diary (aug. 7-31)
aug. 31, 2020
/fragments/
-My laptop camera has not been working for a couple of months now and with classes starting I need to be able to have it on to be a part of some of them. I went to try and get it fixed, was suggested to go back to factory settings, I tried doing it myself and fucked it up. Had to take my computer once again to get fixed and the camera still doesn't work. I'll have to send it to Apple for them to figure out but honestly I don't know if I can go very long without my laptop right now, the past few days were stressful enough. S. let me borrow her laptop when I needed it but there was quite a bit of tension at times when we both needed to get work done or just wanted to cool down from a long day. It was especially bad because my phone's battery was completely shot so using it to do anything was futile. Yet, yesterday I was able to get a new phone so that was nice. Anyway, technology sucks except for when it doesn't.
-Spent Thursday night working on my books for bookbinding class. Now have to start thinking about my final project and have no idea what I want to do. I could just gather up some poems but that seems too easy.
-Friday night and Saturday morning were spent grading for my job. I'm looking for another job, got an email today with a library possibility so gonna check that out.
-The website for the lit mag I'm working for just went live yesterday, find it on my index page. Called Liminal Transit Review, gonna be the associate poetry editor. I'm really excited to work in a group of people with really similar editing goals/philosophies and get to be a part of the creation of this mag.
-Saturday night a couple of friends got together for a "social distanced" hangout in the backyard we share with Cole's apartment building. I stood a little farther away from people because I was paranoid about not following health guidelines but I did have a good time. It tired me out faster than usual, not used to hanging out with others for long periods of time anymore.
-Smelled clove cigarettes for the first time in a long time. Was offered one but declined.
-Learned yesterday that Lysol was originally marketed as a douche product.
-Grace's birthday was on Friday, she got a tattoo from Wicked (the book). Had a nice over the phone hangout session with her on Sunday. Talked about trying to sync up our playthroughs of "Night in the Woods" this year. It's officially a fall tradition. In late October it will be a year since S. and I have hung out with Grace in person.
-Antonio and I are trying to schedule our first zoom recording of the podcast. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a mess but it will be fun.
-S. and I have been re-listening to favorite Coldplay songs and trying to figure out why people have made us feel ashamed for liking them. I remember being told by a white teacher that I couldn't like Coldplay because they're a white people band. That teacher is now the principal of my old high school. Today I watched an interview with Coldplay's lead singer where he said that he was sure kids were getting made fun of for liking their music so he was going to try his best to make it so those kids could be proud of liking it. That was right before the release of "Viva La Vida." Don't get me wrong, I can be a music snob but I also don't believe in "guilty pleasures" (a term especially used to shame women and femme people for liking things). I like early Coldplay, sue me.
-Both Coldplay and cigarettes make me nostalgic for the year I lived in France.
-Listened to all of "Tallahassee" this morning while doing chores before S. got back from a doctor's appointment.
-Finished reading "The Hate U Give" yesterday, loved it. I want to watch the movie soon.
-"We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds."-Chekhov
aug. 27, 2020
I'm not gonna specify this because honestly it could be a comment on so many things that have happened in the past few months with media I enjoy: I'm tired. Just, yeah, I'm tired of people ruining things with their problematic views and hurting others.
aug. 26, 2020
Went to sleep wanting to listen to a song and woke up to do so:
The past few months I've been listening to a lot of the Mountain Goats and Phoebe Bridgers. I'm very accustomed to using my walks to listen to new music but that happens so rarely now.
Another day spent reading for my classes. I had a moment of extreme anxiety that made it difficult for me to think so I focused on my breathing and went to sleep. This is my main tactic for self-preservation and self-sabotage.
Read a really interesting article about how libraries are seen as sacred places and the origins of these perceptions coming from the Catholic Church. It also goes over white-supremacy in libraries as focused through middle class suburban white women who dominate the field.
"Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves" by Fobazi Ettarh
My blue nail polish has arrived.
Holmes made a beautiful circle in the grass with his rope when I first took him out this morning. It lasted for around 10 seconds. White rope encircling green grass.
aug. 25, 2020
I think I've decided that every day in September I will write a scene of a short play on here, whether that is adding on to "the hive, the den, the nest." or something else. I love doing a thing a day projects like national poetry month when I write a poem a day, there is something really satisfying about completing a creative act quickly without the worry of it being "good" or "perfect." I started this month with a similar hope for #TheSealeyChallenge but I also think that with these type of goals it's important to realize your limits.
