I’ve felt sick every night for the past few nights & my jaw hurts so badly that I have dreams about it. As I pack my bags for tomorrow, my hands tremble alone in my bedroom.

My chest hurts every time I drive & when I go to the airport on Wednesday I’m going to have a panic attack. It’s not an I might or I hope I won’t, (though I do hope I won’t); it’s a definitive: I am going to have a panic attack like I do every time, but it’s not going to stop me.

It’s my life & I will live it in spite of my fears.

I ran a shower & cut my hair again. It was spontaneous. Before I got in, I took scissors & just started cutting aimlessly. The first pair of scissors that I used were meant for cutting hair, but hurt to hold, and were too small to make significant cuts. They left a sort of… soreness, not quite open flesh, but raw flesh on my right index finger. The shower sounded strange & I realized that the stopper to the tub was down, and that the tub was filling with water. It sounded like gentle rain. I turned the shower off & drained the tub. I went back to cutting my hair again, but with bigger, serrated scissors. I do not know what they are designed for, but they have a sort of viciousness to them. At this point, the bathroom mirror was fogged so that I could not see my face or my hair very well, just able to distinguish flesh color & hair color, which I felt deeply moved by: The ultimate method of haircutting in a state of non-attachment; not even subconsciously could I strive to look good or to do well, I could only focus on the action of cutting, which became meditative. I turned on the shower again, hotter than before, so my image would become more obscured & I cut & I cut & the trash can filled with my somehow beautiful clumps of hair. Only when it was off of me could I see the beauty in it. I cut to the point of emotional finality, then turned the shower as cold as I could get it and got in.

I wish I could adequately describe how I felt. It wasn’t religious ecstasy, but it was something… I don’t know. It wasn’t frenzied, but it had a certain lightness of being to it, of knowing that what I was doing was right. It had certainty. I could feel it in my heartbeat. It was the flapping of birds’ wings.

...

While “tonsure” may be a more accurate descriptor, it lacks the humility of the word “haircut,” doesn’t it?

In the cold water, I thought to myself that if conditions are not ideal, then just make them ideal, which is to say that the time can be now, you don’t have to wait. And I thought to myself to “open life up.” Though, often when I say “I thought to myself,” it’s not really something conscious. It’s more as though a thought is given to me. There’s a certain externality and mystery to it, despite the intense clarity of the thoughts themselves.

& the days pass without particular meaning.

“June 2 Wrote almost nothing.” (From the diaries of Franz Kafka)

Took a bath to think about things & it did not work.

My future is no longer distant. It is hurtling towards me at incredible speed (& it is thrilling), like a bird to a window. All you have to do is open the window. Open up. Be open.

Tired. Trying to stay up late & sleep into the afternoon, in preparation for the trip per E’s recommendation. I am not very good at this. Tired. Haven’t written in a couple of days either, so here is a summary of happenings:

Night of 05/27 (?): My brother asked me to sleep in his room with him despite the fact that I would be leaving in the morning before he woke up. Laying on that bunk bed, I thought to myself that next week, I would be gone, across the world. Though I’ve had these plans for months, it didn’t feel real until that moment, laying on a child’s twin sized bunk bed under ceiling stars.

Day of 05/29: Drove my sister to the train station to the city at 5 or 6 AM. Rode train. Sat in coffee shop; very good vanilla cappuccino frappé (?) Went to nearby museum, unplanned, split up with my sister, saw Ukiyo-e exhibition, but felt more moved by some of the European works, perhaps because I will be seeing “the real thing” in Japan soon enough, & by the end of the visit (while in the Ukiyo-e exhibit), I began to feel very faint. I bought a postcard of my favorite piece. Stopped at Daiso to buy some stationery for the upcoming semester, & a small planner. Got hot-pot at the same place that I went for my birthday, the one with small, personal pots. Tonkotsu broth with pork belly & steak, tofu, noodles, crab meat, and lots of mushrooms. Met with sister outside of the Asian grocery store, bought a giant package of seaweed rice crackers & a mango flavored ramune, (a flavor that I have not yet tried), on sale. At the grocery store’s attached café & bakery, I bought a thai tea (middling) and a mango-pomelo drink for my sister. The mango-pomelo drink was so good that I bought two more, one for each of us, for home. I’m sipping on it right now. (Now that I think of it, she hasn’t paid me back yet.) Then I bought five of my favorite choco-buns at the nearby bakery & took the train home. I looked at the reflections of the people in the train’s window & it made me think of Snow Country. I saw a deer.

Day of 05/30: Very little done today, probably due to lack of sleep the two previous nights, (four or five hours two nights in a row). Woke up for less than an hour & took an hour or so nap. Had a dream about a horse artwork that I have on my wall:

It felt impactful. I was told to live that way. Read some more of my Japanese poetry book, but not much. Composed some letters. Grocery shopping, notable because this is the first time that I’ve been trusted to take the car myself, though I had my sister in tow. She made me so angry that I genuinely felt the urge to hit her. I could feel it in my hands & in my jaw. She kept her headphones on the entire time, ignoring everything I was saying, & halfway through the trip I realized she didn’t follow my very simple instructions to keep a running total of the cost. I fucking hate her. Did very little else, save for some trip planning. My friend & I misbooked our tickets & our departures/arrivals are a day apart, so I’m going to spend the night in Tokyo by myself till she comes & then meet her at the airport. Not sure what to do yet. I think I’ll just wander around, get something to eat, go to a konbini, get a hotel. Also calculated rail pricings & found that a JR Pass is a complete waste of money, which is a good thing: Now I can travel without the time constraints of a two week pass. It seems E is unable to afford to go with me to anywhere but Tokyo, but I’m alright going by myself. All of this travelling is far cheaper for me than her because my dollar is worth a lot more than her yen. She said she was surprised that I’m so relaxed about everything. I panic, sometimes to the point of an attack, whenever I travel; even taking the train yesterday was frightening for me, but all I can do is live in spite of it. I told her: “All fear that we overcome becomes proof of capability,” and I mean it. It’s my life. I will live it how I want to, in spite of myself.

