it maybe being silent migraines. but i
don't get nauseous or weak on one side of my body or anything. who knows. oh well. i walk to the store & buy coffee
to see if that will treat it. it doesn't help, though. that night it reaches a point i'd do just about anything to regain
a sense of grounded connectedness to my surroundings instead of feeling like i am on the verge of delirium
prior to the onset of this condition, though, i do type a fairly cogent thing to L, it begins: "i don't think
i'd be fulfilling my duty as a sensible interlocutor if i didn't say that [...]" it makes me feel good, because
i wish i was better at representing my values & beliefs in active conversation. so often, it's like the
aura of another person overtakes me & i clam up or sort of reflect them automatically
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july 30th. i aspirate cranberry juice & have a very severe subsequent
two minutes as a hailstorm rolls in. live each day like it's your last...
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july 31st. my shirt arrives
August
august 2nd. i upload the album "birth canal blues" by current 93 to youtube
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august 3rd. i make it back out to the nature trail today. i walk past a woman walking a dog. when i'm around
a stranger who is with a dog, i feel this energy like me & the dog secretly know each other & we're in on secrets
that its owner isn't. i hear a goat go "maa a a a" & it provokes me to stand on one leg in excitement. then
i turn & see baby goats, which provokes me to shake my fists left & right in front of me
hours later, as i'm walking back to the trailhead, i realize it's definitely going to get darker than i'm comfortable with
before i make it out of that last stretch of the trail. i'm really dehydrated. my hands are all dry & peely. i end up speed
walking on the verge of panic! but i escape from the scary woods. a girl shrieks at me from a passing car & it's awful. she
did a great job at just, reaching right into the childhood internet screamer prank exposure section of my brain! great job, girl!
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august 4th. i receive an early birthday present from my friend Nik: a keyboard midi controller!
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august 5th. we're planning to adopt a new little doggy around my birthday. i almost tear up thinking about how attached
i was to Roxy & how it's going to begin again in a few weeks with a little animal i don't even know of yet, ideally last
at least a decade. a little creature who will become so familiar & important is waiting for me right now, unidentified
but already living & real, & it starts in just a few weeks, & i will have a small creature to be affectionate towards
my early birthday gifts from Nik this year: the previously displayed midi keyboard, two pretty floral face masks, a little
biographical book about Edvard Munch featuring lots of his paintings, & a bag of "Campino" brand individually wrapped
strawberry-&-yogurt hard candies, intended as a replacement for the discontinued "Creme Savers." they taste about identical!
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august 6th. i spend about half an hour becoming progressively more dissociated. i'm semi convinced
it's because i consumed a hardee's burger/soda my brother got me, like the too much salt/sugar
is choking my brain... maybe it's a placebo effect & i only have to stop believing...
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august 8th. i upload the album "londonymo" by yellow magic orchestra to youtube
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august 9th. i was seized in april & may by an energy that i sort of wish i could reattain now. but i'm still
holding on to everything i personally derived in that time, & nothing can take that away from me, even
if i don't feel so impassioned. i just need to keep telling myself not to feel too attached to that state
i lie in bed using tweezers to slowly pluck dozens of burrs off of a pair of socks. i suddenly think about "jim
wise" by sun kil moon, instantly tear up & leap to my feet to put it in my favorite lyrics list, sobbing a little
my birthday is in six days
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august 10th. a derecho rips across a patch of the usa & knocks out electricity for over five hundred thousand people. not in my area, though
my birthday is in five days
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august 11th. i spend five hours manually splitting the album "async" by ryuichi
sakamoto into hundreds of ten second clips & putting them in random order
later, i sit at a spot where the breeze from my ceiling fan catches wisps
of my hair & makes them tickle my back. now this is what i live for
i resolve not to expose myself to darkness through my computer today
i love my imitation creme savers. i've been eating one per day
to make them last. they really make me feel like it's 2007
my birthday is in four days
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august 12th. i rub my hands together so as to repeatedly accumulate & brush off little eraser shavings of dead skin
my birthday is in three days
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august 13th. radio towers at night are so very pretty & cool & lonely-feeling. they're such
a good man-made edition to a landscape. i'm glad that circumstances led to a practical reason
for such pretty things to have a place in areas marked by industrial human activity
my birthday is in two days
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august 14th. i eat a lot of fruit today. i also eat two gas station burritos. hopefully the good food overpowers
the bad food. i'm drowzy. i choose to immediately abide the drowziness & sleep, instead of perpetuating a habit of
shoving my desire for sleep to the back of my mind, torturing myself that way because i want to keep doing stuff
in my current period of awakeness. i'm not even back in school quite yet, so it's not like sleep is the "end"
of anything, like i'm temporarily giving up my freedom. it's just a jump cut in my awareness that makes
me generally feel better. why on earth have i been so inclined to put it off? no more
i'm fearful all day, of the idea that all the growth i feel i've experienced over the past six months or so will inevitably flatten into
hollow words that i can read over & over without reigniting the feeling & spirit that was originally behind them, that i'll resume
business as usual, a lurking dissociation, emptiness, boredom, sadness, thoughtlessness, coldness, verbal impulsivity, or even, god
forbid i even say it, cynicism, might reinstate itself like a dark border slowly growing from the edges of my field of vision
i have been trying to teach myself to alleviate feelings like this by trying to simply reject the narrative,
which i've unconsciously constructed & placed myself in, of going through an inevitable & entropic
descent back from an attained good state to a magnetic & ever-threatening bad state
i want to teach myself to clear my head of all unproductive negativity & worries & doubts as if at the flick of a switch,
just with my desire to be rid of them. i want to be able to reinstate the goodness of reality for myself in a way that
feels like a self-engendered miracle. everything can be so much more simply good than i have been taught it can
my birthday is tomorrow
i'm twenty-one for eight & a half more hours. that's so close to eight hours & ten minutes that in only
fifteen minutes it will be eight hours & fifteen minutes until i am twenty-two instead of being twenty-one
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august 15th. i'm twenty-two, for the next eight thousand seven hundred & sixty hours. yay yay yay!
as for the day itself, though, i find myself very agitated & anxious over completely baseless fears about
myself that by this point are just self-perpetuating because i've entrenched myself in the narrative of
me being anxious & them being what i'm anxious about. i decide to go for a walk in the rain!
my friend janis gifts me six albums from bandcamp, totaling four hours of music. "decay," by shane apparently.
"sleepwalking on a flat circle," by cordial. "tranche," by m.baptistabenedict. "resonate i," by vymn. "one giant leap," by
the summer circuit. "command+v2," by similarobjects & thngmjx. it makes me feel a bit bad, but as of today, which
is still june 24th, i've only listened to the first two. i found the second very enjoyable, though
my twenty-first birthday was associated with a very, very strong candidate for the best three days of my life.
this one was ok. i ordered a pizza. i walked to the store & bought some ice cream. on the way back the sky was
very pretty, & i stopped & stared. my friend called & wished me a happy birthday. he had to call because five
days ago a derecho knocked out the electricity for over five hundred thousand people in the state he lives in
we don't adopt the doggy yet, that gets put off until october
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august 16th. my first class is in about thirty hours. i'm excited to wear all the pretty clothes i found over the
summer. i paint my nails for the first time in a while. they're sky blue. i like to paint them sky blue. i think it's
a calming color. i want to reflect calmingness & the simple pleasure of looking at an unclouded patch of sky
the instructor for my m/w/f class splits us into three groups because of covid. one only goes on
monday, one only on wednesday, one only on friday. i think this is... bad, really. it's an expression
of the fact that we probably shouldn't be returning to campus! but under the circumstances,
i'm psyched that two days out of every week of the semester have become free
it's worth noting though that i've been sort of torturing myself trying to stay awake until eight
pm, so i could sleep sixteen whole hours if i wanted, then get up for my first class on
monday. & it turns out that i will not be going to a class on monday! oh well
eventually i've been awake for so long that i feel like i'm dying. all my thoughts have the exact polluted flavor
i've always known them to have when i've been awake so long. it's really really scary that i spent several consecutive
years abusing my sleep cycle so consistently that this was basically my default state of being. so i go to sleep. i will
become normal & love sunshine & earth & inextinguishable optimism & calmness & humbleness & patience
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august 18th. now i'm trying to sleep before my actual first day of class.