Watched episode 2 of "Lovecraft Country" this morning and I was happy to be proven wrong about my initial anxieties that were caused by the end of the pilot. I love when characters are able to learn about their situations from remembering or recounting things from media that they have experienced, in this case being horror/fantasy/scifi/pulp novels. I also really enjoy the way that different speeches/work of prominent Black artists is utilized to score particular scenes, showing the meta textual existence of the show and Black art. There is some uncomfortable bible stuff in episode 2 so yeah, not loving that.
Speaking of uncomfortable bible stuff-- and please, I know that what comes next seems like it's from out of nowhere but give me the benefit of the doubt-- I believe that if Judas Iscariot ever existed and actually was a follower of Jesus Christ (who I doubt existed) he did not commit suicide. A few weeks ago I was laying down during a depressive episode and listening to the song "Cry for Judas" by the Mountain Goats and the following lyrics came up: "Hallucinate a shady grove where Judas went to die." I'd listen to this song before but it was the first time that the image sank in and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Judas did not commit suicide. Yes, the gnostic gospel "Book of Judas" goes into the whole thing that Judas was the only disciple who actually "understood" the lessons of Jesus, but I'm more interested in what happens to someone who has betrayed a beloved friend and how they come to terms with that decision. I have not been religious for over a decade, yet as a Latinx person catholicism is baked into so many of the constructs that guide family life. I think that the Catholic church does not want people to learn that they could learn to forgive themselves over time, that they could understand what they did wrong but learn from it. In my mind Judas was not present for the crucifixion but he did end up having a family, happy with where he ended up. Why am I obsessed with this? I don't know, I just know that when it comes to mind I become consumed by it. This summer has been fucked up.
A list of the only phrases I've thought about getting tattoos of:
-Hallucinate a shady grove where Judas went to die
-That heart is my heart
Bonus: "playing a banjo in a forest with mediocre vocals layered in fucking unison is not an emotion i am capable of."-rateroratero
Spent most of today reading about the lack of racial diversity that exists in books for children/young adults. My class about social justice for young people started today, our conversation revolved around the current statistics that exist about the publishing industry and this topic. Apparently there are more books for kids being published every year that revolve around animals/trucks than about BIPOC (and yes, the category is called "animals/trucks"). It's exciting to talk about these topics in a place that has been created to be a learning platform so mistakes are to be expected and from the interaction I've had with the other students it seems like many are open to thinking critically about social justice topics. Began reading "The Hate U Give," excited to finally get to it.
One of the options for that class's final project is making a bibliography of books around a certain subject and I was brainstorming maybe focusing on books for 5-10 year olds about non-capitalist forms of existence or maybe mindfulness. Got a couple of weeks before I need to nail my idea down.
S. woke me up from a nap to go on a quick Target run and it was a surreal experience being half-awake in that store. The models with no faces were much less frightening than usual. Saw some geese in the parking lot and thought about the necessity of patience around animals--there was a movement in town to gather up all the geese and kill them because they were stopping traffic but thankfully that was shut down. I love when animals force us to slow down.
I have several overdue library books.
aug. 24, 2020
I keep meaning to write about Animal Crossing. I will do so today. (I just wrote a shit ton about Animal Crossing and that genre of game, the role they have played in the past couple years in my life but it didn't feel right. The tl;dr is basically: I like games that impose a structure when I feel that it has been lost in my life, such as the beginning of quarantine. Then they run their course until I feel lost again, this time for progression. That's when I put energy into creative projects or work or whatever. Stardew Valley is still my favorite of that genre of slow gaming.)
A list of the only poem lines I've written that I can remember word for word:
- your worms are not my worms
- i walk through the fire engine hum in love
- sometimes good things happen sometimes bad things happen and sometimes there are butterflies
- my mother fucked lightning and i came out of a pant leg what else do you expect from the midwest
Everything I write right now seems off for some reason, somehow intensely performative. Today was spent organizing my schoolwork, getting materials for my bookbinding class, listening to "I Said No Gifts with Bridger Winegar," finishing scene 1 of "the hive, the den, the nest." and attending my bookbinding class over zoom. It's the class I'm most excited about this semester because I've been wanting to experiment in bookbinding for about a year now and finally have the resources to do so.
I keep thinking about how I suffer from chronic pain but rarely call it chronic. I've been playing off my back pain for almost six years now but just now do I call it what it is. It's similar to the way it took me years to call myself trans even though I was okay with the terms genderfluid/genderqueer. I both love identity language and hate it.
A song about chronic pain i heard for the first time today.
