DEAR DIARY
07.26.2026
Today is Sunday; a week ago today was also Sunday. Today I worked from 6:45am to 4pm; a week ago today I cancelled work to go to Scotland but then Scotland itself got cancelled and suddenly there was no Scotland to go to. I was initially disappointed. But in the end I had a whole thick local Sunday spread out in front of me as if on good bread; I decided I could still chew that and find it good.Ginger met me at The Trout. I took the bus there. She biked. I have a bike now, too, Lily's old bike, but I am not yet confident riding it. There are a lot of things I see as dangerous and feel unprepared to do, things where maybe I worry they will result in me getting hurt or maybe I just have not yet developed the muscles for them.
I have Lily's bike now but only because she has gone away without it. Her absence has muddled our possessives; I am now the owner of Lily's bike. Ownership is like that. It never truly transfers. Or--it can't always. Some provenance does not need to be traced because it clings furiously to the thing. Haunting is just provenance asserting its autonomy.
Sometimes you wear a hat and it is obviously not your hat even if you own it, even if you bought it new. This isn't a matter of haunting or provenance but of you having the wrong face or the wrong head or wrong attitude. It is easier to discard the hat than to replace the head but sometimes, seeing yourself in the mirror, you think "the hat is right. everything under it is wrong." The best thing to do when this happens is to hum, getting louder and louder, increasing in pitch and volume, until something fragile breaks.
A week ago, after we shared a Sunday roast, Ginger and I followed the Thames path up north of The Trout, as suggested by A----. It felt like we had traveled far, far away. The countryside out there felt fictional--which is to say, rural and living. We walked along meadows, road, and river. Like two characters in a book. Or two people in the world. Dragonflies darted blue in hot air. A voice, hidden behind high reeds, drifted lazily from the direction of the river, accompanied by guitar track. "OOoooo," sang the river or a man on it. "And she's buy-uy-ing a stai-airway to heaven."
There was really no shade on the path so we hid from relentless sun in this little canopied hollow where a few clustered trees kissed and drooped along the bank. Shade is good but, when long preserved, it smells of rot and algae. Sun scours what it penetrates. For better or for worse.
Later we swam. Ginger swam strong all the way out, laughing at the joy of it all. I stripped down to sports bra & ratty thong, clung close & hesitant to the bank, and feared both drowning & bacterial infection. But also laughed at the perfect Sunday joy of it all.
[about 2 hrs later, after 1.5 hours of warm yin yoga w/ sound bath (first time doing)]
Last night I went to bed early on account of having to be up by 6am today at latest. I really did the thing right. I turned away from screens, hid from blue light, instead gently stretched & read by the warm glow of three candles. Relaxed in new calm.
This relaxation (on top of conversation with ---- about ____________ that forced me to confront ____________ + nausea from eating mostly pastries for 4 days straight + summer heat + thoughts on unrequited desire + unsatisfying date + heavy mortician's fug of Death in Venice) proved dangerous. When punch of emotion came out of the blue it ruptured bloated organs and did real damage. I could not stop sobbing. I dug my knuckles hard into thighs, rocking them back and forth, back and forth, but failed to stimulate recovery.
I ran late for yoga this evening in part bc I lost track of time while writing, in part bc I still felt a bit ruptured, for both stale and fresh reasons. Realized at corner I'd left my mat at home so had to double back and run even later. Rushed to yoga, where I was told to abandon rushing in favor of held positions.
During long poses I really did have a new sort of time. Thoughts will enter, the teacher said. Have compassion for yourself. I almost teared up to hear it. Thoughts will insist on entering! Have compassion! !!
While I reclined on a bolster a thought something like this entered:
Last night I could not stop sobbing. It has been a while since sobbing happened. I complain often these days about numbness and absence. Isn't it a blessing to feel so recklessly? There was real anger behind that sobbing, hot anger that was directional, somewhat straight but double-sided, more spillikin or skewer than harpoon. Not parabolic.
