DEAR DIARY

11.28.2025

Bird, speaking to other birds on telephone wire: "Had I but lips I would kiss each and every one of you, not as a lover kisses a lover, but as a soldier kisses a fellow soldier on the eve of battle"

11.19.2025 All Souls

Just wrote in other diary, new diary, paper diary.

When e-worm site was down I began writing in sketchbook, experimenting with externalizing thoughts I do not intend to share, here or anywhere, but which I can maybe only work through by using writing as a tool/technology for processing. So a diary, I suppose. That's probably just what a diary is.

I still have not fully opened up to myself, now or ever. There are certain things that it is unnerving to commit to paper, to force the self to see, read, and accept. Forgive. Grieve. Rage at. Not just certain things, really. Broad swaths of things. Sweeping vistas of things. Vast archives of things. Illegal landfills of things.

But! Once I've written things down for myself, I feel I can share those metabolized thoughts/experiences/emotions publicly. There are many things I hide from, but, once I've processed something, does it demand privacy? If I can confess something to myself, openly and flatly, why not wear it on a shirt? Why not put it on a billboard? But must decide what goes shared and unshared. Even though I'm unsure if anyone other than Juhi and Zach reads this.

Main project right now is learning how to consider want. Hope someday (soon, maybe?) to begin processing grief, rage, and desire. Or at least learning what these words mean. Or at least imagining how these feelings might feel. I will learn how to craft statements like "I want _________." Or "I don't want __________." Or "I want to _____________." Or "I enjoy _________ but not ___________." Or "for now I'd like to _____________ but eventually my dream is to ___________." Or "I want you to ___________." Or "I want _____ to _________ me." Or "I want you to _________ me."

Unsure how to work towards understanding. No longer remember how to read, write, or act in accordance with values, morals, or goals. No longer recall what it is to act. Except -- on the stage! I do someday hope to act on the stage. I want to be a star (see: Higglety Pigglety Pop!). I no longer remember how to be myself, so perhaps it is the right time to experiment with being other people.

Must return to previous plan (from 1? 2? 3? months ago??). NO MORE self excavation. No more!!! Just lose yourself in actual work. Instead of saying "why do I feel like I get nothing done???" literally just get the stuff done. Write your applications (at least rough, quick drafts! At least one sentence, on paragraph!!!) Clean your room (even if just for 15 minutes!!!!) Why are you so terrified to begin small tasks?? Why are you unwilling to just spend 3 hours drafting a proposal on a topic that genuinely interests you ??? ?????

Just move forward.

11.18.2025

Youtube. Trailer. Original trailer. The Birdcage clips. Best of. Best of. Clips. Best scenes. Funny moment where [character] does [action]. [Actor name]'s best performances. Funniest moments from [_______]. Klezmer. Klezmer band. Vulfpeck Klezmer. The world is a narrow bridge. Live performance. Recording. Another version. Another version. Miami Boys Choir. Another song. Another song. Reunion song. Professional voice coach analyzes Miami Boys Choir. Bo Burnham. Phoebe Bridgers. Another song. Another song. One more song! One more song! It doesn't matter what song. More, of anything. More! More!

Wait, uhhhh, Stop! It's a wild comment section! [Nerd/robot voice] *zzzzt stop. you have reached comments.* (lol) You must read the comment section. You must read the comments. Seriously, though, read the comments. Read the fucking comments. Read the fucking comments you little bitch. (Jk haha!)

As a 56-year-old Muslim man who does not speak Hebrew I find I am moved by this video.

I am a Catholic woman living in northern Florida but I can feel God’s energy and love and I am sending prayers from Florida <3

I had never heard of them before today but I love this! The power of song to unite. <3

I am sending prayers from Florida. I am sending prayers from Florida. I am sending prayers from Florida, from the floor of a room, I am sitting here in near absolute darkness, hunched over and smelling like shit, in a pool of shit, maybe my own, maybe someone else’s, it’s hard to know these days. I am sending love and light. <3

I am here in Florida, I am not young anymore, I have three kids and two grandkids, my grandkids love this song, the younger one, she is autistic, she listens to this song over and over and it always makes her smile. She is always listening and always smiling. <3

I am new to this song but I love it! I am crying. I am sending prayers. I am throwing up and praying. <3

My first husband and I danced to this song on our wedding day. He died in a mine collapse in Pennsylvania over fifteen years ago now and when I hear this song I think of him, if it plays on the car radio sometimes I have to pull over for a few minutes, park at the side of the road on account of the sobbing. Jim was my rock. He always put on the radio when he was doing the dishes and he would do this stupid little boogie to the music, knees bent, soapsuds up to his elbows, dishcloth slung over his left shoulder— the dishcloth over the shoulder, I found that so sexy. Sexy even when he was doing his silly little dances. Maybe when he listened to music the music got into him, the beat breached his liver and spleen and hips and he couldn't help himself, he had to heel toe heel toe shimmy shake shake shake. Or maybe he just liked making me giggle. I don’t know. I don't know if he danced when I wasn’t there to watch.