Our society feels somewhat overdosed on nostalgia and quarantine has intensified it with nostalgia for pre-quarantine time. It feels like being inside a box looking through a small hole at the inside of yet another box.
Had my first night walk in a while: picked up some booze, allergy meds, milk and a small halloween skeleton.
p.s. xavier, I really liked the first episode until the ending which left me somewhat concerned. I'm gonna watch the second episode soon in the hope's that I'm proven wrong about my initial reaction. I love the main character Tic, it's amazing to see BIPOC characters who are into genre fiction. Also, I hope you arrived safely to your destination!
a song about worms i spent a solid fifteen minutes looking for
aug. 23, 2020
Before falling asleep last night I thought about maybe writing short plays here on flounder. I might experiment with that idea.
I am quite anxious about classes starting tomorrow on campus and how we will most likely see a rise in covid cases. S. and I talked for a while about how even though I am starting something new tomorrow (my first day of library school) it doesn't really feel like much. Of course that has to do with the way everything seems either dampened or extremely enhanced to a painful extent right now. I like that this will serve as a record to my time during the pandemic since I think it'll be easy to try to just forget how things changed.
Spent a lot of time on flounder today working on a list of media that I want to experience at some point and a page for the plays I mentioned above. I create a list like this every six months or so in the hopes of having somewhere I can go when I'm bored and find something to do. Usually the lists are in my notebook so they get lost in everything else that I write down. My mind goes into these states of organization in which I begin to lose time.
There is a part of me that feels somewhat uncertain about sharing the lists I have made here because the possibility of other people's judgements. Still, I will continue making and updating them because if anyone wishes to ever discuss things that show up on them I am more than happy to have that conversation.
S. and I watched the last two Harry Potter movies in the evening. It's been so long since I've seen them so there was some of that excitement when you experience something for the first time regained. This summer has been full of dealing with difficult emotions about the author of Harry Potter but today things kind of came into perspective after I watched the first episode of "Lovecraft Country." The main character, Tic, gets asked about a book that he is reading and the fact that the character in that story is an ex-Confederate soldier. Tic then says, "Stories are like people. Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You just try and cherish 'em, overlook their flaws." The other character replies, "Yeah, but the flaws are still there." "Yes, they are."
I don't think that what is being said is especially revolutionary but the comparison of stories to people is where my mind was captured.
aug. 22, 2020
One of my first thoughts today was trying to remember the exact wording of the last line to Ilya Kaminsky's "While The Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses": You can/fuck anyone--but with whom can you sit/in water?
Spent most of today doing my grading job. I never want to hear about Clorox or Burt's Bees ever again. S. and I had a nice zoom conversation tonight with Antonio, discussing rap music, the role of family, and the enjoyment Antonio and I get from flounder's small community and design.
Received the test results back, negative for covid.
Today S. learned from a podcast and retold me the story about Michael Sheen's dad, who was a Jack Nicholson impersonator. Sheen also appeared in the Twilight movies just because his daughter loved the book series and only knew about his character through her descriptions. S. and I skipped through the whole Twilight movie series last night just to watch our favorite scenes. The weirdest thing is the older I get the more I like Charlie, Bella's dad.
It sounds like someone is trying to tune a trombone in the middle of the street.
aug. 21, 2020
Got tested for covid once again, waiting for results. Town is filling back up with undergrads that aren't wearing masks or taking social distancing seriously so going out can be a tense ordeal. We went grocery shopping after 6 but everywhere seemed to be full.
I ignored my work pretty much all day, a static over everything. I keep having the reoccurring thought "toss the rot," something that Xav mentioned in their diary entry for today. It feels like a very accurate way to describe these days.
aug. 20, 2020
Spent too long going through twitter replies for Burt's Bees. Mostly positive except for one person mad about the fact they are now owned by Clorox and two people who misread "hand salve."
Got another sandwich from Cheese and Crackers, it was the "Every day is Thanksgiving." I was disappointed by the little amount of cranberry sauce on it.Got Mexican food for dinner.
Depression has hit somewhat hard today. Watched "I Love Everything," Patton Oswalt's newest stand up special. It made me miss live shows but it was good, especially the Denny's bit.
aug. 19, 2020
Found out that Nelson Mandela had personalized Garfield stationary and can't stop thinking about it.
Two zoom calls today, both of them part of library school orientation. I'm excited to get started with classes--hopefully the added structure will help me stabilize.
I've been thinking about how the mental process of going to sleep has changed since quarantine started. As I lay down I scan my body for areas in which pain or stress resides. For the longest time I have wanted to deny having a body but slowly am becoming re-acquainted with it. When I scan I focus especially on my hands, feet and back. This attention allows for some of the pain to dissipate and I fall asleep in the process.
