DEAR DIARY

4.30.2024 Teeth? Brushed/flossed. In? Bed. Feel? Bad.

4.30.2024 [pt. 2 - cont. literal seconds later but with different pen and new confessional energy]

There is an anxiety within me? within which I am hovering? that is overwhelmingly complete. This scares me. I am so tired of not having an attention span anymore. I can't concentrate, not even on my own thoughts. My mouth is riddled with cavities. I feel jittery at all times. I can’t stop scrolling on reddit. I can’t stop passively consuming. I am both bottom feeder and trawler – I am not sure what the exact shape of this metaphor is but it definitely involves silt/nets/fishery permits/etc and represents me + my situation in a powerful, poetic, and highly evocative manner (one which allows Women Everywhere to feel seen and represented).

Idea: whale (baleen variety) sieving krill, saying to friend: “I feel like I’ve wasted most of my life passively consuming – I want to CREATE!”

Idea #2: shrimp speaking to other shrimp: “Personally I’m a big fan of rockabilly, both the music and the aesthetic.”

Idea #3: whale (singing): My oh my it’s good to be a whale/ My oh my it’s good to be a whale/ I’ve got a great big eye/ I’ve got a floppy tail/ My oh my it’s good to be a whale”

Idea #4: shrimp barking at mailman

Idea #5: shrimp bank (bank run by/for shrimp)

I will get up, wash face, then climb back into bed.

4.30.2024 [pt. 3] Face? WASHED.

04.28.2024

Usually I write vaguely and euphemistically, which is safe and fun and noncommittal and arguably hot, but right now I'm not feeling at all literary, I am feeling small and literal and exactly like everyone else, only more so, and I cannot stop obsessively browsing Reddit posts about how to open a British bank account and Reddit posts about British grocery stores and Reddit posts about cats and YouTube tours of Oxford University college campuses given by rosy-cheeked undergraduates who say things like like-share-subscribe
and I can't comprehend that I'll finally be leaving the house this September and that rather than to be institutionalized it's to get a funded masters degree from Oxford
and I don't know whether or not I'm stupid and I'm concerned I might be stupid and I suspect I might be old
and I don't know where life is taking me and I don't know where I want life to take me
and I'm scared of planes and I'm scared that I've wasted vast swaths of precious life doing things like browsing Reddit posts about cats
and I never learned Latin and I've forgotten how to use the French future-tense and I've forgotten how to think in the future tense even in English
and I don’t know how to process temporally optimistic phrases like "this September"
and I still don't know how to drive.

Yesterday I found a dead lizard in the garden. He was lying on his back all still at the foot of the pear tree. We turned a cardboard box into a casket and lined it with leaves and mulch. I wish I knew his name.

04.09.2024

My toe is red and swollen in a way that is concerning. I think I have an ingrown hair. It is pathetic to have an ingrown toe hair. It is pathetic to journal online about having an ingrown hair. But — if one little girl with an ingrown hair READS THIS and feels SEEN and UNDERSTOOD it will all have been worth it.

I like to see my oversharing online as an act of generosity and selflessness. I am giving others the opportunity to see themselves and their experiences reflected in me. You aren't alone, I am telling girls everywhere. I am with you. I AM you. You are not alone.

I like to see my being in the world is an act of generosity and selflessness. I am giving others the opportunity to see themselves and their experiences reflected in me. You are not alone, I am telling girls everywhere, each time I walk through Nordstrom. It is okay to have thick thighs. My green veins are your green veins. My leg is your leg. You are not alone.

It is getting warm in LA. It is getting hot, almost. One of these days I will wear shorts. I will wear shorts even though I feel brutally self conscious about my legs. I will wear shorts and it will be a form of radical, selfless activism. I will wear shorts and a little girl will see my cellulite and will grow up to be the President of the United States as a direct result and will teach her sons to be allies and it all will have been worth it.

You are welcome, girls. It is all for you, and - you are welcome.

04.01.2024

It is more virtuous to be clean than to be dirty, but it is more virtuous to get dirty while doing good than to, in avoidance of dirt, avoid doing good.

Eating yogurt is moral. Eating gruel, even more so. Broth is virtuous. Broccoli-and-cheddar soup is profane. Broccoli-and-cheddar soup in a bread bowl is violently human.

Dark chocolate is more moral than milk chocolate but having no chocolate is better than having any chocolate. A small square of bitter chocolate is nothing to feel bad about, and might even lead to valuable introspection. Child labor that results in the production of dark chocolate is reproachable. Child labor that results in the production of milk chocolate is unforgivable.

Drinking lukewarm water is more moral than drinking cold water. Drinking ice water is an indulgence. Sparkling water is an indulgence, but its sharpness on the tongue can remind one of one’s own physicality, which might lead to valuable introspection. Drinking broth is virtuous. Boiling bones to make broth is thrift. Thrift is virtuous. The smell of boiling bones is profane. Sucking and scraping and gnawing the very last bit of fat off a bone is indecent. Licentious, even.

Bread bowls are violently human. Bread bowls contain. To make a bread bowl is to decontextualize and recontextualize. Bread bowls are literary. Bread bowls are linguistic. There is some minimum-wage worker at Panera right now decapitating a bread loaf and disemboweling a bread loaf and repurposing? discarding? the crumby viscera and proclaiming the bread loaf a bread bowl and filling the bread bowl with broccoli cheddar soup. This gives me hope that, for a while, at least, words will continue to have meaning and communication will remain possible.

Note to self: Next time you eat chicken wings, put the remnants of bone and skin into the remnants of a Panera bread bowl. Call it “Reliquary II.” Call it a philatory. Call it art. Call it activism. Display it somewhere. Make a statement about refuse. Make a statement about capitalism. Make a statement about religiosity. Make a statement about bread bowls. Get an agent: this could be big.

Note to self 2: Just Googled “bread bowl reliquary.” This does not seem to be something other people have done. Corner the market now, while you can. This could be big.

Note to self 3: Act on this now, while Panera Charged Lemonade is still coursing through the cultural bloodstream. Corner the market now, while you still can. This could be big. You could be big. This could be big.

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