"music for airports" is on track four & i'm still awake. it's not looking good
well, i do get to sleep, & i wake up, & i head back to school
both of my physical classes are in room 102 of their respective buildings, which
is also the number of the hotel room we stayed in in march of 2017, the first
time i met up with friends i met online. stay tuned for more alex trivia
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august 22nd. today happens to be the birthday of one of the friends i met up with in march of 2017. unrelated to that,
i give myself the task of lying in bed with a notebook for about two hours, listening to The Caretaker & thinking of one
hundred & forty-four words & phrases that feel worth writing. i plan to take pictures of the nine pages & post them. once i'm
done, though, i decide i don't want to. they eventually become a strange vase shape at the end of the first Preservations page
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august 23rd. i put on socks
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august 24th. i resolve not to expose myself to darkness through my computer today
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august 25th. i listen to a random indistinguishable rock band i found on bandcamp. i get nothing
from it as music, but i enjoy feeling like i'm sitting in a bar. aka "getting something from it as music"
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august 26th. one of the biggest things i've been trying to hone this year is stoicism
about being bored. allowing myself to just feel lonely & be quiet at times when i could
otherwise be filling dead air with substanceless things that make me like myself less
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august 27th. if i had a dollar for every time i imagined a lady's head popping up
over the side of my bed & screaming really loudly well i'd start doing it on purpose
ba dum tss honk honk woody woodypecker laugh slide whistle zoo wee mama
i go on an adventure walking six miles for a case of sparkling water. i see that Lane Bryant has
taken down a sign i've been staring at in awe every time i've walked past it for three years. it
says "EARN REAL WOMEN DOLLARS". in its place now are a bunch of signs about the virus
my adventure leads into caffeinated nocturnal wandering with a case of La Croix in my backpack.
i have a wonderful time. i sit alone at a park late at night, listening to Bladee. i film a video
of myself running & leaping around spastically, slipping & falling on the grass
i see a pair of sunglasses left behind on a picnic table
thinking of people i strongly disapprove of as poisoned tabula rasas & living symptoms of things larger than them feels
so much better than whatever the heck i was thinking of them as before. well, actually, i went crazy in 2017 specifically
because i did think of alt-right people as these exact two things. okay, i guess i'm just more emotionally stable now
my futile crush on _ lingers on...
can i meaningfully call it a crush even? i encountered a template for phantoms
the caffeine wears off & i'm hungry & i feel like my body is
physically disintegrating, it's time to stagger three miles home
i have no sleep mush brains about two miles from home but it's ok it's not
the sad mush brains just silly daze shuffling across the dark parking lot
finally home. the hunger pains became all consuming. every step hurt in my gut. finally collapsed on
bed. body held together by scotch tape. i feel good i love to engineer a night i'll always remember
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august 29th. i wake up, lie in bed in an oxytocin fugue for an hour, then get up & realized
how funny it is that my brother has been blasting g-funk from the living room the whole time
seeing unsettling spiritual sickness in the chosen clothing of
nearly everyone i pass on the street & feeling loony. ya know?
just about all i want from this life right now is for someone to platonically drive me out
to the dark parking lot of a park just south of town where we stare at the treeline &
quietly & contemplatively listen to the song shing kee by carl stone ... OK?
i upload the album "the tables are turning" by zoviet france to youtube
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august 30th. while dancing to music in my room i accidentally punch
my own elbow at an angle that breaks off a bunch of my thumb nail
September
september 1st. i aimlessly walk several miles to a twenty-four-hour convenience store at three am for coffee, giving myself a
serene & spooky & anxious & pretty night. i get rained on the whole way home. i am on a barren street adjacent to only fields
when lightning arcs across the whole sky in a theatrically terrifying way. i started literally running for my life. i slump
against a wall under the awning of a university building now, feeling the adrenaline drain out of me. happy. tal coat by
brian eno. the whole walk home is marked by such a deep sense of unsafety & imminent annihilation. i feel like it is
the ideal possible situation to be in for my first listen-through of ambient 4: on land. it'll be a powerful album
forever now. i get home soaked head to toe. i have two bottles of coffee & an italian wrap
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september 2nd. i feel inexplicably nostalgic for when the carpet in
my room got soaked with water from a busted pipe & smelled bad
i have my midi keyboard with me in composition class. the teacher asks me about it afterward.
she is jealous of it, says she's always wanted one. she also asks for a link to my music!
-
september 3rd. as i'm walking home through a lightly forested area, i come across a guy who has been walking his dog & is now
having to restrain it so that it doesn't kill an injured baby bunny crawling across the dirt path. he's asking me to hold the dog's
leash so he can pick up the bunny. i just stand there anxiously because it seems like a situation that he could've orchestrated for
the sake of exploiting my empathy for a bunny to kill me. i imagine him grabbing my wrist as i reach for the leash. i say i can call
a campus officer down, then i strike that out & tell him to just go on & that i'll look after the bunny. he walks away grumbling
about just trying to be nice. now i can't bring myself to leave the bunny, the need to safeguard it is practically spilling from
my eyes, my nostrils, my ears. i wait on my dad to bring me some safety gloves. eventually the guy walks by again
& apologizes for the whole situation. as my dad gets near, they run into each other & make some small talk. it turns
out he walks his dog around the area a lot, so my dad recognizes him, once chased the dog down when it got loose
my dad brings me the safety gloves. i explain the situation to him & pick up the bunny. as we walk back across
a field, i get a random muscle spasm in my foot. it refuses to resolve for about five minutes. i am incapacitated.
it turns into this weird, inconvenient situation with a bunny sitting docilely in the grass. then i stop being
incapacitated. at one point i drop the bunny & the way it lands nestled in the tall grass on its back
is really cute. then we make it to a parking lot. my brother comes & drives me home
now i have a baby bunny in a box in my room. i struggle to find bedding for it. i'm not sure what to make of it.
my impulse & empathy said that the bunny was hurt & i couldn't leave it on its own if it was hurt. now it's here.
what were its circumstances before i found it, really? was it separated from its mom? was she dead? did i only
take it further from home? do i nurse it to health? is it really injured? do i keep it as a pet for its whole life?
am i qualified in this moment to give a baby bunny a good life? would a fate in a fox's jaws have been
as fair as my rescue? it's not like this bunny has an ultimate destiny that i'm escorting it to, i don't
know. i need to either determine what the bunny can eat, or set it outside
maybe the bunny wasn't really orphaned. i might've made a mistake in being put on the spot here
i decide i was rash in taking the man's word that the bunny was injured. i saw that the fur around the back of its head
was kind of dark & wet-looking, i & assumed it was a wound, i guess. but the baby seems ok. baby bunnies are probably
supposed to just crawl around & not be all nimble. & it's proven capable of squirming & hopping out of my grasp quite
adequately. so, i decide going to walk it back out to exactly where i picked it up at, & let life happen as it happens
i take an obligatory photo before i haul it back out
before i head out, i take the opportunity to show the bunny to my neighbor & tell him about the guy with the dog. then i head out.
