5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29
sheila heti makenna goodman raven leilani tove ditlevsen otessa moshfegh judith butler peter handke hayao miyazaki isao takahata lars von trier charlotte gainsbourg ahmed elbeshlawy judith butler d.h. lawrence jacques lacan
If everyone placed such a high value on their reproductive value, and particularly on their symbolic status as a fertile human being,
(a) they would all go mad, horribly mad.
(b) the world would be a better place.
(c) everyone does this without knowing it.
It would a pure freedom, to make life about nothing but life.
It would be impossible to tell what it means for a person to live.
Each person would need to invent a new notion of value.
A stricture is not just a restriction, but a censorious remark.
I don’t understand why it’s so painfully difficult to take a picture of myself.
God has put a hole in your head so things like that fall out of it. Yet you keep trying to put things like that into it! There is not a hole in your head for no reason at all. There is a hole in your head for certain things, and not for certain other things. Find the things that don’t leak out and fill your head with those ones.
And I could begin a sentence based in truth and end it with a falsity so obscene I was sure my neighbors, if they ever read it, would think I was some sort of pervert.
I, too, want to invent a “Celeste” whose traits are just enough like my own so that I might become, through her, “a completely new woman.” The problem with this novelette is that “Celeste” clearly does not exist.
I can’t remember what I do in analysis anymore. I almost believe that my analyst likes me MORE now, and it’s like I’ve done nothing to deserve it. Maybe something good is going on in his life. Or maybe it’s more interesting and useful for me to be talking about things I’m reading. Maybe it’s just interesting to witness a change—what’s the change??
(Yesterday I met Yongyu and said something about Either/Or and to Hunter I spoke about how annoyed I was by the false questions…)
Now I have the number 1m 44s is etched in my mind; I took another look at “Sunbitch” and realized I had forgotten that I had written something.
Made banana bread. Reached a considerable orgasm right at the start of analysis, missing the call by a second. I grinned and said it might be hard for me to begin today. It was the strongest I’ve had since February.
Finished Luster, talked to Lara, looked at Reformation dresses with her, ate some black chickpeas / kimchi / bonito flakes / douchi / celery from cast iron pan, burped a lot, couldn’t sleep until very late, very tired.
(1) Wish-fulfillment: Talking to Lara somehow re-opened my desire for the thing that’s friendly? What if my greatest mistake was to foreclose a friendship with a former friend? She asks me why I don’t think we (Z) can be friends again—I can’t really say why, though I know it has something to do with sex; why does sex ruin friendship? Because Didi only wants one thing…? Have been discussing this with Hunter—“I like the idea of Zane reading my writing and having nothing but critical thoughts; whether or not he articulates this critique, its existence is enough; I imagine him as my foremost critic and this is desirable to me.” And then I hesitate, wondering if it is indeed good to have a critic who doesn’t produce criticism; it’s not as if I am producing rules, I have a critical engine in how I respond to the things I read, particularly the things I write, …
(2) John, according to my notes, appeared last, after the visit. But I remember it happening first, before the visit. Does this matter?
(3) “I’m sexually magnetized still / we’re friends again?": I don’t know if I verbalized this in the dream or only afterwards. It seems to refer to Zane but it could refer to Wayne, as both induced an ecstatic response through laughter and are estranged or distant.
(4) I mentioned Dvořák to Hunter some sessions ago, had something to do with Bloch and Schelomo and psychoanalysis as a Jewish tradition, my lack of interest in the ethnic specificity of certain pieces of music I had played in the past, including Dvořák’s use of Czech (Moravian, Bohemian) folksong. Are these details relevant? Maybe only insofar as they bring Hunter into the dream, and my interest in Hunter’s wife…
(5) Wayne is an epitome of the masculine; like a “Tang dynasty aristocrat,” he exudes power and has a wider and stronger physique than most of the men I’ve found attractive in the past. His room was extremely spartan, he slept on the floor, had an elegant tetsubin, introduced me to the brand Icebreaker, was generous with his time. When I met him for the first time it was in a group conversation with Michael Albert, Long Do, Akio Kozato; he told me he would date me if I were still a girl; shortly after that I dreamt that he performed cunnilingus on me and never told anyone about it. I felt embarrassed by the fact that I was having a sexual fantasy involving a heterosexual man, like I was supposed to be ashamed of my pussy and find forthcoming and attractive masculine straight men like him embarrassing in and of themselves. I’m probably conjuring him in part because Savitri said I need to poison her at her wedding if she ends up marrying a man in tech, and Wayne, last time I checked, was working on a blockchain startup which no longer exists. But mainly because detransition involves becoming skeptical of past foreclosure of relationships with men.
