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—and some bawston things

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more gloucester things

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everywhere I look // this is what summer is for—

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see like this is exactly what i don't think is true though. technology changes what it appears rational to do, and forces social trades in favor of instrumental rationality.

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« I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are. »

― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism

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“Hi there, now that I have the floor, metaphorically speaking, of course, I'd love to talk to you about me. I am not only a woman, a man, a person, and a goblin, but I'm also a vampire who loves to suck the blood out of human beings.”

- Katya

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every time i get a migraine i just dreamily think about trepanation

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what would i be if it weren't for these moments (or some variation of this thought over and over and over)

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There’s something so sweet and romantic about making pictures with one’s stupid little phone or whatever and sharing them with the world. I want to maybe not die on this hill but for sure pause and lie down here for a bit: it is an act of love to see something you want to preserve forever and then show it to your fellow creatures in hopes that it will light up the insides of their mind the same way it did yours.*

Look: a baby pomegranate, a sunset over the water, a flowering weed, a cat’s toebeans! (Perceive this and you may feel joy.) (I saw this and thought of you.) (Perhaps you’ll find this on your internet and want to send it to your best friend?) 

We stop and stare at a remarkable thing. Then we point our phones at it. We simultaneously hoard and share—what a starting and delightful dichotomy. After all, the principle of memeticity exists in stark contrast to the economics of rarity: the more a thing is known (or referenced or acknowledged), the more value it gains. And by sharing our perception(s) of the world, we make them more valuable. Aaaaa. Very cute!

* Of course, our need for validation and clout has Ruined Everything, but the base impulse (should it remain pure) is very sweet, I think.

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clusterfucktina

It is now exactly a month since the end of term (and year 1) and what a wacky, stupid time this has been. Wouldn’t be entirely accurate to characterize the term itself as being particularly difficult or rough because it wasn’t. Most things so far have felt quite doable, but the end of this period did chew me up and spit me out—in part because of how untenable and difficult things had gotten at home. After the last day, I was so burned out and shredded up and just… decimated that I stayed in bed for two full days—and then on the third, when I still couldn’t get up, I began to suspect something was wrong. After a week of mild fevers and constant fatigue and an anhedonia that felt too new and alarming to be Depression My Old Friend, my body started to break out in a rash, and I developed a persistent and annoying headache. I went to urgent care (thrice) and, when nobody there could figure out what was going on, to the ER on a Sunday afternoon. This was a horrible, awful, no-good time. I swam in and out of an off-the-charts headache. But nobody at the ER could satisfactorily identify what was happening either so after a bunch of bloodwork, the (mostly) nice ER doctors—I saw four of them in as many hours—helpfully told me that since the rashes didn’t seem to be life threatening, whatever the fuck this was was beyond their mandate, so I could (and should) go home. So off I went. Things continued to be absolutely shit for several couple of days, both within, and around, and to my body. Felt like rock bottom yet again. Etc. Anyway, eventually, this episode drew to a close, as all things do.

The rashes are gone now (though some very mild local discoloration remains). And I’m beginning to feel like myself again—for the most part. And of the parts that feel unlike me (though this is perhaps better discussed separately)—the parts where I know I’m more cynical and suspicious than I have ever been, where I’m sore and all shook up, where I’m a sum of all of my shard-y pieces—I’m quite keenly and deliberately aware. In sum, I am mySelf still, just irrevocably and abruptly changed by time.

For the summer, I’ve been dividing life into weekly chunks. The week after the ER visit was for bedtime and slowly inhabiting my mind again. The next was for reading and going off the social type of media. This week is for beginning to think of my second year at school, thesis work, etc. All the while, I’ve been trying to be as present as I can for my research job(s). I’m also walking a little more. At one point, I’d thought my mind would never feel ok again, but somehow, a month in, finally, it sorta does. I’m also in talk therapy again (started last week) and it has now been almost two months of physical therapy—and I’m amazed by the quality-of-life difference from not being in active and constant pain.

Images 1–3: bored in the ER; a pink carnation from an old woman i met in the hospital elevator (she took it off a bouquet she was taking to her daughter); pre-ER search history

Images 4–7: little moments from recovery time—coffee date, sailing demo day, repotting my plants, sunset walks and wildflowers by the river

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Everybody has a mind so they think they know a little bit about minds. Sometimes, when one's mind stops working right, one is struck with how horrifyingly wrong it is possible to be about the workings of minds! Well anyway

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being in academia is kind of like where you're on everest and you see the frozen bodies of the other people who've tried it strewn about everywhere and you think "okay, but that's them and i'm me"

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I'm, above all else, a tangentgirl. always saying shit like "sidenote," "oh also," "by the way,"

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The Summertime Is A Little Different From The Normaltime

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“I am the main character” girl you’re the unreliable narrator.

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we truly are living in These Times, huh

being alive teaches you that it can always get worse!!! we’ll just keep finding new depths to plumb 🥰

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from Salem, this past weekend