Greetings, loved ones / Let's take a journey
> read my private diary> meet people I know and don't know
> explore my garden
> learn about sinks!
> about me
> eworm home
Dear Diary:
02.27.2025 (language centre)
I provided a prompt and was handed a poem. In it I found a half-truth, a whole truth, also a slug, but I did not panic - sometimes they ride in on the coattails of lettuce, and only go to show that it is organic.For lunch (just a few minutes ago) ate a Pret sandwich on a bench in the St. Giles churchyard. I enjoyed it. All of it. The sunshine. The swaying daffodils. The small bulbs pushing eager through the thinning end of February. The Pret sandwich itself - smoked salmon and egg mayo. I don't mind a Pret sandwich. Honestly I like a Pret sandwich. Say it with your chest, Ella: I like a Pret sandwich. This suggests that when the world ends it will take me with it.
There were no slugs in my sandwich. Or lettuce. Had there been lettuce, I'd have been chill about it. Had there been a slug, I would right now right this moment be suing absolutely everyone.
02.27.2025 pt. 2 (later, Pembroke Mackesey room)
A snail - it doesn't have legs.02.26.2025 Blackwell's
Want to hear a secret? Want to hear a secret? I hope to GOD that someone out there sees me as a "fashionista." I hope to GOD person 1 out there has said "do you know Ella?" and person 2 has said "Which Ella? Wait, you mean the FASHIONISTA??" and person 1 has said "yes oh god yes that fashionista" and person 2 has said "I wish I could be a fashionista like HER" and then person 2 has said "wait there's something I need to tell you" and person 1 has said "what??" and person 2 has said "I'm pregnant. But I don't know if the child is yours. Also the reason I always wear socks to make love is that my feet are webbed - this is a generational curse that the child - our? child? - will inherit. Have pity on a poor sinner. Have pity!" and person 1 has said "I love you no matter what. I will love the child no matter what. Also I knew about the curse all along because long ago in the Old Country my ancestor was the one who cursed your ancestor. Our love is a form of predestined reconciliation. Our child - if it is our child - even it isn't our child - is a form of predestined reconciliation. Also, wearing socks to make love is the sign of a TRUE fashionista. Ella be damned. YOU are the fashionista for me."I hope to god this has happened.
Zach says no matter what I write or don't write, no matter what I achieve or don't achieve, I am always complete and I am always whole and I am always wholly and completely myself. Zach is so smart. Zach is learning the names of the trees in Slovenian so he can call them by their names when he greets them. Zach is so smart - surely he must be right about this.
02.24.2025 magdalen --> home
There's no room in the stomach for the stomach. There is a stomach in the stomach, so the stomach is all stomach - and that's all there is in the stomach.I don't know how to dream more about whales. I don't know how to control my dreams so they're more frequently about whales.
02.20.2025 Society Café
There is no way in hell I could be any taller than I am right now. If I were any taller I would be hitting my head on helicopters all the time, getting all sorts of lacerations and concussions and possibly decapitations. This would be unacceptable — helicopters are too dangerous as-is.There really is no way in hell that I could get any taller than I am right now. Young boys with slingshots would see me and start slinging, maybe even shotting. Young men with chainsaws would see me and start sawing. I would be felled almost immediately. It would be a disaster — for me, at least.
There is sugar in my bloodstream. There is caffeine in my bloodstream. There is blood in my bloodstream — I think blood is what is primarily in the bloodstream. Unless...? Is blood IN the bloodstream or is blood what the bloodstream IS? Someone please clarify this. If anyone with knowledge is reading this please clarify this. If anyone powerful is reading this please give me a job, or a title, or a landholding. If anyone out of my league is reading this — please fall in love with me, passionately and recklessly. If the girl reading this is reading this — you are beautiful. If future me is reading this — I hope you're okay. I hope you're beautiful. I hope you have mastered Swiss meringue buttercream. I hope you love yourself, even — no especially — your own spleen. I hope you absolutely love your own spleen. I hope you smile to yourself in a café, and the kind of annoying bitch who asks people "what are you smiling about?" asks you what you're smiling about and you have to tell her that you are smiling with love — thick love — rich love — for your own sacred and radiant spleen. I hope you know how to do a kickflip. I hope you've peed. I need to pee so fucking badly right now, so if future me is reading this I hope to god that you have peed.
