im deep in world of echo and reading this sick article:
Arthur Russell and Rhizomatic Musicianship (Liminalities) by Tim Lawrence
when we were drinking at crane cove a couple months ago, my old college counselor told us he had at one point been 'flirting with a drinking problem' because he was so bored of his life...Jeffrey and I have turned it into a bit of a charade, getting way too drunk at random times of day, mockingly drinking for some sort of emotional reprieve, making 'flirting with a drinking problem' into kind of a lifestyle, but all with a hint of irony, but maybe that's what makes it so insidious...
I'm trying to get into drinking whiskey, I think its kind of big dick energy, today I had some Jameson on the rocks and only gagged once...we talked about white boys drinking whiskey and how its not cool when they do it, but it is when hot girls do it...
the problem with drinking is you think it will make you feel better but really it makes you feel worse - zach says, why would you think it makes you feel better? well, isn't that what they all say...?
sometimes, I wonder if I should go back on ssri's, but then I think maybe I'm just being dramatic...why is it fine when we self-medicate with escitalopram but not with alcohol...? I think one day I might really get tired of always cycling though funks...lately I've really been worried that I will end up just like my dad, and how do I avoid that, and how would I ever notice the signs...it really, really scares me to think about...I don't know how I will handle middle age or the various problems of life, I don't feel particularly equipped and even the mildest romantic drama has me riddled with anxiety and fear...when its good it feels so good, but when its bad its just so bad, and I just dont know how to shake it...
my ex texted me once - 'ive never been with anyone as depressed as you'... I felt really alien, and broken, and like I should be another way and maybe if I worked really hard I could be different and better and normal...and maybe boys would like me...can't believe im posting cringe on eworm at 12am but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ where else are these thoughts gonna live...
to make peace with yourself is something I've always struggled with...to be enough, to be disciplined, to just be myself...what would it mean to be someone who could do that? I feel so much envy towards those who can just reach out and grasp their identity, who aren't plagued by continual fear of falling off the world into the ether, into the endless void...only kept a part of the worldly fabric, the mortal coil, by the anarchic social ties that reel you in when you drift off into space...maybe there could be a sort of indulgence to feel so pathetic, but I haven't gotten there yet...it still just feels bad...
my therapist says- think about the root of the feeling...maybe I just am lonely...I don't know what thinking of the root of the feeling really does for me, even if I identify the loneliness I still have to sit with it, and it doesn't go away...but maybe it is the other associated feelings that I need to renege, like insecurity, like peculiarity, like being destined for failure...
everything can feel so dark all of a sudden...like a giant room that only has one light switch and someone turned it off, and then you're stuck wandering around in the pitch black dark looking for the light, forever and ever...when you're in the room it is so hard to remember what it feels like to have the light on, and so hard to come to terms with the fact that you aren't really in charge of the switch...
am I talking about mental health? I think I'm talking about being an incel, but who even knows these days...I wish I could give up this desire for intimacy and connection, just shrug it off like a wet towel, and beam up to greater heights, but it feels so painfully sad to imagine living this life fully alone...maybe I'm being dramatic, as always, but I really feel its absence sometimes too deeply, and although I wouldn't give up the feeling of having loved and been in love, the experience of the thing makes its absence ache so profoundly...none of these are original thoughts, im just drunk and emo in my bed...thinking a lot about alanis morissette today:
"Do I stress you out? / My sweater is on backwards and inside out / And you say, how appropriate / I don't like to dissect everything today / I don't mean to pick you apart you see / But I can't help it / And there I go jumping before the gunshot has gone off / Slap me with a splintered ruler / And it would knock me to the floor if I wasn't there already / If only I could hunt the hunter / And all I really want is some patience / A way to calm the angry voice / And all I really want is deliverance / Do I wear you out? / You must wonder why I'm relentless and all strung out / I'm consumed by the chill of solitary / I'm like Estella / I like to reel it in and then spit it out / I'm frustrated by your apathy / And I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land / If only I could meet the maker / And I am fascinated by the spiritual man / I am humbled by his humble nature / And what I wouldn't give to find a soul mate? / Someone else to catch this drift / And what I wouldn't give to meet a kindred? / Enough about me, let's talk about you for a minute / Enough about you, let's talk about life for a while / The conflicts, the craziness and the sound of pretenses falling / All around, all around / Why are you so petrified of silence? / Here can you handle this? / Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines / Or when you think you're going to die? / Or did you long for the next distraction? / And all I need now is intellectual intercourse / A soul to dig the hole much deeper / And I have no concept of time other than it is flying / If only I could kill the killer / And all I really want is some peace, man / A place to find a common ground / And all I really want is a wavelength / And all I really want is some comfort / A way to get my hands untied / And all I really want is some justice / It's all I really want, some patience / A way to calm me down / And all I really want is deliverance / A place to find a common ground..."
