Entry titled “New Year”, 01/01/2024, 3:12 a.m.
New year, same exact me. That’s entirely expected, though— external chronological milestones have very little bearing on my state of being. I don’t know if that’s a firm trait of mine or just a symptom of an excess of apathy.
I’ve lost track of how many January 1sts I’ve packed a bag on, but it has to be at least four or five. The last few years, it’s been packing to go home from a house sitting gig or whatever; this year, I pack to leave. According to B___, Pluto left Capricorn (?) for the first time since 2008, meaning that things should be looking up for me. I’m not self-centered enough to believe that the universe has a personal vendetta against me, but doesn’t that seem a bit rude? God or the world or the universal powers that be seem to have told me to go fuck myself when I was just three years old. And I don’t even put stock in astrology and divination like that, so it’s anyone’s game on how the year is really going to go, but that combined with packing to leave makes me think it’s all some omen of change.
I can only hope. To be honest, I’m starting to get bored.
Entry titled “Joy”, 01/15/2024, 3:22 p.m.
I think I’m the happiest person in the whole wide world, or at the very least a contender. Maybe it depends on the specific type of happiness— I’m sure that there are different events in the happiness Olympics, sprints and gymnastics and whatnot— but if it’s a matter of endurance, I’m placing on the podium. I am as serene as the Virgin Mary. I don’t remember if I have any feelings beyond placid contentment. I am the most beautiful sacrifice in the world and I never complain or cry about it. And I’m not even on any drugs (well, any fun ones). It’s just that if you took all the joy in me and used it to inflate a balloon, it could probably lift a toddler into the air.
In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much, does it? I’m still sick. Everyone I love is dead or across the world. My window is still frozen shut. The world outside it— the blizzard, the barn with the dead cat, the silent county— continues on. All it means is that I’m not going to kill myself. I’ll take the win. I just think it’d be nice to face life with something more than quiet contentment. Maybe one day.
Entry titled “Ex.”, 02/19/2024, 10:53 p.m.
It’s undeniable that for most of my life, I’ve only felt like a real person— or at least a living one— at night. This effect tripled when I got sick(er). Somehow, we’ve gone even further into sunlight making me feel dead, which I previously believed wasn’t even possible. This is approximately day twenty of being unable to go outside during the day; in the last five days, give or take, that’s only gotten worse.
I’d really like to believe that it’s partially due to my period, which is bound to be showing up any day now. If we take the past patterns of feeling like shit on my period— which are largely unrelated to my little pet disease, by the way— that means I should be feeling the worst this weekend. It’s terrible timing. We have essentially a revolving door of people coming through, beginning on Friday and ending Sunday morning. The worst part (I don’t think I can even say that, due to the comorbidity of several shitty things happening) is that they’re people I actually enjoy being around, to the extent that I can enjoy being around anyone. J___ asked me if I was a sociopath last night and I told him that I don’t know. I’ve never really met another person who looks down on human contact the way I do. It’s something worth considering, I think. But Mama K___, who I haven’t seen since February 2022, is coming up to the city, and I’d at least like to make it down the stairs to say hi.
One can hope, I guess, but it looks like it’s only getting worse. I’m an optimistic person, so you know I’m serious. My ability to go for walks is getting more and more sporadic, too, even though I’m going at night. I miss going outside. I miss the sunlight. More than any of that, I miss not being in the city. The county felt better. I used to sit out on the porch swing in broad daylight with a cigarette and a mug of tea, dressed for the cold. I felt my soul cry a little when we had to leave at the end of January.
