A Calendar of Days - 2016

I must decide if it is about the writing of if it is about the words.

The writing is my pet: the notebooks, the pens, the script, the careful spacing, the different styles.

Julia

Faye

Chase. I’m suddenly thinking about him again since I’m going to Cali with Paul soon. I told Diego about it (the whole embarrassing Chase clusterfuck) and he was really an angel. Was ideal. Was again a greater man than I expected him to be. Diego is real and Chase is an image, a palimpsest of how I perceive my loss.

Here again I am turned off by the form of the words on the screen. My own writing in my own journal is obviously personal, and clearly private. Here, accessible from the internet anywhere, hackable, findable, and, worse, indelible, there is more at stake with these thought experiments.

genderswap

Maybe apathetic, maybe resigned, or ashamed, but not interested in rekindling any sort of romantic or even a nonromantic relationship.

What’s more, as this man, I have a new girlfriend who I love and who, while she isn’t the old girlfriend and doesn’t replace her or eliminate the memory of first love, is in many ways more reliable and stable and suited to me than the old girlfriend. I respect my new girlfriend more and she definitely respects me more, so I wouldn’t trade her for the old girlfriend for anything.

I like this first way because as I practice it, “if I were a man” serves as a euphemism for “if i felt sexually powerful and in charge, and if had a self-concept free from the burden of strong self-association with romantic relationships”

positionswap

If I were a man and I had dated a girl a long time ago, and that girl and gone nuts on me, and I had been confused and scared when we went to college, and we broke up and she seemed to be completely off the deep end, and kept trying to call me all the time in the middle of the night and send me love letters, but she also slept with my best friend and was cold about it, and then seemed to just bounce around tragically between different men for a while... and then when I did see her she really obviously wanted to get with me, like throwing herself at me, and I was weak and I succumbed, but it felt emotionally terrible and I wasn’t interested in getting involved with her whole basket of nuts, so I didn’t call her back, If I had my own stuff to deal with, and a different style of mess that I couldn’t get around...

Then, if I’m going to see her because she’s coming with a friend of mine to visit the town where I’ve just moved, then I’ll be civil and maybe interested to see how she’s doing, but in more of a detached way, knowing that it is no good trying to get close to someone who is so volatile and with whom I have so many bad memories. I am more concerned with all the new changes in my life.

The second way is unpleasant but useful, a grueling practice in empathy. It’s like dialectics somehow.

Woke up early but then slept most of the day, woke up at four thirty and ate, cleaned. My room is still not perfect and Kid’s side is a mess, but i’m getting really close and almost ready to put myself to bed again.

Fwiw I didn’t write about it but got I got my first tattoo in March, the fifteenth I think. It’s an open eye (to look directly at things).

School starts tomorrow.

First day of school, Wednesday.

10-11 physics mechanics Painter Hall 2.48
11-12 programming Painter Hall 3.02
2-5 physics mechanics lab Painter Hall 2.48
Career Services walk-in hours 3:00-4:30 Painter Hall 5.03

Physics was fine, we’re using Quest for weekly homework and there’s a text we’re supposed to read before class. I like the professor and everything seems pretty straight forward- put in the work and get the grade.

Now waiting for CS to start, it’s a big lecture and the crowd looks pretty chill. Plenty of women. I’m liking using this new asus, it fits perfectly in my messenger bag.

No computers are allowed in CS, and the prof says, “if you have a heavy courseload this will definitely be a big stone around your neck” oh great.

Sitting on a windowsill now in Sutton hall, where the architecture graduate students greet each other after their summer of internships, excited to be in the same classes, so and so looks so different, etc.

So much
Took Diego to bed at 8:15 last night and there we stayed, talking, laughing, making love, discussing our future and it’s sadness

Today i’m happy, and everybody can tell.
Several people approach me on the street.

I saw the old man DJ Twitch at the post office and he told me about KPWR and the difficulties they’re having keeping the signal up and the moving their large transmitter to different secret locations.

More people
Lance the Medici barista wears a long black dress says he’s a gym rat.
Rick I met at the 24th street artists market.

Tu-uyen was in the hallway of Waggener when i went to deliver Diego’s sandwich.