DEAR DIARY

08.21.2025 brunch all day every day (columbia coffee, summertown)

I am a worm, not a man.

I was in the office room slipping back into too-deep armchair. He noticed my posture and commented on my posture. He asked how I felt.

"I notice your body is tense. You seem uncomfortable in your chair."

I told him my posture might be influenced by my being a worm with worm body and the head of a worm. I told him there was a high buzz coming from the ceiling or from everywhere, probably produced by the ventilation ducts or the LED lights or some other engineered system. There was this high droning vibrating buzz that filled everything and blocked out thought. But maybe left room for feeling? He couldn't hear the buzz, I could tell from his face. I tried to look comfortable in my chair.

"When was the last time you yelled? Or screamed?"

"I don't think I've ever really screamed."

"Never?"

"I don't know, not that I can think of."

"What do you do when you feel rage? Rage at things? At people? At the world?"

"I don't know. I don't know." The air was so loud, some sort of system was making it loud.

"Do you direct rage back at yourself?"

"Probably. Yeah, probably."

"I notice that when you say that you sit up straighter, you're sitting more forward in your chair. Feel free to take a minute. Feel free to take a tissue."

"Hm."

Do you have eyes? Do worms have eyes?

Honestly I don't know, I have no idea. We must, I guess. I need new glasses. I must have eyes because I wear glasses. The vision in my left eye especially has gotten worse. The world gets blurrier by the day.

There are certain coffee drinks (ex: cortado) where I theoretically know what it is and what its ratios and proportions are but I am never sure what size cup it will come in when I order it.

08.16.2025

Everybody is talking about brain rot. BBC. CNN. Dictionary dot com. OUP word of the year 2024 and all that. Parents are concerned. Mental health experts are concerned. BBC is concerned. CNN is concerned. NYT is concerned. Opinion sections are thick with concern.

My brain is obviously rotting. I can feel it. Rapid sweet liquefactive necrosis, "pus and the fluid remains of necrotic tissue," I can smell it through the air ducts. I’m surprised my brain hasn’t started leaking out of my ears and nose yet. Or maybe it has — my nose is always running. I do go through a lot of tissues. I do secrete.

Worming is the only thing that makes me feel slightly less shit about this. Worming is an optimistic activity.

I found this in my Notes App from Jan. 15, 2025:

I am a worm. I worm. This is okay; worming is a process of investigation. It is communal. There is so much earth to be turned — it cannot be turned alone.

I am a worm. Being a worm is beautiful. My flailing is productive — it turns the soil. My decomposition is productive — it nourishes the soil. My excretion is productive — it balances the soil.

I am lucky to be a worm. I am so, so lucky to be a worm.

If I am both worm and organic matter, maybe I can at least participate as an active agent in my own decomposition, maybe I can find nourishment in rot, maybe I can turn the soil and myself with it and beautiful new things will grow, or maybe something not so beautiful but vaguely useful, maybe something from the brassica family, maybe a gourd, maybe Eriogonum fasciculatum, maybe Asclepias fascicularis, maybe corn.

This is only metaphor, of course. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't make things better. It doesn't make my day less wasted. It doesn't make my laundry more washed. It doesn't make my job applications more written. It doesn't make the world more just and equitable. It does not in any way heal/staunch/cauterize a horrifically bleeding present. But I believe religiously in metaphor, I have faith in it. Faith is the only way forward. You have to take "like" and "like" and, despite knowing that the two distinct things are two distinct things, not just call them "is" but know them to be "is" — simultaneous, contradictory knowing is faith and is sublime. If this faith fails, meaning disintegrates, and you cannot stack one block on another block or one cowpat on another cowpat or smear daub on wattle, and excrement cannot possibly be generative.

>>

There is this old folk story that keeps circling my head.

Long ago, in a little village back in the old country, an elderly man was on his deathbed. This man had three sons, but he could not decide which of them should inherit his mid-sized import/export agency, which specialized in filing tax forms for small businesses that transported dairy products across national borders.

He summoned his three sons to his small room. They blinked, adjusting to the dim light, they lined up awkwardly next to the shriveling man in his small wooden bed. The eldest son, A___n, was married with two sons of his own. He was just starting to go gray, his hairline was making a cowardly and uneven retreat, when he tried to talk serious he put too much emphasis on the wrong vowels, he said “I see” even when he didn’t see.

“Come closer to me, A___n,” said his father. A___n knelt beside his father’s bed. It smelled sour.

“A___n.” The old man paused. “Why should you be the one to inherit my business? Why should I trust you to run it better than your brothers?”

“Because I am the most intelligent and rational,” said A___n, putting too much emphasis on the wrong vowels. “I will run the business intelligently and rationally.”

