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Sorting Things Out (1999), Geoffrey Bowker & Susan Star

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And I do not know much of anything, it seems, except that I have been wrong and dishonest with others and myself. And perhaps this man left footprints on a soul I did not even know that I possessed.

"The Vastness of the Dark", The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976), Alistair MacLeod

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And yet it seems that neither these people nor this man are in any way unkind and not to understand does not necessarily mean that one is cruel. But one should at least be honest. And perhaps I have tried too hard to be someone else without realizing at first what I presently am.

"The Vastness of the Dark", The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976), Alistair MacLeod

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some people i know have told me they cant keep up with who i am because once they have a grip ive already changed into someone else. my intimate relationships follow this pattern though more uncomfortable as i move on radically and quickly and both parties walk away a little bit stunned.

i (immodestly?) relate to the figure of the trickster, if only because mercurial is a fair descriptor for me. this perceived affinity has been more intense lately (though i cant recall why i typed this).

i forgot entirely what i was writing, or where this came from. so goodnight i suppose.

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i woke up and remembered.

mary gaitskill writes a distinction between those who do and those who are in one of her stories (from bad behaviour). this distinction has haunted me since i read it because i think i'm a "to be" as opposed to "to do".

for example, i am not a writer, i am writing. with regards to language, i am not a "to do" of language, but rather a "to be" of language. the complexity rests in that "to be" includes a kernel of "to do"--and "to do" includes a kernel of "to be". the relationship traces here underpins economic organization--though im not sure how.

i reference the trickster as i feel myself slosh between "to do" and "to be". i write my most interesting crumbs of language when i slide between these dyads, and consequently i dont think it's entirely clear whether i am a "to do" or a "to be".

i said immodestly last night, but i do believe that every human holds within them the same substance that constitutes the trickster's archetype, though it is inherently rebellious and thus discouraged by social organizational constructs.

anyways.

this is why camus' attention to rebellion and weil's attention to attention are particularly prismatic to me.

i feel as though i want to speak in french because etre and fait are more illustrative and flexible than "to be" and "to do".

uhhh

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i want to feel love and my body under pressure. my social circumstance pushed the narrative that this means i want a man, but i found this love when i eat food prepared by those who deeply know/experience their cuisine. so like locally operated, small scale places. i assume the particularity of the food relates to what emerges when there's knowledge and an unspoken confidence infused within one's actions as they prepare something (so, artisanal in the most honest use of the term).

so i dont want a boyfriend i want to have a nice meal on nights where the moon is full.

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my body as a text communicates through colour and context.

i have a dipping half-circle on my back which has turned a rosy red. i suppose that yesterday my sunscreen did not cover that spot, and i burned as i sat in the middle of a pier with my back to the sun. now, warm shower water stings and the skin frequently tingles with itchiness. the sun spoke to me.

i have a purple circle with a yellowish-red crescent towards its bottom. i press the spot and it is not tender. obviously, this is a bruise, but all i know for certain is that my leg has a strange set of shades which deviate from my skin's overall tone. i am not sure how this bruise occurred, nor am i clear as to how my skin made such a change.

in both cases, i fail to confidently understand what my skin does as it transforms itself, and why it holds such transformation and returns to a base-state. what i do understand, however, is my body's capacity for change in response to its environment, which i recognize as a form of mediation between my mind and the world.

interface.

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recently, i received some attention. i had thought i had craved attention until i was recognized, and that recognition pulled me into a type of being that i was not so happy about. what's nice about anonymity is it implies a presence as well as an absence and its within that absence that there's space for freedom.

the concept of an axiom, and how it limits multiplicity as it behaves like a root, has informed my thinking lately. i feel nervous about my desires for recognition or whatever you want to call it because i know that such recognition would function like the recent unwanted-wanted attention.

so: if i am isolated and wallowing, i've done that to myself. if i am surrounded and successful, i've done that to myself. everything i complain about i've done to myself, which is really magnificent and hideous.

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weekend

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when i am afraid of my teeth and their decay, i am afraid of a discomfort. when i panic about unwanted attention, i am afraid of discomfort. when i am talking about peace and violence, i am talking about discomfort.

as with any dyad, the existence of comfort creates discomfort. when one orients around discomfort, they dream of comfort. when one orients around comfort, they dream of discomfort.

asceticism, or worldly denial more broadly, ensures that one orients around discomfort, and as a consequence one is filled with hope and visions of comfort. hedonism, or worldly approval more broadly, ensures that one orients around comfort, and as a consequence one is filled with despair and visions of discomfort. how one approaches this binary depends on whether they prioritize interiority or exteriority.

to be okay is to be between asceticism and hedonism. though i am utterly lost as to how one would find that balance given that these are both sociological concepts--and such, reliance on other people is a necessity.

perhaps one must denial in the same breath that they approve? i don't know.

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"co-exists effectively, efficiently, and peacefully with parents" on my resume

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As it happens, these particular preoccupations all involve distinctions which the frontier ethic teaches western children to deny and to leave deliberately unmentioned, but in New Orleans such distinctions are the basis of much conversation, and lend that conversation its peculiar childlike cruelty and innocence.

South and West (2017), Joan Didion

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