hoebagbasicbitch

[hoebagbasicbitch]

mmmmm i love art i just wanna look at it forever and maybe live in a museum someday

[hoebagbasicbitch]

enough about The Girl! I have a date this Saturday with my printmaking class crush. Thinking about them at the same time makes me really ill. I think I'm at least temporarily getting over her.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

So, it started with this girl.

Well, kind of. It started with a trip to Italy for a class. A workshop, where a group of 10 of us went out in to the boonies of Tuscany and worked on restoring some art in a small museum. So, at this workshop, I met the girl.

We spent three weeks in this small little town, living in a hotel owned by the diocese. There were lace curtains on the windows and a crucifix with a little plastic glow-in-the-dark Jesus hanging above all the beds. It was hot as all hell, and we were all getting attacked by invisible gnats which bit us rashy to the point of near insanity. Needless to say, we were broken down and got close with each other quick.

How to describe this girl? I’m not sure when we started to talk or what we started with talking about. I love a good story, and so I love the idea of a summer fling. Originally, I was sharing a bedroom with one of my classmates, but she had a family emergency and had to leave about 4 days into things, leaving me with a room to myself. It seemed like a perfect storm, and then this girl and I started to get close.

We just spent a lot of time talking. She was the only other person in the class who cared about restoration in the same way that I do. She had spent all of June doing another restoration workshop at the same school, and was back in July because she loved it so much. Our only real difference was that she didn’t know she wanted to pursue the career before this summer, and I’ve been on the crazy train for three years. Not that it makes a huge difference, honestly.

So we talked a lot. Yes, about our class and the work we were doing and conservation in general. We did all the basic getting-to-know-you stuff too, like how many siblings do you have and where are you from and what’s your favorite color. It was strange because we were always, always, always in a bigger group. Lots of us in the class hung out together. I mean, it was a town of 2,000 people in which there was one bar. All we had to do was talk.

Oh, and we played cards.

This was the only time that this girl and I were ever alone. Gin rummy. I was god awful at it, but I played hand after hand after hand just to be in a one-on-one conversation with her.

But we played lots of cards as a group, too.

I don’t know what made me realize that I liked her. I know that it was July 18th when I felt something stronger than friendship for the first time because I wrote it down in my journal, but I didn’t specify a cause.

My journal entries from this trip are fascinating. They oscillate between two different crises I was having, the first being my falling in love with this girl, which is something that had never happened to me before, and the second being my falling in love with art conservation. I’m not sure which of those is the stupider crisis, but they were both making me feel equally insane. Between those and the bug bites, I was not at my most sound of mind.

Dealing with the girl was easier and more fun than the career crisis. I got to flirt and make up inside jokes and find excuses to spend time with her. That was entertaining. The career crisis was silly. I mean, it didn’t feel silly, but putting it in words to me makes it sound trivial. But every night I would barely sleep, and I would pop out of bed in the morning early, eat breakfast (talk to the girl at breakfast, for an hour every day), and rush off to the museum as soon as I could. Even when the restoration work was hard (and believe me, it definitely had its moments), it still felt like the most fulfilling thing I had ever done. They made us take all kinds of breaks during work, and then an hour and a half lunch, and then they would wrap up a few minutes early at the end of the day. And me and this girl were impossible to get rid of. The professor and the TA would literally have to force us out so they could continue their work without having to keep track of students.

I always wanted to be working. Which is funny, because working was the only time I was not talking to this girl. I was working on murals in one room, she was on a painting on canvas in the other. And here is where things got to be really strange. While I was working on the restoration, I felt the same way that I did when the girl and I would talk. Except I didn’t want to kiss the wall, I guess, but that feeling in the pit of my stomach was the same. Thank god when I wasn’t with her, I was working, and when I wasn’t working, I was with her.

The two of us had a conversation about this, actually.

I mean, not about being in love with each other. That was one sided-I think. But about how we had both fallen in love with the restoration work.

The thing about getting into conservation is it is a crazy investment. There is so much education required, the education is expensive, and probably most significantly, you have to move around constantly wherever you can find education, and internship, or a job because opportunities are so few and far between. But to actually touch art was gives me such a high that I’m willing to do it. I don’t need a family or a girlfriend or a pet, I just need to be in a lab with my hands on history.

This girl was the only person I’ve ever met who felt just as insane about it as me, which is probably why I started to feel crazy over her.

So, my feelings began to get pretty tangled. Did I really love her, or was I just falling in love with conservation? I don’t think it’s worth separating the feelings, though. They’re too closely tied to each other.

