021824
my temple pounds. A plume of fog rises from my humidifier. A pile of dog diarrhea waits downstairs, for Jason to clean up.I saw a man on the highway ramp to 101 hitchhiking to Paso Robles. The rain falls heavy and deep.
I watch episode after episode of the sopranos on an old monitor. The couch dips where I sit, and have sat.
Tomorrow I have “Therapy at 1pm,” says my calendar. I’ve been seeing my therapist since my dad died, and now it has almost been 8 years.
My search history: folklore, folk art, anthropology, social anthropology, ethnography. Fully funded masters programs?
Who is going to pay me to learn about folklore and mythology? Who is going to pay me to advance anarchism and a collectivist society?
Who is going to pay me to twiddle my thumbs with a magnifying glass. Who is going to pay me to criticize art at the museum that is somehow at once about weavers and craft, public administration, institutional violence, Southeast Asia, waste, and climate change.
If I were a payer, would I pay me?
Perhaps I would like to write. Perhaps I would like to bend the written word, flatten it between my fingers like sculpy. Bake it in the air fryer at 300 degrees, let it rest. Im sick of playing other peoples songs, like a vulture. Like a tastemaker, like an enthusiast. What does it mean to plunge your hand into the synths, writhe it about, and pull out something unique and with meaning? What does it mean to wring the world into a letter, like a tear?
Im too suburban for my own good. I used to go out on the town. I used to like pumping my first in the air to the untz untz untz. I used to like? being violently hungover on a sunday afternoon, hitting the bong and going back to sleep. Am I inching towards meaning, or just relinquishing my youth too soon? I am recently 26, and what do I want?
The only thing I’m sure of is I want to be in shape. I want to run a 5k. I want to be proud of my body. Imagine–feeling able, fit, and confident. Imagine feeling capable of reckoning with the world. One day, one day…
021324
forcing myself to digest the things I am consuming, so I am not passive, mouth agape, but rather like an intestine, a liver. in college, we had prompts – What does Socrates think is good? What does Foucault think is bad? who is asking me to reflect on My Brilliant Friend in a complex and nuanced way? who is challenging me to think critically about a text, a movie, an article, a dance? I feel a fear of becoming vapid, the muscles are not in use. but it's just like sudoku, I read – you just have to practice, there's no way around it.do I give myself prompts? I need an interlocutor (I miss zach.) do I join a book club? do I apply to grad school? what happens when grad school is done? will I, again, forget how to think?
questions: How does a piece of media make me feel and what does that mean to me? How does it affect me, and how can I describe this feeling? How can I extrapolate this feeling into dreaming of a better world?
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I felt like a voyeur reading My Brilliant Friend. I ate it up in one bite (technically four), it was so good. to witness Elena's neurotic obsession with Lila, her at-times pathetically self-induced subservience, her love that never quite bordered on erotic, was a sensual treat not afforded by most (if not all) media I consume. to identify so wholly with the girl's feelings is also to admit to yourself, that you, too, are diseased — or perhaps the opposite, that you, too, are normal.
I didn't remember feeling some type of way about my childhood best friend, at least not in the way that Elena describes. that is, until the story grew on me, and so many unrealized fears, anxieties, and jealousies rose to the surface, as if I were in fifth grade again, seventh, ninth, looking at my Lila, the thin, pale, waifish girl of my youth that I called my best friend beside me. I remember the insecurity that she was the more beautiful; I remember the pride that I was more studious, if not smarter. I remember the fear for her safety, the fierce protectiveness like a sister. the anger and hurt when tossed aside, callously, for another friend, or a boy, or a latest whim. the secrets we shared, clandestine cigarettes in the schoolyard, reluctant tears at midnight. all of this emotional and psychological push and pull, a saga of two girls that could fill several novels, relegated to a dreamy adolescent friendship in the back of my mind that I hadn't interrogated in years – until reading this book.
I talked to the bookseller, a friend, at an Irish dive in the Richmond at my birthday party. I said that I don't think men could relate to Elena's neuroses. she said it was because men weren't smart enough. I would love to read a similar book from a man's perspective - what does such a passionate friendship mean to them, what does it look like, does it get that way, ever? she was the first girl i ever saw naked, the first girl who nursed my heartbreak, the first girl I ever smoked marijuana with. she was the first girl I ever thought I'd lose to drugs, the first girl that knew my dad died.
as you get older, these things smooth out. the intense mania of a strong female friendship, especially one from early years of life, fades into a sweet oblivion. now she is they, and we don't see each other very much. they are in grad school, they have a drinking problem. they don't respond to my texts for months, then send me a birthday wish out of the blue that tells me how lovely I am, and how they are jealous of me. I feel a pang of resentment to not hear from them in so long, only to see a birthday wish that I would immediately deem sugary if I ever doubted its honesty. I feel a pang of rabid love to be seen by the person who always saw me the most, maybe the only person that ever saw me. I feel a pang of pride to be congratulated, and remembered, by someone so singular, who I held in the highest esteem. I texted my brilliant friend back saying thank you, I love you, please call me sometime. I'm still waiting for her response.
020924
FEBRUARY? already?a January off the worm.
try to write, wrench some words from my thick, meaty fingers
from my thick, ,meaty skull.
in Tucson, the roadrunner's eye. it glistened teal and red as he scurried across the scorched pavement. he hid from me while I chased him, chalantly and deliberately, with my iPhone 15 pro macro lens.
in Kauai, the sea turtles flop. they lay with their bellies on the sand as the waves crash behind them, at Poipu. one has a bright blue satellite transmitter on its head. it quivers mechanically in the wind.
little red-crested cardinals flit back and forth in the jungle. rainforest? they cock their heads like roosters but move like hummingbirds. they come from Brazil, or so they say...
what 2? write... I seem to have lost control of the English language – it is running away from me, as fast as I run toward 26... 2, 6, 2, 6, my heels bounce on the ground as I leap towards maturity, towards grace. I feel excited to be 26: the pivotal age. the age that hot girl-woman working at the café, with the collared shirt open to her cleavage and a few tasteful necklaces, with the brunette bangs and the confident gaze, the age we guessed she must have been, while we stood awkwardly in the Wyoming streets in basketball shorts and over-sized tees.
2, 6. she's 26! it's Aquarius season ♒︎ and she's ready to be...
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