I feel embarrassed & scared today. But things are looking up.

For Christmas I asked for & received some lovely pomegranate bath salts & a

gorgeous glass radiometer that slowly turns & turns on my windowsill (even

though right now it's hidden behind my blinds). But my favorite gift of all is

a tin of 120 colored pencils; I've used it every day since I got it.

My feeling is that if I pray correctly, I won't want or need to talk about

right or wrong anymore, because a light will shine from behind my descriptions

of other things & I won't have to appeal explicitly to what's higher. The

burden of expression will no longer fall on a small set of charged abstractions

but instead on something larger & more diffuse --- a tone or a style, if you

like.

I've been listening to the Melvins song "Joan of Arc" over & over.

I recently bought some CDs: "Bullhead" & "Lysol" by Melvins; "Urban Dance" by

Boris; "Advaitic Songs" by Om; & "Let Us Prey" & "Black Masses" by Electric

Wizard. I also got my friend a copy of "Purple Mountains" on cassette. (I buy

them cassettes because that's all their car stereo can play.) I didn't buy this

for them because I want them to be sad, even though "Purple Mountains" is

certainly the saddest album I've ever heard. "Nights That Won't Happen" often

makes me cry. I also picked up a copy of "The Art of Self-Defense" at the

recent High on Fire show I went to.

Faith doesn't consist in believing or asserting a particular notion of what's

most important but instead paying attention to what we already know is most

important. If you really pay attention to it, it will change you.

Oh, & I also ordered CD copies of "Future Days" by Can & "Lookout Mountain,

Lookout Sea" by Silver Jews online.

Right now my CD holder has too much heavy stuff in it. I don't want non-stop

heaviness...

Today is Sunday: I'll probably have Ethiopian food at the farmers' market in a

few hours even though it's expensive. It's really excellent, I'm very hungry.

My concerns at the moment are quite childish, I think. All I seem to care about

is socializing & partying & interpersonal drama. I can't tell my age. I really

ought to eat better & exercise, that's true!

Even though it's experienced as a lack, the pain of emptiness does appear from

the outside like the presence of something...ironically such pain is often best

treated with various kinds of negation & subtraction, not by supplying what the

suffering person supposes to be missing --- or at any rate, if something is

supplied, it addresses a lack in another part of life. Someone suffering from

an acute feeling of emptiness might need to abandon a malformed conception of

ethics in order to feel well again, because their present conception is an

insecure one & makes unreasonable demands of them --- moral perfection, say,

unfailing thoughtfulness, or exhaustive self-awareness, etc.

I'm interested in philosophy but I doubt I have the temperament for it.

Wittgenstein is important to me.

I've never had a pet. I wonder if someday I might have one. I'm not very drawn

to cats or dogs, although I like both very much. Really I like pigs & rats

more...I would love to look after a pig for a little while, they make me so

happy...

The other night I was thinking about an unpleasant memory while getting ready

for bed. When I turned off the light I instantly became so overwhelmed with

fear that I sprinted around my apartment turning the lights on. I never use my

phone in bed but I did for a while just to distract myself. What disturbed me

so much was that it felt like my eyes weren't adjusting to the darkness like

usual (I always keep a light on outside my bedroom & leave the door ajar). I

was terrified that someone had unplugged the lights & was waiting for me to try

& turn them back on.

I did have Ethiopian food & it was quite nice...today was the first time I

tried their vegetarian options. Recently while trying to fall asleep I started

crying about people hurting pigs. So I've been ordering vegetarian options

where I used to order meat. (This has been very easy because it turns out, for

instance, that butter paneer curry is just as good as --- if not better than

--- butter chicken.) But I'm also going to have to think about vegan options at

some point.

I recently got a CD boxset of Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music".

This is a valuable collection but I haven't started listening to it yet. They

say that, in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 60s, this was the Bible,

that everyone knew every song by heart, even the ones they hated. That's my

fantasy too, I always want to learn monoliths off by heart!

I'm very interested in Quakers. There's a weekly session of unprogrammed

worship one neighborhood over. Maybe I'll check it out someday.

Lately I've been listening a lot to "The Glow Pt. 2" by The Microphones &

thinking about being young, figuring out who you are & where you feel at home

in the world. My opportunities to explore who I was when I actually was that

young were compromised by pain, from not knowing I was trans, then from not

transitioning, then from being punished for trying to transition. Now I'm

almost 30 & I'm longing to feel like my life isn't over & I'm only on the brink

of it. I don't think I'm fantasizing about innocence, just less dread. I know

28 is still young. So if I want to feel this way, presumably I just need to let

myself. I'm allowed to become a new person.

My cough is nearly healed. It's almost a month old now.