the sun is setting, & it ends up being pitch black by the time i get to where i found the thing. as i'm walking down the street with
this cardboard box, part of my head is screaming at me to stop at the convenience store & ask the cashier if they want to see a baby
bunny. it's the kind of merry, unrestrained, spontaneous sociality i need to exhibit all the time! i should be willing to at least invite
the chance of making this cashier's night! another part of my head forbids it, though. it's like an unstoppable force versus
an immovable object. ultimately, i can't force myself to do it, which feels really tragic in the moment, like it represents
my soul being dead. i do at least walk up to the window & see which cashier is there, & it's not even
one of the guys i recognize, so that removes some of the impetus
i finally arrive back at the wooded area, walking along with a flashlight. the flashlight was among the objects in my room that i listed
earlier. it's a very sentimental flashlight! i got it during the three days associated with my twenty-first birthday that i consider to be
strong candidates for the best of my life. i met my online friends D & E for the first time, & we drove two hours out to a state park, spent
a couple nights out in a cabin. we got drunk on vodka from a bottle that's also among the list of objects in my room. i remember holding the
flashlight as i drunkenly staggered with D up to the bathrooms, telling them that i hardly ever experience anything in my life until these
extraneous moments where i'll find myself stumbling drunkenly through the dark woods with a friend who'll be off across the world again
in a few days. i also drunkenly talked to them about... well, it's something i always want to report, because it's such an absurd & modern
thing to drunkenly discuss in a cabin in the middle of the woods, but it's an "infohazard." so i can't. we mixed the vodka with Mountain
Dew Voltage, which i picked out because Voltage had been a drink with a significant presence in 2017, the previous (& first) time that
i initially met up with online friends. the taste truly does something to me, with all its associations! i think i'll walk out & buy
a bottle tonight. or maybe it's best to risk not diluting its significance. that's the thing, there's always a cost with invoking
things like that. you let the association, the one paired with the stimuli, actually live in the present instead of leaving it
dead & uninvoked forever but with each invocation, you pull it a bit away from that past event, root it a little more
in the present. you can't have your cake & eat it too. there's no way to let it be "safe & preserved" for all time
while letting it meaningfully exist at all. & you're going to die anyway, so why even try? have to use
the past to grow, but still embrace the present. "tonight" is june 25th now
so i'm finally back at this dark wooded area, walking along, singing songs to myself. the only one i can confidently remember
singing is, aptly, "let's pretend we're bunny rabbits" by the magnetic fields. literally "singing [a] little rabbit [song]," as
described in the lyrics. i finally arrive back at the exact spot i found it at, & nestle it back in the leaves. i have to
stand there & stare at it in my flashlight beam for a long time before i'm finally able to tear myself away
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september 5th. i listen to "om namo ocean road" by vektroid in
a bar that's close to where i lived in 2014... it's too much!
i upload the first cd of "ohm: the early
gurus of electronic music" to youtube
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september 6th. i get wacky
-
september 7th. i listen to cicadas & doug dalglish's "amazing nature songs from texas," with my room lit dimly &
warmly, watching a construction of nine bead necklaces hung from seven coathangers hung from a bluetooth speaker
hung from my ceiling fan chain rotate, the comforting smell of collard greens filling the room. truly blissful
-
september 8th. i buy a book of crosswords & have the time of my life
-
september 10th. i eat a peanut butter & jelly with bread & butter pickles on it. it is good
-
september 11th. my bedposts have big wooden spheres on top. for at least a month, i've been repeatedly picturing
myself dancing around, slipping, falling forward, & smashing my open mouth into one, knocking out all my front teeth
i take a single step out of my front door & slash my leg on the edge of a little knee-
high glass tabletop that is chipped. the gash is about an inch long. blood! ow!
i go & see Eraserhead at a local independent theater. wa hoo! i've never seen it before! the screening is outdoors,
& it's a delightful way to first experience it. a cool but overall comfortable temperature, the sounds of nocturnal
bugs mingling with the audio, & an orange streetlight burning into my peripheral vision. it's all really something!
during the cab ride home i stare at the mundane scenery with my hands gently clasped & held to my chest, a posture that feels
very adoring, as if i'm trying to express to myself my latent desire to find bliss in only a small rock, or a chair, or a garbage bin
i get home & listen to the song "cherry tomato" until i fall asleep
-
september 12th. i attend another show with C at the arcade bar. i wander into the back alley, over to a
dark adjacent street, & take a nice photo. i get home & listen to the song "cherry tomato" until i fall asleep
-
september 13th. a tumblr post, verbatim: "i drank two energy drinks in one day about a week ago. since then i've been
buying more of them & trying to space less & less of it out over each day so that i don't have to go through a crappy
caffeine withdrawal day. i don't think i was doing a very good job at it this morning, because i was like 'hm, maybe
i am already every terrible thing i could ever fear becoming!'. but now i'm like 'ok, i'm not that stuff'. ok,
that's my update. now i just press the button to make my tumblr post! or instead of posting it i will
just close the app & consider telling these things to one of my friends instead. then i won't have
to question myself about the logic that governs which random goings-on i bother to tell
my tumblr followers about! now it's a goofy self-referenti"
i find a secret room!!! mystery of secret room!!!
-
september 14th. my interesting friend from omegle, L, departs from my life with an absurd, vitriolic rant
is this autism, cowardice or just lack of intelligence? listen, you talk a lot about loving people,
caring for people, being an altruist, but it looks to me you are very centered on your little egotic
Missouri redneck geeky life. you think you are important. you think you are so cool because you have
funny nicknames on funny social media. but life is about going towards people. this is waaaaaaaaay
more difficult than solving extremely difficult mathematical equations, believe me. maybe your
parents over protected you and you are spoiled. maybe you are just blocked. but i won't tolerate
you treating me like a piece of shit. so have a nice geeky robotic transsexual lonely life. i am
sorry, alex, but i have been asking you for months to show some interest, some affection,
while i am offering it to you, and you just ignore me and make cynical comments and treat
me like i don't exist. wake up, little girl. your are just a girl in a redneck state lost in
the usa. i learnt 9 languages, published two books, traveled to pretty much everywhere
on this earth. i have respected you so far. you haven't, so now it's over, coooooooool
Seven of Z Nine math nerd person. I spent one fucking hour and a half listening to your
album, i paid you 20 dollars, you didn't even say thanks, for god's sake!!!!!. being
autistic is one thing, taking the piss out of people and ignoring them and despising
them is another. [...] there are way too many of you out there on the
fucking z generation nowadays fucking net
i spend weeks thinking about the phrase "the fucking z generation nowadays fucking net"
i think the amount it took to set off this rant was definitely sort of unhinged, but i think he was a little
right. maybe i am sort of obsessed with my own life. i mean, what are you reading right now? & why
are you reading it, for that matter? maybe you're obsessed with my life, too. haha, no, i kid...
-
september 15th. i wake up to a text from an unknown number containing the navy seals copypasta
-
september 16th. my teacher tells me she hasn't listened to all of Lumiere yet, but the first song reminds hear of
Nine Inch Nails' ambient albums (Ghosts) & Eraserhead. the Italo Calvino quote in the bio also sticks out to here
later, i try to run a bath. the shower turns on & gets my hair wet! classic slapstick moment
i lie in the dark with sunglasses on listening to "Hymns," a compilation of bizarre,
often probably randomly generated MIDI compositions by Terry Davis, &
reel with amusement at the fact that i'm starting to actually enjoy it
-
september 18th. i walk home from somewhere that isn't my house. each step i take on
the rocks or the grass goes crunch crunch crunch. i feel the weight of the rest of my
body on my feet, in my foot nerves, each time one of them touches the ground
-
september 19th. i have been having some of the worst
caffeine withdrawals of my life for the past few days
-
september 20th. i get out to the nature trail. i walk past a missing poster for two cats, which specifies that they are
never apart & have to be together. there are leaves on the ground now, crunch crunch crunch. i prove psychologically
incapable of not walking to the beat of "ambrosia parsley" by ween. i find some stacked rocks. i've been getting so
excited finding stuff like that lately. sometimes it'll just be one rock placed somewhere intentionally, or
even a pair of sunglasses that someone left behind on a picnic table
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september 21st. my futile crush on _ lingers on...
