I will do what it takes to produce the illusion of a beautiful life.
I shuffled through old notebooks for the first time in what feels like ages. The last time I was here, I didn’t touch them, and in the past I’ve always preferred the earliest ones—from ages 5-6, and from ages 8-11. Reading the notebooks from 2011-2013 is a uniquely humiliating experience; I can’t remember feeling this humiliated at any point in relation to any of my writing from anywhere. But it can’t be all bad, otherwise I would need to start applying for an even earlier death. There are no signs of precocity or greatness in my adolescent notebooks, so I would also be an applicant bound to fail: here there is no life worth putting up for sale. And maybe this is the first time I read them with this logic in mind. All because I’ve introjected Mishima’s aestheticism.
(It irritated me last night to see how my mother looked in her passport photos last night—why didn’t she at least sometimes exhibit the use of makeup when I was a child? The “platonic ideal” of my mother’s face is not unattractive, but her mottled skin to me is a sign of her female perversity, this expectation that the world should see her “for what she is” without having to modify her appearance, of having spent too much time in the sun with no SPF on as a young person, cavorting with the various boys who liked her enough such that she didn’t have to think about it. I too felt popular enough between the ages of 12 and 20 to not care about producing illusions.)
I need to doctor the narrative of my life to produce an illusion of beauty.
[2-2-2012] Another good day -_- When will this emptiness cease? When will I be given a break from this horrible lightness of heart? Anyway. Considering that I have no homework which I can do right now, I proceed to enjoy myself.
[2-9-2012] The emptiness of prolonged happiness can only fill. The only matter is neutrality, ambivalence, mild depression, and everything worse. Therefore happiness cannot refill itself. Only the darker emotions can. On the upside, I did not wake up unhappy. And on the trivial upside, things will improve a lot. I’m 14 1/2 years old.
[12:28 PM] - You really can’t understand anything unless you make it pass through your ego.
There are a few visible categories of “mistake” in my adolescent writing. One of them is the use of emoticons and other language taken from the internet. “TROLOLOL” doesn’t make sense on paper.
Sometimes I use words badly—such as the word “sexy”—or the word “spiffy”—and most variations of the word “fuck,” which I believe to be impure when not used to refer to sexual acts. Like all variations of “lol” and “omg,” the expletive form of the word sounds much better in its native context. Phatic words like “ah” or anyway" or “so” hardly ever work either. Misuse of a word is not as offensive to me, but it always means something: the desire to use the word “impressionable” instead of a more roundabout but accurate phrase belies that the writer has an appetite for all manner of shorthand.
That this or that usage of a word constitutes an absolute mistake has something to do with the fact that it represents the illegitimate influence of a specific culture which doesn’t align with an individual essence. I learned to write in the way that a suburban asian american teenager who primarily communicates with classmates via gmail chat might write, or “spazz” to another. But since I was a person raised on elitist ideals the diffusion of the nobility embossed on me as a child must not diffuse into “vulgarity.” So this stuff that seems ill-fitting to me in the future needs to be bracketed off. If I were an actual aristocrat I would burn it.
(I could have been spending that time reading Keats!)
(Who can teach a teenager how to “have a crush”? I read Dostoevsky and Beckett and Camus at the time—and some Murakami—and some Hesse, Schopenhauser, and Kafka—if some of them taught me to use some words I wouldn’t have used otherwise, none of them taught me how to render sexual desire. And even if I had read more, would it have made me write better, or would it simply have kept me from writing at all?)
Nevertheless I am more or less interested in all the writing about Jacob—it seems that he was the last person I consistently expended some effort on writing about, no matter how inelegant it was in written form. Most of the worst writing happened in the small notebook, which I brought to school, and I don’t remember the specific atmosphere or orientation my body took on when I wrote in that “portable” journal.
The cover is red and translucent and has the opening of the Dvořák cello concerto visible underneath.