This morning there was an exotic bird, some type of yellow-colored parakeet, in our garage. My mom shooed it away. I feel guilty about it. This place is a bird's peril. There is a heat advisory: 110 degrees. I prayed later for its safety with a penny in a fountain, but prayers don't amount to much, do they? Less than using our hands or voices, but I am scared of other people using their hands or voices towards me. The bird is probably dead. Maybe it flew home.

Observations:

1. The bruise on my left knee is a deep plum color.
2. I am not any happier now than when I was in school. This could be a good thing.
3. It is so hot outside that my glasses fog up when I step outside of the house.
4. It is supposed to rain this week.
5. I keep staring off into space for long spans of time.
6. I keep napping when I am not tired.
7. I feel disappointed in myself, but I don't think that I'm a disappointment.

Saw another bird, another water-bird, but very large, with a bright white face, like a welder's sparks. Made me think of some old god. I forget which one. One of the ancient Egyptian ones. The bird looks like it should be in a church somewhere. Andrei Rublev. Walking near it scared me, even though it stood across a stream from me. It looked straight at me. Normally they fly away. Normally I scare the bird & the bird flies away, instead the bird scared me away. I could only look at it for so long. It felt like looking at a stranger. I felt like I should bow my head.

I watched half of a movie (Sans Soleil (1983)). I'd meant to only check if it had subtitles, but I was transfixed. I am waking up early tomorrow, so the rest will have to wait until then.

1. limpid
2. forlorn
3. October Horse
4. "Late" as in dead
5. The Wounded Heron
6. stolid

On a walk a water-bird flew over my head like a halo. I could see clearly the underside of its wings & they were beautiful.

Sequence of the day’s events:

1. I walk downstairs & drink coffee.
2. I have a few sips of coffee before my mom walks in & tells me that I need to get rid of my things. She says that I have too many of them & they’re all over the place. I have three bags on the floor upstairs consisting of my birthday gifts that she gave me yesterday.
3. I have one dresser of things here (at my mom’s house) & this dresser is an affront & it is unacceptable & I either need to “donate my things, throw them away, or take them to [my] father’s house.”
4. I round up my things, consisting of one garbage bag for donation. It takes about ten minutes because I don’t care about owning things anymore. I’ve just kept them because they make my mother happy.
5. She then goes through the bag, asking me how I could get rid of this, or that, or this, or that. I tell her that she just told me to “donate my things, throw them away, or take them to [my] father’s house” & that I don’t have room at my father’s house.
6. She looks at my empty drawers & asks me if I’d like to keep some things at her house. I do not.
7. My dad texts & says that we (my sister & I) can’t come home tomorrow like we (he & I) had planned. He says he’s taking a COVID test today or tomorrow and that he’ll get us on Tuesday. I ask why he can’t get us tomorrow like he had said if he’s taking the test tonight. He says that it’s his & his wife’s anniversary. So he lied, for no reason. He always complains about what a liar my mother is, but he lies too. I remind myself that when we are older I will not take care of him & feel comforted.
8. I return my library books.
9. I decide to take my brother to the movies tomorrow. I've tried to take him for a couple of months now, but my mom repeatedly comes up with excuses as to why he can't. She said he could come Friday, then said he couldn't. Then today, but took it back last night. He looked like she took a small piece of his heart out when she said it. A vein or an artery maybe. When she lied again. This time I had her buy us tickets online. She's fine with lying, but she can't stand wasting money, so now we will be able to go for certain.
10. My mom asks whether I'll be able to text or call when I'm in Japan. I don't tell her this, but I may "forget" to get a Japanese SIM.
11. I go for a walk & a bird flies overhead.
12. I eat lunch (rice & black beans) & read a book on my computer (Botchan by Natsume Sōseki).
13. I wish that I were somewhere else. Then I wish that I were just around different people. Then I wish I had a different family.
14. I wish that I were born a bird.
15. My mom asks me if she can throw away my birthday cake because it’s bothering her & it’s “not cleanly.” I look at her with such contempt that it ends the conversation.
16. I realize that I haven't made a birthday wish.

Another lackluster day.

My sister told me I looked like the archangel Gabriel. It was an odd thing to hear from an atheist.

... 3:14 PM / Addendum: My mom said I look like this painting of Michael. I don't see it.

At first I thought this was a painting of Gabriel, but my sister told me, "No, not that one."

I wasn’t going to bother writing anything today at all, not out of contentment, but out of the fact that today seemed sort of… worthless. Rilke says: “If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.” If he is right, then I am not poet enough & I blame myself.

And the birds continue to rot
And the summer endures
And each day we get a little older
And our popsicles melt

I can’t find my answers in a book, or in the weather, or in a song. (I broke my string of beads of silence & put on a few songs to see if they had my answers. In all of their noise, they said nothing.) I can’t feel the answers on the wind, at least not yet, at least not this wind, & they don’t come out of the bathtub faucet. They don’t even come from Rilke, so where are they?

