Diary 09

LIKES:
NPR
turkish figs
fire
nudity
long wispy hair, short bangs
mustard yellow
oats
rocking chairs
dim light
mail
autofiction
butter and honey
velvet
swimming
glass jars
weighted blanket
rain in sunlight
rain in gutters
hiking boots
triscuits

01.08.21

Cooking became essential to my resilience this last year. There’s a moment when the meal is plated and wine is poured that serves as a quick reminder of my buoyancy. I think of all the ways in which I see others adapting to the current moment through restorative practices, cooking being a really common one right now.

Does self-sufficiency really exist?
“My sense is that what’s at stake here is really rethinking the human as a site of interdependency. And I think, you know, when you walk into the coffee shop … and you ask for the coffee, or you, indeed, even ask for assistance with the coffee, you’re basically posing the question, do we or do we not live in a world in which we assist each other? Do we or do we not help each other with basic needs? And are basic needs there to be decided on as a social issue and not just my personal, individual issue or your personal, individual issue? So there’s a challenge to individualism that happens at the moment in which you ask for some assistance with the coffee cup. And hopefully, people will take it up and say, yes, I, too, live in that world … in which I understand that we need each other in order to address our basic needs. And I want to organize a social, political world on the basis of that recognition.”
-Judith Butler in Examined Life

01.09.21

I haven’t been on a run in over four months. A woman was stabbed to death at my favorite local trail and I’ve been jarred since, went cold turkey on a routine that I had had every day since moving to California. With fear pervading so much of our experience right now, this one really drove me into quarantine. So much grief and anguish that finally laid bare after the most intimate and seemingly “safe” space outside of my home was invaded, so I’ve retreated to yoga on my bedroom floor.

01.12.21

“stylized disarray”- gel in a boy’s hair
I tend towards writers that write the same as they speak, and inversely. I often find that others weakly structure their work on experiences they haven’t had, totally fail to incorporate their personal narrative into the story and so unconsciously, and wrongly, assume someone else’s, which arguably totals the work, makes it ineffective. A simple sign of that occurring is when the author’s oral and written speech fail to align. I think you can gauge authenticity through that failure or kinship.

01.27.21

Hiking at Lake Calavera:
a park ranger with pink skin & aviators
murky pools of rainwater
rolling dried rosemary between my palms
scat
orange sand

“When an experience can be named, it can be communicated and even shared. Learning to express new or previously unrecognised constellations of feelings, sensations, and thoughts, builds an emotional repertoire, which assists in emotional regulation. Naming and expressing experiences allows us to claim some agency in dealing with them.”
Jonathan L. Zecher, “Acedia: the lost name for the emotion we’re all feeling right now.” The Conversation, 8/26/2020.