The large notebook also has a translucent cover, orange and red bisected by a grey median. The score beneath is of the opening of the cello part of the Schubert Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat.
[2-23-12] I had a beautiful (Maybe I’m exaggerating) chat with Fortran last night. I didn’t expect it, didn’t ask for it, didn’t do anything. I asked him what the best java IDE is. He told me what he uses (VIM) and that the school uses jGRASP (which is what I’ve been using). I said “k” and expected the conversation to just end there. But he said “have fun.” I ignored it. I was pondering whether or not to react. But as I was pondering… he said something.
[2-25-12] OMG!!!!!!! / So I clicked on the tab and then there was a chat window titled “Jacob Holtom.” He said “good evening.” OMG aaaah HE INITIATED A CONVERSATION.
[2-28-12] As William Blake said, “Love that never told can be.” Wut a manwhore -_-
[3-5-12] Love is only a way to get him to teach me.
[3-2-12] “How did you get a girl to be the afs understudy?” Paralyzed by happiness.
There’s also something in my dreams that still moves me—fundamental motifs—the centipede, the spider…
[3-2-12] I had a dream about eating with Jacob at a party, and then finding a deer antler while stalking some biologist in a marsh, and lastly, a conceptual map showing the difference between object-oriented and normal programming.
[3-6-12] I had a dream last night in which I was at a party with my family and Jacob… It happened in our old California house… It was sunny and beautiful. There were gigantic centipedes as wide as my arm in the center of the table which were beautifully repulsive. You know what pisses me off? My first thought today: “Jacob.” My last thought yesterday: “Jacob.”
[3-27-12] I had a Jacob dream. We were sitting together, it was Spanish class (though the room looked drastically different from the one in reality) and there was a beautiful orange furry spider on the plant next to me. Jacob was scared of it.
[4-7-2012] I had a dream where Jacob refused to watch the Miyazaki movies I recommended. I was SO angry/sad. I slept at 12:12 because I was listening to dumb pop songs while thinking about Jacob ardently.
[4-10-2012] I dreamt that Jacob wrote me a beautiful letter with no grammatical errors in it…
Variously imbricated with mentions of the last boy, and first heartbreak:
[2-27-12] I wonder how I should explain the Perry story. […] So, in March 2011 (ides of march, actually) I began to have a crush on him after arguing with him on facebook about the making of unnecessary statements.
[3-7-12] Anyway, I had a dream… Perry’s status involved wanting to remember his depressing past. He was on his old account… For some reason he wasn’t showing up on my chat list. Then I went on Bernice’s account and made a provocative comment about myself in 3rd person… I woke up before I could see his reaction…. :(
[3-29-12] Dreams. I was in the CSL (but it looked somewhat different; itr was dark and much livelier). Perry accepted my chat request. He had no status. Was available for one second, then busy, then completely offline. He’d go on and off, tantalizing me. I wasn’t sure whether or not to talk to him. I began typing a message but kept on revising it. Jacob was there.
The strange casual way in which I seem to be able to deal with the deindividuating force of being a girlfriend. I was vaguely aware of something disturbing in it but did I know what it consisted of?
[3-8-12] I was depressed in the evening because I felt fat and had some stomach pain and one of the CSL kids (Alex Barghi) asked Jacob to tell me this insult: “She’s nothing but a servant with her tongue cut out”… I saw truth in it… Which made me sad… But he’s obviously a jellybean, because apparently recently he had tried to get a freshman girlfriend (he’s a sophomore) and failed… anyway, I did learn… How to open chromium? chromium & disown && remove? And Jacob said to me “Love U” again… And I only said “goodnight”…
This is bad enough to never want to be a “she/her” again… But it is oddly shocking because I had forgotten about it entirely, such that every time muteness or Philomela have come up in the last year or so I haven’t been reminded of anything. But perhaps I developed some kind of a resistance to being quiet as a result.