What’s new? Nothing. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, as usual, and February is still the worst month of the year. When I was seventeen, I used to wish that all this pain would cumulate in a pair of feathered wings cracking out of the skin on my back— one final punch of hurt to end all hurt, and then something to blame for why I was sick. Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t get out of bed to make it to all your holiday parties, I was growing wings. Now I just think about how wings would make going outside even harder. And while it would be fun to burst into a fundamentalist church through a stained glass window and pretend I was a messenger from God, here to reprimand them for being assholes— I am an angel of the Lord, and he has sent me because you forgot the teachings of the Son and have spread hatred and misery in His Holy Name— I’d like to start by going outside. Preferably before 9 p.m., if that’s not too much to ask. If those aren’t available, I’ll take being able to go downstairs before sunset. Do you think it’s the antifungals? I hope it’s the antifungals— that means that something is happening in me, some progress in any direction.
God, this is exhausting. The world is such a beautiful place; sometimes I think I’m the only one who truly understands how beautiful this planet is. You must understand what a cruel stroke of fate an illness like this is to someone who would like nothing more than to sit outside in a quiet place with the birds and the bugs. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really. My life goals are all directly related to the accumulation of serenity— they always have been. I have no ambition in the places I’m supposed to, so for a desire so simple, it’s a special kind of blight. Desire is the root of all suffering, I guess. I spit on fate. It’s exhausting.
“O MYRIADS OF IMMORTAL SPIRITS! O POWERS MATCHLESS, BUT WITH ALMIGHTY; AND THAT STRIFE WAS NOT INGLORIOUS, THOUGH THE EVENT WAS DIRE, AS THIS PLACE TESTIFIES, AND THIS DIRE CHANGE HATEFUL TO UTTER. BUT WHAT POWER OF MIND, FORESEEING OR PRESAGING FROM THE DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE PAST OR PRESENT, COULD HAVE FEARED HOW SUCH UNITED FORCE OF GODS, HOW SUCH AS STOOD LIKE THESE, COULD EVER KNOW REPULSE? FOR WHO CAN YET BELIEVE, THOUGH AFTER LOSS, THAT ALL THESE PUISSANT LEGIONS, WHOSE EXILE HATH EMPTIED HEAVEN, SHALL FAIL TO REASCEND, SELF-RAISED, AND REPOSSESS THEIR NATIVE SEAT? FOR ME BE WITNESS ALL THE HOST OF HEAVEN IF COUNSELS DIFFERENT, OR DANGERS SHUNNED BY ME, HAVE LOST OUR HOPES.”
Entry titled “Tarot Reading”, 03/22/2024, 9:38 p.m.
QUESTION: none CARD ONE: TEN OF PENTACLES UPRIGHT Abundance, fulfillment, security, inheritance, good fortune, property, family resources CARD TWO: THE HIGH PRIESTESS REVERSED Unrealized potential, hidden self, hesitancy to reflect, being too involved in your inner world, withdrawal, isolation CARD THREE: KNIGHT OF WANDS UPRIGHT Good news, relocation, positive activity, an idealistic and loyal friend, excitement, being free-spirited, restlessness OVERALL: You're in a good place and now is the perfect time to self-reflect and make moves towards the future. Travel upcoming??? We'll see.
Entry titled “Y”, 04/01/2024, 1:43 p.m.
The tarot reading was right. My mother managed to find something out of the city and we headed off, intending to spend April in the woods. Last time we went South; this month, we went East. The forest is drier here, ponderosa pines and silt and abandoned wooden structures. The house sits on a hill— below it is a marshy valley full of high-power transmission towers, which run up and down the length of it for as far as the eye can see. When it rains, you can hear them buzz every time a drop hits a line. It sounds like a swarm of bees sent from Heaven. Snow is intermittent and indecisive, but makes a similar noise. If you go up the hill, there’s a little deer trail that takes you to a mossy clearing that overlooks both the house and the valley. I’ve been going up there on warmer days to sunbathe with my kit off— not like there’s anyone around to catch an eyeful.
I try not to be concerned. It’s not hard for me to do. One day I’ll be down and out and get myself born into something else that’s more my taste. Until then, I’m in the sun spots, putting a towel down to avoid poison oak.
Untitled entry, 5/12/2024, 11:27 p.m.