They’re not outside, they’re inside.

I watched The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) & it made me feel something that I have never felt before. I cried, which is not unusual when I watch movies, or see an artwork, or even walk down the same streets over & over again, but I cried in a new way: Exactly two tears, one down each cheek. It is my new favorite movie. It felt like being born again.

Told E it was “our nostalgia day.”

Bought clothes at the thrift store like the old days, unlike the old days, they are all dreary clothes for student teaching. While it felt disheartening & while E looked in my cart & said those are not Vashti's clothes, I reframed it from a spiritual perspective: Instead of trying (& failing) to find clothes that I liked, I bought blue & grey clothes, & slacks, & knee socks. Most of the clothes are navy blue. That’s a color that I’ve been wearing a lot this year. I told the Gull that we can call this time in my life “Vashti’s blue period.” As I grabbed each sad article of clothing, I told myself that this is not just a reiteration of the Uniform, that this is an exercise in non-vanity such as when I shaved my head, & they cannot take that meaning away from me: This eased my broken heart into just a sprain.

When E picked me up, she “surprised” me with the same drink she always does. I like it because she is the one that gives it to me, which is to say, I never buy it for myself & only get it from her hands. I used to, back when my little brother & I would go to the mall & sneak it into the movie theatre. Now it’s a holdover from happy days into enduring happy days. (I had this realization recently that when I look back on my old diary writings, I see them as happier days, even though they’re not. All of these days are equally happy.)

Books given to E:

1. Till We Have Faces (Returned)
2. Crime & Punishment (Lent)
3. Franny & Zooey (Lent)
4. Letters to a Young Poet, Stephen Mitchell translation (Lent)

At the bookstore, I triumphed when I remembered that I had a giftcard languishing in my wallet & triumphed again when I found the translation I wanted of Letters to a Young Poet. (The fact that I now had a new copy was the only way that I could bear to lend one to E.) In the bookstore, she opened this medical book & explained its illustrations to me. When I was pointing at some of the different books that I’ve read she asked me how I find all of these books. I just said when you find one, you find more. I told her that I would make her a list.

We talked about my beloved sunglasses. E calls them “the iconic” ones.

After dinner, I watched Andrei Rublev (1966)

As I waited for E to pick me up, I reread Letters to a Young Poet. I wasn’t planning to lend it to her until I found the other copy, other translation at the bookstore; I just wanted to read it as a birthday cake for myself.

We went to a bakery & café. I went to the same bakery with my family on Saturday & they did not have my favorite pastry, but this time they did. I bought three of them.

We went to H-Mart & she dropped me off at home. She told me that if I read the Bible, I should start with the Book of John. I said I’ve been wanting to read the Book of Job, because my book on Rilke said: “In Paris, before going to bed at night he used to read the Book of Job for solace: ‘It was all true of me, word for word!” I talked about Saint Sebastian at the bookstore, but she was unfamiliar.

When we got to the house, before we parted, I brought her inside so she could eat a cherry from the best batch of cherries that I’ve ever had. It was so good that she wanted another. She marvelled at how empty my room was, (she has not seen it since last year), despite the fact that it is in disarray right now. She looked at the print-outs on my walls & giggled at one, asking what it was:

She said it was funny, but I’d never thought of it that way. It looked more like self-imposed inevitability to me.

I got hot pot with my family, but I didn’t feel lonely this time. No melancholy. Just food.

No melancholy today, instead I felt loved. I said it didn’t feel like my birthday & E said it was because today [was] a fun day like any other. It was the opposite of diminishment, or: elevated importance of the mundane into what it is, something special. Every day is a special day, my birthday the least/&/most of all.

She asked me if I felt older. Do I ever feel older?

I woke up & my back hurts like any other day. Life goes on, but I can handle it better. Getting older has never been a deterioration.

Today was my birthday dinner. It’s not my birthday & my parents are divorced, so I’m going to celebrate my birthday with my mom next week; perhaps for these reasons, the proceedings seemed to lack a sort of finality, or ceremony. I’m actually just using words to cover up the fact that for an inexplicable, (as in unknown to me), reason, I felt really lonely eating with my family & with E. Everything was fine… I just did-not-could-not feel happy. My lack of happiness feels like an inadequacy.

Maybe I will write about the dinner at a later date, but my lack of feelings about it, or the lack of the right feelings, make me feel ashamed.

Tired. Bird watched at the park for about an hour. I am now able to sit outside & listen to the life-noises & the distant train-noises & feel whole. The only reason I left was because the sun was setting.

I will eat ice cream for breakfast tomorrow & read my book.

I am feeling much better, at least so I think. I have come to a lot of understandings. I think the way it works is like an unravelling of necklaces or strings in which it gets easier & easier the further you progress, because one string free frees the others. This is to say that these are not epiphanies, and that I will slowly keep up this unravelling until progress slows & I find another knot, & even then, I will continue to tug at it but without any results to show for, (until one day, it comes undone). There is something to be said of effort though. I use my teeth to open things a lot, & to untie strings. I am assuming that you don’t do this, but if I can’t get shoelaces undone, first I try my canines, & then I try a fork. Maybe when you eat some trash, you can also try putting your mouth on your shoes & untying your laces. You talk about eating trash eventually, & I think a good way for you to go about it would be to put something in the trash & then immediately grab it out. Or put something like an orange in a trash can. You can always work your way up to ambitious trash eating later. Trust me when I say this, but fruit from the trash can is the best: I don’t particularly care for fruit, (I much prefer vegetables), but trash-fruit is unrivaled in its notes & complexities: It is the best fruit that you can eat. It is the sweetest if you want sweet fruit & the sourest if you want sour. You will eat it & ask yourself how anyone could bear to throw a fruit away, & how everyone else stops themselves from eating the thrown-away fruit.