i take two nice photos
-
september 23rd. i just stare
-
september 24th. i fall asleep to alvin lucier's "music on a long thin wire." it makes me feel good in the way that a weed
whacker muffled through a wall does. i truly love that sound. i would like to hear a weed eater through a wall for a hundred
percent of the rest of my time alive, & also the idling engine of a vehicle through a wall, & a vacuum cleaner, & a washer
& dryer. all through walls! a love of muffled bassy/rushing noises. i will just listen to these sounds, blissed out, as they
steal all of my focus. everything will feel right. also among the most soothing noises are when i am in my house
at night & hear very loud revving cars in the distance, or train horns. these surely happen during the day, but
i usually only notice at night. it's different if they're ringing out in the lonely dark. i also love the sound
of a dog licking itself. noises whose acoustics can't be simulated by a speaker setup, which soothe me all
over my soul more than composed music or sound design ever can. john cage was truly right about traffic
you mistook a diesel generator or a washing machine for drone music? don't be embarrassed, you dunce! there
is so much beauty to find in the world constantly! listen to the hum of power lines & be filled with bliss!
don't chain yourself to the ascribed significance of the presence-or-absence of human intent! don't
demonize the delight that you can ideally take in every drop of your sensory perception!
this, now, is unrelated to sound, but sometimes i'll be in a situation, like lying in a room listening to a song, or
walking in a place outside, where i am really enjoying myself! something about the conditions is just letting me
feel blissful. at times, though, once i notice how good i feel, i automatically make it a little narrative in my head.
"alex walked along that trail in the woods & felt great." from then on, i feel sort of phony. as if the fact that
i felt so great on the trail says something, something i'd shallowly like for it to say about me. & now i'm
self-sabotagingly pressuring myself to keep feeling so good about being there
-
september 25th. i go to a Hobby Lobby in search of note cards, but i only walk around progressively becoming sort
of delirious with appreciation for everything in my field of view. & this is only enhanced by the very white, southern
bent to the location, which inevitably feels very conservative & sinister. & it is only enhanced by the sinister mass-
produced phoniness of so many of the objects, the simulated appearance of aging & wear on a wooden sign, the
meticulous cultivation of "handmade" qualities. i know all of this, & i despise all of it, but with respect specifically
to my earnest love for the aesthetics of these objects, it only gives them tension! zest! tang!
well, i don't find the note cards. so i go to Dollar General. i get the last pack of note cards in the store.
it's sort of hidden on the shelf, & the wrapping is partially torn open, which gets a laugh from the girl who
helps me find them. it is fifty-four cents. i pay with exact change. i place fifty-three cents on the counter,
then the last penny. i am wearing my shirt with the bunnies in easter egg hot air balloons. she says it keeps
distracting her. she clarifies that she thinks it is a great shirt. my affect is so dulled that i sort of
feel like i'm betraying her. i don't reflect the exuberance of my shirt in the slightest
then i take an accounting exam while a computer program, which initially requires a
photograph of my face & id, & a short video of me doing a 360 degree scan of my room
with the camera, tracks my face & alerts the proctor if i look away from my computer
-
september 27th. i approach month nineteen of obsession with
the idea that the wingdings smiley face's name is "Buddy"
-
september 28th. i like to intently speed walk toward a squirrel until
it reaches a tree. i like to imagine going "You." when i start doing this
today i send my "thanks for the prescription! also, you should know & take into
consideration that i have already been taking this medication for two years"
e-mail, then fall in renewed love with Chipmunks on 16 Speed
-
september 29th. it's established that we'll be adopting a doggy next friday
i become very fixated on... well, i walk past a building that looked tornado resistant, & imagine being
locked in it with people during a tornado. & if the mild drama of the situation might make anyone
subconsciously imitate movie characters, or if they were "normal" & i just delusionally thought
they sounded like characters. & art imitating life imitating art imitating life imitating art
imitating life imitating art, & it either tries to portray things authentically or exaggerated,
as in maybe a movie will exaggerate the ways of its time to be parodic & appealing.
but what if the movie is popular & affects people's vernacular? maybe there can
be feedback, but it's not like a linear cycle, there can be all this interplay.
demented chaotic stew of traits & imitation & artistic license. it's so
fucked. in the end, there doesn't seem to be any meaningful distinction
between reality & fiction, because fiction is embedded in reality
my friend nik has these things to say:
i've been reading borges and. a recurring thing in the stories has been the idea of a person or people basically
imagining things so hard they become real /// and it's not possible to exist as a pure unaffected human ///
tlon, uqbar, orbius tertius suggests a vast conspiracy that intends to remake earth into an imagined
world by gradually introducing created artifacts from this alternate world into reality, and
they're real as long as people believe they're real /// when the derecho hit and i was out
walking around afterwards, there was a feeling that like. obviously this was a historical
event, but the extent of the damage, and all the uprooted trees etc, made it feel
like... sort of like a stage-managed "disaster", like this is something you see
on tv on a weather channel special about natural disasters. cliches have
currency because they recur and resonate with real-life happenings,
but then you find yourself in the catastrophic situation where
your sincere unfiltered emotional/behavioral response to
a scenario aligns perfectly with a cliche, and you
have retroactively become a cartoon
i say:
there's always ambiguity whether someone feels obliged to follow a
routine or if they just don't know how to channel sentiments better
nik says:
what if the optimal expression of sentiment happens to
match precisely with something in art. what could
be more cliche than to say "i love you"? and
what better way is there to express that?
it's good, & it might be beneficial to espouse. but i think trying to describe it would only bastardize it. it's fragile!
it's just that kind of thing. i can only recommend finding your own thing & not telling anyone about it"
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september 31st. one of my neighbors who moved away early in the year, a very kind old woman, passes away
from covid. i was never very close with her, but she was a very familiar & sweet presence for a long time
October
october 1st. as i'm doing something, i finally have to acknowledge that part of me is incessantly
composing an objective description of what i'm doing & nagging me to write it down. so, even though
writing out what i'm doing is against the spirit of the activity itself, i do write it out: "i am by a creek
willfully choking out my higher brain functions, babbling gibberish, reveling in the physicality
of breaking branches, kicking plants, stomping & hopping, kicking gravel & throwing big rocks"
late, i see someone in a nice outfit at a pretzel stand. i want to compliment them but i am paralyzed
with shyness. i imagine the feeling carrying over to everyone else that i might ever see in
a nice outfit, & i want to cry. learned helplessness as always. i need to change
i buy a rider-waite tarot deck. i stare at the 2 of swords once i get
home. the 2 of swords has always transfixed me unlike any other card
i really need a nap. standing outside the mall, i feel totally disconnected from my surroundings. i also don't feel like
i want to pursue a meaningful life in my body. i'm in the mood to humbly decline life. no thank you, it's okay. as
stated, a very nice lady who was my neighbor for six years also died of covid yesterday & i think i might be
flushing it into my subconscious instead of feeling sad about it. i decide to go home & take a nap
-
october 2nd. i do nothing forever & have my interpretation of that vacillate
between me having a still, mundane nature or me having unexpressed energy
i ponder how to politely tell my brother that i happened to hear him play his guitar a lot during about four years in which
i now consider myself to have been deeply sick in my soul, & now when i hear it through the wall i feel like a hissing rat
in a cage, & this is will be a lot more unpleasant when it gets too cold out to comfortably flee the apartment. over the
coming months, i do eventually manage to work through these emotions without ever subjecting him to this absurdity
i have a video call with my writing teacher. she says that my paper's pre-final draft needs a thesis & a conclusion, but otherwise
it's fantastic! i hadn't expected that. i did spend three hours thinking about the paper, but it really felt like something i'd
listlessly banged out to meet the deadline. i thought she would tear it apart. she asks about my major, & i talk about how
i defaulted to computer science but am reconsidering because it's so disenchanting. she says english would love to
have me, which i think is the push i need to change my major to either music, visual art, or english
-
october 3rd. i think of when _ asked me what all is in my purse, & i was excited to
systematically display every object in my purse, & he noted that i was so excited to
systematically display every object in my purse. my futile crush lingers on
after more delays, we truly finally adopt a doggy today. she is ostensibly a chihuahua-
dachsund mix. her name is Sweet Pea. there is an amusing poster at the animal shelter
for about an hour after we bring her home, i'm actually hit with a chasmic sense of sadness. i nearly cry. oddly, it is
similar to the feeling i got after i ordered Silly. maybe it's buried Roxy feelings. maybe i'm worried i adopted a puppy who
i'll find myself selfishly, guiltily disappointed with. i'm ok though, it's very transient. i am happy that i have a little doggy
-
october 5th. in march of 2017, when i met up with people i knew over the internet for the first time, they brought
their little chihuahua. its name is Little Dog. the time came to feed Little Dog. Little Dog's soft chihuahua food had
to be mushed up. they asked me if i had an implement with which to mush up the soft chihuahua food. i fished a ball-
point pen out of my bag. it was an adequate implement. i still have the ball-point pen. i mainly use it to occasionally
write in a moleskine journal. today i write in the moleskine journal about raccoons. my futile crush on _ lingers on
today i consider drawing a stick figure in ms paint & writing something like "Hi. I'm a stick figure. I have
been telepathically reading all of your thoughts for eight years. I haven't felt disgusted by a single thing."