02.19.2025
I've been spending so much time reading The Journal of Emily Shore, thinking about what a diary can be and should be. Every day I tell myself that I will start writing a diary entry every day, even if only to log my movements or say that I'm too busy to write a diary entry. Every day I don't. Today I am. Tomorrow I will.02.01.2025
Wasted much of the day scrolling on Instagram. Sat on the floor, back leaned against bed frame, hunched in a position that would strike terror into any chiropractic heart, and scrolled.The wall-to-wall carpet in my room is an uneasy off-beige, speckled with off-black and off-tan and off-grey and off-yellow and off-orange. I assume that carpet companies market these swatches to landlords with the promise that they "don't show stains." I suppose this is true, in the same way that smallpox hides cystic acne.
Maybe carpet companies pre-distress their carpets, like early 2000s Brooklynites taking bleach and safety scissors to a new pair of jeans. They probably have a whole crew of employees whose only job is to spill ink and projectile vomit Hawaiian Punch and pour ground-up pencil shavings onto the 100% polyamide low-cut tufted pile. Their in-house design team is probably a mold colony. Our guarantee? You'll never be able to tell which bits of the carpet can be vacuumed up and which are endemic.
I sat on my floor today, knowing that I have 3000 things I need to do and 3000 topics I want to explore and about 30 books reserved across 3 different libraries and about 30 books to locate in another 3 libraries and only a few months left to write 3 papers and figure out my path for the foreseeable future and take advantage of a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience and instead I gave myself over to the algorithm, led by an overwhelming desire to think nothing and be nothing.
The algorithm showed me moms cooking easy weeknight meals. The algorithm thought I might be amused by a series of humorous experiences only gym girlies will understand. The algorithm sent me to a teen figure skating fan account which had made a post for each young athlete killed in the sky over DC, with photos and skating clips and biographies. I read them all. I scrolled through the comments, some from strangers mourning those poor babies, some from accounts with smiling podium-picture profiles sharing personal memories from competitions or pleas for this to just be a dream.
I bookmarked a recipe for broccoli spinach pasta, knowing that the sauce requires a blender and that I do not have a blender. A clip compilation of Jordan Peterson talking about rats made me laugh so I watched it three times. I bookmarked that as well, to give myself the option of going back for a fourth watch. Saving it felt like a step too far: I un-bookmarked it.
I was hit by a wave of anxiety about the man I bumped into at the party last night who I had not expected to bump into, the one I sat next to at the ---- dinner and who asked me back to his place afterwards and whose DM I finally responded to with a disgustingly stilted "I'm happy to grab a drink as friends" but who has now cut off his man bun. I glanced back at my last message. Seen Monday.
I microwaved some leftover broccoli and potato soup in a mug.
It seemed like a good time to see if I was capable of performing Shakespeare so I locked my door and pulled up Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" on my phone and gave it a few goes at a whisper, in case ---- was in the flat. I was able to tear up on cue in the same place each time. I wondered whether they were acting tears or plane crash tears or tears from having just read the Wikipedia articles for "cotard's syndrome" and "mortality salience" after the algorithm handed me an overwritten film nerd post about Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in Synecdoche, New York. I wondered whether, if I had played my cards differently, I might have starred by now as King Lear in a mediocre gender-swapped student theater production. I wondered whether, if I had played my cards differently, I might have thousands of instagram followers by now bookmarking my pasta recipes. I wondered what percentage of me wants an audience. I wondered what percentage of me knows what it wants, and what percentage of me devotes its energy to denying it.
Last night, when I was walking to the party with ---, men outside the church on St. Giles told us to come in and light a candle. I didn't want to be converted, so I avoided eye contact. Maybe tomorrow I will light a candle. Maybe tomorrow I will allow someone to convert me to something. Maybe tomorrow I will ask someone to grab a drink. Maybe tomorrow I will not look at my phone even once and I will walk around the city and read in the library and do the work I need to do and send emails and wash my bedding and go to sleep happily content. What I will not do tomorrow is rewatch the video of Jordan Peterson saying "the rat goes like THIS." I un-bookmarked it.
I don't know what kind of career I want. I don't know what to dream. Maybe there is a carpet factory hiring.