...

... I think my sense of pity is overactive … I don’t feel numb though. It’s more just acceptance. I think acceptance is awful & that it’s losing until I accept something. I think the same thing about God.

... I agree that black & white thinking is probably not good for you. It is probably not good for me, but I love it. I cannot understand why I should not strive to be as absolutely good as I can. It’s always been strange to me that the treatment for depression is normally symptom-based rather than situationally-based. & I say this as someone who is recurrently depressed… I just don’t get it. Depression is seen as something to be fixed rather than an indicator that something is wrong. I guess that I am saying that it is the treatment of a symptom, palliative care, rather than the treatment of the underlying disease, or what is wrong in our lives. This isn’t just psychiatry-therapy-ology either; I see this on a societal level. I think people like relinquishing the idea that their problems are their problems, that even if they did not cause them, they are allowing them to fester. Maybe this is latent misanthropy, but most people seem content with mediocrity. I don’t think I know a person who is fulfilled-truly-happy, but everyone is alright with it.

I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m trying to express this to you, but it’s not working. It’s just that everyone is dying & I am the only one who thinks about it, enough for everyone, & I do it constantly. Every time I take an off day, I think to myself: [Vashti] get up; this is it; you could be dead tomorrow. Only now is the time. Only now. Only now. & the things that I do seem like a waste of my life. All schooling feels like I’m wasting my life. & this way of thinking, I cannot tell if it is unconventional or if it is unhealthy. There’s a difference. Not many people can see it, but there’s a difference. It’s really difficult, because in living for-myself-as-myself, I have to examine each individual thing & way of thinking, categorizing, etc. & then I have to ask myself if this is right, if it’s not right, is it because everyone else thinks it’s wrong, if they think it’s wrong, is there a good reason for it, or is it societal convention, if it’s societal convention, is it one you value, if it’s not, do you want to replace it, if you don’t, are you okay with the absence of something others need, if you are, is the absence like the field or like the pit, if it’s like the pit, then maybe you should fill it, but what do you fill it with? & this is for fucking everything. Everything is under the magnifying glass, because otherwise I cannot see. It’s not even that I can’t see, it just feels that way. When you are used to seeing everything close up & microscopically, the real world feels like a cartoon or something counterfeit & foreign.

I still haven’t explained myself. Maybe one day. Or maybe this will forever be my own feeling.

...

For my part, I don’t talk about religion because I don’t talk about anything important. It’s probably why I hate phone calls so much. There is an almost complete divide between what I say & what I write, which is to say there is almost a complete divide between what I say & what I think about. I am trying to learn how to mend the two & to graft them together like the magic tree in Don Miguel’s patio, but it is a slow process. Maybe they are grafted together but are not yet bearing fruit, perhaps “from the shame or from the fright.” I’ve learned to stop speaking in the way others want, but don’t yet know how to speak in the way that I want, which is to say all speech is marked by an absence, an absence like the pit & not like the field. It is slowly filling with good soil & becoming a field though. Slowly: Secondary succession. This is for all ways of communication. How I dress is part of this.

Part of it is this:

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

I say that I don’t speak what I mean, but I mean that I don’t speak eloquently. I don’t accept that I do not mean eloquent things. I don’t like my clumsy & grasping speech. Part of it is really just a general sense of shame though.

Outside of my shame, I also see little use in speaking with anyone about religion. You are not included in this, because I am writing to you. I am talking specifically about the act of speech, vibrations of vocal chords, etc. I think it would be helpful for me to clarify how genuinely alone I am. Here are the people I talk to: My family & [E]. That’s it. There’s no one else.

1. My family hates me & we don’t talk about anything. They are not-religious. Not not-religious in that they are atheists or agnostics: Not-religious in that they don’t think about it. For my part, I don’t value the things they say. I hold a private condescension that is beaten down only from shame & overcompensated humility in all things.
2. [E] is a devout Christian & she loves God too much & He loves her too much for us to be talking about the same persentity, (person-entity). Talking to her about God makes me feel jealous.

...

I don’t really like how I’ve explained myself to you, but I am also unwilling to backspace & think about things some more. To summarize: I am a lonely little girl locked voluntarily away in a room & when I speak, it’s the muteness of Philomela.

& thinking about God is better than talking about God, isn’t it? I don’t see how talking could ever outrival thinking or writing about a thing. Thinking, then writing, then …………………… speech in terms of removal from myself & from God. Maybe I will have a better answer one day, but to ask me why I don’t talk about God & to ask me why I keep a diary are the same question.

Do you think you’re a people pleaser like [Redacted]’s mom? In contradiction to everything I’ve written, I am almost the opposite of a people pleaser; in fact, I can be purposefully antagonistic. Not mean, but in terms of social conventions & niceties. The violation of niceties is not meanness, it is meaneties which is my favorite indulgence, behind coffee. This purposeful antagonism is not so opposite to the saying of what others want though, either way you are letting the Other determine your actions. That’s what I mean when I say I am getting closer to the field now… acting in spite of others is still acting for them:

But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.

Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? “Thou shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, “I will.”