Why would opening chromium in xmonad be something one needs to “learn”? Just disown && remove…
And so suddenly happy (the verb “wandering” completely refreshed now by Wordsworth…)
[3:53 PM] Soooo… I’m pretty happy today, Sara commented on how I was smiling when she saw me in the hallway. Jacob visited me in JLC, which is insane. “I wandered out of the CSL for once.” Me: “That’s crazy. You must be going insane.” Him: “Yes…”
I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vales and hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils; / Beside the lake, beneath the trees, / Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way, / They stretched in never-ending line / Along the margin of a bay: / Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they / Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: / A poet could not but be gay, / In such a jocund company: / I gazed—and gazed—but little thought / What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude; / And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils.
[3-20-2012] He also sent me a somewhat lengthy email (at 10:19 PM last night) saying that love hurts him, that he trusts me a lot, and that he isn’t good at expressing who he is and his love. I replied “I understand”… If he really is that bad at expressing who he is maybe he is much more beautiful than I perceive him to be.
[3-21-2012] In last night’s conversation Jacob, at one point said “so my dark cynical mind is right / there is not relationship beyond friendship” It scared the hell out of me. He ended up taking it back after I said some crap about not being an obsessive lover. He asked me to describe myself. And I did. My main points were that I Have gender-identity issues and that I’m very self-centered.
More updates on the strange insult and an instance of communication between girls:
[3-22-2012] I talked to Anshula briefly. I was like “Did Alex really ask you out?” Then she blushed and didn’t really say anything and said something about how he and anshula were supposed to play Jacob & I on urban terror XD trololol and she really doesn’t want to because her kdr is 1/20… Jacob & I would pwn if we did, but I don’t really want to. Alex Barghi, the dumbass who called me a “slave with her tongue cut out” has asked her out the 2nd time. trololol.
3:49 PM
Me: So how did you react to Alex?
She: Um…
Me: Did you reject?
She: Oh actually I’ve liked him for a while
Me: Oh ok
She: Why do you think I would’ve rejected?
Me: I heard he’s a jerk
She: Really?
Me: Well that’s what Jacob said… I don’t actually know him
She: Ok… they hate each other, so… maybe they’re both biased?
[3-28-12] I just worked on poetry but 8B some of Jacob’s friends came over and made entertaining commentary about our relationship. It was pretty damn funny. Roshan didn’t know who I was, and was making references to me while talking to jacob in front of my face. DMRC MUST BE FIXED / On the way out I kicked the door open violently and Eric Sun: “Woah Jacob your girlfriend kicks doors open violently?!”
Person 0: “Whose account is he [Jacob] on?”
Person 1: “Teh account belongs to both of them. Their accounts were linked by love”
LOLOL and this morning Kashish—“What is your name?”
LOLOL HE DIDN’T KNOW MY NAME
(I consider this joke to be legitimately funny—deserving of its LOL)
[3-27-12] I love him because he’s like a dishevelled underground man, an intensely impassioned mind, worth saving, beautiful on the deepest inside, ugly in the rudest way, questions the tenets of [the] everyday…
[3-29-12] We [Jacob & I] chatted about physical contact around 10 PM while I worked on a composition for English. So it started out with complaining about how ugly it is when people make out dramatically in public… And then it shifted to the thought of us kissing, hugging, or holding hands. “Making out with you is so illogical it’s funny” —Jacob :P I told him that I associate physical contact with saying goodbye forever.
[3-30-2012] Anyway Jacob’s satatus was lengthy and was about not wanting to be a lovestruck dumbass yet it contained stuff about wanting to kiss me. I love Kashish for coining the phrase “Linux dates.” That’s exactly what Jacob & I should do over spring break.
[4-7-2012] A truly isolated guy… A true computer lover….
[4-10-2012] Mom asked me if Jacob’s a “good person.” I asked her to define “good person.”