My grandfather called and we chatted for a while about how he's doing after a surgery he had last month. He's walking around and feeling better but seems incredibly bored since he can't do all the projects he's used to, like woodworking and fixing stuff around the house. We talked mostly about covid and about Puerto Rican culture. At some point the conversation pivoted to my grandmother which is pretty common between the two of us.
I'm at the library now, trying to get organized for this semester. It's been an overtly positive day.
interesting video on black cemeteries and why black and white funeral homes are still separate
tMG song i'm listening on repeat while working
aug. 18, 2020
Just learned that there is a "Saved by the Bell" reboot coming out and I have mixed feelings about it. I watched the original series on most mornings before school from 4th to 8th grade. It was on rotation along with "Family Matters," "Boy Meets World" and "Full House." I never got into the "Boy Meets World" or "Full House" reboots so I don't think the "Saved By the Bell" one has any chance.
Got the results from my covid test, negative. All clear! Bought six e-books from AK Press and ordered pens mentioned in the article below.
article about pens and writing letters during quarantine
I invited my friends Antonio and Al to join flounder! today.
Check out Antonio's page here.
The day included two zoom calls, one about starting library school and the other for my grading job, which starts in full swing tomorrow. In the evening, after cleaning the kitchen, I baked banana bread to use some bananas that had been almost forgotten.
aug. 17, 2020
Al received the books I sent him and seemed excited to read them. The books included: "Some Animal" by Ely Shipley, "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green, "The Year of Blue Water" by Yanyi, and "Exit West" by Mohsin Hamid.
S. hung a ceramic piece she's working on upside down so that it would not slump or lose its shape. A little frustrated I didn't get as much as I planned done today, but honestly it'll be fine. Got tested for covid and was asked to spit more into a tube because my first attempt was not enough for a conclusive test. Still waiting for the results. Did spend a few hours playing Hollow Knight.
chill music i listened to before a stressful meeting
"arrow" by jeffrey lewis, covered by rosie tucker
aug. 16, 2020
The morning carried a calm air to it but I knew that was gonna break at some point, leading to anxiety.
Thinking about how a friend of mine ordered bagels from a place in NYC a couple of months into the pandemic and they were incorrectly delivered to a nursing home that said the bagels were attacked and eaten by squirrels.
Ordered some stamps that will hopefully inspire me to write more to friends/finish some of the zine ideas I have. They include some halloween, some moon, and some art stamps.
Just saw a gif set from the Mandalorian, which I haven't watched yet. I realized I have no idea what the story is about. Due to the gif set I can only assume it's the story of a single father taking care of a yoda.
one of the few things that chills me out right now
aug. 15, 2020
Woke up early, around 5, and decided to watch the HBO documentary series "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" about Michelle McNamara and the Golden State Killer. I read her book a little after he pleaded guilty to the crimes he did back in the 70s. I watched all six episodes of the series today and it covers a lot of the same ground as the book but also goes into what has happened since catching the GSK and McNamara's own dependence on certain medications that led to her death. The last episode made me cry because they showed a party held by survivors of the GSK, how they were so kind to each other and supportive. It was beautiful.
Went to the post office with S. to mail some books to my friend Al. It's been on my to-do list for weeks to send him these books and I hope they get there in time before he's scheduled to leave for Spain. He got a special visa to leave during the pandemic, and I think he'll get a lot out of those books. Phoebe Bridger's "Punisher" vinyl arrived today and am listening to it currently. The turntable seems to be having some issues with the second side so I'll have to check that out later. It's skipping around on the first track of side b, "ICU".
I went to the public library to pick up a book and took some time to just walk around the stacks. It was very calming and I missed doing that a lot the past few months.
I finished building the compost tumbler and plan to go out later to get the first batch of compost going. I've been thinking a lot about the rotting process since reading Caitlin Doughtery's books on the mortuary arts and am actually excited to experience it through this.
aug. 14, 2020
/snippets/
-Began my morning by listening to podcasts about the Delphi murders in Delphi, Indiana. I've slowly become more interested in true crime since the beginning of this year and I'm still trying to understand why. The one case my brain keeps going back to after having first heard about it is the Corpsewood murders, where two gay men who had built their dream home out of nothing were killed by neighbors. For the longest time I avoided true crime because of the way it was presented but that seems to be changing.
