Notebooks 1
March 18th, 2026 20:45
I am in my room in my apartment on Carrer Aragó. I am eating a dinner of pasta, pesto, cherry tomatoes, and spinach. For some reason I have decided to start digitizing some excerpts from the notebooks I have kept over the years. I am making the decision of what to include and exclude right now, as each cherry tomato bursts under the pressure of my fork, as I run my tongue over the grimy residue of spinach left on my teeth.
March 5th, 2015. 18:25:44
June 9th, 2016
The scariest thought: A suddenly acquires dementia, does crosswords all day in his room with the fan on.
July 2016
I think about gentleness, the idea of Junior's Cheesecake, as I see a man walk into Karma Cream, alone, order a small cup of vanilla ice cream, sit down at a 4-person table to eat the ice cream, alone, nothing else on the table to distract him. He is wearing business clothes and glasses that help with seeing close up. He eats quickly, drinks a glass of water, and leaves.
How can I be nicer to people? I want to change parts of myself, start over, but it's so hard when one's identity is cemented into place from being in a relationship. I want (I always want)(I have always wanted) to be nicer, quieter,
July 2016
Kiarostami says it's not fair to make the audience cry. He says "What did they do to deserve that?" I for one have done a lot of things.
July 22nd, 2016
I want to start some blog detailing my thoughts about particular readings that I do, thoughts about travel, literature, art, etc. I have this urge to make what I am doing public. Writing my thoughts about what I read will also allow me to develop my thoughts more, make reading more meaningful, and maybe also prepare me for grad school. If I end up going to Spain I can justify that as the study abroad experience I never had.
While I have this public blog I also want to be able to keep a private journal. However, I am afraid that this will encourage a division between private and personal life, and will either discourage intermingling of the two, or encourage repetition.
This may have to do with the fact that I feel less observant to the IMC1 and Poetry when I read theory/anthropolgy/whatever, because one of its motives is to construct generalizations and explanations. And it doesn't account for the weirdness of everyday life. Which is what I want to be able to document.
I think there is virtue in documenting the quotidian, but I am not interested in explaining why, because
July 2016
July 2016
Goodbye Gainesville, Baker Baker, the Hawthorne Trail, the Teal House Garden, my chenile plant, crickets and frogs at night, armadillo roadkill, spiritual moms, front porches, Jimmy John's bike delivery, shows at Display, Gainesville Regional Utilities, people at Library West unstacking chairs in the morning, sunshowers, Krishna Lunch, brown widow spiders in the windowsill, Ward's grocery store, the later gator rotator, the abandoned blueberry farm, empty summers, the above ground pool,
My chenile plant
August 18th, 2016. 9AMish
Stayed up really late last night and listened to a lot of the songs Austin Harrouf2 had uploaded to his Youtube. I don't know why I kept listening. I was picking out snippets that mentioned his drug use, violent thoughts, depression and fear of going insane, and trying to distinguish between the exaggerated fantasies of a 19 year-old weightlifting frat bro, and an actual signal that he would later kill people.
It was scaring me, listening to those animal noises dispersed throughout his songs, growling and snarling, as if someone were in my room, about to pounce on me. I was afraid to roll over, afraid to lower the blanket from my shoulders even though I was hot. When I was little I used to scare myself into believing that some serial killer was inside my house, just on the other side of my bed. Why did I do that? Why am I doing it now? There's most likely no one there, so why don't you just calm down? Turn over? Take the sheets off of your shoulders? Was I crazy? I thought, paralyzed, watching the lightning but no rain flicker through the trees. Do I have a predisposition for craziness? I thought about that dream I had where I was schizophrenic and had killed my parents, and how nothing had made sense during or after that dream, when I was watching the candle flickering in the corner and listening to A talk in his sleep. Why was the candle there, why was I there, why couldn't I move? There aren't any answers to these questions because they're not good questions, but I was asking them and getting scared. Was I crazy? Hearing things that seem to come from outside my head when I'm trying to fall asleep. Is this evidence that I have some pre-existing condition that will develop into something more severe later? When I was younger, still in a stroller, I used to hear these breathy voices I thought were coming from clouds.