Parabolic anger is horrific~! To simultaneously hate with the hate that a victim has for his perpetrator (for enacting brutal violence) and the hate that a perpetrator has for his victim (for embodying some condition that asks to be formally & brutally opposed). But both prongs face the same direction and are the same length and puncture the same abdomen together!! A sharp parabola is just a pitchfork--all small devils carry one, in cartoons and in stock photos advertising slutty Halloween costumes. The third (middle) tine is the y-axis and is there to remind the tortured that, when symmetry governs, even radical transformation will take you right back to where you started.
But last night's anger was illuminating because it requested forward motion. When you don't know what you want, disappointment and jealousy must--despite (or due to) the pain of them--be treated as beacons and as Rosetta Stones for reading want.
Didn't you ask to dream again? To have nightmares again?? Isn't that what you told ----, lying back on his couch, waiting for something to just happen?
07.25.2026
A mother must teach her daughter to furnish a house. To pick multi-layer window treatments. With valence, cornice, swag treatment, sheer drapery, satin and sateen jacquard-woven damask (pinch pleat), stiff silk brocade (box pleat). Held open by tasseled tieback or dental cheek retractor by day. Drawn secure & blackout at night. So when the wind blows, even if it is hard and fast, it cannot disturb an essentially fragile ecosystem.A father must teach his son to fix a car. To switch out the engine for one that runs on jet fuel and pure verbal intensity. To modify the engine so the car goes fast fast fast. That way, when the wind blows, even if it is hard and fast, it cannot catch up.
07.14.2026
While she rolled and smoked cigarettes she made comments from the side of her mouth; you have to speak from the side of your mouth to get words around cigarettes. Her hair was bobbed French. She had this seeming ability to remain at all hours caustic--even at soft times like 10:34am or when faced with earnest confessions like "I feel lost"--without losing some hint of compassion.Cynicism, in her fidgeting hands (playing with lighter, turning and twisting rings), was a sharp, prying, neutral tool that allowed access to viscera. Once flayed, subjects could be poked with subdermal directness. If she could lay friends and strangers bare and laugh, not at stripped individuals but at people as genus, maybe she could overstep those gradual intimacies and vulgar revelations to which so many relationships fall victim.
Start naked to avoid the eventual discomfort of undressing. That is: remember that dressing is also intimate. Putting on clothes. Choosing socks. Zipping trousers. Layering. Adjusting a belt. Being within. Being dressed.
Nakedness is inherently funny. Or at least textured. Some bits of people are dangly, some smooth, some damply pruned.
Clothing is also textured. It can bother. It presses against the ribcage and leaves lines. If weight fluctuates a shirt that didn't previously leave lines might now leave lines.
Sometimes, I said, not to her but months later to -----, I get overwhelmed by texture. Sometimes I am walking past a stone wall and I let my hand trail along the stone wall and I get lost in the rough pitting. Sometimes I am crossing a bridge and I suddenly feel the the ridged non-slip flooring up through the soles of my shoes and then I can barely see the London skyline because I am entirely foot. He said yes, yes, yes, me too, I also feel the ridged lines through my shoes. I am aware now of the ground. When we stepped off the bridge, the lines vanished and the pavement (we agreed) was brutally, blissfully smooth.
------
LATER:
Just got back from pub. L-- and G-- move out tomorrow. They are leaving and I am staying and it is making me sick. G-- is going back to California and that is NOT okay.
I still have not--have never--travelled around Europe, despite living so close and basically having nothing but time every day, time time time time. Buying tickets confuses me: there are simply too many places one can go.
07.09.2026
Today so hot. Too hot.Work at 6:45am so alarm for 6am. Struggled to sleep due to heat. Struggled to wake due to lack of sleep.
Fairly quiet at work. Grateful for A/C. Made sandwiches. Sold bread. Sold pastries. Ate heaps of discarded cake + bun scraps. Wore grey cotton dress.