My head shook with the weight of you. The tremor followed down my body to make my knees knock and my hands sing cricket friction. Stomach lining turned inside out. If it hadn’t been for the heavy of breathing, I would have abandoned you on the sidewalk.
Entry titled “Edenic 3”, 06/25/2024, 9:16 p.m.
Sometimes I dream of having an absurd amount of land. Logically, it would be a disaster, especially if I was trying to maintain it myself— endless water bills and cleaning and pruning. Most of it would grow wild. Land does know how to maintain itself without human interference or intervention. I’m not talking about a self-mowing lawn or something foolish like that, just the natural processes of an ecosystem full of life and death. So, in the possibility that I got my hands on something with a stupidly large acreage (ideally with a wooded area, and I certainly wouldn’t object to a body of water in some way), it would mostly be left to its own devices.
I’d like some sort of lawn— not too big, but large enough to be able to reach full speed when running across it. I get a little sad watching the dog run tiny paces in our yard, never being able to fully take flight the way she wants to. Room to stretch your legs, you know? I’m not necessarily in good shape, but it should be big enough that I’d be out of breath if I ran the length of it. The house is mostly irrelevant. Small, hopefully, just enough room for a guest to stay over. Honestly, I wouldn’t object to living in a trailer— maybe that’s a little white trash of me, but I’ve spent some time in trailers, and they’re surprisingly spacious. Kind of the perfect size for one or two people, actually. I’m down as long as it keeps the heat in during the winters and keeps the heat out during the summer. I wouldn’t be opposed to a double wide— as long as the layout has some potential and I’m allowed to repaint and redecorate and whatnot, everything is hunky dory.
Now, the key to this dream is the garden. I want roses, and maybe some vegetables. Hell, if I’ve got enough room for it, I might as well put a couple of fruit trees in there, too. If it brings rats, who cares? Let them come. But I want roses. I was in the Garden just a few minutes ago— I managed to stay until closing time and had to be escorted out by a cop. I almost wish he had just locked me in with the flowers. It wouldn’t have been a good idea, considering that I’m not exactly well equipped to spend the night outside, and also because I saw a couple rats moving around among the roses. I like rats. This is a known fact about me. I prefer my interactions with rats to be either sightings or hanging out with tame ones, though, not waking up to find wild ones crawling across my chest at night. I think that’s fair, frankly, but I digress. I just adore roses. Stereotypical, maybe, but I don’t care. They’re beautiful and infinite— I love it when there’s infinite possibilities with a flower. There’s over 30,000 varieties of roses, apparently. I’m technically related to one, I guess, with my grandfather’s hand and all that. But wouldn’t rose gardening be a lovely way to pass the time? I’m not the type to get too fussy about the petals being spotty or anything, so I reckon it’d be easier for me than those types who freak out when they see a flower droop.
Of course, if I had that much land I would definitely get horses. Two, probably, enough for a guest and enough so the other horse doesn’t get lonely. Might as well throw a dog into the mix while we're at it; a mutt, like me. You know, my father used to call my sibling and I his little mutt puppies, isn’t that odd? But any other animals would be too much effort, aside from a cat or maybe chickens. The point with all that is to be able to have fun with it, not stuck doing chores until the sun goes down. Chores of that nature tend to be fun for me, though, so who knows?
Doesn’t matter, anyways. It’s just hypotheticals, a pipe dream.
Entry titled “Fix”, 07/10/2024, 4:42 p.m.
Everything is boring me. Hopefully it’s temporary. The deal is that nothing is hitting the spot like things used to hit the spot— my joie de vivre is constant, but no music or books or topics are filling the hole in my head. I don’t have anything to abandon myself into because I don’t fucking like it. It’s been like this for months now. When I was a kid I had bears, when I was a tween I had a couple bands, in my later years I rotated through fascinations with certain albums, but I’ve got nothing right now. It’s like there’s no magic. I’ve been listening to a lot of Suede lately, but that’s not hole-related. It could be my fault— I might be subconsciously trying not to devote myself to something. Don’t know why I would do that, but it sounds like something I’d pull, doesn’t it?
