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DEAR DIARY
03.03.2026 in bed, still sick
I have this nasty mucosal cough that forces itself out every few minutes. I have this snot gushing from my nose at all hours. My stomach is bloated tight because I'm sick and bored so I keep nibbling on things like bread and honey -- like that one queen in her parlour.The queen eating - I mean, her eating-bread-and-honey-in-her-parlour - is a nervous pre-event - without knowing itself to be. It hovers in l'imparfait with other habitual gesture - the king counting money in the counting-house, the maid hanging clothes in the garden - when suddenly the passé composé rushes in all violent - the blackbird swooping down to peck off the maid's nose. I assume in an act of vengeance for his 24 brothers. [I think this is all I remember of French - that is, when (in theory) to use passé composé v. l'imparfait. Also I can haltingly say "Je vais au supermarché pour acheter l'épinard. Tu aimes l'épinard?"]
1 routine action is being performed in location 1 by person 1, a 2nd in location 2 by person 2, a 3rd in location 3 by person 3, when along comes a 4th character who cuts straight through habit !! Severs it entirely! Violent disruption can slice the nose off habit/routine -- is this good, bad, or neutral?
It is sick, anyhow, pecking off a maid's nose for something her employer did. It is typical!! I wonder if the palace kept her on after, and how she coped with the hole in her face, and if she had health insurance. I wonder if the violence actually disrupted the routines of the king and queen, or if the royals just got on with counting and eating, unperturbed.
Also I assume blood got all over the clean clothes the maid was working so hard to hang up -- having your nose sliced off is not the sort of thing you expect to happen to you when you're hanging up the wash.
I hung up a load of laundry today. My nose ran, but stayed attached. I did a cold-ish water wash but I still need to do like 4 more loads before I can consider the piles of laundry in my room conquered: 1 (one) Very cold Very delicate load (for those really demanding fabrics that threaten to shrink or unravel or change color or whatever if heated or agitated to ANY degree), 1 (one) wool wash, 1 (one) underwear/sock rough warm fast tumble, then also my bedding (especially on account of my having been in bed so much the past three days on account of being SICK).
Meant to write real nice good log-type entry today - have been losing days rapidly without record, so hoped to shift from pseudo-self-analysing ramble to cold hard fact (what I did today, what is happening in world, what, if anything, I have learned, who I have seen, where I have gone, etc etc) but too tired and wiggly. Almost always tired and wiggly nowadays, but being sick heightens and refines (ie, further vitiates) wiggliness until it feels almost like a spiritual state. What a pleasure, to feel horrible in a way that isn't TOO bad but prevents you from thinking anything or being anything other than sick. What a pain. What a nuisance. What a way to be.
03.02.2026 Sick today. Sick yesterday.
NOTE (December 27th 2025):
Have a sudden, intense desire to know if anyone reads this other than Juhi and occasionally Zach and even more occasionally Chris.My desire to Know Who Has Seen Me is probably a moral failing. But also probably the real moral failing is denying+repressing desire.
In my notes app, written Nov. 5:
I don’t know exactly what I want from this. Maybe I’m like those pink-cheeked overeager waiters at a mid-priced family-oriented Italian-American chain restaurant who drift around with pepper grinders and Parmesan graters begging for the chance to desquamate onto your pasta/soup/salad. They interrupt you mid bite, they insert themselves: please, please, please let me grind onto your minestrone. Let me grate onto your minestrone. Let me both grind and grate (grate, then grind) onto your minestrone.
Let me insert myself in your dinner. I will sprinkle myself over your meal and then hover, off to the side, watching you eat.
In my Real Diary, written (pen on paper) Dec. 1:
Today (and every day) I say too much. I pour myself out to anyone with a glass, or anything that might be used as a vessel: a saucer, an empty peanut butter jar, a cupped hand, a sour-smelling milk carton, an accessible belly button (supine), a detergent bottle, a candlestick indent, a Ziploc bag, a dress shoe, a bin, a greasy takeaway container, a flower pot (the kind without a drainage hole), a hole (the kind for drainage), a length of pipe (capped), a cap (like from a milk carton), a pasta bowl, a salad spinner, a graduated cylinder, a test tube, a tourist-trap souvenir mug, a champagne flute, an acorn tea cup (from a fairy’s home), a bucket, a toilet, a stoppered sink basin, a crimped sausage casing, a condom, a water balloon, a diva cup, a drawer, an open mouth (barely open, even, lips only just parted, room enough for a tube, or a funnel).
See?? I say I want to turn my gaze outward, away from me, towards the world, but I am a practiced & certified researcher of the Self!
Maybe three weeks ago I was in a man's room. He removed my shirt. I realized after a while that his blinds were wide open. He followed my gaze and closed the blinds. His window was visible from a not-too-busy but fairly large street. I probably was, for some minutes, public. Two days ago I walked down that street and passed that window and found that I had, defensively and involuntarily, crossed my arms. If you are that man and you are reading this - imagine that I am at your window, now, waving. Also inside, shirtless.