And [if] a “good person” is someone polite ≠ Jacob
without a bad temper ≠ Jacob
doesn’t curse ≠ Jacob
nice ≠ Jacob
not violent ≠ Jacob
friendly ≠ Jacob
[4-11-12] 30… 41 crunches -_-
I did better than Jacob. He looked beautifully hurt.
I spent P.E. staring at Jacob when I wasn’t talking to him. His nose is very thin at the base. Delicate. His brows are knit in anger and pain. His eyes are maniacal. Blue, hard, piercing… According to Sandy he looks like a cute 10 year old. He won’t tell me about how he was accused of having a prostitution ring?… I wonder if he thought my legs were ugly. We were partners for the fitness test. Originally we were supposed to find partners within our class but Jacob and I failed (isolation buddies!) and thus became each other’s partners. This is where I say “How romantic.” :P He wants to rage at my dad…
[4-20-12] Jacob and I are pretending to break up. :D It’s because I don’t want to be seen as his girlfriend. If I’m his girlfriend no one will take me seriously. This is so fun. What if random csl guys start flirting with me like I have this feeling that James is attracted to me. I had so much fun lolling at a chat Jacob had with James when I first asked him “do you want us to be in a relationship?” LOLOLOL Jacob said something like: “Well I was like “FUCK YEAH” in my head…” “Then she rejected me” “ah, I hate love… have gone from UBER HAPPY to uber depressed :(” and he went that picture of me with half my face covered in hair (“staredidi”) to James so he would know what I look like and James said “wow.. you choose well”←YOU LIKE ME DON’T YOU trololol
[4-22-12] He added Perry on gchat and in true arrogant-douche style, proceeded to threaten to hack perry’s computer and show off his sysadmin power. Perry blocked him. Jacob is irate.
[5-11-2012] My writing is atrocious. Two questions: 1) What time frame defines entropy? 2) Is love possible without the presence of language? So how can I make my journals less atrocious? Well, I’m fairly sure that I’m going to stop having crushes on people. Any fondness will either die within 24 hours or grow into a friendship or *shudders* romantic relationships. So I will have less crap about random useless boys. Second of all, I need to write better. Period. I need to develop a voice of my own. I have no voice. Lol. My handwriting improved significantly after Benson and became significantly worse after Perry. Jacob can’t even write I do need to write more.
I didn’t know anything about thermodynamics, but I’m still trying to figure out what I meant to ask.
In analysis today I mentioned this entry. I had come up with exactly the wrong response to the problem.
[5-14-2012]
I’m tired and confused mentally. I had an amazing 8th period… I stayed with Jacob in the Schwarz room. We talked amid our failed efforts to fix Kafka (“my” laptop). Since Friday, the day I broke it, I’ve been coming to the syslab more often, just to get it fixed. Well, today we came to the conclusion that files have been corrupted due to the ram overheating. Finally, some sense is being had. A nice simple truth to satisfy the mind. Kafka cannot be useful. Well, I learned a little, despite the utterly romantic nature of the whole meeting. Meeting? Yes. We met. I realize with (muted) admiration that Jacob actually understands kernels and processes and heap and stack and swap and all those things I’ve been reading about in “Inside Linux: A look at operating system development” by Randolph Bentson (or something).
Of course I don’t actually admire him. But he understands some complex concepts, I must admit. One would be surprised. Well. On to the romantic stuff. The stuff you, so human, would love to read about.
