Greetings, loved ones / Let's take a journey
> read my private diary> meet people I know and don't know
> explore my garden
> learn about sinks!
> about me
> eworm home
Dear Diary:
03.25.2025
Mantelpiece: ornamented. Clock: ornate.Man 1 (around 70, white hair, ruddy cheeks, in black tie under overcoat) to Man 2: Oh so you're not an Oxford Man, then, are you?
Man 3: Jay Gatsby has always been a hero of mine. I relate to him on many levels.
03.22.2025 (12:25am, so the 23rd, really)
There were these three fish, once, goldfish, I think, and they were living together in this big barrel of water. They were living together but in a totally casual, platonic way. It was not sexual or anything. It was casual and platonic. They were living in this barrel and one day they began to suspect that it had sprung a leak. A small leak. An absolute pinprick of a leak. It wasn't enough to prove an immediate threat but it was enough to make them think long and hard about their mortality, about who they wanted to be and what they wanted to achieve. One of them, the smallest one, realized suddenly that what he wanted more than anything, more than life itself, even, was to be an actor on the stage. Delivering the types of monologues where just reading them in your head you could convince yourself that Sheila had really left you and taken the kids, or that the ranch would have to go on without you, or that you DESERVED Brian's love and always had."Honestly I'd like to try acting," he said aloud. "Maybe stage acting."
"We're fish," said one of the other fish. They all lived together, but it was platonic. "We live in a barrel."
"Oh." Until that moment, he hadn't really understood what it was to live in a barrel. Now he understood. The world suddenly shrank to a circle, and then a point, a pinprick.
"Oh."
In his head, he started making up a monologue. The stage would be simple but a few understated set pieces would suggest that the events were unfolding in a place something like Kentucky. "Papa," he imagined himself saying. He would wear jeans and a white undershirt, simple but evocative. There would be a cigarette, he would hold it but not light it. "Papa, look at me. Just this once! Look me in the damn eyes! What is it that scares you about looking at my face? Is it because I look like him?? Nooo... no.. I think it's because I look like YOU. Yeahhhhh that's it. I look too much like you, and it makes you SICK--"
I'm in the library rn. I have a paper due tomorrow at noon.
03.09.2025 11:52pm
I'm about to turn 28.03.06.2025 English Fac Grad Common Room
Came to make a cup of tea or scavenge a snack or something and scavenge I did -- found sugary snacks sitting out and nibbled ratlike, not knowing how long they'd been sitting or who had grubbily fondled them, despite already feeling nauseous. Drank some Sunny-D from the communal fridge. All ratlike all ratlike. Thought I was alone the whole time and only realized afterwards that Birkenstock man was lying on the couch the whole time, feet up and crossed, facing me, seeing the whole thing. I feel dirty. The day is so sweet and sunny and blue outside. But I am in the bowels of this fluorescent-lit box, alternately wishing to be smote and to be smitten.03.04.2025
12:38 Visitor's bookMy life hasn't taken the shape I had expected. But it has led me to this place, and to this moment. And tomorrow, by this afternoon, even, the warm immediacy of this feeling will have dissipated, like piss in pool water. But right now it is everything. And right now it is enough.
1:25 Bench
Losing someone is an event but living without someone is a continuous and evolving process. Grief metastasizes like its progenitor, working its way into the bloodstream and colonizing organs you didn’t even know you had, quieting down for years before suddenly reasserting itself, swelled and bulbous.
Openness is a blessing; anyone has the right to seek comfort in it.
Coolness is a blessing, especially when it is gently and intimately kissed gold by sun.
Benches are a blessing, especially wooden benches generously donated by pairs of middle-aged women (one with a German accent, one British) who wear proper walking gear (including a clip-on compass) and are willing to really think through the practical dimensions of the thing, like whether to sink concrete foundations to reinforce the legs and stop them from squelching down into the over-saturated world.
Small birds with orange breasts are a blessing, maybe the greatest blessing of all.
I am wearing not one but two of my dad’s shirts right now. Time and wear have begun to eat away at them.
Time is a blessing; even when you are stationary, there is always one axis on which you can be mapped.
Maps are a blessing; this is why it is always necessary to carry a compass.
No man has ever taught me to fish. Maybe this is my problem. Maybe this is why I don’t eat well these days.
1:29 Standing
Just watched a man catch a fish and take a picture of self with fish.
Watched a man (different man) yell “you whore! You ugly fucking whore!” (Or maybe it was ("you hawk! you ugly fucking hawk!")
1:54 Abbey
Ate a celebrations mars bar in front of godstow lock. it felt assaultingly sweet. Nobody but a man sitting and his dog, who flopped up to me and then lifted his leg on the abbey wall (the dog, not the man. The man stayed sat).