On Tuesday evening I walked to Headington Hill Park. I sat on bench, eating half bag of Haribo while telling myself not to eat half bag of Haribo, and read the second half of The Ha-Ha. The air was all thick heat and shvitz, even at 8pm.
There was this big butterfly with a piece torn from its wing. While I read it kept landing on me: on page, shoe, knee. It perched on my bare knee for full minutes staring right into my eyes. I could feel its body on my skin and see the ruffled hair on its thorax, brown and downy and so animal. In one of its brief absences I saw two butterflies (same brown and orange) spiraling upwards in erotic entomological courtship. I could not tell if either of them was my butterfly. I couldn't make out whether their wings were broken or intact. The courting butterflies vanished and soon after my butterfly was back on my knee. Was one of those lovers you? Were you part of that? Are you loved? Lusted after? Chased? Courted? Or is courtship something that happens to others? Is sex something other bugs do while you sit weird on human knees??
I felt full and empty. Of butterfly, book, and haribo.
I sent a picture of the butterfly (on my knee) to mama. She sent back a screenshot from butterfly-conservation.org saying "Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta: A large and strong-flying butterfly and common in gardens... It was also recently voted third place in 'Britain's Favorite Butterfly.'" I hadn't thought to look up the butterfly and learn its name, patterns, distribution, and habits. I! Who claim to think often of Linnaeus!
07.07.2026 noli me tangere
July is a well-lit but hazy slice of time, sweet and lacking empathy. July is only in town for a little while. He is tall with long legs so each step takes him far. He will play his guitar in the warm evenings and girls will fall in love with him, undo their pigtails and swim with him in the sun-warmed sea. They will beg him to stay forever but he will soon leave, strolling casual down the dusty road. Because his legs are long his steps are long. He will stride off into a collapsing curtain of oranges, reds, and purples until next year when he comes back whistling.There are some girls in town who, when their time-lined mothers warn them to be wary of him, really do listen. These girls do not let down their hair or splash, laughing and suntanned, in the sea. They watch from upstairs windows, through curtains half-drawn. In bed at night they imagine being seduced and abandoned.
These girls do not let down their hair. They brush it back slicker and tighter, graduating from pigtails to sleek low buns. Their necklines inch upwards. In September their cousins return from summer in Florence and gift cameo brooches, which they wear daily at their throats. When snow first falls late November they put on thick cloaks and gloves and walk brisk to church and back again. They re-enter the house (it is like they never left the house) and look in the mirror and brush cold flakes from collar, cheeks, and hair. The white in the hair does not brush off. It does not come out. It is growing from the scalp.
07.06.2026
Beep norbo squamp. Squimblet in orbo. Norfit bonk. Sporbin bonk. In ibo nip plimb amplicop. Porb. Porb! Porbo SQUAMP.(later) Ippppppp... Non squamp.
07.04.2026
Up at 4:37am, shocked, breathless, and in awe of how many days/months/years I've allowed to passively elapse.07.02/03.2026 "they knew what they were doing when they made Patrick Bateman hot"
On Monday, when we were walking towards Millennium Bridge, I mentioned having been hit by an e-bike.You said "I know."
I was confused. We hadn't spoken--not properly--in about a year. Last time we saw each other we didn't talk about e-bikes, there was no opportunity to discuss e-bikes, e-bikes did not enter into it. How could you know?
You'd read my e-worm entry, you said.
Of course. I'd described the incident in detail on a public website I voluntarily link-in-bio on instagram.
But to hear you say "I know" ? ??
Later, you told me you'd also shown _____ my journal, when the two of you hung out. This was a shock to the system. "I think," you said, "I showed him the entry where you got hit by the e-bike."
So all at once I had to picture the two of you, maybe in Regent's Park, maybe somewhere else entirely, heads craned over one screen, pressed close and intimate, simultaneously thinking about me getting hit by an e-bike. Or maybe you handed him your phone and awkwardly stood there waiting while he watched me (in his mind's eye) get hit by an e-bike.
I had to picture the two of you picturing me getting hit by an e-bike.