“Thou shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, “Thou shalt!”

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of things—glitter on me.

All values have already been created, and all created values—do I represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more.” Thus speaketh the dragon.

My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?

To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do.”

I am still just a lion. In that way, your insistence as to my leonine nature is very apt.

I would write more… but I think writing for the sake of writing would be a reduction of the things you’ve said. My repression is more general, a repression of the whole self...

The weather was so pleasant that I decided a mile walk to the bus stop was in order. It’s garbage day, so the smell of empty trash cans wafted through the air. Instead of raining cats & dogs, it must have been raining birds, because there were dead birds strewn about like a cat’s confetti: They were torn from their trees or the air in last night’s storm. I wrote yesterday that maybe the birds like the rain like I do, but I didn’t stop to think that a storm is a bird’s peril: Mistaken anthropocentrism. A tree was torn in half, down its trunk, like the magic tree in Don Miguel’s patio. While it was in all likelihood the wind, I like to think that it was struck by lightning.

Waiting for the bus after the dead bird walk¹, I was impressed by the beauty of the sky. I say “impressed” because it had a certain weight or a pressure to it. It reminded me of the ocean, but it didn’t resemble the ocean at all.

¹My computer wanted me to correct this to, “after the dead bird walked.”

1. Stop waiting for responses.
2. Talk to yourself in others' absence.
3. Solitude that is involuntary is just loneliness; there's a necessary grace & perspective to it.
   (Otherwise you're just a lonely little girl again.)
4. All good things are voluntary.
5. Stop waiting for someone to come & save you, even if that person is you.
6. Stop waiting for the word documents to load.
7. Idleness & doing nothing are not the same; leisure & doing nothing are not the same.
8. Don’t let yourself get electrocuted in your cage,
9. but most importantly, no matter what: don’t see yourself as the electrocutioner.
10. And don't cry about your birthday this year.
11. Bless the gutters
12. & keep the faith.

My feet belong to
a sick man
& my hands
to an arthritic writer

I went for a walk & understood that I need to live & find answers with my hands & not my head; like Rilke says:

“Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

It started raining on me, & without being conscious of it at first, I turned my palms up like a supplicant to feel the rain better & stared down at my hands. After staring at my hands, I watched the ripples on the pond & then a bird, some type of crane or egret, stand on a branch. Despite my love of birds, I never put in any effort towards identifying them, maybe because it would reduce the language: I mean, that yellow bird that I’ve been seeing, I think it’s a yellow warbler, but I call it the bird that’s yellow like a highlighter over smudged ink. Isn’t it better that way?

I used to worry that the birds wouldn’t like being rained on, but maybe I was wrong. I like being rained on, so why wouldn’t the birds? We live in such a hot place, so perhaps they like it because it cuts through the monotony, at least the birds that aren’t just visiting.

My heart is a migratory bird, one that has never left.

Since I’ve stopped listening to music, all sounds of life have become loud again. All of the quiet things, the birds & rain & dishwashers, they fill up the world & my palms. Maybe if I listen closely, I can find some answers there. When I lay down to sleep, I can hear birds through the window at night… I hadn’t noticed before, unless their sounds were particularly remarkable, but now all sounds are particularly remarkable, all equal. It’s not a reduction of the most beautiful sounds, but an elevation of the most mundane ones. I keep worrying that the dishwasher & the washing machine are broken because they seem louder than they ever have.

I’ve been treating shame like a leash, something to keep me in line from straying too far from myself or from what I value, but that leash doesn’t go anywhere: It is tied to a tree & joy is out of my reach. I’ve been pacing in a dirt circle, in a suburban backyard. I get what shade & what light comes to me, always at the same time, because the sun rises & sets in the same place & the tree does not move, & so the beauty of the world is simultaneously barely within my reach & the weight of a routine. All of it in perpetuity. Just get out from under your little tree.

Something in me was lit on fire today, but it went out before I could write about it.

Hot day; Meursault days;
Plastic bag tumbleweeds;
The blisters from my sandals
will become calluses & I
will walk away from here soon
on my own two feet.

My back hurts so badly I think I could throw up.

A woman told me that I should smile. Sorry, was I not good enough scenery for your trip to the dollar store? Go fuck yourself.

I’ve had this growing sense of spiritual malaise that has deteriorated into spiritual illness & I am feeling a general sense of emptiness: Not emptiness like a field, but emptiness like a pit, a vacuity, something that is supplicating & is begging to be filled, a God-shaped hole, not God-as-in-God, but God-as-in-deity. This is the emptiness that a fish feels when it’s gutted: A fish cannot identify which organs are now missing, it has no need to, but it understands the peril & the terror, the wrongness. Even when I am happy, I am standing on this emptiness, this instability.

I have gone from contentment, to misery, to normalcy, to misery-as-normalcy, & back again & I have further to go, so when I say “conclusion,” please understand that this is not the end, okay? This is a conclusion because everything is fleeting & is ending; it is a conclusion because I am holding it & understanding it for a moment before it’s gone.

For a while now, since January at least, my life has been something as a stripping: First I got rid of my possessions, then my desire for money & work, then my hair, then that thing in me that cries constantly for attention & approval, (It is still there, but quieter, pacified, no longer overactive.), & right now, music. All of this is to say that I am peeling away layers to the self & to the world, (because the self & the world aren’t as separate as I had once thought): All of these distractions & the noise, I hate them. I feel closer to myself & to my life than I ever have, & even if I am not happy yet, in many ways I feel more fulfilled now that I am aware of the vacuity. I wish I could tell you that I am happy now, but bearing the soul & the reality of the world is painful. My only consolation is that it is the same pain you get in your feet from walking, or from the weight of someone lying down on you: The pain of living.

