Notes 2
I’ve lost my journal, which somehow means my emotions are more immediate. They bubble to the surface faster.
Yesterday, I made worms for a class on lighting. The worms are supposed to be carrying toast. And I’m supposed to take a picture of that. Initially, I thought that using real worms would be unfair to the worms, whom I wanted to pose. So I spent $50 on ingredients to make little edible worms. I think I messed up the recipe because the cream curdled when I poured it into the hot red mixture. I don’t know if it matters because I’m not eating them.
Apparently Israel is dumping white phosphorous onto Gaza. That’s no good. And my friend sends me an article calling Israel out for human rights violations. War is bad. I read a pacifist friend’s tweet, remembering that I was once a pacifist. A robust pacifist, not like a passive pacifist, as I learned in an ethics class or two. But I’m not sure my commitment to some ethical ideology matters at all, as I sit staring at my phone across the globe from the beginnings of a small war.
One of my friends, this morning, shared with me an Instagram video of an autistic dad who owned a bunch of matching sweaters, a bunch of matching shoes, and a collection of art books by one artist. My friend suggested that him and I have the same type of autism. I own sweaters, and own an art book or two, and mostly own converse shoes. So I took a test. I do not have autism.
One of my friends posted about attachment styles and sexual needs. It seems more and more like all relational behavior is somehow reducible to four words: Anxious, avoidant, disorganized, and secure. I wonder if internalized homophobia is a more useful lens for viewing gay men’s relational issues than a broad identification with one of those four attachment words. I wonder why people are so quick to diagnose the differences they see in others.
One of my friends noticed that I was reading philosophy the other day. I read it when I’m anxious, to slow my brain down. And I posted on Instagram that I saw a correspondence between the structure of religious thought and some arguments in post-structuralist writings. It’s striking because although postmodernism and post-structuralism are not the same, many religious people critique the post-structuralist writers (naming them “postmodernists”) as anti-religious. And I posted how interesting it was that sometimes “religious” writers don’t really have a “religious” structure of thought, and that “non-religious” writers seem to have an incredibly religious structure of thought. One of my friends facetimed me, asking if I was okay.
A partial eclipse happened this morning, when I walked outside to feed the dogs. They continued to bark at me, as I stared and noticed how specular the lighting had become outside. I wondered, looking at the shadows, what made the sun seem smaller and less diffuse. The dogs barked loudly. One has a cone on his head, and he bumped into me and the other dog, blocking my way to feed him. I gave them extra food today, while staring up at the sun, wondering what was going on.
I gave my friend a life update. He told me that it sounded like a fever dream. If I continue to publish notes like this, it is because life seems disordered to me right now, and I feel an urge to report as a draft, as immediately as it comes.