Email to Danish on 4/2/16:
“apparently during the time i wait for water to boil wayne has misgendered me twice / akio problematizes how wayne has begun to think of me as girl now knowing i am trans / but he is kind about it and i find it funny – i can’t think of it as misgendering i can only think of it as his… trying on my past in the form of language to briefly see me as the ‘wrong’ gender for a bit is perfectly genuine / he tells me that if i still …… i fill in the blank: identified as female …… he would be very romantically interested in me, that i am his ‘type’ / ‘chill but assertive masculine female’”
Afternoon horniness: Ingratiated a 23-year-old man from Maine; his verbal fantasies sounded like they had been taken from a non-descript porn scene and I responded with a kind of scene of public sex in a grocery store. The first time I sexted on reddit I described a scenario that was too private and it made me feel awful. I think having sex in public is accurate to my desire, has something to do with the fact that I’m more free to wear a dress in grocery stores. I also asked him to talk about someone real that he found attractive, his girl had short hair, freckles, worked at a store he frequents. Held off on exchanging pictues, but he offered up his penis, which was “4-5 inches” long and looked like a sweet potato because it was uncircumcised. What really got him off was a kind of personal intimacy; he wanted to know my name, which I invented for the occasion, and it helped him to use it frequently. I had to answer to the question of whether or not he could actually breed me; I said, “maybe you should find someone nearby.” I was extremely turned off and needed to think a lot in order to respond to this and get the conversation to a satisfactory close; later I felt basically good about having made up a name, about the notion that this activity would be less about producing arousal in the moment and more about learning to perceive the Other’s desire.
Today’s run was so bad that I had to cut it short, and as I was walking down Slaterville road I came across a mulberry tree and took as many berries as I could fit in my hand. I also got barked at by a german shepherd, it was running quite vigorously along the border of the front yard, there was no fence, I was intimidated enough to cross the road.
“Testosterone enanthate has an elimination half-life of 4.5 days and a mean residence time of 8.5 days when used as a depot intramuscular injection” (Wikipedia). It makes sense that I crash on Sundays. Considering going off T entirely next week.
I spoke to Savitri about the male gaze last night; the penis seemed to be a larger version of the one from Reddit; the mochi ice cream reminded me of stealing people's ice cream from the community fridge at Humanities House, the waist guy looked a bit like a boy with dwarfism who went to my elementary school in 4th/5th grade, but also had certain features that might be like Kevin Xu's; speaking to Semilore would be consistent with my desire to cultivate more relationships with (black) women so that I can learn something about their relationships with men and with beauty.
"I really want to get pregnant, it seems."
“I remember how this happened last summer, I thought my life had no other use.”
“But that isn’t true now! I do have thoughts, things I’m excited by.”
“Why do I want a skirt? I don’t want to buy anything. I’m satisfied with what I have.”
“Skirts are arousing to men because of ‘easy access’? Or because of exaggerated sexual dimorphism? Why not a dress then? A skirt is different—something about stricture?”
“I wish I could go to a STORE. At least yesterday’s run was good!”
“I am feeling really bad about my OVARIES.”
“Are my OVARIES WORKING???”
“I’ve been a “man” for HOW LONG?”
2013 2014 2015 ( 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 )
MARCH
Declared tentative intent to go off T at doctor’s appointment on March 3rd. I don’t remember my dosages, but it was something like .24 ml, .21 ml, .20 ml, .19 ml.
APRIL
Held at .19-.17 ml range; a bit foggy, acne breakout around the temples. Vomited on April 8, very tired for most of the month, more energy during the last week, hard to know how much of this was circumstantial, related to exam pressure, John/Katie.
MAY
Decreased a bit: .19, .17, .17, .15. I am only sure about the last dosage, and the fact that I went down to .17 at some point. Vomited on May 15, 30, also bloated on May 13. Felt quite tired on May 26. Did bloodwork on May 20 (one day after .17 ml shot). Testosterone: 445 ng/dL (reference range: 264-916; previous reading: 649 ng/dL on 2/10/22). Estradiol: 28.5 pg/mL (reference range: 7.6-42.6 for males, 30-400 pg/mL for premenopausal women).
