my sleep pattern is a bit wonky right now, so i got up at some absurd hour... what was it?... oh!
about 2 in the morning! gosh... well, for breakfast, i had, um... well, we're very low on groceries,
currently. we're going shopping tomorrow, but... as it stands, i had to resort to a leftover
slice of pizza... & a bowl of raisin bran, wetted with the very last of our milk...

i've been in my room almost the entire time i've been awake... i'm experiencing a weird phase right
now... one night i moved a nice lamp into my room, & cleaned it up a lot & made it feel more
like my own space, & now, well, i just... want to be in here from when i wake, to
when i sleep... it's not normal for me. i'm not sure what's going on!

i've also been... making my bed every day, but because that intersects with "tidying up my room"
& "being in my room constantly," i wasn't... sure where it fit in the above paragraph...
but i do feel compelled to mention it... um... ok, moving on...

i remembered the existence of an album called "Worn Copies," which is an Ariel Pink tribute
album featuring 17 peoples' covers of various songs... i decided to upload the album to a
youtube channel where i upload music sometimes... the channel is called Vallesaab

a feature of Vallesaab is that some (but certainly not all) of the music i upload there feels either very obscure,
very silly, or both... i like to upload things that give me a sense of fascination with the act of uploading that
particular thing... strong examples of this are "Exile," "Undeniable Resurrection," "Catscraps," &... Lil Markie

there's also a lot of albums that just felt at the time like blind spots in youtube's "unofficial
upload of full albums" roster, like the three Residents albums... or at least Animal Lover!
that's liek a particularly appreciated 2000/2010s album by them right ?

i have also put much of my music there...

i've been less productive today with my schoolwork than i have been the past two or three days. let's see... i read an essay
that a classmate wrote, & i left two of the three required comments about it on the discussion board... i finished an online
computer science lecture that involved making a simple flow chart... oh dear, that's all i've done, really! i need to
start watching some freaking physics lectures. there's so much of those to get through...

what else... ? i guess i spent a fair amount of time catching up on some of the messages sent in a discord server...

the temperature will reach its high for the day in an hour or two, so i might go on a walk, or at least
spend 20 minutes out in the sun... lately i've been... mm, i was making sure to get 15-20 minutes of
sunlight each day, so that i don't become deficient in vitamin D & other positive effects of UV light
on skin!... but i've totally dropped off on that for the past 2 or 3 days, on account of... going
nocturnal & developing an unusual affinity for staying confined in my room

hmm. i like to make diary posts here. i just don't like to overdo it. i fret a lot over what to say
& what not to say. i've been retracting from [tumblr] lately, averaging less than ten posts
per day. it feels good... it feels good to be sparse, for things to feel more considered ...

i like the idea that if i only say, share, or make things that i really like, over several months, then people who find
my blog & look through it will scroll through those months fairly quickly & see it all, instead of wading through a
bunch of nonsense... i like when i delete my two-week-old favorite song posts & the blog compresses more

i'm glad that i made my website! formalizing & centralizing my online presence feels good. listing a bunch of writing
that i'm satisfied with there feels good. committing it to the site instead of having it buried under more posts forever

i like knowing that people can wander there & find my music, art, or things i've written, at any time. i like the
passivity of it, in contrast with the nature of [tumblr], where i feel like the only way i can be seen is by choosing
to actively republish things & advertise them. that always made me feel annoying & attention-seeking

oh, also, i'm not crazy about this redesign. it's making me feel even more distant from [tumblr]... blegh

i'm still stuck in my room most of the time, because it's ninety degrees out every day. it's also become more
justified to linger at home, because covid cases in this area, which were sparse until about a week ago, have
spiked by several hundred. i'm trying to not go too loony under the circumstances... i certainly don't feel
as blissful as i did in april & may, but that's okay. i won't get too attached to that state

i've almost entirely stopped willfully falling asleep. i casually lie down & fall
asleep by accident, & find myself waking up a while later, disoriented

a few nights ago i was walking back from the store & a car drove out from a church parking lot
& pulled up near me. someone threw a plastic bottle full of liquid at me. they threw it pretty
hard, but they were far enough away that it landed & skidded most of the distance to me

