Any music is good music, any art is good art. You just have to be willing to make it. And leaving it unfinished for now is okay. The only thing that changes the circumstances is how much of it you make. I went on a date a couple weeks ago who said that Pharell said something in an interview about any music, or noise, being good–as long as you take the time to listen to it. The same goes for any art or music you make. The only difference, in the public’s eye, is that you make a lot of it. The more you make, the more your stuff has a pile of previous stuff to sit on, which is what really elevates your art. Aesthetics are pretty much subjective–they are personal to you. And they are sociologically learned. So just make stuff you like, and make a lot of it. Nicholson Baker said something about the pile of stuff your stuff needs to sit on in The Anthologist.

Memory details are hard to throw together, but I’m trying my best. This is why you need to journal, everybody. I swear it’s the best thing I ever decided to do. You don’t realize how trapped you are in a moment until you can glance back on one. It’s deciding, this is not permanent. I’m writing it down because there’s no way in hell I’ll remember that I felt this way in a few days. It’s trying to make something permanent, because you’re accepting how transient it truly is, no matter how permanent or swallowing the emotion or situation you’re in may feel. And in that way you’re allowing yourself, conversely, to experience it truly swallowing whole, because you know you’re gonna come out, and you won’t get to feel this miserable forever, how tragic. 

You might never feel this miserable again, and what a waste that would be. So better drink it in, write it down, so future you, sixty year old you, when your bones are aching or something, can just get a touch, a La Croix essence of how good it felt to be that miserable over a boy. Other miseries just aren’t as sweet. When somebody you love dies, or you get sick, or you’re staring into the barrel of the gun that is your finances or something like that, those are truly, sucky miseries. But breakups–or just letting go of somebody– are some of the best miseries out there. Truest, most failsafe miseries ever. It’s self-contained. It’s acute, it’s poetic, it hurts so much like a bitch, it’s grief-lite. The gut-wrenching misery of getting to know somebody. Nothing can really hurt so much and leave no scars. I mean like the deep wounds of death of a loved one, sickness, etc. Why does it have to be so deep and unbearable.

One of the sweetest miseries, and you should, get to feel it as much as possible. It’s such a sweet misery, truly. So intense.

Desire, too, is such a great feeling. The sweetness of it. The cloudiness in your head. Desire is a tension, an unresolved feeling, so we need it to be resolved, but just basking in the tension, if you can do it, leads to such a beautiful resplendent feeling. The tension is almost better than the release.

Inoculation, you can’t inoculate yourself against misery. It whips you every single time.

I’ve had to pare down my life lately. Whittle away the parts, the knots, that don’t serve me. Do some pruning, I guess. I’ve never had to prune my life like this before. Pieces just fell away if they needed to. Other parts crowded them out, really. And I was just marching forward. Is it just a fact of getting older that you start needing to prune your life?

That you find you need to grow in a particular direction? As a kid you’re all crazy and got all these tender green vines but now they’re getting brown and it’s gonna be a lot worse having to trim that shitty branch hanging over your neighbor’s fence in the future.

I stopped this tutoring job. It took work to extricate myself from its clutches, honestly. it’s at these points if you realize you’re a people pleaser. I’m trying to be less of a people pleaser. 

I like the idea of holy fools lately. Can’t we all be holy fools? I’d like to embody the idea of a holy fool. In John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essay from Pulphead, Feet in Smoke.

Never do things for money. Money is so so subjective. Jeff Bezos wouldn’t even wipe his ass with so much money.

When you go straight for the gut, for the big question, what is love, it feels forced–the closeness. and then you see them twirl a leaf and they something innocuous like look at it spin and that’s the deepest shit you’ve ever heard, look at it spin. And you didn’t get to that point where someone’s frivolities are your profundities, but that’s what real love feels like. Love of a person, of the world. Anything. That’s where it’s at. 

Writing is about pointing out the Obvious

But sometimes you’re afraid of cutting a lifeline. One part that’ll really hurt to prune, but you gotta. 

In a snapshot, it looks like you’re standing still. But life is a process, if you look at the edges, you see the blur. And you realize you’re running toward something, any direction. But you’re running. That’s the realization part.

If a guy says that he doesn’t want to be tied down because he’s an artist, believe him. But know it’s not because he’s an artist, but because he’s a man. If he says he’s going to break your heart, believe him. If he says not to fall in love with him, believe him. Fuck him for putting that idea in your brain in the first place. And don’t make the same mistake twice. Or three times. Or four. Once is good enough. Fool me once, you can’t get fooled again.

It’s easy this time, though. Coming off the last one, this one’s not so bad. It’s not your first rodeo. And you have your feet under you this time. But also after a while you get so puffed up and then the tension inside you goes away,

First of all, that’s not true. Plenty of artists have been “tied down.” They’ve had their muses. It’s not the exclusive beneficiary of people living in the “real world” to have significant others. He sounds like a man. Just like any other man I’ve met. And there’s nothing special about that. 

Now what? Do you have a hoe phase? Is that even worth it? How do you seduce a man and get him to want you, really? You have books. You don’t even care about this guy that much, you just have no one else. No one else. You let yourself get caught. It’s a trap, a trap, a trap. You’re a man, just like any other man I’ve met. And that’s not worth my time.

Someone you barely even liked in the first place.