In a lot of ways, I feel isolated. The people around me refuse to accept my motives, or they don’t understand them. And in a more grand sense, I am beginning to suspect that my desire for a religion to call my own is just that: Something to call my own, not an organized religion that I can share with others, which is what I had originally thought I’d wanted. I mixed up my desire for God(-as-in-deity) with my desire for any sort of community to relieve me of my loneliness. After stripping away the distraction & the noise & really looking at myself for the first time, all I’ve wanted is solitude, & so it’s become clear to me that I don’t want religion in the way I’d thought so before. I don’t need a community to do away with the aches of loneliness anymore: I’ve healed those aches myself.

This process that is not a crawl & is not a run, but a slow walk to the self really hasn’t been all that difficult or even different until I quit listening to music. (My little brother is the only one who gets it; he says I’m “on a diet from music.” I think to describe it as “fasting” would give it a more spiritual connotation, but who am I to question what is out of the mouths of babes?) Everything is quiet now. And the only time I can get any noise is when someone talks to me, which is rare, when I listen to the birds, which is becoming more & more regular, or when I talk to myself. And I don’t mean to talk to myself in my head. I’ve begun talking out loud, which feels really important to me. When I write, I have this habit of whispering, not even audibly, you can’t hear any words, just air or warmth or whatever it is, that gentle sound that comes out of my mouth, quieter than the rustling of leaves or lonely sneakers on pavement. I fall into this whispering whenever I am really focused on my writing, and in my silence & in my solitude I’ve begun doing this in my daily life, while the sun is high.

There’s this book that I read in April called Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger & in it, they talk about this sort of automatic prayer. I’m not going to bother explaining it because I’m writing this for myself & know that I will never forget the book, & so:

“Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling. Her lips began to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move.”

Look, I’m not saying I’m enlightened or anything, or that I’ve reached a state of automatic prayer, (I think if either of these really occurred that I wouldn’t be so embarrassed to write about them), but I have reached a point of thoughtless & soundless words, automatic in the same way I get when writing, which may not be automatic at all: Maybe my focus is so singular that it just feels that way. But anyways, in this silence & solitude & soundlessness, I’ve come to a few conclusions about things. Maybe they will help me when I lose my way again:

1. The soul is not some sort of lightness: Not light in a way that it hurts to look & not light in a way that makes it so high up it’s inaccessible: The soul is nothing like a halo. Rather than something above, I think it’s something below, something subterranean, something that you venture into, something dark & something within. It’s frightening, but it’s frightening because it’s real, because it can be found. It’s not so hypothetical anymore.
2. I do not need to be understood by others. I do not need to explain myself. Understanding is not the same as love, though they are not totally separate either. (Understanding is not approval & approval is not love.) It is an act of love to myself to stop with all the justifying. While I have perhaps gone off the deep end, that deep end is into myself.
3. So many of the things you worry about, so many of your concerns are just noise. You don’t need to listen to them.
4. The only way to avoid decay is courageous acceptance, to refuse to numb yourself, to distance yourself from yourself. It’s hard to look at the world as it is. Even in writing, you seek metaphor & simile & you try to soften things, but there is something to be said of just seeing them as they are.
5. You are deserving of a sense of justice, you are not immune to it. You have those dreams & those latent thoughts about hanging yourself, but if someone were to walk into this room right now with a noose in hand, you would think & you would scream that it is so unfair, and you would be right. Don’t be unfair to yourself.

I’ve been keeping my reading of this book a secret from everyone & only read it when I am completely alone. It has a gravity to it that I don’t feel comfortable sharing. I keep it a secret in the way I keep my diary writing a secret.

“Allow it all to happen: beauty and terror
Just press on! No feeling is an error.”

Despite my love of it, I don’t always “get” poetry, but I love its inherent mystery & the fact that much of it is hidden from me. The constant feeling of looking through the poetic veil makes it so when something is understood, really understood, I understand it in intensity & severity.

Cried again after waking up this morning. Oh well. Really, I wouldn’t be bothered by it, save for the fact that if I am caught crying, everyone will look at me as a thing that needs to be repaired. That & I used to get hit for crying as a child. As an adult this still situates itself as a cage or as a muzzle over my head & I am used to simply seeing through its bars; reticence to the utmost, a jaw that has atrophied. I feel like something that has only known rust. All of this is to say that it is not my crying that upsets me, but possible reactions to it, which is just to say that I accept my crying.

Walked to the bus & I thought to myself that while right now I want to kill myself, I don’t want to be dead. I’m not sure what that means. I guess I just want to dispose of this life, not life itself, and that’s okay. It’s all okay. My birthday is a difficult time of year for me, the whole month really. My relationship to my birthday is comparable to how people feel about New Year’s, in that it’s the time of year that I examine my life’s choices, or its trajectory. The difficulty comes from the fact that my mind keeps lining itself up with this time last year & this time a year from now: 21 & 23. I’m not really thinking about being 22 at all. The past is “a bridge to nowhere” & the weight of the nonexistent future makes me tremble.

Thinking more about it, not only do I not want to die, I would be sad to die right now. Even if I don’t really care for my life as it is, even if it’s incredibly painful, even if I hate it, I still believe in my future. I don’t normally feel this way, but to be worth anything one day means that I am worth something now.