I can’t help but mention how (let me be honest and detail in full glory my dark animalistic humanity) beautiful he looked today. In Spanish I suddenly came to appreciate his appearance, which has never happened before. His eyes were so nicely shaped and piercing, his lashes long and evenly spaced. Just everything about him looked nice. I even found his neck pleasingly thick and masculine. After that class was over we were soon in the csl. Schwarz room. Hamilton’s office. What he had ran at lunch did not work. Curse words. The details are blurred in my memory… But I remember our faces in close proximity, intense staring into each other’s eyes—his questioning; looking for truth in mine, and mine murky and dark, wondering whether or not to betray my thoughts inside. There is a power to blue eyes, for the pupils are starkly black against their light irises; they bore deeper, and his are full of pain and unwanted fragmentation. I remember the infinitesimal wavering of his voice when I cruelly admitted that he is, in fact worthless and that I should leave and ignore him. His eyes blurred a little (with water?) when I said it; he looked so hurt. I knew that that was the closest I might ever see him to crying. I remember us face to face, and I wondering whether we’d ever kiss. We didn’t. Oh, how beautifully expressive he was. How pensive. I had never seen him pensive before. And it gave me hope that maybe, maybe I don’t have to delete him. I still frighten myself with my rational words. When he asked if “I’m worthless, aren’t I?” I did say yes. Yet had I not, he would sense the lie. Or not quite believe me, anyway. What power is held in his stare.
I remember, with pain, how he abruptly grabbed my mouse, with force, to click away with rapid speed at my (fb) profile in an anguished flurry, trying to change my relationship status from in a relationship to single—and me stopping him, and sthen stating solemnly that “as long as we love each other, there is a relationship.” And he replied “So you do love me,” tenderly. “I’ll live,” he said, the timbre of his voice defeated and unstable. “I’ll have lots of ragey chats with Hamilton”… “Yes you will,” I said. “You’ve never been suicidal.” And he stared at me angrily, then looked away. “Or have you?” and then “I’ve thought about it, yes,” he said.
Oh how cold I was. But rational.
I’m at loss for words on how I feel. I love but now I know for sure that love will benefit not me but him, yet my love keeps me caring and not as seflish as I should be. And worse yet, my mother again harrassed me about course selection, and is convinced that I can’t take compsci next year. Or I should go to McLean. Major arguments may arise soon. I fear yet venerate such conflict. Jacob also pointed out how strange it was for a “mormon and atheist to have any good relations.” And found it strange when I ls’ed the folder “home,” which contained didi and jholtom. He also asked for permission to touch me. Not directly, of course. Rogers and others teased him about his religion by reading how someone in the school newspaper stated “I think of Mormons as being pale and pretty. Maybe it’s because they interbreed.” They had an utterly disgusting session of annoying him in low ways during lunch. I physically attacked them, without much success. I must address my conflict with my family.
Am I wrong to have an inclination towards computers, let alone academics in general? Am I being pulled there by society, or is this legitimate? If it is not? What to do? What is wrong with what I’ve been doing? Am I too naïve about how the job system works? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is music meant for me? If not, how can I tell my mother this? Am I merely a fantasizing adolescent who loves computers only as a form of rebellion? How wrong could I possibly be and how can I determine my invalidity?
So that’s the response to the demand to write more, or better.
Something Lawrentian about that sentence (“Oh how cold I was. But rational.”)
I seem to have avoided entirely the question of touch.
“annoying him in low ways”—random victorianism in “low”
Most of my crude responses involve some variation of the question of why…
[6-28-2012]
I felt true emotional pain for the first time… (since November) this morning. In the form of a dream:
I went to longfellow on the last day of school, hoping to talk to Perry. He was sort of cold, as he has been, but this time ruthless and revealing. I asked at one point “Was I too annoying?” He: <rolls eyes> “Yes. Very. How did you know.” in a caustic manner. Also, he said, icily “You just want to be around me physically.” Me: “That’s not true…” Him: “It is.” Me: “Well… I admit that it was true at some point but not anymore… Well actually I’m just being irrational right now so nevermind.” I made a fool of myself with my answer. The bell rang or something and he went away. I was vanquished.
All my insecurities packed into one damned dream.