JUNE
.12, .8. No real noticeable issues. Did first round of laser hair removal. Bloodwork on June 13 - E: 22.1 pg/mL; T: 122 ng/dL. I’ve decided that it’s safe to proceed; no more testosterone, will do another test next week. Not experiencing any fatigue out of the ordinary. I weight 107 lbs in the morning with a fair amount of hydration, my measurements haven’t budged: 31-25.5-33, 18.5 thigh.
Hi Rachel,
I have continued to decrease my T dosage and would like to check my levels again. Could you send in another order for blood work for me, just checking testosterone and estradiol levels? I’m not sure I need the complete blood panel to be checked at this frequency, but if you recommend it then that’s fine.
Here’s a summary of the changes: I held my dose in the .17-.19 ml/week range throughout the month of April and the first three weeks of May. I experienced three episodes of bloating, nausea, and stomach cramps which seemed like PMS symptoms during this time period. I’ve also experienced some fatigue, marked by slower running times, mostly in the last two weeks, when I decreased my dose again to .12 and .8 ml. I find that I am noticeably more sluggish on the fourth and fifth days after my shot, and more energetic by day six and seven (prior to the shot). I think my digestive issues have stabilized, and have been tolerating the lower energy levels without much stress. I’m pretty confident in my decision to detransition at this point and would like to go off T completely in the next week or so, but I suppose my levels will influence this process. I should also note that the last time I did bloodwork was one day after my shot, so it’s possible that my mid-week T levels have been around 220 ng/dL for a while now. I’ll try to do my next lab closer to the middle of the shot cycle.
Best, Didi
Walked uselessly to grocery store, bought dates and figs; saw three dogs—an afghan hound and two wolfhounds—and four cats—slim orange tabby with eye problems, long-haired calico, stout gray tabby, slim black cat; wore gladiator sandals and No. 6 mesh shirt. Wondered if I was simply “heartbroken.” Told three friends earlier in the day that I’m suffering from sudden boredom! And so are they! Told Hunter that I’m bored; he suggested we meet four times a week. Deeply perturbed by the suggestion!!!
“In the morning there was hope. It sat like a fleeting gleam of light in my mother’s smooth black hair that I never dared touch; it lay on my tongue with the sugar and the lukewarm oatmeal I was slowly eating while I looked at my mother’s slender, folded hands that lay motionless on the newspaper, on top of the reports of Spanish flu and the Treaty of Versailles. My father had left for work and my brother was in school. So my mother was alone, even though I was there, and if I was absolutely still and didn’t say a word, the remote calm in her inscrutable heart would last until the morning had grown old and she had to go out to do the shopping in Istedgade like ordinary housewives.”
No longer bored, made coffee in the overcast morning, shaved my legs for the third time ever, not very well, bumped into Tracy on my way to Galvanic, read more about laser hair removal, had a good run, read about the pharmacology of synthetic testosterone and its possible relation to manic depression. Saw a red-tailed hawk standing on a lawn, later chased away by sparrows. Saw a flattened chipmunk and some other small dead animal. Time was in the 7:50-8:00 min/mile range. Thinking I should read The Copenhagen Trilogy.
I imagined visiting Cambridge and asking him to impregnate me, reassuring him about the child, saying he doesn’t have to worry about it, that I’d take care of it, that nobody would know whose it was, that he wouldn’t have to spend any more time with me afterwards. It gives me comfort to imagine this scene so vividly, in which he listens and doesn’t respond, in which my ridiculousness is allowed to exist. My cyprine has a more watery consistency now, I tasted it and it was salty in an elemental clean sense. I somehow feel more justified in imagining asking for sperm, knowing that I am “more female” now, i.e., non-teratogenic. I would even say I feel “purer” and more “delicate” now, so that my demands and desires cannot land as sharp and hard. But I don’t know why I still think of this all as necessarily an exchange—give me a child, and I’ll give you your freedom, freedom from me and freedom from everything that’s ever held you back. I imagine that after Z gives me a secret child he’ll contribute something very important to his field, meet someone else with whom he has an excellent rapport, and I’ll be happy for him, but I’ll also have a child who is completely invaluable and amazingly unknown.
