analogy about existential angst

i was talking to my friend about my #existential angst and he brought up the stoics and how they kind of considered that they couldn't control anything and just needed to manage expectations and take what comes in life, ride the wave in a way.... which made me think of a way that might explain how i feel? like, if life is all about riding the waves that come and letting them take you wherever, my question is why am i in the ocean in the first place? why do i have to deal with waves? wouldn't i prefer to be on land, where there are no waves? but in this world i dont even know that there is such a thing as land because ive never seen it before, so all i can do is stay swimming in this ocean wishing i didnt have to do it, because it's so hard, and yet not knowing where else i might be / not having an option to be anywhere else. lol. just wanted to note that down i guess.

read this piece a couple weeks back: https://theoutline.com/post/7267/living-with-passive-suicidal-ideation?zd=1&zi=amdkoiqx which is about a similar feeling of not really wanting to be alive but i dont really identify with it, because while the author compares it to treading water with the risk/possibility of drowning, i dont feel like im at risk of drowning, i just don't want to be in the water in the first place. but i am, so i have to keep swimming, and it sucks.

society cafe

a list of the times i've been to society café on st. michael's street:

1. Meeting up with Lana in Michaelmas term of 1st year. We were supposed to go to this other café that I'd found when I googled 'cafes oxford' but it was closed so we came here. I haven't seen Lana that many times in Oxford -- we live in completely different worlds. She looks exactly the same though.
2. Hilary term 1st year: Meeting Alexis for the second time after Tobi had brought her to an informal Isis meeting (location: the then-new Common Ground coffee on Little Clarendon St) because she'd heard a lot about me and wanted to be friends. I ducked into Society right after having lunch with Emily at Handlebar just down the street, so this would've been our first meeting when we'd both just been chosen as the new Isis editors. The Handlebar has this French waiter who speaks with a heavy accent and I'd instinctively ordered in French. I came to Society early to wait for Alexis but she was late, so I sat downstairs with a tea and carrot cake for the longest time. Eventually she showed up and we had a riveting discussion right before she left for China.
3. Shortly after my meeting with Alexis -- like, a couple of days after -- Sanaa and I dropped in to her Homecoming Queen launch which was here at Society after hours, before going to the Isis HT18's journalism panel.
4. Michaelmas 2nd year: group lunch with Michelle and Li to celebrate/welcome their entry as Sine Theta interns, and then I was bored so we decided to skip down to Society to study. I was reading T. J. Clark's Farewell to an Idea for my Picasso essay and greatly, greatly struggling. Eventually the others left but I stayed until 7pm agonising over that chapter. 
5. Today, Trinity 2nd year. I keep forgetting that you can't move the tables here at Society. The table is a bit too far away from the (hard wooden) bench for my comfort so my back and shoulders are definitely gonna hurt after this. I passed by Society on the way to brunch with Gabriel at Bill's and decided to spend my afternoon studying here. But I need to remember the thing about the table's distance from the seat. I don't think I'll be back anytime soon.

I guess it's just cool how many experiences overlap and fold onto each other in a small town like Oxford. I've been to other cafes like Skogen too many times to count now, but here at Society I still remember all the little details of each time I was here, like the fact that the toilets used to have blackboard walls with chalk graffiti encouraged, but now is just a regular toilet. 

little update

Yesterday was the day I'd picked to have a chill little birthday picnic outside but it rained intermittently all day (it's been raining for over a week now) so we had it in the JCR instead. When I came back I did a bit of reading, or tried to, while Gabriel napped, and then watched a movie before going to sleep. I woke up at 11 to a really sunny day, which is infuriating, and had cake leftovers for breakfast before going over to Skogen for a light lunch and some studying. I finished Saturday's reading, did another, and then half of another, before we went to the Anthroposphere launch, then got bubble tea and came back, and I've still not finished this reading but it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

When I get my own place I'm going to try to keep a clear desk, and put all my necessities like stationery and books on shelves etc. so that I can periodically wipe down the surface of the desk. I just noticed earlier that my desk has some oily patches on it and when I wiped it with a tissue it was black. So that's why. But I never know how you're meant to keep a shelf, with all of the books and knicknacks on it, tidy and clean. Do those fluffy duster things actually work? How do you keep dust off? I don't know.

things i like #12

Wow, the last "things i like" post I made was a full year ago. I haven't posted much on this blog lately because it requires way too much brainpower to string together full sentences about Interesting Topics rather than just fragmented ramblings about things immediately connected to what i'm doing at that very moment.

Anyways, this is dedicated to the broken escalators at Tesco on Magdalen Street which bar customers from going to the basement, where the snacks, sugary things, and health and hygiene items are stocked.

- when you open a new dove soap bar and you run your fingers over the dove logo stamped onto the soap, which because it's new feels really harsh and hard but also substantial and strong; also the smell of dove soap
- my chemical romance
- rilakkuma paraphernalia
- being able to rip off a piece of tape with your teeth in one go
- my new(ish) sienna uniqlo pants. the color is just so beautiful, im obsessed with it!

too much and not the mood

an extended abridged quote because i'm still not done reading this book:

Older girls, like babysitters or a friend's sister in high school, were pedestaled beings with perfect jean jackets. They were white girls mostly. Close-talkers with side-swept bangs who never appeared too wowed by anything, because they had yet to and might never encounter what it means to be denied. I coveted their casual nature, believing their incuriosity was a sign of self-possession; of not harboring some secret longing to be seen. Seen alone, not in comparison or as other, or through the bewildering construction of compliments that seemed to only further other. [...]