Perhaps I only like the pursuit of him. He caused me much pan for I had already made him my everything in that dream. I must NOT. he is NOT. but if he talks to me he will. That cannot happen!!! What a revelation has stumbled upon me in this early morn… (it’s 5:10 now) The address of the time only intensifies the meaning of the dream. “You only want my physical presence, not to talk to me,” he muttered. Oh, I was a stupid female. Exactly what I despise. I must not be stupid…
[10:19 PM] I’m afraid of what I might do in my youthful stupidity once I leave my home… I am already so fragile—depressed I am today merely ‘cause I saw that a boy who will be in my NSO SMI chamber group is very good at math… I felt inadequate and became obsessed with the idea of a romance with him.
I’ve formed a concept of my views on feminism and misogyny but I don’t know who I am, where I fit in, or how I can possibly not fail when I’m already an inherently ugly, stupid, mercurial person. Designed to fail. And Perry, gtfo. How can I forget him. Please. My feelings aren’t legit. None of them. Depression is too sweet, an addictive cocaine. I’ll forget it all; you can’t remember feelings, only memories. My face I purposely contort into a simile Females have more prolactin in their tear glands why am I female. Fuck.
[9-1-2012]
Kinda worried about failure yet gay.
Constructivists don’t believe that √ 2 exists. Sigh..
I’m the kind of person who makes fucking schedules but doesn’t fucking follow them.
I act so much better around peers. Like I care about my outward appearance more than who I really am -_-
I think things are getting worse and worse.
I don’t even reflect deeply anymore.
Absurdity is all there is; I’m sinking into nihilism.
What do I have to offer to this world?
My linguistic studies were furthered quite a bit today. We went to Middleberg, since my mom just insists on going somewhere when she’s not working. At Hmart we got lots of food and two japanese thermos-lunch boxes which created much materialistic satisfaction in me. Oh, materialistic satisfaction……. I’ve been obsessing about linuxing my macbook air too much. Cello seems more mature but I practice badly and for little time.
So that’s the end of the journey with Jacob and a period of effusive phaticisms and solecisms. I formerly had an impression of myself as constantly willing to speak about my desire, but this is primarily a document of sexual repression. At some point I describe myself as a “pansexual asexual atheist who plans on removing ovaries as soon as possible.” My two references to masturbation involve the fact that I used to do it to images of women; in the second instance I admit, “only recently did I start masturbating to the thought of hugging him and feeling his belly against my belly and pubis.” There is no “logical introspection” on these matters, on why I refused so much. Complete black-out absence of discussion of why I wanted to use him as a source of knowledge; to what extent… was this true? No discussion of my admiration for the CSL on an aesthetic level. No attempts at literary criticism and no attempts at discussing music other than as an endeavor. Most of this notebook is a meditation on the law: a desire for laws from without, imposition of laws from within. I betrayed no interest in understanding the strangeness of my parents’ desire to keep me away from computing and to encourage my endeavors only in music and math. The ugliness or badness of myself is rendered as an absolute; I misunderstood my freedom; believed I “had” an Oedipus complex.
The parts that follow are even worse. This is essentially the point at which I reached a limit with diaristic writing. I wrote a story about John Dell for English class in 11th grade. Maybe my writing improved in academic settings, and my diaristic style changed markedly with the use of Tumblr, and after meeting Lara.
[10-16-12]
PSATs tomorrow. I successfully hurt Kevin(Xu, the senior guy who has been hitting on me)’s feelings without hurting my own. IOW (in other words), I had a snarky conversation with him in which I expressed my cynical views of niceness. He said something about me being nice and I refuted it, I made no eye contact with him, little of any smiling. He hugged me 3 times on Friday 😵
CS → I still need to finish Lab03. Pierce tried to prove the hailstone number… Collatz conjecture. He’s awesome. I love CS.
lunch → Warding off Kevin
Spanish → failed PALS
Chem → electron configuration. Zane already knows everything. I began sitting by him.
So basically… um… I’m not allowed to use my MBA (macbook air) at home… I’m missing school on friday, hooray! I’ll go to homecoming most likely… Monday was depressing, today was ok. My life consists of CS, not failing cello (had a scarily terrible cello lesson last saturday), hating my parents (that was mostly on the weekend when they got pissed at me for cello…) wanting to be a game dev… Loving braid, the indie game (that was more last week)… Getting a visa card on Oct 2, buying games and my aiaiai headphones… Jealousy of Perry and all smart kids… And here’s a list of boys that have made an impression (in order, more or less) on me.