“Ha!" said the old man. He gestured for his son to retreat and called forward the next. His second son was E___r. E___r had all of his hair and put oil in it to make it slick. He was the type of man who leaned casually and comfortably against unfamiliar walls, tables, trees, etc, he never asked "is it okay if...?" before sitting on a chair or couch in a stranger's house, he looked at his reflection when he passed his reflection to check if his clothes were all in order, he paid extra for the wine pairing, he maintained eye contact.

“Come closer to me, E___r,” said his father. E___r knelt beside his father’s bed. It smelled sour.

"E___r. My son. Why should you be the one to inherit my business?"

"Because I am the most strategic and charming," said E___r. "I will make deals and maintain relationships with strategy and charm."

“Ha!" said the old man. He gestured for his son to retreat and called forward the next. Tz___k was the youngest son. He had a forgettable face and a forgettable body. Sometimes his older brothers forgot him entirely, sometimes he was left out of family anecdotes, even when they revolved around him, even when they were specifically about him, even when they were retellings of the time he broke his wrist at Six Flags Magic Mountain's Hurricane Harbor because he slipped at the top of the water slide instead of waiting for the acned teenage lifeguard to say "go."

“Come closer to me, Tz___k,” said his father. Tz___k knelt beside his father’s bed. It smelled sour.

"Tz___k. My son. Why should you be the one to inherit my business?"

"Wow, that's a great question," said Tz___k. "Hmm... There are so many elements of the business I'm passionate about, but I suppose I'm most excited about rethinking and subverting the traditional office space. I was doing some reading recently on trends in data vis-a-vis workplace optimization, y'know, whether changes to office layout actually correlate with increased productivity. I mean, there was the initial popularization of open-plan offices in the late '90s, right? Then since the early 2010s we've had this massive surge in workflow ideas borrowed from, like, Silicon Valley startups -- hot desks prioritized over traditional assigned seats, coffee-bars and snack hubs where colleagues can continue generative conversations, architecturally-striking central staircases that double as seating areas, a lounge with fun colorful chairs and a foosball table...

...I mean, think of the term "water-cooler moment." Think of the term "elevator pitch." A lot of the most generative, disruptive ideas emerge from liminal, transitional spaces. And it's got me thinking... What can we do with that? Where can we take that? If the elevator and the water cooler are the real... the real marketplaces of ideas, how can we radically rethink the office to encourage more creative disruption? How can we make the entire office a (metaphorical) elevator? A (metaphorical) water cooler? What would it look like if -- "

Smiling, the old man passed into the next world. Legal disputes over his will are ongoing.

08.15.2025

I had thoughts when I was walking yesterday. They were thoughts worth writing so I wrote them down as I walked, I made them into a journal entry, except I didn't, they were only thoughts and clung to nothing; I dropped them somewhere between the Oxford Railway Station and the Queen's Lane bus stop. A few were left behind in London.

These aren't them.

I got this writing kit as a kid, a souvenir maybe from the Met. A red box containing a paperback book on historical writing methods and the paraphernalia necessary for chubby young hands to reproduce those forms: a pen, a little jar of ink, a clay slab sealed in an airtight wrapper, a plastic stylus. I always meant to use the clay -- that is, to use the stylus to press cuneiform into the clay. Once imprinted it would dry into calcified, falsified antiquity. I could not generate words suited to perpetuity. Or to cuneiform. I never opened the clay packet. It's probably all dried out by now.

There was a spider in my bedding this morning when I stripped my bed to put up the wash. Fat body. Fat legs. Giant house spiders are Eratigena atrica and are common in the UK, says the internet. We're in spider season now, says Lily.

I spent August 2nd through yesterday mostly walking, mostly walking, leaving thoughts dripping everywhere behind me like those trailing dots of condensation from truck exhaust pipes. It was hot today. They've probably all evaporated by now. They've probably all dried up.

Today I scrolled, I scrolled and I stared. I won't do that anymore, not tomorrow or ever. I told myself just this once, just this once is allowed, you're unsure of where you are after all those days of walking, all those miles, you need a rest, you need an IV. It felt disgusting, I felt disgusting, addicted and passive, dripping into my phone while my phone dripped into me.

Dinner was delicious. Pasta made by Lily, eaten in the garden, bedding taken down from the line, white cat at the end of the garden, sparkling water, kombucha with grocery store bagged ice, Tesco-discounted greens.

Spent lovely yesterday in London with I---. Submitted my visa application last night. I can't leave the country until I get a response. It's not like I had entirely intended to go anywhere in the next month or so. But now that I've been told I can't there is a new feeling of here I am. Here I am for a little while, at least. Here I am.

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