I made coffee again and decided to go for a walk with my camera, the macro lens on. Wore the Reformation printed turtleneck with the naked women and leopards on it, and the thrifted black silk culottes that I must have found in a San Francisco Goodwill five or six years ago. I went down to first dam, where there were no people in bikinis, and no more ducklings, and no more canada geese, though I found the nest, apparently abandoned, with two eggs in it, one that had rolled out, and one that was completely crushed. Continued on to the Mulholland trail and saw various water snakes, a toad, a bullfrog, a jack-in-the-pulpit, various fungi, a baltimore oriole, a group of many kids chaperoned by a few adults, a young woman in a red bra meditating, a few women running. The papier-mâché guy is making a sturgeon. Returned to apartment by 11:45.
Why is it so bad to think about telling zane…? Well it’s bad because I would say it, and have said it. I wouldn’t be able to take it back if I said it. It taints me to desire in this way. I said something about those embarrassing block quotes from 10:04, like what I could remember of this—“She wants you to donate the sperm precisely because she doesn’t think you’d ever get it together enough to be an active father; she’s much more afraid of raising a child with an onerous father than without a father at all; she comes from a line of self-sufficient women whose partners disappear.” Now that I’m revisiting it I feel embarrassed because it doesn’t match how I think about fatherhood in the slightest. I don’t care about the presence or absence or togetherness of the parental unit, but about desire. It’s impossible for me to imagine him wanting what I want, and I also feel like a poison for wanting what I want in relation to him, so it’s better to get it over with, finish up with this particular idea, but it seems like an idea which won’t be finished off unless I think about it. I like the non-intersection of desire, like a sheet of polarizing film… the notion of running off with denial and making it into a gift…
For the first time ever, I counted nine months out from the present. It occurred to me that the real difficult starts afterwards, that the next four years of my life would be the key to the child’s existence. At five or six I’d finally be able to relax a bit, or at least the priorities would shift. Right after analysis Instagram showed me a reel by a pregnancy blogger: “I get pregnant… / Carry the baby for 40+ weeks… / I push the baby out of me… / They look like their dad 🤦🏼♀️” She (@katelynnseay) is only 23, and seems to have had her first baby right after graduating from high school; she’s so young and lithe and attractive in comparison to her 33-year-old husband! I’d rather my child look like a foreign alien…
It also occurred to me recently that detransition is a sort of rehearsal of pregnancy for me; it’s a homologous endocrinological change, to be suddenly feminizing myself, to experience surges of ovarian activity. I might be growing more vellus hairs on my face and arms in response to this, just like a pregnant woman.
Michelle and /u/postsure reached out today.
I felt guilt and anxiety in relation to Hunter.
I re-read emails that Kevin Xu sent me, which I have no memory of, and they disgusted me. I’m afraid that Hunter’s recommendation that we meet four times a week feels a little bit like an incursion, but if I think about it as a penetration or punctuation it makes me kind of impacted, like I don’t know what’s best for me and he does.
Is Hunter bored or annoyed when I return to the subject of pregnancy?
Yes, maybe fertility is going to become tiresome.
I had no dreams; doing the dream-work was painful today.
I want to make another banana bread, or chocolate-chip cookies.
Received Kosas lipstick samples and enjoyed trying them out. I’m surprised to realize that I prefer cooler, muted colors: purples, light brown, some nude shades of pink.
Enjoyed some portions of the Internet: @dyremarxx, @fayemikah, the word “straggot” on Reddit, a comment on the silliness of the breeding kink. I kept on telling myself that my desired to be bred has nothing to do with consensual non-consent, that it also has very little to do with the physical sensation of someone depositing seed inside me, and that it basically has nothing to do with anything anyone has proposed thus far.
The embarrassing thing is the notion that behind my desire is a very simple thing that is impossible to properly articulate; that I like him as a being who has no relation to me.
Yesterday I worked pretty hard on a detransition substack-style blog post.
I avoid discussion of relationships with particular individuals, which feels necessary.
I have the energy I need to do things but they’re being directed into less intense things.
I have a list now of books I need to revisit.
I rewatched Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind.
I want to watch Only Yesterday.
I want to write to Zane, but I’m scared, and I don’t know what I’d say.
I am comfortable writing here because I know I won’t push the changes until the end of the month, or even later, depending on how I feel about it. It’s totally unlike the “send” button—how can I ever return to the “send” button? How can I return to buttons?