[…]
Zane and Nick look similar.
Joshua is the most unattractive.
Peter and Perry are alike. Peter… blond, beautiful.
Overall Zane is most impressionable.
[10-29-12] Wow, I can’t believe that I never wrote about HC—wait, I did, but in my secondary journal. Here’s the current issue: I need to stop liking Zane. I like him way too much. It’s a motherfucking trap that I can’t get out of. Hurricane Sandy is coming up the east coast; school has been cancelled today and tomorrow (if the weather is purported to get worse). So far I have eaten pumpkin pie and oatmeal today.
[11-14-12] I think it sucks that I haven’t been writing as much when my ideas are better. I got a new table in my room. It’s red and shiny and rectangular (2.5:1). I let Adele read some of my school journal. Heh. It motivated me to write better.
[11-9-12] I try to track the nuances of my life. But I’m just so baad at writing. It is provoking to realize how infantile I was. I wish I could expedite this painful process. This process of stupidity overwritten by acute lucidity. When was the last time I had a true existential crisis, the kind that wouldn’t leave me? No, rather, when is the last time I felt the absurd gnawing at my heart. What were all the low points of my existence? […]
I want to complain about a few smaller things first. First of all, I saw Zane today. His 8B was obviously in the Ling room. Rubik’s cube was moved, perhaps. I also saw him before 8A. The supernatural is taunting me. I feel embarrassed by loving him. I saw some girl flirting with him at math team. Winston trolled me meanwhile by asking me what percentage of my time is spent thinking about him: Me: “<2%.” He: “Oh, so 80%” confusing me vaguely for a while. That section of the day killed my morale. I felt stupid and jealous. What a horrid combination. I feel like Zane looks down on me after I got a 91 on that test. Thus… I must say… FUCK. I refuse to want him. I refuse.
[11-12-12] Life is where it should be. Slight conflicts between my family and my love for computers are a constant threat to my sanity. My first USACO will occur this weekend. I’m struggling to comprehend graph theory. And to keep up with my coursera class. I got to run in P.E. Zane and I talked about polyatomic ions.
[12-14-12] Our relations are slowly improving, and I hate getting muddled between the irrational and the rational—liking him is truly stupid, no? I hope he reciprocates; only then will I dislike him. Kevin Xu is still talking to me.
My mom is… a paradigm of the contradictory.
She is so chaotic; I truly dislike her. My father I like; he is very calm and helpful, and creative as well.
Footbinding=high heels, and masturbation is wrong in every religion except Hinduism. I believe in masturbation. I masturbate more than usual nowadays (1 time per day)… If makes me feel hypermasculine, as I tend to masturbate to images of females. Masturbation satisifies my id. We learned about Sigmund Freud in history; Ms. Yi went off on a tangent about him… It was very nice. I totally agree with the Elektra and Oedipus complexes, I had one.