i instinctively fled from it because i imagined it was full of some kind of chemical mixture
that would explode into acid ten seconds after you shook the bottle or something. it did
not explode into acid. the car drove away & i heard multiple people hooting & hollering

maybe a minute later, another car came down the next street i was on, a street that was dark,
residential, & obscure. it slowed down maybe fifty feet in front of me. someone tossed a
firecracker out the window. it split into a screaming cloud of green sparks. it was unpleasant.
these events left me sort of lastingly upset for the next few hours if i thought about them too much

tonight i sent a friend a copy of ableton live 9, & a keygen for it, & i taught him a lot of basics for
using the program! he was so grateful, for with that guidance he got further in his understanding than
he has with any other music program! it makes me happy. i hope he makes some great music

i put three songs & an album by the band "tenderness" on youtube, because i think they're really good, & the music is kind
of isolated on a bandcamp page that's on a dedicated web domain, which breaks the ability to embed the songs anywhere

umm... i have a bunch of list stuff i'm meaning to get done. i need to finish my rym list that has paintings instead of music. i need to
"finish" the album cover one too, which is to say, finish filtering the ones i really like from my old album cover blog... i need to
make youtube playlists that correspond to the three music broadcasts i did there! that will involve uploading more songs

last night i listened to "free to be you & me", a feminist album of skits &
children's music from the early seventies. it encourages gender neutrality. i liked it

tonight i'm slowly listening to "the lamb lies down on broadway," by genesis, one disc at a time, as part of a systematic music-listening
thing i'm doing. i have an f2k playlist called "favs." for each day's favorite song, i add its album to the end, unless it's already
been added before. that i'm only listening to this album now is indicative of the weeks i've spent playing catch-up

i'm really paying attention to the lyrics this time. there are some great ones. i like the stuff that deals
with the protagonist's emotionally repressed facade of toughness. at the start of the album he is a
mean & callous person, & at the end he has an epiphany that makes him gentle & honest!

here are some good lyrics from "in the cage" ...

(soft instrumentation)
i got sunshine in my stomach, like i just rocked my baby to sleep... i got sunshine
in my stomach, but i can't keep me from creeping sleep... sleep, deep in the deep

(panicked instrumentation)
rockface moves to press my skin! white liquids turn sour within! turn fast, turn sour... turn sweat,
turn sour... must tell myself that i'm not here! i'm drowning in a liquid fear! bottled in a strong
compression, my distortion shows obsession, in the cave... get me out of this cave!

if i keep self-control, i'll be safe in my soul, & the childhood belief brings a moment's
relief. but my cynic soon returns & the lifeboat burns! my spirit just never learns

stalactites, stalagmites, shut me in, lock me tight! lips are dry, throat is dry, feel like
burning, stomach churning! i'm dressed up in a white costume, padding out leftover
room, body stretching, feel the wretching, in the cage... get me out of this cage!

in the glare of a light i see a strange kind of sight, of cages joined to form a star,
each person can't go very far. all tied to their things, they are netted by
their strings, free to flutter in memories of their wasted wings

& here are some from "back in n.y.c."

so you think i'm a tough kid, is that what you heard? well, i like to see some action & it gets into my blood.
they call me the trail blazer, Rael electric razor. i'm the pitcher in the chain gang, we don't believe
in pain. cause we're only as strong, yes, we're only as strong, as the weakest link in the chain

let me out of Pontiac when i was just seventeen, i had to get it out of me, if you know what i mean... you say
i must be crazy, cause i don't care who i hit, but i know it's me that's hitting out, & i'm not full of shit. i
don't care who i hurt, i don't care who i do wrong. this is your mess i'm stuck in, i really don't belong

when i take out my bottle filled up high with gasoline, you can tell by the night fires where Rael has been

as i cuddled the porcupine, he said i had none to blame but me. held my heart, deep in hair, time to shave, shave it off...
no time for romantic escape, when your fluffy heart is ready for rape, no, off we go, off we go, off we go, off we go

i guess something that happens now is that i stretch my legs while i'm asleep, & it causes these brief but terrible
cramps in my calves that make me kind of scream in pain. but i'm not very conscious at all, so i just wake up later
& dimly remember screaming in pain, & think, "well, ok, i wasn't very conscious so that's fine i guess"

