1/8/18

occasionally, when i instinctively don't like someone, i'll try hard to like them a lot, like more than i would with other people, people i probably could like, or already do like, and it's never worked

i end up just resenting the person more, for trying to like them. i can think of several times this has happened, over the course of many years

i think it's just, like, if i feel that "omen" about someone, i'm just going to never be able to fully like him or her. it's usually a him. i remember spending a lot of time in 2015 with people that fit this category. there was nothing wrong with them mostly, i was just faking it, because i didn't want to face other stuff

it would be good to just stick with the instinctual disliking thing, or better yet to not care. to ignore people, but it's hard. it's fun to play the game against myself. see if i can outwit myself

if i like someone before i know them, i'm almost always right. or i can't be proven wrong. i've never kicked out a window, but they all look like good candidates

yesterday i woke up really tired. i felt like i was behind a tv screen. like a crt tv, how the screen wasn't flat, slightly bulging out, reflecting stuff back convexly. i felt like i was on the other side of that. all my muscles hurt. today there's just a part of my back that seems out of place

i heard a horse through the phone. not the horse, but the sounds of katie being next to a horse, outside, in arizona. then she said there were a few more horses. she said the sound of her voice had made them interested. i don't know, i couldn't picture anything

i forget the name of the cross streets she told me the cop cars were parked outside of. i wanted to look up what might have happened. the video showed cops holding shotguns and eight or nine squad cars with their lights going parked alongside a house in what she said was a nice part of the city, on a sunday morning, to the song "bullet proof nothing" by simply saucer

and i kept crying reading the new york times profile of joy williams from 2015. i think we'd enjoy cooking together, me and joy. she has a pet tortoise and two german shepherds. i think i'd love to sleep on her couch, with a rough wool blanket, with fringes. i'm sure we'll never have a real conversation, but i should figure out how to send her a letter. i know how to send a letter to bobby shmurda and i never do it. the article says she doesn't have an email address. she's only in her early seventies. that's, like, defiant, behavior. it also says she's been working a novel for a while. something about a desert animal nobody's ever seen, or something. i started to cry when i read that

in the interview, when asked how she's been able to make a living as a writer, she answers, "it doesn’t add up... i don’t know! i don’t know how i’ve lived"

maybe i'll keep pa-ing at snl even if my novel wins the pulitzer prize. i don't think they can stop me from pa-ing, if i continue to just do the work. i'm pretty adequate. i don't ever not do the work asked of me

i mopped the floors. i mop my floors like twice a year, so now i don't have to for a while. i did my laundry. i showered. i fed the cat. i'm wearing three shirts, two with collars. i'm going to ikea later to buy stuffed animals for myself, then to an opening somewhere in brooklyn so i can be around people

i thought there was something i really wanted to put down here, to remember. something about the paint coming off my tub, or putting the top sheet on my bed. now i can't remember. i started reading 'natural selection' (1990) by frederick barthelme yesterday. i love it

oh, i remembered. it was something related to the top sheet. okay, here: i saw the blood stain from cutting my finger preparing shrimp cocktail, hurrying before i had to drive to the subway station, in march of last year. the blood stain is on my mattress, because the band-aid came off in the night. i cut my finger probably down to the bone. i think three nights, maybe four nights, earlier, i cut the ball of my hand going down in the subway tracks after swiping into the queens-bound side, when i needed to go toward church avenue. the g train. after we saw 'get out' (2017). i don't believe in symbols. i do think it's nice, though. there was all this blood, and i felt, like, full of life

it was great, feeling such a wide range of emotions all the time. it felt, um... i just mean thinking about the word "range." like i was experiencing emotions in a huge, flat, sweeping, beautiful space. like a ranch. (that's close to "range.") thank you, everyone who lets me have emotions at them. thank you, iphones, for making it easier to have my emotions at people

i'm glad i remembered about the blood. i wanted to put that down, so i could remember it again another time

i need a little bit of a hair cut, and i'm afraid if someone does it i'll just feel sad it wasn't who i wanted. i think if someone punched me in the back right, it would fix one of my current problems