i don't go through with it because i feel it might be upsetting to someone with paranoid delusions & the like
-
october 6th. sometimes, when i feel acutely lonely, i get a pulse of pain
inside the middle of my left palm. it doesn't feel quite like any other variety
of physical pain, & acute loneliness seems to be the only thing that triggers it
i have to get my blood drawn in two days. i have never gotten my blood drawn before. i am
trying to lean into the anxiety & positively focus on how alive & alert it makes me feel
-
october 7th. all i do is walk around, stare at trees & buildings,
& feel haunted by multimedia composite images of people
the coffee shop is doing another monthly special with lavender in it. it's a strange & sort of
unappealing flavor for coffees & shakes, but i can't resist the novelty of drinking laundry
sometimes i have trouble with deleting redundant photos of the same object from the same
angle, with little detectable difference between them, because i know each one is still
a different preserved moment in time from the other ones & destroying them feels bad
i seem to feel generally happier when i don't expose myself to
evil through my computer, even if i don't directly feel an
emotional link between those two variables. hmm!
i draw the current 93 logo & a dazed emoticon face on the chalkboard
others have drawn a crying heart & a dog on a skateboard
-
october 8th. i have to get my blood drawn today. on the walk to
the clinic i pass a teddy bear lying far below in a drainage ditch
i don't even get dizzy. after it's done, the nurse reviews the information she's
taken & mutters, "i think i got everything i need here," & i say "blood, namely"
my banter with her is actually some of the most comfortable human interaction i've had in years. i think it is the
nervousness drawing unabashed humor out of me. she says that i drank enough water & the vein is great, which is
to say, easy to find, & i say, "you love to see it," &, 'i love to have a great vein." afterward, when she asks if
she can get me anything, i say, in sort of a childlike way, "yeaaah, a juice would be great... apple :)"
i come home & find Sweet Pea being so much more affectionate. i think she's
starting to get over her childbirth lethargy & kennel cough. consider my heart stolen
-
october 10th. today happens to be the birthday of the other friend i met up with in march of 2017.
unrelated to that, as i'm buying two cranberry almond bars at the gas station, the cashier tells me with
a chuckle that he's been working there for over two years & had never heard me talk. so, before i
leave, i say "have a nice night." he raises his arms, laughs, & says "haha heeey she can talk!!!"
-
october 11th. i get wacky
i also keep thinking about how loving of a gesture it might be for a person to show
another person how to do a common household task that they are unfamiliar with
-
october 13th. i walk to a gas station for snacks but as i approach the door a guy with a gun in the back of his
waistband gets out of a car & struts out of sight to the right of the building with the aggressive confidence of
a heterosexual white man so i just sort of turn & walk back home. then i see a very fat rabbit eating grass in
the yard of an adjacent apartment complex. it doesn't react much to my presence, i think it was domesticated
-
october 14th. at the coffee shop, i stare at a nearby building & sketch it. it's more detailed than stuff i usually draw
-
october 16th. i draw shapes on my face with colored sharpies again
-
october 17th. a local theater shows Coraline. i go & see
it. it's maybe my sixth time watching it. it's so, so good
my futile crush on _ lingers on...
-
october 18th. i upload the album "in times like these..." by bishop perry tillis to youtube
-
october 19th. for days, every time i've stepped out of my house, a little electronic toy witch that detects nearby
movement has laughed at me sinisterly. i don't know who brought it here. this time, though, she is gone, & i notice
her severed hand & part of her hat lying on the sidewalk. so i look around for the rest of her & find her lying by the
stairs. i immediately hear her severed speaker laughing weakly from like five feet away. truly harrowing stuff
i upload the january 2003 section of the wfmu 365 days project to youtube
-
october 20th. all day, "la femme chinoise" by yellow magic orchestra keeps intermi-
-ttently playing in my head & giving everything funny, sinister, manic undertones
-
october 21st. owl raccoon chipmunk gopher woodchuck fox robin bluejay lizard snake deer bear opossum skunk
fish frog crawdad crayfish duck goose crane egret turtle groundhog coyote wildcat dog squirrel sparrow crow
vulture pigeon hawk rabbit jackdaw bat mouse snail slug mole quail. i type all of these in the tumblr app
on my phone, then fall asleep without hitting the post button. fortunately i wake up again a while later
my futile crush on _ lingers on...
-
october 22nd. i draw a simplistic drawing of a twirling dancer
-
october 24th. i visit an antique mall. i don't expect just how much i end up enjoying it. the whole
time my brains are just turning into soup because everything in my field of vision is too good & i can't
even begin to adequately document it all. it's ridiculous, i just walk forward & dart my eyes endlessly,
always to the next thing, wholly stimulated, truly blissed out, truly eating lotuses
i upload the february 2003 section of the wfmu 365 days project to youtube
-
october 25th. i remember that getting a dog so excited it starts
running laps around the house is one of my favorite things in life
-
october 26th. i'm lonely but sometimes i can find it in me to writhe around joyfully
over nothing. i feel loopy. i am laughing at how clear everything feels right now
-
october 28th. my futile crush on _ lingers on...
-
october 31st. happy halloween
November
november 5th. i get a root canal. it's really not too bad. they get the filling out of the twinkie, as a nurse playfully describes it.
i really don't like getting needles stuck in my mouth, but once i'm past that everything is okay. my heart does pound as they fill the
molar with bleach, because of a possible occurrence that i read about on wikipedia, but everything goes fine. they can't get the tooth
all the way numb though, so they just give it a temporary filling & set a date for me to come back. this is my second dental procedure
ever, the first being a cleaning in 2016. surely i can handle anything now, having jumped straight to endodontics. it is a merciful
seventy-degree november day. i make two ham & cheese sandwiches, then realize i can't chew with my mouth numb. i have
been awake for quite a long time, but i consider going on a long walk to the nature trail... i fall asleep, though
-
november 6th. the sandwiches i made got all hard. i toss them, along with part of a pizza crust
& a hardened frisbee of bread from a microwave sandwich, into the field. hours later, Sweet
Pea finds the frisbee & the crust. she brings them in & hoards them at her blanket
i think about the goat i heard go maa aa a a three months ago
i've again been awake for a long time, but i drink a coffee & get out to the nature trail.