I skimmed an article called “What is orgasm?” It’s all about vibes.
Am I officially done with my involuted, intense jouissance?
Analysis was intense today, and I didn’t think I’d send that, especially not after all that.
I’m thinking about death again; isn’t it always going to come back, even after I am, or when I am closest to a vision of what the prolongation of life would look like for me?
What do I mean by the word “dangerous,” as in I’m afraid of entering a dangerous place? I took a walk which felt dangerous—the fraternity houses looked so desolate, and the greenery had turned the medium-dark shade of green that signifies it’s been summer for a while now. I figured I’d post the images of the diffracted sunset somewhere.
Shelved
Bewilderment in the room was beneficial for the future.
Readers like to identify with a girl who is mostly hapless.
Fame became an object of want after the catastrophe.
She dislikes what you’ve done as much as your mother.
Can you trust the man with pink streaks in his eyes?
Allow it to affect you at the pace of life.
Portion
A little block of prose promises to say something.
Told their suffering is meaningless, told to move on.
Mom suggests he’s repulsed by my nonstandard gender.
I’m supposed to be a scholar of voicing and babies.
CPR, OCR, IRC. Many things in the world cry out.
Suffering has a sideways aspect. Lateral recumbent.
Ululating is not the same as weeping or sobbing.
Grand lacrimal event in the sepulchral museum.
Lot
I would allow the flakes to blow in my hands.
When I received the news I was summoned.
My skin is pulled over something green and smooth.
I was flummoxed, I placed my fingers in the part that floats.
I said I knew the feeling of each angle, so that sight was no longer smooth.
I said I was twenty-four and that when I was twenty-two I had different plans.
Difference
I held the bone in my arms and kept it there like a baby.
I’d wrap my self around you and wonder if I felt more dead.
I wasn’t invited to your funeral, but they knew about me later.
I came here to say that I haven’t masturbated in four days.
ACLA done. It’s pleasing to be asked questions.
It’s also entertaining to be sent a 63-page paper, full of long footnotes, possibly more of a mess than many of the things I’ve written, by another graduate student. Now I get to feel less insecure about something.
Two quotes from Andrea Long Chu on Otessa Moshfegh:
Fear of the reader, not of God, is the beginning of literature.
It’s a shame. Moshfegh dirt is good dirt. But the author of Lapvona is not an iconoclast; she is a nun. Behind the carefully cultivated persona of arrogant genius, past the disgusting pleasures of her fiction and bland heresies of her politics, wedged just above her not inconsiderable talent, there sits a small, hardened lump of piety. She may truly be a great American novelist one day, if only she learns to be less important. Until then, Moshfegh remains a servant of the highest god there is: herself.
(1) I’d rather be a nun than an iconoclast
(2) I’d like to be a “small, hardened lump of piety.”
(3) I’d like not to be a servant of myself.
I wonder what it would mean to spend a long time deeply unhappy, spent the evening reading Eileen. I decided to do this after reading about Moshfegh’s chewing and spitting, which is about as far as I had gone where eating disorders are concerned. I did all this after encountering two “windsprites” on my walk from Greenstar.
It is scary to shut my eyes while sitting at this desk.
I thought I might begin my evening by watching Nymphomaniac again, but it made me think of the time when Z told me that he didn’t like how it ended. I couldn’t respond to this, didn’t want to, didn’t want to defend anything associated with my predilection for the film, which feels too personal. Did he wish that Seligman hadn’t tried to rape her?
Seligman’s asexuality is a falsification of neutrality?
Seligman thinks it would mean nothing for her to be fucked once more?
Joe becomes a free woman on account of his assault and her murder?
I discovered my cunt as a two-year-old.
“Cunt” is a very strong word.
Let’s call it “Pandora’s box” then.
Um… No, no, no. “Cunt” is better.
(I forgot that this is how her story begins)
Am I “method acting” in my freezing?
I believe that this freezing is necessary.
Rubicon
That fundamental was unforgiving; it came back with a gap.
My passion is very important to me, surviving its religiosity.
Father says, “The ash tree has had its fingers in the ashes.”
The floss cut a taste of red meat, be grateful for what’s vibrant.
I want a man’s dick in my mouth, that’s all I would do for him.
