fragments #3

older thoughts returned (clearing out my notes app)

01.02.23

“…beside me i let her words stagger;

like moonlight towards the pale end…”

(words that i think came to me in a dream)

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01.20.23

a woman, a customer at work sitting near me, talks about housemaids and saunas and yoga-pants. “when i buy something i just feel like i’m accomplishing something.”

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01.25.23

my imagination is too active for me to exist in the world peacefully.

(edit: this means that existing is sometimes very painful because i can’t stop hoping for things. hope is supposed to be something that’s good but for me it’s almost a curse— i hope so much but never actually see any true manifestations of what i hope for. but it’s so funny. because i keep hoping. i would like to understand this someday.)

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maybe life is about relationships. me and other people, me and other things, me and nature, me and myself… and understanding these relationships the best we can until the end.

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01.28.23

“you’ve always been late to something”

(- a random tiktok comment that felt interesting and important and out of context but also in the most perfect context so i wrote it down to remember it)

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01.29.23

i feel holy in the presence of art. art is holy. this is no revolutionary thought. and i’m also aware that it has been made holy by societal standards. but that’s not exactly what i mean. what i mean is that i am not blind to how it’s also disgusting, degrading, and vulgar. and i feel holy in this unholiness too.

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02.02.23

i exhale my breath fully so that my chest sinks and i can feel my heartbeat deep in my entire body. for a moment i almost feel whole.

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02.05.23

for a single day i am developing a fear that there may be something very very small in between my teeth. flossing obsessively.

when the day ends i return to my habit of only remembering to floss a few times a month.

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02.09.23

snakes on my mind. or maybe it is just time to reread play it as it lays.

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breaking down i know i am only 18 but i wish i could go back in time and redo everything i just feel like i haven’t shaped or formed my life so far in any substantial way so now i have a sort of sense of who i am i think but i feel very lost on how i got here i feel formed maybe but hollow and i just think it would be better if i were disfigured but at least was sure of what my life has been so far

(02.11.23 edit: i wish i could be 13 again so that my immaturity could be justified)

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02.21.23

it wasn’t until recently that i realized just how much the landscapes of my childhood live inside my mind; place themselves in my dreams. (like labyrinths.)

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02.25.23

i’m enjoying the moment that’s private to myself i really am but i still keep thinking about maybe what it could be like if i was sharing it

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03.01.23

i think that maybe i don’t believe in love. only because i can’t let myself. not yet.

this sounds horrible. it’s not my fault. i am still waiting for it to happen. it.

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03.03.23

i see the school play and i like it— it’s well written, very well directed/acted, clever and genuinely funny at times, and at other times just the right amount of dark and philosophical, the type to leave you reevaluating your relationships and experiences. over all, a very good play. but the whole excursion leaves me cold. sitting all around me is so much life. it is so painful to feel all that life around me. i feel like i have done something wrong in life and yet i cannot understand anything i could have possibly done at all.¹

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03.04.23

someone needs to see me just once so that i can know i exist. just once

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i examine my life at all costs

i think i might die without knowing who i truly am but i fill my arms with fruit and walk home high on strawberry fumes

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i am opening like the pages of a book. each page very thin and delicate. stretching within myself. my stiff spine slowly cracking, my chest expanding. im blooming, assuredly (not in what/where i am blooming into, but that i am blooming at least).

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undated

i wonder if it is inevitable to always be arguing about such meaningless things.

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03.07.23

i am at a seaside cafe and the water does not look nearly as beautiful as it did last time, or at least as it does in my memory. a girl near me is talking loudly about how much she has travelled; that she has traveled everywhere. she is young, definitely no older than her early twenties. she has a french accent. i listen to her and resent her for what she has and what i do not have and what i want. as i walk by her she flashes a warm smile and i feel bad for being so jealous. i return to my car and see a text from a friend and start crying. as i drive away the sea starts to look prettier, glittering in the way i had remembered it.

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posters drip down my wall above me

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my skin is sour

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03.08.23

i have to fill out a survey where i rate from 0-4 my resonance with certain experiences. i don’t know what to answer for all of these:

i get sad or angry when i think of my family

there are many things i am afraid of

i feel disconnected from myself²

i don’t enjoy being around people as much as i used to

i feel isolated and alone

i lose touch with reality

i feel worthless

i feel helpless

i am enthusiastic about life

i feel sad all the time

i feel self conscious around others

i am afraid i may lose control and act violently

i feel that i have no one who understands me

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later the counselor really does not understand. i don’t know what i expected but i had just felt that i was at a last resort. they never understand but i keep going back, expecting them too. she tells me that i am very wise and i just need to gain more confidence to insert myself into more situations where i can possibly find community. she tells me i should walk into the queer center and join the queer club, or something. i’m thinking, just walk in? that’s not possible, that’s not how it works, that would be humiliating, i would never belong, i would never find people like that, i could never just walk in like that. she keeps on using the term “the L community” and for the first few times i am very confused until i realize that she just doesn’t want to use the other term.

as soon as i step out of the office i begin crying because i feel so much worse than before. this is the thing i mean about hope. i had been hoping for some help or resolution and since there was none i just feel so much worse. i walk into the bathroom to clean the snot from underneath me mask. standing in there is a group of three girls having a wonderful conversation with each other and i feel like they are judging me. i cry more on the drive home.

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03.09.23

aching into myself

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03.10.23

“sometimes we’re so defenseless— like children cast out into the wilderness at night. the owls fly past, watching you with their yellow eyes. you hear the pitter patter and rustling, the sloughing and sighing, all the damp noses sniffing at you.

the wolves bare their teeth.”

-through a glass darkly

Såsom i en spegel (Through a Glass Darkly) (1961) dir. by Ingmar Bergman

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03.11.23

“what is a woman if not a montage of despairs and thwarted ambitions, a shadow vessel, made visible through madness and retaliation?”

-akua a. banful on alice diop’s saint omer (2022)³

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when did i stop being a child?

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tradition; being left out of it

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identity; “what it means to become others by altering, disguising, and disappearing”; “we are unknowable— even and especially to ourselves”⁴

idea. playing around with identity in a simple and “predictable” way. and yet it works. childlike almost. child wonder?⁵ (putting on a costume hat, etc.). fit gender/queerness into it somehow?⁶

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“a poet is always living in kletic time, whatever her century, she is calling out, she is waiting. she lies down in the shade of the future and drowses among its roots. her case is the genitive of remembering.”

-after sappho by selby wynn schwartz

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1. it’s like i’m not sure if i’m to blame or if it’s all just fate. i blame myself and yet i cannot imagine what i could have done differently.

2. how do i judge whether or not i feel disconnected from myself? i don’t understand… if anything i feel hyper-connected to myself— or at least myself as in my body? or maybe it is myself as in what i am stuck in to be perceived by others? is that myself? do you see how i don’t understand?

3. a film i saw in theaters and LOVED and can’t recommend enough and was therefore very excited to find a review of it in this spring’s issue of BOMB magazine! which i also recommend by the way!

4. more words although slightly rephrased i think, from a review in bomb magazine— i THINK about the book biography of X but i might be mistaken and cannot check at the moment which is why i am leaving this uncredited— so sorry!

5. makes me think of petite maman as i write this

6. don’t steal my silly little idea before i get a chance to write a short story or something