as i walk along i think about drinking off-brand dr. pepper in a church cafeteria
i associate this with some of vektroid's music like initiation tape, night signals ii, starcalc. i love
listening to vaporwave or vaporwave-adjacent music & recalling crappy old brick buildings
& staring out the window at endless flat plains during car rides instead of stupid
retrofuturist internet stuff, it's really an exquisite pairing of stimuli
i get home & lie in bed with Sweet Pea, so exhausted i can barely talk
-
november 8th. i peer through a window of an abandoned
store at a mall & see something that makes me SEIZE
i start reading Breakfast of Champions. i could really see myself working through
Vonnegut's whole bibliography before i bother with any more books by anyone
else. it takes me about seven months to work through the book
every time i walk home i pass a huge, burly pickup truck parked in the
grass in front of some apartments. its front license plate says "BEEF"
i call Sweet Pea "Pubby" about as much as i call her "Sweet Pea," if not more
-
november 9th. i upload "on the other ocean" by david behrman to youtube
-
november 10th. i whisper "it's cool to be awesome" to myself at least once a day.
it's like a thought-terminating phrase that helps me stop worrying about things
my self-expression is probably sufficiently benign that if someone could
directly observe the anxious self-dissection about it that i privately
engage in every day they'd find the sheer contrast hilarious
once, when i... i feel weird talking about buying a bottle of vodka, but being drunk isn't that interesting to me anymore so whatever. once
when i was at a convenience store buying vodka, it was a cashier who i was pretty sure i'd never purchased vodka from. & when i approached the
counter i realized i'd happened to approach without him seeing what i had, & i sort of had it down by my legs, behind the counter, so he couldn't
see that i had it, or anything, yet. & it came very naturally to choreograph my placing it on the counter a little, in a way that'd emphasize the
factors of the situation. which was using both hands to lift it up by the stem(?) & set it down with kind of a thud. he laughed a little & said "ok!"
-
november 15th. i've been thinking for like two days about the way the lyric "& so on & so forth" is
unexpectedly split between two lines in the first verse of "busby berkeley dreams" by the magnetic fields
-
november 16th. maybe forty years after i die someone will find my century old anonymous crossword book
gathering dust somewhere, & see that i drew frowny faces by the clues i had to look up in the back of
the book, & neutral faces for ones i did internet research for, & big smiley faces in the margins
for puzzles i completed with no sad or neutral faces. & they'll go: aw that's kind of cute
-
november 17th. D calls me. i just say "howdy, pardner!" & "yeeee haaaw!" then go silent for
like eight seconds & start laughing because i can't think of any other things that cowboys say
i upload the march 2003 section of the wfmu 365 days project to youtube
-
november 18th. today is the last time my writing class meets in person. me & john, the sole other
remaining student, arrive at the same time. we are five minutes late. when we walk in, the teacher
is slowly rotating back & forth on a rolly chair in the dark, with her feet propped up on a table
that night i fall into a weird state for about an hour where i curl
up on the love seat & can't stop babbling to my dog about the sun
-
november 21st. i listen to "an empty bliss beyond this world" &
think about crunchy powder that smells good & NOT dementia
-
november 23rd. i upload all the unique songs from ween's "caesar demos" to youtube
-
november 25th. i upload a personally compiled two & a
half hour compilation of rare john maus songs to youtube
-
november 26th. i keep thinking about how, before recorded music, if you wanted to fall asleep to
calm guitar playing someone would have to calmly play a guitar while you were falling asleep...
-
november 29th. i fall asleep then wake up inexplicably imagining bugs bunny & daffy duck putting aside their
differences to calmly walk around some bleary outdoor location like a cemetery discussing the evil nature
of capitalism, then they come to a railroad bridge high over a river, step onto the railing, hold hands, tip
forward, & break their noses on the invisible surface that's there when they do the "walk off a cliff into the
air" gag. this isn't like, me lying in bed trying to daydream a wacky scenario or just letting my mind wander
or anything. the entire sequence of events is just fully formed in my head the moment i woke up. in a flash
anyway, it looks like it's just me & this bedroom for the winter. me, this
bedroom, & all the pictures of dessert i can download from wikimedia commons
December
december 1st. i spend an hour tediously punching randomly generated pitch & timing settings
into audacity's chirp generator, to make a sine wave wobble around annoyingly. i want to hear it
-
december 2nd my dad gives me some colored markers & boards made of a plastic-y material. i draw this
-
december 5th. my writing teacher leaves this feedback on my paper:
"GOD BLESS YOU, ALEX (LASTNAME)." so i guess she likes it
-
december 6th. i upload the april 2003 section of the wfmu 365 days project
listening to a recording of a woman reading a children's book for her young nephew, i become emotional over something hard to articulate about
cows eating grass in it, it's presented in a very unconditional way but you can acknowledge that it's art made by people who are like the cows in
that they have to eat food because nature constantly tries to tear every living thing apart by naturally redistributing their energy so they have to
eat food & store energy as atp, & that's all implied in the drawing but not really portrayed in it. the drawing feels unconditional, cows just
eat grass, that's it. & the scene it's portraying makes perfect sense, there can't be any way for everything to be other than what it's
showing you. people arising from the same evolutionary process as cows & portraying a process that sustains them as an ongoing
cyclical process of birth & death, just like cows. then you have the book itself as a tool in that process, to mentally nourish
children. i guess the unstoppable nature of that process really does make the phenomenon of cows eating grass
unconditional. & like, if you want the drawing to ostentatiously represent death anxiety, or, nihilism, or, love,
or people taking care of each other, it can because everything is a tangled ball. but it's pretending it can't
represent any of those things, cows just eat grass. this feels weird as an unwieldy paragraph
of declarative text but good as a visceral feeling
-
december 11th. i discover an electric toy piano at a
playground & record myself playing it for a few minutes
-
december 16th. i upload "automatic writing" by robert ashley to youtube
-
december 17th. as the year approaches its end, i look at my playlist called "songs i've been
posting lately." it feels absolutely, thoroughly saturated with the general feelings of 2020 for
me, exactly how i'd hope a playlist slowly amassed over the course of a year would become
-
december 18th. my upstairs neighbors vacuum directly above my room. it's heavenly.
they don't even have any idea of the delight it brings me. it makes me think about
how much delight i surely, unknowingly bring to others on occasion
-
december 19th. again: watching a dog run laps around the house makes me smile so hard it hurts
-
december 21st. i fall asleep with my laptop on my bed, but i wake
up before it sets the bed on fire & kills me. so i'm not dead!
i find myself deeply longing for May, when i would just buy a snapple each day
& walk around my neighborhood reading Cat's Cradle & feeling like i was in
heaven on earth for no particular reason. it's not quite like that anymore...
around this time i try to take completely cease my online public self-expression for a little while,
because i've privately felt like i've slowly been going insane over the course of 2020, for
reasons that remain entirely undisclosed. i come back after about a week. it helps
-
december 29th. occasionally people on omegle will ask if i've been kidnapped, like if i'm in the possession
of an abductor at the time i'm talking to them. it's bizarrely consistent. i'm really not sure what creates that
impression. tonight i finally get an answer about it from someone. i don't remember exactly what she said but
it was something like, i act weirdly stiff & polite as if someone outside the camera frame is watching me
-
december 31st. i submit twelve volumes of Church of the SubGenius music to Rate
YourMusic. they all seem to have been ignored & forgotten by the whole world
i keep blinking just my left eye, involuntarily. it makes me feel
like some kind of bug-eyed cave-dwelling ghoul. in a funny way
it finally really snows today. i take three photos of the
snow, which sport a grainy look that i'm in love with
-
& those are my final thoughts on 2020.