fully dissociated at gate 18a at LAX and I still have an hour until we board...feels like time is standing still - like goo, "i stole my sister's boyfriend, it was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. within a week we killed my parents and hit the road." Thursday night I was so beat, I thought I might power down permanently from hunger, we got galbi jjim in ktown that they made into a whole gimmick with a table-side blowtorch to melt the cheese, I groaned that all of LA was just a gimmick, just like the galbi jjim...after a night of feeling like a pathetic self hating zombie I got over it, we went to the rooftop at the Waldorf Astoria in the morning (fond memories of storming the Waldorf in chicago in 2015...) and ordered rose and caviar, somehow racked up a ridiculous bill and the food wasn't even that good...'fuck LA,' I keep saying as I continue to return to LA, frequently and of my own volition...we were wasted taking calls at the Waldorf and then went to rodeo, went to bottega, lanvin, saint laurent, jeffrey and I got matching Prada sunglasses, felt kind of urbane and baller, but all kind of coated in a weird vibe, an irresponsible extravagance endemic to rodeo that would be so out of place in San Francisco...we befriended an employee at lanvin who mistook my ardent curiosity for everything as a specific and pointed desire to work in luxury retail and she talked to us about how it's competitive, the women are sharks, rappers drive down rodeo and throw money out their cars, how crazy is that...rich people in the Bay Area would never...Jeffrey and I rapped on the commodification of identity, famous celebrity stylists, foolish financial decisions, and cultural differences as they pertain to wealth and spending... against the contrived backdrop of a commercial tourist-invention-cum-real-life-spending-playground-for-the-nouveau-riche...we were laughably late to our reservation at providence, almost an hour, because we stopped by ella's to say hi before...the food was great, a gleaming light in the moral abyss of mochi donuts, açaí bowls, and mediocre brunch that normally dots the landscape of central LA...afterwards we went to ori and Lukas's in Los Feliz and took some edibles and drank and watched m&m ad compilations...we ubered home at 3am, totally beat, and ate our Korean leftovers this morning dripping with lethargy and hangover...we had ambitious plans of bottomless brunch which was never going to happen, and now Im sitting at the terminal trying to make it through the next 30 minutes so I can go home, sweet home...I'm ready to be out of here, it was all a flurry but I feel sated now, sometimes you just got to switch things up a little, destabilize for the intrigue, and the spice...and now I have Prada sunglasses...
note to self: stop compulsively verbalizing my anxiety
maybe im watching too much peep show
vibing in sf...yesterday on 420 walking by the Conservatory of Flowers, its city beautiful victorian majesty glowing gold and grey in the hazy afternoon light...so windy yesterday, the trees were thundering above us and we hid under the blankets waiting to weather the storm...
we kicked around a soccer ball and watched a murder of jet black crows pick at the kettlecorn they pillaged from our site...hearing them crunch with their kind of foreboding and eerie beaks...if they decided to come for us we'd be goners...
we saw a comedy show at milk bar the other day, i have a lot of respect for stand-up comedians, it takes so much resilience to stand up there and be un-funny, which you always will be, to someone...sense(s) of humor are so specific, i really felt some empathy for those performers, but maybe that's kind of their bit too, relying on some sort of feigned pathos to inspire some connection with the audience, now that i think of it that way, it could get to be a pretty tired bit...in any case, a fun activity for a chilly early spring evening...