There are a few conversations of ours that I remember most distinctly. There was the night we drank an entire bottle of vermouth straight while playing cards. That was the only time we ever hung out in my room. We talked about growing up a lot, I think. The vermouth made it hard to remember specifics. Another night we sat outside after going to the bar and watched stars for hours. There was a meteor shower happening, and I made a lot of wishes on shooting stars that still haven’t come true yet. Of course, one of our classmates who could not take a hint was with us the whole time. But we talked about the golden record and the size of the universe and the constellations above us. We put our faces right next to each other so we could point out constellations accurately.

I shared a lot of nectarines with her. The food situation wasn’t ideal. I ate a lot of fruit as meals. I would take the dull hotel butter knife and saw a nectarine in half around the pit, and then pull It apart and give her whichever side was less mangled. Whenever I did this to eat alone, the fruit would fall off the pit, but when she was watching, the thing would seem to fight back, trying to embarrass me. She still always took the fruit, though, with a smile.

 We talked about what we were going to do to touch art again after the workshop was over. We also laughed about how similar we were, and in one humiliating conversation, we decided that we would fuck our clones but not each other.

Oh god. I forgot to mention the shirts.

We spent a great deal of our time coming up with stupid t-shirt designs featuring images of saints and nonsensical phrases very loosely based on those saints. It was maybe the strangest possible reaction to falling in love, making these idiotic t-shirt designs. But it was really, really fun.

There was more. I’m certain that there was more. Breakfast was it’s own thing. I don’t know what else to say. It was a very odd summer full of big feelings, and it’s going to be difficult for me to split up my feelings for conservation and this girl. I must stay in love with conservation, but I also have to get this girl out of my head because I am never going to go to San Angelo, Texas ever in my life (God willing). All I can hope for is that we run into each other at some conservation conference in the future and hook up there. Even though my crush was unrequited, I still think I can make it work.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i think I'm gonna put all my unreadable prose on here so the future me can cringe/reminisce (we'll see how it goes) without ever opening a word document

[hoebagbasicbitch]

So, because I love history and I'm horribly sentimental, I have a fascination with lover's eye pendants. I'm not sure if there's much more to say there. I just love them, I think the concept is delightful and since I knew they existed I have hoped that someone in my life would look at me and say hey. Will you paint a little portrait of my eye, and I'll do one of yours, and the two of us can have that and just we get to know what it is. And this has been, I don't know, years. An indeterminable amount of my life with this boiling on the back burner in my mind.

I've been getting better about being happy with what I have, so I haven't thought about lover's eyes for a while. That is, until, a girl texted me. Not just any girl, but what I would consider in my life up until this point, the girl. Like, capital T, The Girl.

Anyway, The Girl went to a new museum last weekend. She sent me 63 photos afterward (not that I am counting), which she said was every picture she took, because I asked to see. Sue me. I love museums. I wasn't going to reply to every photo, but I commented on a couple highlights. She sent me some Victorian brooches, so there was some stuff made out of hair, which we have talked about before, but also she sent me a picture of a bunch of different lover's eye pendants, which was unusual because we had not talked about them before.

Well, I figured now was the time to bring it up, and I said that we (the royal we, the as a society we, not the two of us we) should be making them more often. In response, she said that she took those pictures (of the hair jewelry and the lover's eyes and the tags on the wall that accompanied them both) specifically for me.

I'm really not sure how to think about anything else anymore. I feel like a big cornball. The only way I could find it in myself to cope was by taking another of said 63 pictures, this one with her in it, and zooming in on her eye and sketching it on a sticky note with a ballpoint pen. It's stuck to my wall now, and I'm really, really starting to understand why people made those pendants.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

oh my god ew I just read back through this blog for the first time in years. I should have been institutionalized in high school. anyway it's time for modern issues.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i'm back all. Im back to needing to yell into the void so like give me one second to gather my thoughts.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i did so much work to be better at college. and i really, really was. I am. But the threat of going home is sucking the life out of me. I want to stay all summer, and all of the holidays next year too. 

[hoebagbasicbitch]

Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up. 

Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in. 

“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.” 

The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up. 

“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.” 

“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?” 

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.” 

The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.” 

Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.” 

“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.” 

Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together. 

“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.” 

“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?” 

The god rattled around in the temple and sighed. 

A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer. 

“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?” 

“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.” 

“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.” 

The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god. 

And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War. 

Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him. 

“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!” 

“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?” 

“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke. 

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile. 

“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.” 

“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.” 

And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god. 

Sora found the temple with the bones within it, the roof falling in upon them. 

“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation. 

“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.” 

Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.

“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”

“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.

“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.” 

Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.

“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.

“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.

“What?” the god asked.

Sora carefully lifted the skull onto the cloth. “You are the god of Arepo.”

