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DEAR DIARY
10.12.2026 michaelmas week 1, day 1
These past 2 weeks have been nauseous with motion and impressionistic dots. Few of my hours have resembled one another. My google calendar has become this sick corporate patchwork of colors carefully selected by UX-designers and named things like "peacock" by branding experts.Every day for 2 weeks I met so many new people. I told them my name (or my best guess at my name) and my research area (or my best guess at my research area) and various important and unimportant things about myself. I gave my name to anyone who asked for it and lots of people who didn't, I handed out personal information (accurate and inaccurate) with promiscuous abandon. I drifted into rooms and experiences with passive buoyancy. I forgot people's names. I briefly forgot my own name. I attended pizza nights and wine receptions and induction talks and mandatory training sessions. I got confused. I moved from a home to a room. I ate a lot of sandwiches and pizza slices and supermarket pastries and felt nauseous. I got an overdue cervical smear. I met with a therapist. I went to spoons, took my first sambuca shot, danced to reggaeton in a collegiate crowd, stood on smoking patios with smokers while they smoked, chatted in groups, chatted with individuals, bounced aimlessly between groups and individuals as their formations shifted, dissipated, altered, dispersed, and eventually reassembled on smoking patios. I discussed antisemitism. I wore skirts over jeans. I entered groupchats.
I attended evensong, drank wine, looked at carved wood without really Seeing it. I worked 1.5 shifts (wearing a new apron). I ate celeriac remoulade. I rowed a boat. I said yes, and.
I failed to record any of it.
It is jarring (brutal, even? spiritual, almost?) to think that just a few years ago I stayed in my house for a few years. I can't process that. Or anything else, really. Effectively. Or at all.
10.10.2026 new room, new desk
At St. Antony's last Friday I drank white wine and red wine and was reminded of an old fable:A man was waiting on a nearly-empty subway platform when he looked over to his right and saw a man who looked exactly like him. Exactly. Indistinguishably. The man had his face and body, his affect, his mannerisms. The man was wearing the same clothing he wore, the same slim-cut white button-down and slim-cut charcoal trousers, the same polished black loafers. He had the man's pale freckles, his loud-cracking knuckles, his small, close ears.
For a moment, he wondered if this man simply was him. Then he shook his head and smiled and said to himself:
"That man cannot be me. He is standing to my right."