Even their bad skin conveyed a type of beauty that desperately drew me in because it wasn't beauty alone. It was notional. What I perceived as built-in unhindered-ness. Like ripping and ruining one's clothes at one's pleasure. Drawing with ballpoint pen on the rubber sidewall of one's Converse--a truly satisfying motion, actually. It was things done just because. It was disinterest. Inconceivable amounts of it. How exquisite I thought it would be to not care.

feelings??

last night wes and i were sitting in my room playing music to each other and talking about how the music made us felt - like how shostakovich's jazz waltz no. 2 was a checkerboard-floor ballroom with several couples dancing in sync, the women's identical long skirts twirling in unison. i showed him rex orange county (which he didn't seem to like) but i said that this was some guy our age in london with acne who made music about how much he loved his girlfriend, which wes thought was cute. then i showed him "les yeux d'elsa" by louis aragon (which by the way is not the same in english translation at all) and told him it was about this guy's love for his wife. (also, after doing some reading over the vac for an essay on surrealism i found out that aragon was a hardcore communist and a surrealist, which is so interesting because that poem itself feels like a really conventional work of french literature with meter and rhyme and fancy words and all that.)

at the same time i was reading both "too much and not the mood" by durga chew-bose (which i bought at blackwell's after reading that interview) and jenny zhang's "how it feels" online, again. (and then also "having a coke with you.") both durga and jenny zhang's works have this honesty but they could not be more different: zhang's poem is this typical zhang relentlessly raw and unflinching work that makes me want to self-annihilate every time i read it, like i really just want to disappear off the face of the earth because i just cannot deal with the emotions that she doles out on a platter like that, it is just unbearable how much feeling there is in that piece, like, oh my god?

and durga's honesty is sincere and tender and gentle. i'm still in her first essay called "heart museum" and she's talking about all the times her heart has skipped, and the soft way in which she talks about the feelings she had when she was in love - she isn't embarrassed at all to talk about her emotions. i don't understand how people can be so absolutely vulnerable in writing, immortalising the strength of the way they felt.

when i write, sometimes i feign authenticity - sometimes it sounds like i'm being vulnerable and honest, but i truly have not been for years. and when i look back at actually honest works i cringe so hard that i just want to die. why am i so afraid of having emotions? or more specifically of letting other people know i have emotions? it seems so embarrassing... and yet i am bouleversée, bowled over, by other people's emotions. like frank iero's "they wanted darkness", the absolute teen angst of that, that feeling of being so sad and angry and resentful and truly feeling like you're the only person in the world who feels that way, that self-absorption and self-indulgence and lack of shame... let's face it, i could never write about myself in such an open and unbothered way. maybe my destiny is to be like elif batuman, cynical and over-reflective, opting for the filters of self-deprecation and witty self-awareness, opting for telling stories about herself and for teleology instead of having to face the fact that those periods of angst and agony we went through were completely... completely... arbitrary and never did lead up to any kind of vindicative or conclusive moment where everything fell into place like a common app essay.

i guess i'm supposed to become a semiotician ... i'm too obsessed with meaning.

bad poems #10: feeling like white noise at the social science department café where i like to study because it has an almost perfect level of white noise noise that doesn't suffocate like complete silence does but also isn't too loud or distracting (except during lunchtimes when people sit at my table and speak at length about their boring lives) and where i can get a hot drink for very cheap

i

earlier i spilled tea

all over myself in the

ssl café

ii

55p tea

regular, milk and sugar

in a huge cup that

iii

i didn't put a

lid on because... i don't know

i guess i'm just dumb

iv

i was opening

my notebook to check something

about h. wölfflin

v

when it fell over

a burning sensation on

my lap and my thighs

vi

it splashed on the floor

(but thank god not my laptop)

i had to move spots

vii

my body was moist

my brand new brown pants felt cold

against my sad skin

viii

only after a 

while did i notice that my

favorite shirt, which

ix

i bought in japan

was wet, and would stain slowly

as it dried, a brown

x

patch with dark edges

i thought about going home

(which was very close)

xi

to change my shirt and

soak this one before it stains

but i had only

xii

recently arrived

at the ssl to do

some work, finally

xiii

and could not bear the

waste of time and energy

i also could not

xiv

simply take off

my shirt because the turtle-

neck is see through. so

xv

i have been sitting

here, sunken into a deep

inexplicable

xvi

state of depression

as if that tea had been my

only connection

xvii

to some kind of will

to live. i don't know if this

stain will wash out now

xviii

and it fills me with

incomprehensible sadness.

i'm demotivated.

xix

i was going to

go to edamame but

i don't think curry

xx

will heal me today.

nothing seems to matter now

all i want is to

xxi

lie in my bed and...

wait. no, not that. i want to...

i don't know. i want...

xxii

some kind of respite

(temporary) from being

conscious and feeling

xxiii

so i can stop this

void that has opened itself

in my tea-stained chest.