You really have to protect your own energy. How do you do this so it’s not like stumbling in the dark without a flashlight. You can only see as far as the beam of your flashlight.

Things you’ll see things when you’re drunk that you’ll never see sober it’s like your tipsiness spills into the real world and you end up seeing a school bus with a man and a dog in it and a golden retriever in it.

If you wanted to, you would’ve done it already. The window of opportunity has closed.

Some things can send you tailspinning into a hoe phase.

I feel like I’m cracking open. Like I’ve been incubating for a long time. That’s why I wanted to move out. To incubate. And here I am. 

I’m not interested in security so much as the opposite.

The stress, the dopamine, the rush, the drama.

The risk the fall the rise. The rise the fall the rise.

Or at least i tell myself i need these things for a full life.

Actually Rice was good for me because i had i gone to art school i would’ve rebelled and become an investment banker or something instead.

I think I learned something. Deep. I want to be an artist, so I have that to thank him for that. 

This is the best thing ever, best writing ever, a muse is speaking through me, but then you realize that the reason you felt that way is because it felt really good to get it out. like vomit or a sneeze. it feels really good to sneeze, one-tenth of an orgasm, but snot is not pretty. I mean sometimes when it’s green it is. but the process is the gift, is the ethereal part, not the product.

I might go tailspinning into a hoe phase. But I can’t do that. I can’t force people into my life because it never goes right. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could do it

I remember, back in February, I was experiencing something you might call heartbreak. Time felt so still. It’s good to feel miserable. Or to feel anything, really. 

If I spend too much time without anything happening I aggrandize, delude myself, fantasize. It’s nice to day dream. What will this weekend’s reality be like? Life is so full of unknown surprises. I don’t even know what I’m waiting for, but I can feel the tension build in me. All this unknown stuff. I’m still young. I’ll guess I’ll just wait–for something. I’ll let fate lead me by the hand where it needs me to go.

You get trigger happy with paring things down.

I got another tarot card reading. I keep having odd dreams. And they told. Me. That’s not a stem I want to snip. Perhaps it’s the wrong path–it’s ok, I’ll take the lesson. For now, it makes me happy. I would go out of my mind otherwise. I feel more mature than I was a year ago. Like I’ve learned a lot. A lot more sure of myself. You haven’t even met all the people that will love you yet. 

Rumi, drinking the wine. Haven’t drank the wine. 

I saw a shooting star and a cat crossing the street.

Lately I’ve been seeing the world through mottled glass. Maybe it’s the result of spending too much time alone. I feel distanced from things, a copy of a copy of a copy away. I don’t know what’s supposed to wake you up from this. Maybe its too much caffeine, something’s supposed to shock you awake

I love being surrounded by artsy people because then I realize, I can do this as a career.

Not everything serves you; sometimes, you serve them.

I have not yet written about the penis queen groupie/

I invited this stoner into my house that would not leave. he didn’t put the grocery cart back and left weed pieces in my sink.

So many tiny red flags like broken capillaries.

Guy who wouldn’t leave and left like bong stuff in my sink and shit

Hoe life is not for me

We had an idea to buy a dildo and measure the depth of the vagina (meaning my vagina). Anyway, I told him to buy the eight-inch one but he got the six-inch one. I have a feeling he was insecure about his micro-dick (according to studies it is). What’s worse is when it’s a micro-dick but it has a weird angle to it, so it’s small but it hits the inside of you wrong and hurts anyway.

So he made me pay for half of the Trader Joe’s groceries even though I insisted I only pay for my stuff. And he said things like I’d fall in love with him. I need to cut this guy off. And I think he was about to leave the shopping cart in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.

Also, he wouldn’t leave my fucking house. He took bong rip after bong rip. And he kept making excuses to stay. I was not about to let a stranger I had met that day spend the night. Especially if he was begging and pleading because he was homeless. I asked him what his red flags were and he said he cares about people too much. You know, after dumping his weed ash into both of my sinks and not even bothering to wash it down.

He noticed the hickey I got from two days before (worst sex of my life), commented comedically on the audacity and balls of coming with a hickey to a date, and later that day planted another one underneath that one. I TOLD HIM NOT TO. Can’t I protest a hickey??

Anyway, now I know more of what I don’t like. PDA. Hickeys. People not leaving my house when I ask. Man had a weird sexual energy to him. 

Many of the girls I know hoe around the for the stories they get out of it. Have I ever enjoyed hoeing around? The NFT guy with a raging foot fetish? The other guy I feel bad for? Yet to have a good one night stand (because a good one night stand usually turns into more night stands).

I ended things with that guy. I sent him a few texts on a drunken night. As you must, protect yourself. Elevate yourself. Do things for yourself. Can I handle knowing somebody is probably seeing other people? Not really. Should I end things there too? Probably. I like knowing somebody is committed to me, at least for the moment. I gotta get out of here. Figure myself out. Truly. 

Wow, sometimes it’s hard to extricate yourself from things. Like the tutoring job. Trying to be less of a people pleaser. 

It’s hard to know what to prune and what not to prune. It’s hard to know whether to grow toward something or not. 

I haven’t felt anything truly resplendent lately. It feels like I’m taking the tiniest steps and nothing is really leading me forward. 

I think about my family and how I feel distanced from them now, but not in a bad way. In a more objective way. Trying not to say things that do not match with how I feel. Need to work on things so bad. Wish I had the balls to give more details here.