Entry titled “Phosphorus”, 08/30/2024, 3:35 a.m.
Gave up on writing for a bit there. Not in general, I was still publishing things, but here. I have a lot to say to other people but nothing at all to say to myself. Typical, really.
I’m running out of candles. The last few months have felt absent of a presence that needed to be here— it might’ve been phosphorus. I’m addicted to the smell. Surely there’s perfumes out there that emulate the smell of a struck match, but it’s not like I have money to buy them. And perfume— being a person who wears perfume— requires much more maintenance than I want to put into myself, so I’m settling for playing with matches. I’m sitting at my desk. For a bit there, I was just lighting matches and watching their bodies crumble until the burn almost reached my fingers. Off went the stubs into a little dish with tea leaves in it. Eventually, I just lit a candle and picked up a pen; I don’t want to waste a resource. I had already gone through six or seven matches before I reached for the candelabra. Strike the match. Side eye the flame while taking a long, slow drink. Fingers get warm. Goodbye, matchstick. Then I did it again and again and again. The candlelight isn’t even stopping me from wasting matches, not that much. I want the phosphorus and the sweet of the wood smoke in my atmosphere. I don’t want there to be better things for me to do. I want to talk in radio to the moon.
It’s almost 4 a.m., so I’m slow but I swear I’m steady. My head’s just fine. This is the best time of day to live in a city— pressing through the exhaustion into something clear and shill, right there with the raccoons and coyotes and rats that all wait patiently for humans to exit stage left for the night. The ambulances whoop for hours like jungle birds. Surely something is dying for my joy. Sometimes, there’s music coming through my open windows.
I don’t know what’s wrong yet. I spent half an hour earlier today jumping from my feet to my knees on my mattress. The purpose of the exercise was, to be frank, injury— I was trying to land on a box spring as gracefully as possible. I wanted the bruise. I like the mystery and the visibility of it, for everyone to know the hurt without knowing why. I’m a good liar and I’ve never told anyone anything. A bruise feels like a baby step towards some kind of admittance. Wanting someone to know without telling them.
My room is already clean, so this time I’ve really got nothing to do. I’ll ask if I can buy more candles tomorrow. It’s all just typical.
Entry titled “Blue”, 09/04/2024, 4:07 a.m.
It’s just past 4 in the morning. I’m only popping in to say that the most marvelous fog moved in around 2:30 a.m. I’ve been watching it all night. It came from the ocean— you can tell because it smells like salt and death. It rolls fast, low, and dense, crowding the streetlights until the world goes milky-nacreous-opalescent. Not a bad way to spend a morning, not at all. I should really get a bench or something to put under my window so I don’t have to awkwardly curl up on the windowsill, halfway outside.
The fog comes and goes. Sometimes you can almost see the houses up the street, but then it rushes back in and you’re alone again. I closed the curtains around my body to block out the inside. It must be nice. Water reflects the light until the window begins to glow. Good visibility. I sizzled in its blue volts like a desert prophet.
Entry titled “Enigma”, 09/12/2024, 11:22 p.m.
Need to be a better person— need to lay off the sugar and not buy anymore cigarettes and to take up Tai Chi and to read more and drink more water and get into green tea and to actually try to get myself better and to have a spine, just some sort of fucking backbone, when it comes to making myself do difficult things. And maybe get a portable CD player.
I don’t think I’m necessarily a bad person, not at all, I’m just young and have a shocking amount of unresolved issues for someone who has lived so little.
There are other things that also need to happen, things like going back to school and getting a job and whatnot, but ideally I sort out at least some of my bullshit before I have to start being a member of society again. Take advantage of this weird liminality, you know. Do something. Do anything. Do it and keep doing it and then keep doing it for the rest of your life. And that’s how the world works, isn’t it? How terrifying.