*
sort of.
so, i have a bunch of these leftover notes i wrote down throughout 2020. they're in chronological
order, but what distinguishes them is that i foolishly lost the exact dates for all of them
so before i close out 2020, i'm just going to place them all here
to be clear, this is all culled from the first two Preservations pages. it's
the entries that are more immediate, less rooted in more abstract rumination
- - -
the nervousness surrounds me again. oh no! i feel so embarrassed, regretful, paranoid, &
apologetic. hey nervousness, i'm trying to sleep here, stupid! i'm literally tucked in,
here. can you imagine being such a peabrained neurotic aura that you decide to try to
surround someone, not even realizing they're in the process of getting some shut-eye?!
one night i type this in my drafts & immediately fall asleep:
how many times i'll let empathy & concern condensate worthlessly inside me
for all the goodwill i follow through on, i may as well be a violent alcoholic
i feel so confused. i'm happy, though. i'm going to be happy! earth is beautiful. love. sometimes
i'm freaked out & i feel like i don't deserve to be at the helm of a personhood or a personality.
it's ok, though. i think, realistically, i'm isolated beyond the standards of normality. but it's
ok, & i've found things & ways of being that i like. i'm drunk. one sentence won't stop
coming back: i feel like i'm being crushed in the middle of a venn diagram
i'm invited to join my dad & some others at a shooting range. i don't plan on firing
any guns if i go. i'd enjoy getting to visit & explore a new place. but i'm uneasy. if
it were just us there, that'd be ok. but if i went & there happened to be other people
there, i think being around strangers firing guns would freak me out a good deal
landmark: june 15th
the relief of having received such a blatantly sinister series of messages
that i can reread them & think "okay, this instantly resolves my doubts.
i probably did not do anything wrong, because these could not have
conceivably preceded any genuine expressions of decent intent"
i look at this piece of decoration & actually read it for the first time, even though i'm
pretty sure it's been hung in every house i've lived in since as far back as i can remember
the temperature stays in the high eighties every day for at least four weeks.
i become kind of desperate to be able to go on long walks to a nature trail
again. i just want to walk four miles to a park pavilion & sit under it
in april & may of 2020 i sincerely feel "i love earth & life", while in
june & july of 2020 i can only sincerely think "i love earth & life"
"false hard truths" are my enemy. i've been trying to be vigilant about identifying & rejecting them. one day
i try to decide that i don't have to feel sad just because i've been awake for a long time. i think it works
i consider that my personality growth this year might in part be a response to that woman saying
something hideous to me in the early months, & my response being a tepid "wow, ok, haha!" ...
i evaluate this later, & i think, "hmm, something is wrong! i should completely overhaul myself"
i make a list of songs with my favorite lyrics. lots of them
keep making me sob, aaag aaahhh it's too concentrated
i reread my mannerisms & overall way of communicating in 2017. i think, "good god, this
person was not ready to enter a 'normal' relationship, let alone dive into polyamory for
her first in-person one & immediately go on a two-thousand-mile road trip for two months"
i stare at trees & grass blowing in the field by my house, listen to birds, & imagine everything
as dead & barren as i've already accepted it'll be in the far future. i think about feeling
uncertain about just how far that future is, & people i've known of who i'd love to meet, &
musicians i like starving to death. i also think about how many happy children there
might be on earth currently, & how their real happiness now could be debated to be
more important than the hypothetical happiness of a hypothetical number of
hypothetical unborn children, whose number feels unprecedentedly uncertain
even if i've already accepted that it is finite, & that children can only be
happy until the heat death of the universe. but i will be happy regardless
the heat coming out of my fridge feels like a microcosm of impending potential global ecological
disaster. aspects of modern life like refrigerators approximate a natural desire to be in a safe
physics sandbox where the stories of people's lives are free to play out as safe narratives
that exist unconditionally, instead of in a hostile reality where all energy is on a budget.
temperature as an arbitrary quality that you freely adjust with a dial, based on mundane
necessity or desire to freeze food or have a cold drink. life invoking the satisfaction of
increasing the size of a box in a 3d modeling program. my refrigerator & my faucet
suggest it is that way, & they let it be that way, locally, but turning a dial up is
inherently costly, & turning it down isn't (in a sense. intentional refrigeration
is costly, but, ultimately, everything is always cooling)
everything comes at a price. i have body heat because of chemical reactions inside of me
that break down the food i eat. the heat comes out of the back of the refrigerator &
incrementally warms the air, justifies turning on the AC, the AC unit pumps the hot
air outside. my laptop is like a miraculous, freeing thing that brings me so near
to the sandbox, lets me exist in a bubble of ideas & art & stuff, but it spews
hot air. burning coals hundreds of miles away drive turbines & generate
electricity & it zips here & turns into heat, incrementally warms my room
every infinitesimal increase in the CO2 concentration, every infinitesimal decrease in the albedo,
every infinitesimal increase in the surface temperature, & the average refrigerator has to do
infinitesimally more, the average AC unit has to do infinitesimally more. we can move &
redistribute the heat, but the debt grows & grows, the net increase becomes impossible to
ignore, local sandboxes are maintained until the climate puts its foot down on everyone's necks
i ride to the bank. for the whole ride i feel fearful of nearly everyone & everything in my field
of vision as either having been systematically made evil or being instrumental in systematically
making people evil. it's an unhealthy thought pattern. i constantly remind myself with irritation
that i know nothing about anyone i see. i think i woke up mid-sleep-cycle & it's making me feel off
i spend six years typing every album or set of songs that people download
from me on soulseek into notepad. then i randomly stop, & that's that
landmark: july 4th
my personality regresses again. i try to resume withdrawing from
the public internet until i can be human & good & not bad again
my main feeling for months has been constant "i was severely corrupted in the latter half of
the 2010s but now it's the 2020s so i'm not", oh god i'm so. anticipating the rest of my life!
going from endless despondency & feeling totally soulless, sterilized of any human spark,
incapable of, resistant, even, to feeling hope, to not an ounce of cynicism inside me oh my god!
i see a "tweet" that renders me deathly afraid of the idea of sliding back
into the waking nightmare that was 2015, 2016, & 2017, so i go to sleep
i feel like the best thing i can strive to be as a person is a "fortunate discovery"
my brother opens my bedroom door while i'm asleep. i scream. i tell the
internet about it because i don't involuntarily display emotions very often
& it always stands out to me. then i try to go back to making posts less
i just want to keep drawing excitement & energy from the notion of being human in all the
best ways, & viciously identifying & rejecting inhumanity, & thinking of anything i could
say or do to drive anyone who has succumbed to inhumanity to also begin to do these things
i really like this norbert wiener quote
our tissues change as we live: the food we eat & the air we breathe become flesh of our
flesh & bone of our bone, & the momentary elements of our flesh & bone pass out of
our body every day with our excreta. we are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing
water. we are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves
& i learn that the ecclesiastes book of the bible is essentially a long, non-religious expression
of existential dread with some "oh but God gives life meaning!" stuff tacked on to make it
spiritual. it also opens with the wonderful "to every thing there is a season" verses
to every thing there is a season, & a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, & a time
to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted; a time to kill, & a time to heal; a time
to break down, & a time to build up; a time to weep, & a time to laugh; a time to mourn, & a time
to dance; a time to cast away stones, & a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, & a time
to refrain from embracing; a time to gain that which is to get, & a time to lose; a time to keep,
& a time to cast away; a time to rend, & a time to sew; a time to keep silence, & a time
to speak; a time of love, & a time of hate; a time of war, & a time of peace.
i have a habit of finding two surfaces that sound like a kick & a snare
at least in comparison to each other & tapping the amen break on them
i think i've been in passive denial about the possible reality that i feel nothing when my friends &
acquaintances say sentimental & kind things to me, because it is too sad to acknowledge. several
hours ago i teared up daydreaming about being at a park pavilion with a nondescript person who
i imagined i was comfortable enough around, could relate to enough, that they had said
something kind to me & i had started crying & asking why that hadn't made me feel
anything, & how could i have a real connection with them if nothing they could
say could make me feel anything, & for that matter, how could i even have
reached the point of feeling comfortable enough to cry & ask these
questions in the first place if these are the questions i'm asking,
questions about things that preclude the connection
that would be a prerequisite for asking them
one day my feeling all day is: if something really crazy happened right now, i think it would
feel like objects moving around around me. it'd feel like an aspect of, not an exception to,
the stillness that was there before it happened & would be there after it happened
i listen to about two & a half hours of music i made in 2015 & 2016. it is kind of exhausting. i feel like
it'll refresh my neuron pathways pertaining to the time period where i was feral & evil, & mess my brain up
landmark: august 27th
literally thinking about Family Guy & sincerely feeling like it's some kind of infohazard, & feeling
like a nervous wreck because i feel like i'm in 2016, immersed in the commonplace & mundane
toxicity of the internet, but for all the fear i feel, it's not a singular outstanding misfortune that
can elicit sympathy & understanding, just a terrible mundane patina glazed over a span of
time, facilitated by cultural artifacts so mundane & soulless & flat that they feel like
infohazards, like any reasonable person would be drained of emotion & passion if
spoke of them. i would like to exit this bubble of things i am thinking about &
feel normal & not like i am staring into the eye of a spiritual black hole
i make my room pitch black & listen to music. i walk back & forth, seeing phosphenes.