I wonder how Selma Judith feels about her father. Thinking about him makes me feel dead most of the time; I can’t reconstruct what I felt in 2020. I was a horrible person back then. I think of artists as being numb to their residues. I think artists need to experience motion through other people. I think I’ve led an evil life, too motionless for too long.
I should sublimate all this loneliness into more sexuality.
Sublimation […] does not on all occasions necessarily follow the path of the sublime. […] the sexual acknowledged as such may come to light in sublimation. The crudest of sexual games can be the object of a poem without for that reason losing its sublimating goal. (Ethics of Psychoanalysis 161).
In accordance with this Lacanian idea, even though Nymphomaniac does deploy the crudest of sexual games, it makes those games through Joe’s steely rebellious character the “object of a poem” and, precisely because of that, the film does not lose its sublimating goal, that is, to make the figure of the nymphomaniac sublime in spite of being an outcast in any decent society and, at the same time, to make the film itself intellectually sublime in spite of being too pornographic for mainstream cinema.
(Chapter 9 - Conclusion, or, Desire as Law: The Loneliness of Nymphomaniac between Pornography and Narrative, Woman in Lars von Trier’s Cinema, 1996-2014, Ahmed Elbeshlawy)
Bought waxberry, hawthorn, apricot juice, rambutan, lychee, daifuku
Charlotte Gainsbourg has a 11-year-old daughter named Joe (her third).
Pleasing walk up Mitchell St., saw deer eating fallen mulberries, saw delicate prolific alpine strawberry patch in someone’s front yard.
The watermelon candy scent of the pink flowered-vine was impressive. Quisqualis indica, “wrangling creeper.” Then I saw a pink strawberry kasugai gummy wrapper on the sidewalk on the way home. The phlebotomist wasn’t very good this time, she didn’t even ask me to clench my fist. I watched C. Gainsbourg’s film on her mother, Jane. Joe made various cute appearances. She looks so serious and independent. I liked the little doggies and the discussion of touching (one’s daughter) and the cameras Charlotte used; otherwise a somewhat boring movie. I researched Brigitte Bardot aftewards and decided that Et dieu creá la femme is a boring movie, but that her outfits are pretty impressive—the long green skirt that gets unbuttoned to reveal the bottom of her black bodysuit! Sometimes when I look at pictures of my sister I’m proud of her for being cute or pretty. I haven’t talked about this in analysis enough!
- Finished Women in Love last night
- Another round of bloating, but no pain or nausea
- My homework is to develop a piece on Lacan
- My homework is to read Undoing Gender
- My homework is to re-read Handke’s “Child Story”
I am not sure I know when mourning is successful, or when one has fully mourned another human being. I’m certain, though, that it does not mean that one has forgotten the person, or that something else comes along to take his or her place. I don’t think it works that way. I think instead that one mourns when one accepts the fact that the loss one undergoes will be one that changes you, changes you possibly forever, and that mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation the full result of which you cannot know in advance. So there is losing, and there is the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned. I don’t think, for instance, you can invoke a Protestant ethic when it comes to loss. You can’t say, “Oh, I’ll go through loss this way, and that will be the result, and I’ll apply myself to the task, and I’ll endeavor to achieve the resolution of grief that is before me.” I think one is hit by waves, and that one starts out the day with an aim, a project, a plan, and one finds oneself foiled. One finds oneself fallen. One is exhausted but does not know why. Something is larger than one’s own deliberate plan or project, larger than one’s own knowing. Something takes hold, but is this something coming from the self, from the outside, or from some region where the difference between the two is indeterminable? What is it that claims us at such moments, such that we are not the masters of ourselves? To what are we tied? And by what are we seized?
This was my favorite font when I lived in Olympia (ages 8-11).
Last night I received skirts and a dress from TheRealReal. It’s important and gratifying to do online second-hand shopping.
This morning I went to the botanical gardens to check the plant sale. They had sanguinaria and trillium and opuntia and other strange species. I picked up the curbside magazines near my house. I shopped for glasses online. I read parts of the Dobbs decision. My homework is to get a glasses prescription. I called.
It seems more important to make remarks on the weather, to say it was sunny and cloudless, and that it therefore got quite hot, and that yesterday was relatively cool, such that going for a walk with J was comfortable. And when I did my analysis I spoke a great deal about things which seemed trivial and I smiled and laughed and apologized for being so frivolous, and for even having told a “boring” story. Boring because it seemed so closed and finished, and then Hunter made a surprising punctuating remark at the end—you seem to wish I was there. I think I need to come back and speak about that remark again.
