11/27/17

recently, while on ketamine, i've had some compelling thought loops. one being, like, how being a vegan, or even a vegetarian, you take a stance that the lives of animals should not be compromised for the pleasures of man. then, like, also for the most part, stereotypically, people who are vegan veer left on the political spectrum. but that those same ideals, inherent in the, like, "every animal deserves a chance to live its life" ideology, can be applied to pro-lifers. but vegans are almost never, or have traditionally almost never, been pro-lifers. i do see some discrepancies, though. and that one can also think of, like, if you're really into "live and let live," that if you're an extremely empathetic person, there might be a kind of person who believes even viruses have the right to thrive and go about freely the way they want, and that vaccines and viral research is an affront to viruses' lives. like sometimes on ketamine i think about how hiv is just a virus trying to live like any of us, and it seems easy to think there are pro-hiv people, for this reason, though i've never met one

another sort of a loop that happens is i think about how great and perfect my life is, and how blessed and privileged i am to get to live it, and then i think, like, i've lived enough of it to know how good it is, but think about refugees from syria, for instance, how much they could benefit from just a few years of living like me, and that if i commit suicide, i could stipulate that a refugee or other underprivileged or subjugated person could take over my life where i left it. get my apartment, my money, my car and job, etc. it's not that i want to die, but i want to give others what i have. i know if i did kill myself, though, that none of that would happen for another person. there would inevitably be complications. it's kind of frustrating, but i am grateful for what i have. and all the stuff above is mostly irrelevant to my thoughts when i'm not on ketamine

i can't remember what time i went to bed last night. i think i remember seeing "11:17" but that might've been a different night. it was probably twenty or so minutes later than that

i woke up in the middle of the night and thought i was sick. i don't feel as bad now, but i had stress dreams about driving a motorcycle through traffic and it being ramadan and a lot of people being in my apartment and having to tell them all to leave, except for my dad for some reason

on wednesday, last week, five days ago, katie and i drove to my parents' house for thanksgiving. we went to harry's restaurant and shared clam strips and and a chocolate frappe. i told her about how if your order whole fried clams you sometimes eat a bad one with sand in it. katie became excited at the prospect of paying for dirt, but we still just got strips. some things had changed in the restaurant. they don't use plastic letters on one of those clippy white boards for a menu anymore. there's still a depiction of racism in the "stir-fried chicken" poster. we listened to teenagers talk about their relationships in the booth behind us, and in the morning i walked katie around my neighborhood and showed her places i used to get drunk. we walked past charles's house and i saw what i think was his car, a subaru

on thanksgiving we briefly got too drunk. i didn't eat meat, which didn't feel like a task. we watched 'goonies' (1985) and 'home alone 2' (1992). i've never been able to pay attention to 'goonies' and i still don't really know what happens in it. i did a lot of laundry. my parents gave me a check for some money my grandma left when she died. i felt stressed out depositing it. also, is the spelling "cheque" completely archaic now? would it be edited out of a publication? i bought a bottle of piper-heidsieck. we stopped by nourse farm and talked to john. he seemed really good. i felt emotional. on the way back to the city, katie put in a vampire weekend cd, and i felt emotional hearing "oxford comma," remembering when colv and i sang it at kelly's bar doing karaoke in hamtramck in 2015. i could kind of hear his voice, his cadence, through the song, and when i watched the last video lil peep posted before he died, talking about how he was on xanax, he sounded very similar to how colv would sound when he was on a lot of xanax: far away and satisfied and desperate

i've been crying a lot lately. in the car, hearing colv's voice. in the car, seeing people feeding seagulls by the verrazano bridge. listening to "xo tour llif3." it's been kind of nice to cry so often and readily

we stopped by my grandma's house (my other grandma, not the one who died last summer). i didn't introduce her to katie because i don't think she recognized me. she has alzheimer's, and for the past few years when i've come over, she's referred to me as "dear." at least i think she has... i might be making that up. at one point my mom relieved some of my long term future concerns, saying something about how when their husbands are dead, she and her sisters will all live together in probably rhode island. i gave my dad 'we were eight years in power' (2017) by ta-nehisi coates as a belated birthday present

when we got back to my apartment, it seemed like my cat had a seizure. she didn't make any noise, having not seen me in two days, that being rather inconsistent. when i picked her up, she kept shaking her head and chewing on her tongue, flicking it in and out of her mouth. i put her down and watched her. then i gave her a lot of food and she went back to normal. that was three days ago. she's seemed normal since then

last night i fried latkes and put a poached egg over them. on saturday conor and zoe and i went to zachary's. it felt very comfortable. we just lied around and talked and listened to music. it felt like we can and probably will all have sustainable, supportive love for one another for a long time. things were hopeful

earlier that day, katie and i talked about if i ever wrote about her what that would be like. i haven't heard back from my agent or the publisher she's reached out to. might email her tomorrow. i've started gathering more information and ideas for a second novel. i want it to be different than the one i'm trying to get published now, in that i want it to be less of a reflection of my life and more of a projection of banal everyday stuff mixed with the horror genre. stuff like dreams, drugs, the deaths that have affected my friends and family. i want it to feel a lot more tense, and with stakes that may not actually exist in anyone's real life, as real life lacks almost any discernible coherence or narrative

in the car, later, i considered naming a love interest character in my next writing project "brittany," after the girl lil uzi vert mentions in "xo tour llif3." i think that would be nice, but i wish her name wasn't brittany. i can only think of girls i knew in elementary school who looked protestant and didn't feel exciting to talk to. i remember when girls started wearing bras in fourth grade. they were, like, too big for the shirts they wore over them, and when a strap would show, they'd say "it's snowing in december"