zach and i are in a ceramics class, which is really fun - easy to get zoned in, sort of an ikigai (my mom made me read the book the other day)...mainly im interested in making things we could use, like ceramic wine cups for sitting around the fire, mugs to sip tea, little soup bowls, mushroom ornaments for the backyard...atavistic shot glasses, a set of plates, maybe a tray or two...
jeffrey's way of life has really been inspiring me lately - like freeplay in a video game...a "why not?" or a "you won't" kind of attitude...catherine sent me this article, kind of an adjacent idea:
i'm flying down to LA for dinner tomorrow, basically just an excuse to spend a lot of money for no reason, but points are free money anyway, and cheryl is letting us stay at her place...i'm still skeptical of LA, but somehow the allure is still there (maybe Lukas was right), i guess the pull is that it is the city you love to hate...the aquarian inside me is instinctually revolted by the notion that i could be vulnerable to such a commonplace opinion but i gotta be honest, maybe there is some truth to the bit about LA - as far as american cities go, it does take up a lot of airtime in my internal monologue...and, as much as i denigrate it for its general lack of taste or nuance or depth, i do wind up there quite a bit, and of my own volition too...maybe if you stick to the osetra and miyagi there's less chance of it all going wrong...
yesterday we christened the firepit, our very first fire, sitting on the slabs we brought from south san francisco, which in turn they brought from india...it felt paleolithic and primeval, or maybe the other direction, post-apocalyptic, a quiet warming to end our 420 festivities...
it seems i haven't really had a chance to catch my breath since before our first round of friends arrived, since mid-February...since then its been a whirlwind of travel, excitement, camaraderie, drama...i have a little bit of yearning for a quieter, simpler time, maybe even a nostalgia for the days of a little less sunlight, where we ate berries and cream and had minimal plans, more recently for a second in january and before that in the waning fall...
it seems like a bit of a pipe dream to expect that to come back, what with all our impending visitors and what looks like it will be a vibrant summer ahead, but i have faith that everything will shake out alright, and if not at least i have the confident company of the fog drifting through the city, like an invisible friend shrouding me in the safety and incongruity of liminal space...
hey everyone, everything is great now, in case you were wondering. lovely day in SF! lovely, lovely, lovely! how can all the things still be going wrong and yet everything is still so lovely? something something putting on a different pair of glasses to see the world and yourself...lots of wine...sunshine in the morning...making the city into a village...?
want to have a bartender friend... want to have poets as friends...what a cool thing to be... how romantic! Martin is my only poet friend...Martin, do you know more poets?
everyone feels like they are making moves, life looks so beautiful when all your friends are blossoming... I am so grateful to have such good friends around me, always ready to pick me up when I am down...and ready to feast and celebrate when we are up 🌻
Sunshine Daydream [Veneta, OR, 8/27/72]
hey everyone/no one, i'm back, streaming from the bottom of the ocean, the lowest of the low...today i thought: "grin and bear it!" well, at least now i can grin...
i wouldn't go so far as to say my life is in shambles, but i will say the past few weeks have been farcically bad for me, put me in a real funk. sorry to everyone i haven't responded to, again, im trying to pick up the pieces but im moving kind of slow...
last week i drank some leftover bhaang and went with my cousin to get boba, and when we were standing in the ridiculously slow line at t4 i suddenly felt like a gunman was going to come in and shoot us all dead, targeting asians or what have you...i got so freaked out i had to leave and sit in the car with the doors locked
a few days ago i had a panic attack about dying, i totally freaked out, but i read that thanatophobia is stronger in your 20s, and is often triggered by the death of someone close to you, and that doesn't really make any of it better, but maybe sitting with the discomfort is healthy. i thought, what if when we die, we stay in our bodies, and did my dad feel like he was being burned alive in a small box at the crematorium? if i am cremated, will i scream for help trapped in my futile body while they light me on fire? i looked up the other things you can do with your body, and turns out you can be made into soil, and that calmed me down enough for me to fall asleep.