I read more NY Times articles: Melissa Febos’s breast reduction, a guy’s phalloplasty, poor women recovering from Brazilian butt lifts, a guy who was fat and lost weight using the Noom app. This complemented the one on the guy with the crooked jaw who looks like a matador named Manolete (my favorite). I also skimmed the one on Maggie Nelson (yuck) and read a Vanity Fair article on Grimes. I imagined being a bored housewife with some insecurities and some interest in seeing how others either find solace with their imperfect bodies. Or being interested in how these little celebrities live strange and excessive or serious and ambitious lives. No, I can’t do that, I can only admire the slick texture of glossy magazine paper and the way the columns are laid out on the page. But I don’t really approve of the ecosystem of the work, if what it does is to give bored women a sense of peace in the possibility of a “lifestyle.” It’s the “as if”-ness of isn’t it better, or more important, to sit through boredom in an ascetic painful solitude, or to force the bored person to draw or write?
I researched my brief “misogyny” phase by reading chat logs from June 25 2012. I want to revisit the Schopenhauer “On Women” essay but I can’t get myself to do it, or to care particularly; is any of this “misogyny” cognizable as anything but an adolescent’s attempt to try on a difficult, painful ideology? I wonder if I shall read Beauvoir, but I think Butler will take precedence for quite some time. I suppose the exigency here lies in figuring out how to say something about psychoanalysis and gender, to have some sort of elegant theory about how a gender identity comes into being, and I think of Beauvoir’s work as more descriptive and historical.
Today was essentially a buying day—I put in the glasses order with eyebuydirect, which doesn’t require an actual prescription, and I decided I’d try lap swimming this summer, and spent a whole lot of time researching what to buy, learning about this material called PBT polyester (polybutylene terephthalate)…
The 26th was the day it went from hot to cool. I started my day more or less (9:30 start) with a 7-mile run, during which my right knee started to hurt. But I figured out how to “fix” it—by stretching my hamstring and thigh adductors. Then there was the torrential rain coming in around 4 PM, at which point I had read the introductions and second chapter of Gender Trouble. I read the first chapter on Saturday? And there was that weird conversation with Rin in which she complained about her eight-hour layover.
The eye doctor was named “Chris Jester.” It’s so fun to try on glasses and go to “big-box stores” like Walmart and T.J. Maxx and Trader Joe’s. I haven’t found such cheap and large and ripe California figs since I was in California, though there’s nothing stopping a place like Greenstar from obtaining them, no? Then there was Significant Elements, which had various old sinks and architectural elements. I like living here more than ever. And I found that last dream quite sweet—I think it had something to do with my sexual ecstasy from the reading and the rain.
Read Joan Riviere’s “Womanliness as Masquerade.”
Spent a bittersweet 2.5 hours with John, in which I accidentally revealed that he had been chasing me in my dream. Made plans to meet with V (the second V?!) tomorrow. Very, very, very tired.
(2): I entered a large store, a bit like the entrance to Walmart or Wegman’s, and saw an incredible display of phragmipediums for sale, and some small african violets. I saw a red phragmipedium besseae, and various striped varieties… Later I was supposed to be performing at a recital, playing the cello, but I left the place to search for a bathroom. I was wandering around all sorts of stores in a sunny, gold-toned city, and when I found a bathroom, the line was too long. I was trying to use a women’s room and was also afraid of being seen, of being “clocked” as transgender.
The cause of sense is the external body, or object, which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in the taste and touch; or mediately, as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which endeavour, because outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour; and to the rest of the body, in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling. All which qualities called sensible are in the object that causeth them but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but diverse motions (for motion produceth nothing but motion). But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye makes us fancy a light, and pressing the ear produceth a din; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we know the thing we see is in one place; the appearance, in another. And though at some certain distance the real and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing else but original fancy caused (as I have said) by the pressure that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs, thereunto ordained. But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine; and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species, (in English) a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving whereof into the eye is seeing. And for the cause of hearing, that the thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, or audible being seen; which, entering at the ear, maketh hearing. Nay, for the cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, that is, an intelligible being seen; which, coming into the understanding, makes us understand. I say not this, as disapproving the use of universities: but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a Commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way what things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.
(Hobbes, The Leviathan)