-Last night S. and I had a conversation about the poetry zine I've been working on for over a year to get out the first issue. I worry that I will not be able to find others who believe in an inherit love for writing and its necessary separation from capitalist structures. The more time I was at my MFA being told that I should work on professionalizing and looking to "progress" in my writing career the more I was reminded that the true joy in all of this for me comes from small projects that are free and done just to make something for people to hold in their hands. It's that simple, I think.
-Good news! I will be assistant poetry editor for an online publication that will be launching soon. More on this in the future.
-I plan to re-watch the Hulu series "High Fidelity" and write a review for Daily Drunk Mag as a type of obituary.
-I was at Petsmart watching a couple playing with their chihuahua mix when I remembered that I want to buy some new nail polish soon. Something blue.
-Got a sandwich (called the "Rulebreaker") for lunch from a local deli called "Cheese and Crackers."
-Started building new compost tumbler while S. went on a bike ride. We had dinner afterwards that included a vegan calzone and vegan cheese sticks.
an article about queer self-acceptance during quarantine that i've been slowly reading all day
music video i was thinking about while washing my hair today
dungeon synth to study/work/sleep/etc. to
aug. 13, 2020
A couple days ago I learned how commercial mushroom farms work. That's all on that.
Yesterday was spent finishing the online training for my job. Our friend Antonio, one of the few people we've been hanging out with during quarantine, stopped by to say goodbye. Antonio and their boyfriend are moving to Iowa for grad school and work and it's taken until this moment for it to really sink in how much this matters to me. Antonio has been one of my closest friends for over five years now and we moved to Illinois together after undergrad. Our creative lives have revolved around each other for almost as long, collaborating on the They/Them Podcast and comics and an album that Antonio is currently finishing. We were roommates for a year and that led to possibly the hardest period of our friendship. Things evolved to something that I'm very proud of yet we are back to trying to figure out how our friendship will continue.
After Antonio left S. and I zoomed with a few other friends and at one point were craving ice cream so we decided to go on a Dairy Queen run while continuing the call. We hotspotted the computer from Stephanie's phone and drove around town while chatting. That was fun because of course we could of done it on our phones but there was something odd about having the whole laptop and going through a drive-thru.
Nothing much to report on today.
aug. 11, 2020
I recently got a job as a grader for a business course at a university so today I worked on the online training for a few hours. I wanted to try and read a book of poetry every day of this month as part of the Sealey Challenge that's happening on twitter and instagram but I came to the realization that I just can't do it. The first few days were pretty easy but my schedule is about to fill up soon with classes starting-- also, to be honest, there's a lot of other books that I would prefer to read right now, maybe I'll write about them in the future.
The past couple of days my partner has slowly been getting me to watch Downton Abbey which for the longest time I avoided because it was reminiscent of all the terrible British novels I had to read for school. I've started to enjoy it for a number of reasons: it's prime escapism as a period piece (we're currently at the episodes where they're dealing with the Spanish Flu, so it burst that bubble slightly), the characters are honestly very well written and charming, and Maggie Smith can act circles around everyone else with just the lift of an eyebrow.
The first good news in a while was announced today, a new Mountain Goats album is coming out in October.
Our new neighbors left us a note with their phone numbers in case of emergency, the paper they wrote it on had a place to checkmark the way you wanted to "check out" that day, whether with alcohol, drugs, etc. We left it blank.
aug. 9, 2020
I spent most of today exploring the reasons behind some anger I've been harboring the past couple weeks, a lot of it seems to come from just the general uncertainty about quarantine/Covid/etc. I'm trying to figure out some way to process the anger, maybe exercising or start therapy back up.
aug. 8, 2020
Obsessed with how the toy microphone is not attached to anything in Phoebe Bridgers's performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Finally made it to the next area on Hollow Knight, getting past the learning curve that stopped me the first time through. Got a vegan calzone from D.P. Dough which was overly spicy but worth the pain.
aug. 7, 2020
Today's been quiet in a lot of ways, emotionally more stagnate than in the recent past (which is honestly appreciated). Went to pick up my stuff from a performance art piece I did for a group show at a local art gallery: pink boxing hand wraps and the little piece of poster board with my name and titles. The show started at the end of December and was going to be open up until now but that meant several months went by were no one was able to visit the gallery. I listened to my friends Amy and Grace's podcast, the BFAF Podcast, on my walk to and from the gallery so that was nice. Spent some time working on my flounder page which was very relaxing.
I almost forgot! I spent a couple hours playing Hollow Knight and I'm still struggling of getting into the groove of it. I've owned the game for over a year and still haven't gotten past the third boss fight.
/diary/