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<main> <h2>dec 31st, 1999</h2><body>
<p></p>one year, to the day, since the last time jeff mangum performed. something was off in the performance. i have a vhs bootleg of it that i got from a friend, and every time i watch it, i wish i could reach out and touch him, to see if he sweats below his sweater, because i want to help him, because his expressions don't look like any of the other bootlegs i have, or even the ones ive glimpsed in passing at conventions, oddity halls, or homes of acquaintances. i think he knew he was never going to come back. it must have weighed so heavy to have something like that, something that you knew would change everything, that you wouldn't tell anyone, or couldn't tell anyone.
<ul><li>breakfast: a bowl of oatmeal, 3 strips of bacon, a piece of honey wheat toast</li>
<li>lunch: 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on honey wheat, finished the old bag of bread, one slice from the new bag</li>
<li>dinner: a pork chop and roasted broccoli</li>
<li>sleep: 12 hours, woke up twice in the middle of the night, woke up once in the morning, saw it was 10:45 AM, and slept until 1:00 PM</li>
<li>addiction: 2 shots of vodka at lunchtime, 1 hit off the joint ive been nursing after cooking dinner but before eating it, and a 3-fingered fingernail scrape down my right upper arm, soft enough it didn't draw blood, but hard enough it left a mark</li>
<li>sexual: reached orgasm in 12 minutes, finished while trying not to think about katie</li>
<li>creative: drew for 30 minutes, nothing good. wrote 700 words across an hour on the nature of connection.</li>
<li>expansion: read poems 19 and 20 of the tao te ching. read psalm 74. read 40 pages of cat's cradle. listened to on avery island again.</li></ul>
11:55 PM - nothing much happened today; the house was quiet except for mel coming in after she got off work and going directly to her room. i don't know when things are going to get better for her, but i hope it's soon; it doesn't seem like the meds are working. im turning the computer off and going to my bedroom to sleep; i didn't do anything worth noting today.
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<girl>December 31st
His poetry about Jeff Mangum brought me to tears. What a tender soul, to look at someone else, and see that. Everyone else on the internet is just asking when Jeff's going to play another concert.
Not him.
Easy day, for rec purposes. I still have some oatmeal left over from my last grocery trip, and I've learned to keep a lot of honey-wheat bread, peanut butter, jelly, frozen broccoli, frozen pork, etc after reading enough of these. I'm kind of thankful he didn't specify whether the food is frozen or fresh, because it makes it a lot more manageable for me to maintain a stockpile. Maybe they didn't have frozen food back in 1999 lol (that's a joke.)
Last night, I unfocused my eyes before reading his December 31st entry but scanned for the sleep section so I could rec it properly. I took melatonin to make sure I got the full 12 hours in, and woke up a couple extra times (other than the 3 alarms I set,) but I'm considering it to be close enough.
I don't love drinking or smoking weed but it's interesting to see how it affects my mindset and imagine how it was affecting him, at the time. I try not to get too lost in daydreams about him because they lower my capacity for critical thought and proper analysis of how he was likely affected in the moment. The scratches on my arm felt good. I imagined they were from him.
It still feels wrong to say his name. I don't feel like I have the right.
It was hard to get off as fast as he did, especially while trying to think about not thinking about someone I barely know anything about (Katie). I tried to use analogous experiences from my life, to hit the balance of my thoughts falling back to somewhere it feels wrong for them to be, then trying to think of something else, then failing. I tried to do it by thinking of my ex, like he did, but I accidentally just thought about him, which worked in some ways, but also felt wrong. It still took me 20 minutes.
I set a timer for 30 minutes and drew, but made sure not to do anything I was too proud of. I spent an hour writing about the nature of connection. I wish I could see what he wrote, to compare.
I read poems 19 and 20 of the Tao Te Ching, but didn't really feel like I understood them. Psalm 74 made more sense. "<i>O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?</i>"
I've always felt more in touch with the parts of the Bible that espouse any uncertainty, especially from otherwise devout believers. It makes me feel like I'm not insane. I listened to On Avery Island, pages 41-81 of Cat's Cradle, and read ahead in the Psalms, a little bit. It's 11:45 PM, so I need to get ready for bed immediately and stop writing this post. I only have to wake up around 4:45AM and write down if I have a dream, then go back to sleep until 9:30 AM. A couple of people texted me, but I unfocused my eyes and cleared the notifications.
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