Another childhood pre-sleep dream: I am looking at a beautiful field, clear and green like the default windows background, but brighter, and on one side a white chapel, with angels and a rainbow. A sound comes from the angels, a pure tone, like the ring of a bell that never ends. On the other side of the field is filth, what lives underneath the playground, evil and chaotic, pine needles and dirt and splinters and honeycomb, tangled hair with chewing gum in it, a jumbled and violent crashing sound, like a xylophone falling down the stairs.
I remember these visions would make me laugh, and I had them a couple times. It haunts me now, the beams of light that emanate from the word "simple", a fresh splash in a glass of cool water.
Where does this come from? Again, am I crazy? I was realizing this was one of my biggest fears, as I lay there alone in my bed, surrounded by books and pens. Is believing I could actually become a translator just a delusion? Is that just part of my mild psychosis? Am I destined to be a serial hobbyist for the rest of my life? Hang out at Starbucks all day and autodidact but never achieve antyhing? Is that what being a little crazy is, like that guy in the library who "has his own theories" about what's at the center of the earth, sits there and reads sci-fi fantasy novels all day? Isn't that basically me?
Is Clarice Lispector "crazy"? Anyone would consider that level of introspection crazy if they weren't a writer.
August 18th, 2016. 1PM, Reading The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares.
ABC writes about the parts of the island with ravines, aquatic plants, other biogeographical phenomena. Of course this excites me, because I immediately think of representing that visually. But I've come to the point where I don't even imagine it in detail anymore, just the possibility of it being represented is exciting enough for me, so that all there needs to be now is just the suggestion of biodiversity, and I get excited. Just the word "plants" excites me, because all I could do with that word, but never actually do.
Thus: every day I see why poetry is so cool & good.
August 25th, 2016. Morning. Reading Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector
How can just reading words, these sentences that have nothing to do with me, still give me such pleasure? Just to pass my eyes over them and think about their effects gives me shocks of joy. I think I am starting to understand poetry.
She's not without flaws, though. Like the parts where she talks about how her writing does this or that in a very Lil Wayne boastful kind of way. "I am improvising and in my improvisation I create dazzling kaleidoscopes..."
August 25th, 2016. 10pmish
What would happen if I tried to get some of my earlier writings published? Would that ruin the integrity of my writing, by fucking with the very reason I write? (: for pleasure, for working out problems, to distill my thoughts, to create steps to get to other thoughts, for posterity and compassion with future self, for the IMC, to atune myself to Poetry, to find joy in solitude, the strength to rely on myself, to discover the origin of values and interests). What if I only published the really old stuff-- like I had a rule I couldn't even publish anything until 10 years had passed. Now that's a good rule.
I imagine, at some interview, someone saying: Do you have any advice for young writers? And I would say: I never meant to be a writer, I wasn't doing this with the goal of being a published writer in my mind. I think if I had, my writing would have come out very differently, and I would have come out differently as well. I guess all I can say is never stop checking in on yourself, making sure you're always following your own IMC, whatever that means for you. Whatever you end up doing, be it writing, drawing, studying astrophysics, loving somebody, whatever, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, whatever those are for you...
Are there people who regularly buy flowers?
From an interview with Clarice:
I'm not a professional, I'm an amateur, and I intend to stay that way. A professional has a professional commitment to writing. Or a commitment to someone else. As for me, I insist on not being a professional writer, to keep my freedom.
She's so serious!!!
I love in the interview when she doesn't feel like answering a question, or doesn't know, she just says "It's a secret."
August 28th, 2016. Morning
To do before I leave
- download a couple albums for listening to while on the plane (emeralds, tim hecker, jeffrey cantu ledesma)
download a bunch of movieslaundryupload all phone photos to G drive- Exchange currency
- Buy Alsa bus pass
- Finish drawing the house outside
August 12th, 2015. Night