He wasn’t a miner. We didn’t live in Pennsylvania.

He left for work as usual Friday morning — pulled out of our driveway like he did every day, it was gravel, then, the driveway of our little yellow house just outside Wilmington, with the calendula.

He worked in AV equipment sales.

His colleagues say he never showed up at the office Friday. They found his car parked in the lot but he'd never clocked in. Nobody knows how he got to Pennsylvania or why he was down in the mine when the cave-in happened. The emergency rescue team spent five 24-hour days working in shifts, using all sorts of (what was then) high-tech emergency equipment for excavating and digging. They sent down spelunkers. Time was everything, because maybe, they thought, maybe there were survivors. Experts on CNN theorized about air pockets.

They found his body in the main chamber with the six other victims. The others were miners all contorted in their workwear (age: 23, 27, 27, 39, 48, 50. Three married. Four fathers). A seventh body was off to the side in a three-piece navy polyester suit with a paisley pocket square (tag still attached). It took two weeks to identify him, because nobody connected the missing b2b sales representative from Wilmington with the grey corpse buried nearly a mile under a bituminous coalfield thanks to the catastrophic failure of (what should have been) a standard room-and-pillar retreat. When they finally pieced things together the detectives and news stations asked a thousand questions. No. I have no idea. I can’t imagine. No. No. No, I’ve never seen him wear anything like that. No, we have no connections to the area. Yes, he has a scar on his chin- from fifth grade, when Robbie DiMarco was chasing him and he slipped on black ice. No, nothing.

Apartment tour. 250 sq ft. 400 sq ft. How she makes it work. Rent controlled. Podcast. Podcast. Anything funny happen this week? Do you like the new studio? The new left? The dirtbag left? The horny left? How do you feel about Zohran's win? How do you feel about the minutiae of international tax policy? Do you even know anything about international tax policy, you ignorant slut? In what ways do you think AI will continue to transform data stewardship in the international policy sector? Do you want to kiss? On the forehead? The cheek? The mouth? Or should I start at the bottom and work my way up?

I didn’t get a full night’s sleep for nearly a decade; nobody could even imagine what he was doing down there, how he got into the mine, why the suit, the car, any of it. Kids on the internet have theories, but they have theories about everything.

In the months that followed I became a container for grief. The space that wasn’t taken up by grief was reserved for confusion, mostly; some spaces were allowed to remain empty and hollow. Room-and-pillar. I developed one ulcer, then another. Dr. R-- told me I should have come to see him earlier, my insides were riddled with holes, perforated, like Swiss cheese, like a fusilier's helmet after the Somme.

But that was all so long ago. Every year, time goes faster. Some of the mines have been closed. They say we might go nuclear soon. I have lately been flirting with the idea of installing solar panels (if only they weren't such a commitment!) but I am uncomfortable with wind turbines, on account of their disrupting bird migration. I expect bird migrations are all we have left. Birds are our only remaining indicators of time, one of the few holy units remaining. When patterns begin to fail, when V's of geese stop pointing with cardinal precision to sacred Truth, when a cluster of sanderlings no longer signifies anything other than itself, I suspect it will all be over.

Coal ash can be used to fill pits or amend soil.

-----

I am burning all my time, day after day, and terrified. I mine time and burn time. To extract, I destabilize. Through consumption, I pollute.

Today slept late, woke late, watched/consumed/scrolled, meeting at All Souls, dinner, dessert, bloating.

NEED to write DPhil/PhD applications tomorrow or you will lose the option of applying this year.

Need to return to job apps. Need to move forward, in step with time.

11.17.2025

Slept at maybe 4:30am. Now it is 11:37, my day is just getting started, my day already feels over.

11.16.2025 Sunday

6:45 shift began at bakery
woke at 6, cold water to face to hide puffy eyes from last night's cry, quick shower, clothing on, walk fast in cold.

hours went fast in labour and interaction. 20 cheese sandwiches, 25 pork.

11.15.2025

The man carried the glass to the table and set it down. There was no coaster. He didn't notice or care. He put damp glass on porous wood and by the next day a ring had appeared.

The table would wear the ring always, now, an everlasting mark of constancy.

The man never acknowledged his new bride. He ordered a taxi to the airport, he went back to Italy, he got a job promotion at a mid-sized accounting firm, he married a short woman, he watched TV mystery dramas, when he drank wine he got nostalgic and told small trite stories about his childhood: knees skinned, palms scraped, stitches in chin from when ___ .

He drank every day - wine, water, cocktails, juice, alka-seltzer. He pressed a thousand cups intimately to his lips, drained them, set a thousand glasses (empty, full) on a thousand rigid, dutiful, fidelitous tables. He thought nothing of it.

> back to diary