...

I came to the conclusion on that walk under the sun that I need to learn to live while I am depressed, to carry myself onward regardless of how I feel. And this isn’t I should & this isn’t I want to: This is born out of necessity. I will not keep living this way, not living at all.

I often have the (irrational) fear when writing or even texting that I will die & my family will have read the things I’ve said. I can never fully purge the idea of a (perceived, imaginary) audience. People have suggested to me that I become a writer, insisting that I would be good at it, but even a nonexistent audience is paralyzing; I’ve sat here for twenty minutes trying to write about my relationship with my father. I couldn’t write anything down, but I did start crying.

I keep having the latent wish for a father figure, and then the latent wish that I tell my dad that our relationship has crawled itself to the point of almost complete deterioration & if he doesn’t do something now, soon, that I will be incapable of looking at him as anything other than a punishment. And as I imagine this, I don’t say it out of bitterness or to injure: I look at him in the eyes, desperately, and he understands me. I plead. Even in my own fantasies, I beg the Other for approval. I feel an inexpressible sense of degradation.

I’ve cried so many times today that you think I’d dry up in the way a wound either scabs itself or bleeds you out, but no, I just keep crying. I feel like the Salton Sea. It’s a day like any other.

I took a nap today as it was raining, just listened to the thunderstorm, & in my dream, I was crying. I was being interviewed, on TV maybe, it was being recorded, & I just started crying. I asked what we were doing here. I looked into the camera, deeply, & I couldn’t stop crying. I said there are people being bombed out of their homes in Rafah & no one cares. People stared at me & I couldn’t stop crying.

I haven’t mentioned it here, or to anyone, but I’ve been having recurring dreams about Gaza… I just think about it a lot. Every time I eat breakfast, I think of the people who don’t have any food, when I drink water, when I take a shower, when I kiss my little brother & tuck him into bed; everything I do reminds me of these people who have been deprived of a safe life, or those who have been deprived of any life at all.

...

I started crying in the shower earlier. I don’t know why. I turned the shower on & as I stripped myself of my clothes, I just started crying. Not everything needs an explanation though. I’m beginning to understand that it’s best to just courageously accept the mysteries & the not-knowing.

“and dont think negatively so far ahead about the teaching. who knows? maybe by then things will have changed or you will have changed and you might enjoy it. besides, its still a while away, no reason to think about it so soon.”

&

“people arent all evil or all good. they can do good things to you between all the horrible shit, but that doesnt make them any better. a good person can do a bad thing, but that doesnt suddenly make them the worst human on earth.
ive noticed this in you a bit, but sometimes you look at certain things as if theyre only one or the other, or you get them so mixed up you end up hurting or confusing yourself. people are so complex, and because of that, situations can be as well. that doesnt mean (for the most part) its all bad or all good.”

Saw a bright yellow bird today, the color of a highlighter smudged with black ink.

Feels weird to just be done today, though I guess it doesn’t feel like much of anything since I start school again May [Redacted]th. I didn’t feel anything when I graduated high school either. It didn’t matter to me at all. The things that “should” matter rarely do; instead I’m deeply affected by the weather or the way light falls. Light falling: I think I saw a shooting star the other day, & another last night. I didn’t record it in my diary. I don’t know why. A year or two ago I stayed out in the backyard for a few hours because there was supposed to be a meteor shower & I was desperate for a wish. My neck hurt more than it ever has & the light pollution & the lack of a single star left me emotionally desolated. I think I cried. Right now though, I can’t think of anything to wish for. I told my sister today that “the only way my life could be better is if I were living a different one,” which is to say things are going as well as they can for me. I kept thinking to myself today: “I’m saved! I’m saved! I’m saved!”

I still feel self-preoccupied, but it is good. Not the self, but my world. I am preoccupied with only my immediate world. I still get lonely, but not as much, & not at all lately. Loneliness is another way of self-preoccupation, the preoccupation with being the self, being a self-preoccupied self out of choicelessness. Right now though, I don’t want to hear from anyone. Well, I want to hear from you, but in a different way. I don’t need to hear from anyone. I could not speak to anyone for the month & I would be alright. Maybe I would welcome it. All I want is silence lately. I think I’m going to stop listening to music for the rest of the month. Lately I’ve only been listening to music when the only thing I’m doing is listening to music as in: not doing the dishes, not cleaning my room, not playing video games. If I listen to music, I sit & I listen to music.

You spoke about... “spiritual fastidiousness,” but that’s all I want lately. It’s the only time I feel free, I think, when I apply self-restraint.

Today I saw a dead bird, stiff, its wings to its side & its body filled with dirt. It looked like a bowl for the earth.

Didn’t feel right today… Felt separate from everything, but in the middle of it, like a bug under a glass, maybe. I kept staring off into space in a comfortable emptiness.

I felt unhappy, uncomfortable today, but I was content in my unhappy, uncomfortableness.

I felt a few cold drops of rain & no more.

...

In my unhappiness I still feel steadfast self-assurance.

I need to pack my things, which I hate, because normally the act of packing indicates that we are going somewhere good, but for me it means visiting my mom & takes on the same emotional significance as doing the dishes.

As I was brushing my teeth, my thought was: “Just quit being ashamed of yourself.” & it was that simple.

I have no idea how to like myself unconditionally.

“People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.”

... 12:27 PM / Soba & barley tea in the fridge. Relax & be good to yourself.