Entry titled “Go”, 10/15/2024,
Another day, another rung down on the ladder, another mural painted on the back of my closet door. The other closet door, that is. I’m running out of closet doors. Next up are the closet walls. Blood draw has officially been scheduled for the 21st— bad timing on my behalf, because my father is leaving town on the 20th. I don’t want to be alone in the house with her after I do it. I don’t want to be with her while it’s happening, but I will, because I have to. I still retain my right to bitch about it, though. And we can’t get me any Valium, so I have to try and fuck around with the leftover antidepressants I was prescribed for sleep issues to see if they’ll work as a sedative-type thing, which they won’t because they’re not benzos. Hooray, prescription drugs. Where have I heard this song before?
It’s like being fifteen again in the worst way possible, because this time, there aren’t any demons to make things more interesting or to take me away to another place. No money. No license. No escape. Maybe once I get my phone and computer back, I’ll get more serious about trying to make some money. I’ve said it before, surely, but now really is the time to start trying to write a book or something. The amount of time I have to do literally nothing is astounding— there will be no other time in my life where I have this much spare time on my hands. The issue is ideas, coming up with a plot and characters and all that. Every story I have the potential to tell is one that’s been told a hundred times. I could write myself, of course, but that’s also been told and besides, I’m an anti-memoir person (just in the sense that if you’re not famous or haven’t done anything particularly extraordinary, you don’t need to write one). I’d have to change the tune but I don’t know any others. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.
I mean, let’s be honest, here— I definitely won’t. I’m going to keep doing fuck all, I’m going to keep being broke, and I’m likely not going to make any moves towards the future. I’d like to think I know myself well enough to not flat-out lie about what I’ll be doing. And it’s not that I don’t believe in my potential to change— I do think I can change, to the degree any person is able to— I just don’t think that I’ll use that potential. I know it the same way I know I’m going to be dealing with irrational, unrealistic fears for my whole life. I know it like I know I don’t like doing hard things. I don’t want to believe in it, but I know it. If I’m being an optimist here, that’s a kind of blessing, isn’t it? Three cheers for self knowledge.
Entry titled “One Source of Bad Information”, 11/07/2024, 2:54 a.m.
There's a boy in you about three years old who hasn't learned a thing for thirty Thousand years. Sometimes it's a girl. The child had to make up its mind How to save you from death. He said things like: "Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk." You live with this child, but you don't know it. You're in the office, yes, but live with this boy At night. He's uninformed, but he does want To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy You survived a lot. He's got six big ideas. Five don't work. Right now he's repeating them to you. -- Robert Bly
Entry titled “The Heaven”, 11/14/2024, 12:03 a.m.
I lived as a monster, my only hope is to die like a child. In the otherwise vacant and seemingly ceilingless vastness of a snowlit Boston church, a voice said: I can do that-- if you ask me, I will do it for you. -- Franz Wright
Entry titled “The End”, 12/31/2024, 12:34 p.m.
If you asked me how my year was, I couldn’t answer you. It was the same as it always was, I guess, or at least the way it’s been since I was about seventeen. I read some books, but I wish I had I read more. I saw some movies, but I wish I had seen more. I wrote some, I painted some, I went outside some, I listened to some music, I wish I did it all more. I didn’t get a job or go back to school or make any money or stay hydrated or learn a new language or anything. It was fine. I don’t remember. I took about eight pills a day on average, which means I took around 2,912 pills this year. Isn’t that a big number? I’m starting to realize everything is bigger than I think it is. It’s okay. I’ve also started to realize that I’m better than I feel— a little bit smarter, a little bit more emotionally healthy, a little bit more principled.