[11-16-12] Zane continues… He is like love [itself], as he is the source of either excitement or depression—all rather mild however, not at all like those passionate reactions of yesterday. He sat near the syslab this morning, and looked very spiffy, wearing a coat, with his typical striped multicolor long-sleeved shirts. It aroused me, but I was too busy on English to talk to him. Later I saw him after the end of 8A, as chess club is in the same room as linguistic club, after it ends. Brief words were exchanged: “What club meets here now?” (chess club) “Linguistics club is in here A-block)”… I’m always so dry or awkward around him. I hope I don’t come across as stupid. I hope he’s just acting superficially when he acts so erudite in that pretentious way. I have a feeling that he’s trying to show off (hopefully I’m not skewed in my views in favor of myself) his intellect to me because he seems me as worthy of that level of intellectual erudition, as opposed to that pessimsitic view of me in which he’s always like that and looks down on me because I once asked if a dodecahedron had 20 sides. ← I still haven’t forgiven myself for that. But if he’s always like that I dislike him; it is pretentious. Or not? Perhaps both of us are equally bad at expressing ourselves to each other. Perhaps… It’s hard to read him. Wow, that ended up being a long digression on Zane -_- Kevin Xu is being so annoying. He bought me a stuffed animal. (dog) I rejected it coldly. Can’t he see that I don’t like him? Anyway I had a vaguely frightening realization: If I don’t learn math well, I won’t be able to innovate in my coding. I must learn math well, I have to learn other paradigms of thought like chess and rubik’s cubes (oh Zane…)… Anyway, I need to save up on sleep (gonna USACO at 4 AM on Sunday.)… Gotta make a github repo and learn how to use it […]
[11-17-12] Sergey Khac…[something] was a great violinist. Shostakovich #4 lost me. The concert was satisfactory. I have a plan for Zane. I’ll ask him to come to the syslab so I can teach him CS.
[11-29-12] I don’t give a shit about Zane though I blushed when Mrs. Taylor used Zane and I going to McDonalds as an example when trying to explain a type of bond.
[1-9-13] Kevin Xu trolled me by using Zane as a decoy to get me to go to the music wing where people played happy birthday for me -_-
[1-14-13] Zane came to sit with Asa, Riley, and I during lunch.
[3-19-13] Fuck, I am obsessed with the idea of Zane liking me back. Depressed, tired.
[4-27-13] I am a gay transman.
Brahms was interesting—I performed the entire 1st cello sonata.
I am a logical introvert.
[6-24-15] Well I’m a bit hypomanic rather than being totally depressed like I was yesterday. It’s weird. Now I’m excited for the future. Masochism. Writing. Nice convo w/ Zane!
A final entry in that notebook: Signing the guest book [6-23-19].
I haven’t dared to write something in there since. If I look at my phone photos I can get a sense of what I looked at during each visit home, but I don’t know that I care to, given how uncarefully I read through things each time. Here I resume or I’m going to continue to blame my mother for most things, because she’s raising her voice, treating my sister like my father—habituated to throwing her own stresses onto some passive, melancholic victim. If my sister makes the wrong choice of dress for a 15-hour flight, she should suffer the consequences. I know better than my mother; this must be said with a tinge of shame even it is true. She has treated me this way in the past, too, hence this sense that being in a low mood was bad, and the aggresivity with which I approached such moods, including such moods as I witnessed them in other people.
I’m against the construct of the mother and the maternal gaze—mothers who want little phalluses.
What was Ms. Yi’s tangent on Sigmund Freud? How many teenagers have been deluded into thinking that the Elektra complex exists, or at very least into attributing its existence to Freud?
I have tried to bump into my father three times and each time he simply wasn’t there. Earlier in the evening, before sundown, I saw he had started a fire outside, probably in order to cook something. He has a little electric burner inside but it’s nicer to cook outside. My mother’s bathroom remains unfinished because she’s not interested in finishing it, and her “husband” who is more inclined to do such work isn’t being asked to help. When I was growing up they were around one another and fought, now they have this strange separate existence which I haven’t managed to grasped through longitudinal experience. In the basement there is a printout of the text of an email or letter typeset in Baskerville; no salutation or signature, but clearly something my sister wrote at most three months ago.
I wrote one of my best missives—a text message—to John before I left. I still haven’t read the response.
This post implies I have had a massive amount of time on this “layover” before boarding the direct flight to Korea, which is somewhat true, though I work fast and spent several hours today in Zoom meetings with students. I have made more better succint associations in analysis, and went for a six-mile run. I feel that I have produced something of an illusion—not the one that Kiyoaki would approve of maybe, but one I find entertaining and also forceful-cruel in moments: joining the ranks of other sparrow-nightingales.