Generations passed. The village recovered from its tragedies—homes rebuilt, gardens re-planted, wounds healed. The old man who once lived on the hill and spoke to stone and rubble had long since been forgotten, but the temple stood in his name. Most believed it to empty, as the god who resided there long ago had fallen silent. Yet, any who passed the decaying shrine felt an ache in their hearts, as though mourning for a lost friend. The cold that seeped from the temple entrance laid their spirits low, and warded off any potential visitors, save for the rare and especially oblivious children who would leave tiny clusters of pink and white flowers that they picked from the surrounding meadow.

The god sat in his peaceful home, staring out at the distant road, to pedestrians, workhorses, and carriages, raining leaves that swirled around bustling feet. How long had it been? The world had progressed without him, for he knew there was no help to be given. _The world must be a cruel place, that even the useful gods have abandoned, if farms can flood, harvests can run barren, and homes can burn, _he thought.

He had come to understand that humans are senseless creatures, who would pray to a god that cannot grant wishes or bless upon them good fortune. Who would maintain a temple and bring offerings with nothing in return. Who would share their company and meditate with such a fruitless deity. Who would bury a stranger without the hope for profit. What bizarre, futile kindness they had wasted on him. What wonderful, foolish, virtuous, hopeless creatures, humans were.

So he painted the sunset with yellow leaves, enticed the worms to dance in their soil, flourished the boundary between forest and field with blossoms and berries, christened the air with a biting cold before winter came, ripened the apples with crisp, red freckles to break under sinking teeth, and a dozen other nothings, in memory of the man who once praised the god’s work on his dying breath.

“Hello, God of Every Humble Beauty in the World,” called a familiar voice.

The squinting corners of the god’s eyes wept down onto curled lips. “Arepo,” he whispered, for his voice was hoarse from its hundred-year mutism.

“I am the god of devotion, of small kindnesses, of unbreakable bonds. I am the god of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust,” Arepo avowed, soothing the other with every word.

“That’s wonderful, Arepo,” he responded between tears, “I’m so happy for you—such a powerful figure will certainly need a grand temple. Will you leave to the city to gather more worshippers? You’ll be adored by all.”

“No,” Arepo smiled.

“Farther than that, to the capitol, then? Thank you for visiting here before your departure.”

“No, I will not go there, either,” Arepo shook his head and chuckled.

“Farther still? What ambitious goals, you must have. There is no doubt in my mind that you will succeed, though,” the elder god continued.

“Actually,” interrupted Arepo, “I’d like to stay here, if you’ll have me.”

The other god was struck speechless. “…. Why would you want to live here?”

“I am the god of unbreakable bonds and everlasting friendships. And you are the god of Arepo.”

[hoebagbasicbitch]

right now I am just deeply craving the ocean. I remember once on a beach with my dad, and I know is short essays and poems people always say father, because it’s more formal and therefore more artistic, but he is not my father, he has always just been dad. I was with my dad in florida, which is normally regarded as the stinky shithole of America, and I can hardly say I disagree, but when you know rich people in florida, it suddenly gets a lot nicer. Anyway, we were in florida, in the ocean. Not on the beach, but really out in the ocean. The sun was setting and there was this great big thunderstorm rolling in. A majestic sight, I thought to myself. Something more beautiful than the midwestern tornadoes that tore up cornfields. I had been trying to boogie board, with a cheap thing we had bought at a junky tourist shop for five bucks. Those attempts ended with the daylight, but we floated there in the salty water with kelp violating our space. The purple sky and rolling thunder was a perfect distraction, and lighting split the sky so bright it was like someone was flickering the lightswitch over the ocean that night. It was the last night of our vacation, I remember, and it was perfect. Bobbing there in the waves, I thought that this is peace, and it could never get any better than that. Well, now we’re deep into february, and it’s twenty below zero, and I haven’t seen a drop of salt water since we left florida the morning after the thunderstorm. 

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i would like to be punched very hard right now

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i talk about this a lot but it’s bc i genuinely can’t belive it and no one irl can know about it... i think i have a career in writing erotica bc ppl eat this shit uppp

[hoebagbasicbitch]

almost 36k people have read my poorly written erotica. what??????? 

[hoebagbasicbitch]

i really can’t tell what is wrong w me which sounds like so dramatic but i just know my brain is like... fucked and idk how specifically it’s fucked but it definitely is. like am i depressed because I have depresion or am i depressed just seasonally or is it because i’m anxious or is it untreated neurodivergence? Or am I anxious because I’m depressed or am I anxious because there’s a pandemic ruling my life and I have no control over anything?? much to think about.

[hoebagbasicbitch]

why does reading through this blog mame me so uncomfortable. also i think i came out to my mom as “ehh” so hey that’s something. I hate the term coming out tho. it feels so official and idfk what i am (that’s a lie i totally do but i’m scared it will change)

[hoebagbasicbitch]

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no [REDACTED] happened i didn’t think they were serious no no no no 

[hoebagbasicbitch]

if i don’t get a kiss right now i’m losing my marbles