On Tuesday, I took the Bakerloo line to the National Gallery. In the National Gallery there is this brilliant shock of a Velasquez painting. A nude woman reclines on the far wall of a room mostly populated by royal portraits and throbbing martyrdoms and the familiar Hapsburg chin of Philip IV. She lies on her right side, back to the audience, on a bed or divan draped with cloth. The divan's slope emphasizes the pale curve of waist, hips, buttocks. She looks into a small, rectangular mirror held up by a cherub. Her reflected face--angled improbably towards the viewer--is smudged serious, darker and less definite than the luminous body in front of which it hovers.
When I entered the room, a male docent was gesturing to the woman. He was telling a cluster of tourists how unique she was, how atypical of Velasquez's work, how rare for a female nude to survive the violently imposed modesty of the Spanish Inquisition.
The group moved on.
An American-accented father and his young croc-wearing son stopped and examined her. The boy got bored and wandered off. The father hovered a moment longer, called out "wait!" before rushing to catch up. His gaze was the last thing to pull away.
When I got home I looked the painting up on Google. The English call her the Rokeby Venus. She is famous and valuable. On March 10th, 1914, the day after one of Emmeline Pankhurst's numerous arrests, fellow suffragette Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery with a meat cleaver and slashed the Venus seven times. News reports used the language not of vandalism but of murder. One woman had butchered another with a meat cleaver. The perpetrator was crazed, political, and irrational. The victim was innocent and recumbent, sensual but posed on unquestionably clean sheets.
Decades later, Richardson discussed her motives for the attack. The British system, she felt, refused to honor its clothed women, would not listen to their needs or grant them political agency, but poured funds into this nude figure, who hung silent and passive while men funneled in to ogle her.
The Venus was quickly restored. She hangs at the far end of a gallery. Around her are Hapsburgs and saints.
I did not know about her when I wrote in my diary, on October 21, 2024:
I deserve to be asked to remove my robe. I deserve to be told to remove my robe. I deserve to be ordered to put my feet here and here, to place my forearm -- no- no- there- yes, just there-- like that. Right there. And-- hold. I deserve to be approached - arranged - adjusted - commanded to curve my fingers - to extend my thumb - to cup my hand slightly so the knuckles show (it will make the hand look longer if the knuckles show). I deserve to have the tension in my wrist observed and aestheticized.
I deserve to have my name added to the museum label decades later by a bisexual intern passionate about highlighting silenced women and bringing their voices to the forefront. I deserve to hang across from Saint Sebastian, set in passive, if controversial, curatorial conversation. I deserve to be vandalized and then meticulously restored.
Or on October 18, 2023, when I wrote:
Someday, I hope to inspire a fantasy. They say that women are more likely to hang naked in a museum than to ever have a piece displayed in one. One day, I would like to hang naked on the wall of a museum. One day, I would like to hang naked on the wall of a villa in the background of someone's dream, rendered softly and flatteringly in oils, gently inviting. It is okay if I am forgotten in the morning. Actually – it is not okay if I am forgotten in the morning, but I have to be okay with being forgotten in the morning. Dreams are like that – you simply can't be picky about how you appear in other people's dreams.
When you picture me--if you ever picture me--is it clothed or nude? Standing, reclining, or seated? Crossing a bridge? Lying back on an analyst's couch? Hunched, poorly postured, over a laptop? Getting hit by an e-bike?
On December 2, 2024, I wrote:
Tell me something that makes me feel good about myself, really good. Tell me that if you could paint well you would paint me, and you'd paint me well, and it would be good.
When I wrote that December 2 2024 entry I was thinking, in part, of a conversation I'd just had with you. I suppose, when I wrote it, I was thinking of you. I suppose that you, in some way, occupy that entry. This whole weird journal is like that--it holds scraps of people, places, and things accessible only to me but which, once pinned in place by involuntary, indirect reference, are pinned for good. I can't actually remember what we'd talked about. But it doesn't much matter.
> please take me back home, thanks.