i dance around for about forty-five minutes. i've otherwise never really bothered to
make my room so dark. after this, it seems that i can sleep without a nightlight,
& not imagine that a ghoul is about to shriek & grab me! great!
i do something charitable because i want to go for a ride
in the car to the place where i'll do the charitable thing
one day i don't feel so good. i feel like i am a p-zombie, & like i'd prefer to retract, stop
being seen by the outside world, stop narrativizing all the things i see & think & hear
into a house of cards that i call "my traits". i feel that i really don't feel or do
anything, or love anything either. i feel that don't know what love is, & i
could probably stop thinking entirely, too. the next day, i feel better
one night i drink & decide that i want to format thoughts as
bullet points. here, i'll just make them sentence (fragments)
too reticent. i'll never. i'll never. i'll never. i'll never. there's so much i'll never : (. i need
a space to develop. i need a sandbox. i'm feeling a complicated relationship with my higher
brain functions. this morning i was thinking:. i fundamentally do not understand how to
cultivate a meaningful relationship to another human being. (but maybe this was just
the false reinforcement of some narcissist who went on a rant critical of me this
morning). ((maybe my caffeine withdrawals made me take it a tiny bit more
to heart than if i was normal & would simply have said "this all seems
narcissistic")). & in the face of this lack of understanding my
wishes for affection simply make me feel like a sociopathic
oxytocin fetishist. oh gosh. ow i just tried to flop onto
a pillow & slammed my head into the headboard
i do lots of crossword puzzles. they are fun, & help me feel grounded & normal
i find myself really wishing that i knew anyone in person, & that anything would happen.
i feel like i am on the path of a fear-paralyzed person who will stay cooped up forever,
thinking surely i can't remain in stasis for my whole life, that if i wait long
enough then something might happen, or i might come to know anyone,
somehow, as though anything happens without any stimulus
but wait, what if i've just randomly convinced myself that i am feeling these things,
& the above paragraph is essentially me imagining myself in that headspace &
writing a prose description of it? ok, i vow to stop feeling lonely &
bored by accepting the narrative of this second paragraph
i find myself believing that i'm too alexithymic & acclimated to solitude to even know
firsthand that the emotion of loneliness really exists. i've only read about it. will
i play along with a webpage telling me i have to feel sad about something?
i type & delete & type & delete in an endless loop. i have no reason to say
anything there. so this is all i say, to feel resolved for at least having
said something, & i know i can get rid of it later, if i so choose
landmark: october 1st
i realize that whether a person finds something i do cute is often based on whether
they're willing to lend me that way of being interpreted, & it's very easy
to just take that lens & view myself through it whenever i want
i see bitcoin atms popping up everywhere. they make me feel
like the outside world is being transmogrified into a podcast
i reach a grand total of about nine months from the time i came within a hair's breadth
of accepting an offer, from that crazy lady, of a plane ticket to a place that is one
thousand, two hundred & fifty miles from my house! can you imagine?
i feel so cozy when i listen to "amazing nature songs from texas." i do crosswords
i lie under a weighted blanket. it feels physically equivalent
to someone saying "shut up, dummy", & i humbly agree to
i start re-listening to a series of videos about music called Shallow Rewards
landmark: october 20th
i read a bunch of blog posts from about a year ago. they all have a distinct voice that feels
like i wrote them when i was fourteen, not twenty or twenty-one. it's kind of eerie, how
they all feel like that in such a distinct way. have i actually made progress now, or
will everything i've posted over the past six months start to feel that way too?
i write the arseny tarkovsky poem from async on a coffee shop chalkboard & take a photo. i don't
share it on the internet because it'd look like a wacky generic artsy tumblr picture. i'd try really
hard to pad it & de-emphasize its "tackiness" with the caption somehow, but it would get zero
notes anyway, which is generally fine, but it'd activated the hardwired circuit in my brain
that makes me hate myself. it's good that i'm showing restraint & averting all of that!!!
everyone in my writing class slowly disappears over the course of the semester.
it comes down to just me & a guy named john who watches project veritas
behind-the-scenes info: i didn't know what project veritas was before he talked about it, but
i referred to it as just "project veritas" instead of "a disinformation outlet called project
veritas" because i unconsciously default to not qualifying things i just learned about
with descriptions, because if people who already know about the thing read it
it'll sound like i already knew about it too & i'm informed & stuff
i find myself feeling like a terribly stupid person with no sincere interest in rigorously
pursuing knowledge, & that to openly or privately consider myself Smart at all would just
be un-self-awarely glorifying my basic common sense (why am i talking about "considering
myself smart" in the first place? i must have a complex around it. the "people
unrealistically called me a genius when i was a child" syndrome)
i think this usually isn't much of a problem until i get too behind on sleep & start going
"hehe wow i can just say stuff!!! maybe i can make some statements!!!" otherwise i just
try to. like. express myself in ways that are worthily idiosyncratic or cute. or try
to rigorously bind myself to "normal, unpolluted" thinking & come up with fresh
ways to publicly reiterate it. all my energy goes into trying to heuristically
come up with new spins on these things instead of accruing knowledge
i sit in a room & hope i somehow know if anyone ends up anywhere
near me who i feel is not on the other side of the unbridgeable
metaphysical rift that i think is between me & all other people?
for a night everything becomes so dismal & scary for
me for seemingly no reason but i know it will be ok
that night i get in a very depressed mood for a few hours, sitting in endless stillness
thinking about why i really even want to be alive. it feels like it extends into the
past & future, like i had always felt so sad & always would. then i remember how
badly i do want to be happy, & how purifying & forgiving optimism is. i get
up & make myself smile & prance around my room giddily
that night i feel tired of being asked about my emotions & having no answer.
& it's not like having no answer translates to having no emotions. if i said
i didn't have emotions, that would not be accurate. but it's so horribly
nebulous & vague. there's just no answer to provide. i have no answer
that night i happen to cry over a lack of closure regarding my
infatuation with the man i spoke with on omegle five months ago
that night i feel insanely disoriented & scared. i don't know why. existential fear
stemming from transient convictions about the utter futility of connecting with
other people. & the simultaneous utter necessity. or that even to connect with
anyone would mean nothing. or the classic fear of being broken? everything
feels so different for me. i'm in a bubble of fear where nothing about
anything is the way it was outside of the bubble. i hope
that sleeping will make it go away. love
i start periodically flexing my bottom ribs in sort of a weird way. three
months later, i'm still doing it. so i guess it's just a part of my life now
my automatic response to remembering things i've said or done that i feel embarrassed
by randomly shifts to pantomiming stabbing myself in the neck, sometimes going
shklhklhkh, & throwing myself backwards onto my bed. it's very ostentatious
i try to continue a movie i've been watching but get distracted poring
through the entire "sweet meals" category on wikimedia commons
i move a lamp from the little table by my dresser to a perfectly sized circular space
that is on the corner of my bed if i take off a bedpost. because of the refreshed
lighting i now feel a thousand percent more sane about being in my room
my insecurities arrange themselves in a way where on top of irrationally
feeling evil i also feel evil for feeling evil. ha ha very wacky ha
woozy from hunger on a platform rocker i flatly mutter "little puppy. little
puppy. little puppy" as i play tug a war with my manic frantic dachsund
that's all!