i feel grateful for the return of function to my mouth. i revisited the handouts from my therapist on envy, like homework, like studying for a class on how to be a functional person. it says, count ALL your blessings - do not exaggerate your shortcomings or discount what you have...i am thankful for a healthy, pain-free body, and i am lucky, because i would be the world's worst patient...
it seems recently like i can't shake this feeling of being an alien, i feel like i'm 14 again and the world is so big and i am trapped and alone. and everyone else does things and i can't do those things, and why, what did i do wrong? i know its ugly to feel sorry for yourself like this but i can't help it. i wonder if my brother feels this way all the time. i wonder if he knows that i feel this way too.
yesterday i fell asleep listening to wharf rat, today im listening to fugazi. all i do is try to be a good person, and do what's right, and help people, and for what? every day i tuck my grandma in at night, every day i stare into the immortalized eyes of my dead father, every day i eat my feelings, every day i am rocked by the turbulent boat that is life. im just trying to get ahold of myself, why is it so damn hard?
when i was in high school, i was so angry and misunderstood. all i had was my music, my journal, myself. i wasn't in control of my time, i didn't have relationships with people i felt good about, and i was trapped inside the four walls of my insane, dangerous, chaotic house. all i had was to look inward, which drove me crazy, but it was all i had. when i left home (maybe earlier, when i fell in love for the first time) i was so excited for this new life that had previously been denied to me: freedom, liberty, fun, unbridled creativity, hedonism. smoking a 5 ft long j in the wine cellar of a mansion in pac heights at a post prom party. playing guitar naked on the deck of my ex's house in west marin on shrooms. getting high as shit with my friends in the empty parking lot of a business park. yeah, i guess a lot of it involved drugs, but also a lot of it was sober. when i moved away to chicago i felt so determined to seek out this life, catch up on my missed years, of love, sex, chaos, genuine friendship, doing whatever i wanted to do. somehow in that pursuit (and in the desire to be socially accepted/successful) i gave up my interior life completely, or at least it was subsumed by the overstimulating social environment of college. when you can dissect everything with friends over dinner right after it happens, there's no need to keep a journal, and i didn't, despite religiously keeping one for 5 years prior. my impending and inevitable existential crisis lasted more than a year, and it just seemed like i couldn't grasp anything that in any way felt like it resembled my identity. quarantine helped that, being forced to just sit with myself for so long made me realize, that, indeed, i did have a self, there was someone there.
anyway, now i feel self-loathing, but i also feel loathing towards others, some genre of misanthropy, and really its welcome, familiar almost. everyone (but not you, friend, reading this) can just buzz off. im going to work on my ceramics, and set up my studio, and finish my mural, and get really good at DJing, and also paint my mirror. 'i am responsible for my own happiness'...trying to think about what my therapist would say. 'worry about things in your control'...easy for you to say, Charese. wonder if the dead have any words of wisdom for me...
"sometimes the light's all shinin' on me...other times, I can barely see..."
like always – "the sun will shine in my back door someday..."
Im sick of being a we guy, I think im going to try on being selfish for a change. like when I decided I was going to be mean in the fall of 2019, when I was like that's it, im so tired of being so nice all the time and for what? for who? im the idiot...I just want to do my things and for myself. I just want to hang out with my mom. I hate scrolling through my email. I hate feeling yanked in all directions by life and others. I dont care about the stupid BA show or 'GRAM WORTHY OUTFIT INSPO and what is a woman-led food hall, anyway? sorry to all the people I haven't responded to, im in extreme physical pain and also im going through it, maybe im emo or maybe these are the signs of opiate addiction, I can't keep any of it straight anymore...Jon says being emo is sick, spoken like no one who's actually been emo before...im sick of everyone, I dont want to deal with it anymore, and for the record, 600mg of ibuprofen and 700mg of acetominophen makes me feel sicker than all the codeine in the world, so take that everyone, im team Big Opium now, and I want to crawl out of my skin, this wisdom teeth saga is just never-ending, and I feel like the ant that I accidentally burned alive in my salt water rinse yesterday. im inured to the taste of blood and I want to take up kickboxing, and I keep thinking about the final scene of scarface, on loop in my head like a GIF.