Today, at the end, there are three things that are coming to mind. The first one is a diary entry (or part of a diary entry) that Marilyn Monroe wrote. It’s just the phrase having a sense of myself printed neatly in the corner of an otherwise blank page, but it sticks in my head sometimes. Having a sense of myself. I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea of identity lately— how we define ourselves in relation to other people, how other people’s definitions of us shape our own self-perception, how we can develop a false idea of ourselves, etcetera. It’s a delicate thing. Not like this is a new realization for me, but identity is a series of reactions, right? Selfhood is how we approach situations. The more you read or watch or experience, the more you react to; the more you react to, the better you know yourself. And then the world reacts to you, to your gender and race and financial status and all that jazz, and that shapes the way you react to the world. Having a sense of myself. Having a sense of myself. I think it’s easy for people in my situation (isolation, unrepentant physicality, all other applicable synonyms) to lose sight of ourselves because, due to the repetitive nature of our worlds, we stop reacting to things.
I’ve been trying to go downstairs more, find more things to react to, talk to people (even if the people are just my parents). I’m getting new information. The world is reacting to me and informing my sense of myself. Because I get lost in my head sometimes, you know? I don’t talk to anyone so it’s easy to get lost in there. I’m learning more about myself from it. I’m better with words than I feel I am. My father thinks I have a lot of follow through, and I do, but only because I won’t say something out loud unless I’m certain I’m going to do it. I’m opinionated, especially when it comes to things I don’t like. I’m a little prettier than I think I am. I’m able to stay very calm and admit to faults in an argument, which turns out to be a rare skill. I don’t care very much what other people think of me. I’m difficult to offend. I’ve got a strong backbone. Not a bad person to be, is it? I’d like to think so. It’s still considered a non-identity, in a societal sense— labels are things applied by other people, and I don’t like applying them to myself— but I have a sense of myself. Some sort of something. How can we lose when we’re so some sort of something?
The other one is that segment from Interview Magazine of Joan Didion answering questions Andy Warhol came up with. He says, “why can’t it just be magic all the time?” and she goes, “What.” That’s the way it’s written. Capital W What with a period at the end. That was my central dilemma of the year. One part of me is relentlessly logical, refusing to let feeling take any sort of precedence over proper form (there are pros and cons to this). The other part of me felt the magic of being alive slipping away in the late summer— it still hasn’t returned, I’m okay though, I’m trying to find a way to bring it back— and freaked the fuck out. Part one thinks part two is a child for needing magic to be satisfied with life. Part two thinks part one is an idiot for even insinuating that maintaining the desire to live doesn’t require any magic. Both of them are wrong because both of them are right. It certainly is a little childish to want everything to be interesting and beautiful, but that desire can be used to make more things interesting and beautiful. It’s not bad to want magic. I have to remind myself of this.
The third and final one is a Joanna Newsom interview that I found through a Tumblr post. I won’t quote the whole thing because my hand is cramping and I think it’s bad luck to run out of ink in the middle of something, which I’d be sure to do because this pen is on it’s last legs, but it’s about her connection to childhood— how children are able to look at things without bias or fear. This year has been very childlike for me, somehow. You can learn from children. Emotions move through the body very quickly, touching the soul but never being wallowed in or held onto. They’re asking questions. There’s a willingness to explore morbidity that adults lose, because children haven’t yet learned the rules on what can and can’t be talked about. I’ve been trying to forget fear and let emotion pass through me like that. I’d like to think it’s working.
I’m running out of things to say. I’m running out of time in the year to say them, too. There’s a faint haze over the sky, not enough to obscure the blue but enough that the sunlight is yellower than usual. It’s sitting on my desk right now. My heart is some sort of warm because my heart is some sort of something. I’m not scared of the passage of time; not today, at least, because everything right now just feels like Golden Hours by Brian Eno. Not a bad feeling. Not a bad person to be. I think my resolution for the year— on top of trying to look more like a woman from a Tarkovsky film and learning more folk songs— is to be not bad. It’s impossible to be good in this world, but you can be not bad with relative ease. So I will. And there’s some sort of something in that, too.
as always you are able to articulate things i can't say. i feel seen in ways i rarely do. your presence is really precious to me, lee, happy new year! 💜