it's been in the high eighties every day for at least four weeks. i'm getting kind of desperate for it to
cool off so i can go on long walks to a nature trail again. i just want to walk four miles to a park
pavilion & sit under it. i should start going on more nighttime walks. last night was very nice

once i was exploring the woods adjacent to the nature trail & i encountered a large blue tent. it seemed to be someone's
permanent residence. there was rudimentary fencing. it seemed to be purposefully bordered on the inside by hundreds
of crushed up beer & soda cans. there was an american flag on display. it all unnerved me, so i hurried away

sometimes i think about thrilling myself by walking to the nature trail at night & seeing how
deep i can go before i probably panic & sprint out. i've never gone through with it. except for
a night last year when i went on a four mile walk with a boy named T at two in the morning

we'd never really hung out prior to that. he gave me a few rides home from a coffee shop. we'd occasionally
run into each other on campus. he once gave me a bjork cd (Debut), a skrillex cd (Bangarang), & an avocado
(Avocado). i humorously gave the avocado back to him several weeks later, saying "it had served its purpose"

my college has one of those bigoted preachers who stops
by once each semester & yells at passerby about gays
& sodomy & drugs. his name is brother tom

you may remember him from my now-unlisted youtube video where i approached him & said
"i want fuit gummy" over & over for about five minutes, until a student tossed me a pack of
fuit gummy, & said "here, please stop". so i hopped up & walked away, wordlessly, placated

that video was accumulating a thousand views per day for all ten days that i had it up. all my other videos' view
counts were starting to creep up too. it unnerved me, so i unlisted the video. on that note, mass unlisting old
videos always feels pretty relieving. sometimes i realize that i just exist too freakin' much. gotta exist less

anyway, one semester, while brother tom was doing his
thing, T walked up next to him in front of the crowd of
bystanders & cut his own arm open with a pocket knife

i didn't see this happen, but he ran into me afterwards & rambled about it in sort of a fervor. this was way prior to the night walk, so it was
the first at-length conversation we had. he kept saying that he didn't know why he had done it, just that he absolutely couldn't stand the hatred
brother tom was expressing, & he just had to potently display his disapproval in some way. then he rambled about how he used to do lots of drugs,
like xanax, & how a lot of our old classmates had gotten hooked on drugs. then he showed me a bunch of pictures on his phone. all of the pictures
were like that sort of anime/vaporwave content where it's been watered down to its absolute most milquetoast form. beats to study to

but anyway. on the night of that walk we listened to music on a bluetooth speaker & talked about random things. some of the music
was mine. [i remember playing "black ballerina" by ariel pink & several four tet songs.] i can't remember most of the conversation
topics. he rambled a lot about the seedy behavior of some of our old classmates. toward the end we found ourselves at the trailhead.
we walked maybe fifty feet in before i requested that we turn around. i remember "violence" by andy stott playing while we were
walking back out. shortly after that night he moved to a different city. i don't have any in-person friends so that was
the last, & one of the very few, occasions that i've done anything like that with anyone

i took binoculars to the alcove at the top of the library. i looked around. then i went to the university's small nature
trail. i ran into a charming teacher leading some students around, talking about the different plants etc. i tagged
along. it was very nice. i thought some guys at the back of the group were cute. i used to be mildly attracted
to guys, then my brain changed over the past few years. now i'm primarily attracted to them

i've been thinking of changing my major to sociology. now i'm considering ecology. i want to work at a nature
preserve or a state park, i want my life to revolve around ponds / trees / raccoons / geese / turtles /
beavers / vines / ducks / soil / invasive species / roots / wood / trails / rivers / owls / doves

then i walked to a bank. i went through the drive-thru on foot. the lobby was closed. an old lady
was making a fuss about something so i had to wait with the cars for a good while. her car had a
pleasant old lady smell that i could detect from about ten feet away but it was mixing strangely
with car exhaust. some people in a jeep took pity on me & let me go ahead of them

the clinic called & reminded me that they want more of my blood soon

i'm lying in bed waiting for a maddening feeling of pressure in my head to go away. visually
focusing on anything hurts. i close my eyes & i'm still focusing on the backs of my eyelids

the above paragraph isn't actually current anymore. i typed this post & instead of lying down
i've been putting a bunch of thought into editing it. still, i'll probably lie back down now