Went for a walk & everything was strangely hazy. Chest sort of hurts, the base of my throat, a slight burn like I was running, but I wasn’t. Air quality warning.

Had a dream where I explained in explicit & matter of fact detail about my attempts to hang myself. For some reason, my dreamself decided the best method was to affix some sort of hook to the wall & lean down with a noose around my neck. I also tried to use a belt. I spoke about measurements & tautness of rope, distance of fall. In all of my technicalities & measurements it didn’t work & I wasn’t upset about it. I said it with the same level of detachment that we use to talk about the weather, meaning I find it extreme with symbolic-spiritual-significance & others see numbers & simple observations, like the statistics about my hanging attempts that I listed in grocery fashion. Somehow, this was an optimistic dream; an affirmation that I cannot keep living this way.

In less than a week, I will have graduated. & then I commit myself to another year of school. The idea of committing myself to anything for any longer makes me spit, but I have the papers & the scholarships & the grants… Really everything is moving in complete synchronicity with little motion on my part. Things are hurtling towards a better future without me. All I have to do is walk towards them.

Today was my last day of class, the last time that I will go back to my campus. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. It just ended. I took a test, I finished early, & I ran for the bus. Running away from there seems as good an end as any. Despite this, I still have work to do before I am free temporarily, which is not freedom, just a prisoner’s outdoor time. Still, not many prisoners’ outdoor time is a Japanese vacation, is it? I know when to be happy, & now is the time.

Finished my math test an hour early & had to sprint for the bus, which feels good. I like running after things. I told my sister once that my favorite part of the ice cream truck is not the ice cream, but having something to run after.

Lethargic today. Slept in, took a nap… didn’t do much schoolwork, but my laziness didn’t feel good. It just felt really heavy.

I went running this evening. Not quite running. Actually, far more than running: Sprinting. Wildly, as in, like a prey animal. Night fell, (Though really the Sun fell below the horizon & I could no longer see it. People should say “the Sun fell” or “day fell.”) and as I was walking home, I suddenly turned & sprinted the opposite direction. I don't know if I've ever run so fast. It is how I imagine flying would feel; there was a certain weightlessness with it that came from the disconnect of my feet & the ground: They were in the air longer than they were on the ground below. It's strange how the lack of feeling something makes us more aware of it.

Have written very little these past few days, I suppose because I've spent them in the waters of contentment. I’ve found my way back to happy loneliness, or as other people call it: “solitude.” I’ve had little desire to speak with anyone, even myself.

From Missed Time by Ha Jin; (I didn’t think that my heart would ever be able to hold this poem up again.)

“Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning—
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.”

The best way that I can describe this month so far to you is a very long weekend. I’ve been reading, going on walks… I’ve stayed home. And I am happy to be here, right now. I am happy to be here right now. It’s been raining & this is the first day that it felt unpleasantly warm, but only for a little while; eventually the breeze came back to me. Whenever it rains, I think to Japan this June: Today marks one month away, an X on the spot of my heart.

This morning there were little slits in the sky that let visible rays of light fall down to the earth, like we are bugs in a jar.

This evening there were lighting bugs. When I noticed one, I immediately noticed the rest of them, as if I were overcome. It was overwhelmingly beautiful. First there were none, then one, then too many to hold in my vision. I couldn’t stop seeing them, even if I wanted to, (& I didn’t!) It’s as though I had opened my eyes for the first time & hadn’t quite gotten the hang of focusing them: I was greedily looking at all of the bugs with a child’s wonder & immoderation. It felt new. I felt new. It was beautiful because I chose to notice them. Before that, they were invisible to me.

I passed a puddle that reflected the sky. I walked around & around it, looking at the sky above from different angles. Up close, it was just a dirty puddle, a dome over water-trodden grass, but from far away, I could see the pink of the sky & telephone wires.

Sometime last night, or in the early morning, I woke up to the sound of my ceiling fan pulling its own string. While it didn’t actually turn off or on, the noise is distinct & I heard it. Laying under my covers, I heard this sound, lamented that it must be time to wake up, before sleepily realizing that I don’t have to wake up right now. I fell back asleep happily: A reminder that I am happy right here, right now.

I keep seeing the word “arabesque” everywhere: “A complex, ornate design of intertwined floral, foliate, and geometric figures.”

The light is soft today.

Writing this in my bed, because I have wet clothes hanging on my desk chair: Went for a walk in the rain. It was raining so gently that I didn’t realize there was rain at all until I went outside & saw the gentle skein of wetness across the world. Not the whole world; My world.

A couple of weeks ago, I would have to be at work on a day like today, & I would be lamenting it, because work would be abysmally slow, but mostly because I would feel indescribably intense & concentrated jealously as I watched the rain from my cage. Concentrated into a heavy stone in my mind that would occasionally roll into my throat, only allowing me to think hard & bitter things.

I would have written yesterday, but I was too busy being alive. I just realized, or decided, that it’s alright. It’s all alright. I don’t need to have the answers to anything right now. Or, I can take some comfort in being “lost” for now. It's all “for now;” temporary.

“You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

I keep having dreams where I am trying to travel through the desert, not to get anywhere, but for the sake of being in the desert itself, almost as a pilgrimage. Many of them involve road trips to the desert that are sabotaged by my family. My first dream of the month was one such dream: A reminder to live authentically, or, to not be stifled.

Today & yesterday were nothing new. Really they were the same as any other day, but they took on a greater significance to me. They were important but they were not special.

Nothing has changed except for me, and I have chanegd radically.