January 2026 in HUJI pictures

 

        I started going to the gym with Shiyara                                  first zoom class of the year

 

             everyone learning how to change the                   went to Cafe Couler to see Pyeng Threadgill

                 thermocouples in a new kiln                                            sing jazz songs, with Rachel

            went to see Olivia DJ, with Adriene and Conor (and Parker, not pictured, but beloved)

Ali taught me how to organize my illustrator files better, and we hung out with Ester the cat

Tate and Emma in town, we went to Santa Panza 

and then to Cafe Erzulie to see really good jazz

Aaron and Lil put up shelves and I watched

                               Big snow storm selfie                                                hanging with Sunny

                                               Karaoke Wednesday with the girls (Jess, Ester, Lil) 

Women Talking

I finished Women Talking last month and I've been thinking about it a lot. It's a novel by Miriam Towes about a Mennonite colony in South America that has experience the trauma of drugged nighttime rapes of the women by the men and boys they love, depend on, and trust. When the book begins the rapes have already happened, have been discovered, and the men are now asking the women to forgive them so they can move on as a community. The women have been meeting to decided collectively if they will 

1) do nothing 

2) leave or 

3) stay and forgive. 

They do not know how to write, they do not speak Spanish or English, they don't have much of a formal education, so leaving is daunting. They invite a man who rejoined the colony after the rapes to document and take meeting notes for them, since they cannot, and he, it turns out, is the narrator of the book. I thought it was an interesting choice to have a male point of view for this, and although he is a sympathetic character towards the women, his deep love and desire for one of them, his being raised in the colony, and his being a man means that you must always as a reader remember that this story is being told through a warped lens. 

This is the narrators recollection of talking with a librarian in Europe, after his family was banished from the colony and after he had received a more mainstream education and a grander perspective outside of the conservative lens of Mennonitism. He is a child, and is explaining that he had stolen something and was still haunted by his actions:  

“I asked if I could put back the stones after god had found me, and punished me. I was so exhausted from anticipating punishment, and I wanted to get it over with.” 20:37 

Why do I feel this way all the time? This seems to be a thing with people from intense religions or abusive childhoods, but I wasn't in either of those things. 

Christmas, maybe 2008, 2009?

playing cards against humanity with the family and Shadulla

mom could not figure out how to win until we told her to play her most abysmal card combinations

 

New Years 2026

Beginning of the night. 

Blew out my hair and went to Lil's for a potluck party, then over to Good Judy for dancing and karaoke.

End of the night. While I went to close out my tab all the people I was with just went home. It was fine, but a confusing and sobering end to an otherwise fun night, so I didn't go to bed, I went to the studio and made art for a few more hours. 

 

Death

A couple months ago mom called me on a wednesday before class to tell me jake had died. It wrecked me, man. Like crying. A lot. Regret. Today, another wednesday, mom calls me. Delano has died. I feel... nothing. Regret, yes. But I don't know, don't know if I can feel things anymore. I have to teach class now, that's how I remember it's all wednesdays. Years ago she told me Harvey died too, murdered, also on a wednesday. Did dad die on a wednesday? Just looked, I think it was a sunday. 

I think I'm like 24 here?

I was so pleased with this portrait, and I've never shown it to anyone who liked it as much as I do. 

 

another home pulled out from under me like a rug

do nothing

one not at a time

until you're done for

Throwing Away Food

 and not just because it's rotted in the fridge. it seems like waste but also it feels like growth. 

Maya Angelou

 

Maladaptive Day Dreaming

 Maybe if I become delusional enough I can live my best life inside my own head, perfect it, and then die. 

Just Finished Reading "Grief Is For People" by Sloan Crosley

 Some things I underlined: 

• "And no one is obliged to learn anything from loss. This is a horrible thing to say to the newly stricken, encouraging them to remember the good times while they're still in the fetal position." pg. 5

• "The idea that misfortune arrives "out of the blue" means that the surrounding events become consequential in order to buttress the presence of the intruding event. You looks back on the day of your car accident and remember how you broke a glass in the sink that morning. You never break glasses in the sink. What can be gleaned from this fact? To a person who does not expect trauma? Something cosmic. To a person who expects trauma. More or less nothing. " pg. 26

• "Ideations not withstanding, I find it hard to believe any suicidal person knows the exact dimensions of what they're hiding. So why would the rest of us have a superior sense? And who among us is categorically happy? Rather, who among us is categorically happy and tolerable? Who lacks a reason to kill themselves? Reasons are not the problem." pg. 46

• "We all have something we're trying to fend off. The question is, how big and with what?" pg. 47

• "Or, to quote one of Russell's favorite films, The Lion In Winter: "Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives." pg. 47

• "'I've always wanted my life to be different,' he says, 'not over'" pg. 49

• "Everyone will be sad about this for a month. Then life will return to normal. You'll see. How difficult to love someone who was so wrong and will never be right again." pg. 51

• On object permanence: "Though who knows at what age one develops a narrative arc? Probably twenty-six. More likely it's because if things didn't keep disappearing they couldn't keep coming back.  The coming back is the best part" My note: Is this why I don't mourn lost things/people properly? My partially formed brain? pg. 59

• "And do you know what George Sand said? George Sand said we can not tear a single page from our ives but we can burn the whole book." pg. 60

• " 'How will he know you loved him,' she asks, "Unless you try to destroy yourself?' " pg. 64

• My note: Quiet quitting. Committing little suicides while the world moves on.  pg. 69

• regarding the wealthy: "Their whole lives, they could have anything they wanted. And now what they wanted was not to have lives." pg. 70

• "It's easy to slip into suffering alone" my note: Do I want people to suffer with me?  pg. 71

• "Countless burial rituals treat objects not as offerings but as gateways." pg. 86

• "With gas or pills, I think, there's space. Time for the murderer to take one shape and the victim to take another, two versions of the same person, one who conceivably did not mean it. One who might have lived, for a short while anyway, to express self-condolences before sinking into oblivion. None of us are the same person we were an hour ago." my note: Knowing someone is like hanging out with 10,000 twins, and they're all switching spots from hour to hour. [william kentridge?]  Pg. 87

• "What gruesome work suicide makes of grief!" my note: is refusing treatment suicide? Is pursuing holistic treatment instead, suicide? pg. 88

• my note: black people can't/ shouldn't hang themselves. It's too historical, too metaphorical. It's too physically violent to other black people. I remember sobbing at the end of Do The Right Thing, crying "they hate us! they hate us so much." This would have a similar effect.  pg. 88

• "Having located the thing and lost it again sometimes fills me with the fear that I'll never get another chance. Other times, it fills me with the confidence that I will. These feelings cancel each other out until all that's left is the brightness of screens." pg. 89

• " 'It's intolerable being tolerated.' That's from A Little Night Music." pg. 109

• "In 'Goodbye To All That," Joan Didion writes, 'It is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends.' " pg. 117

• "Those living with grief know the particular sleepiness it engenders - so nonnegotiable, so immune to warm milk and narcotics...Grief insomnia has a mouth on it: Time does not heal all wounds, Time does not heal any wounds. Who promised you that? Get your money back. Time only pushes wounds aside. Regular life becomes insistent and crowds out the loss. Usually, his is a good thing. So much of healing is the recognition that not all your tissue got damaged in the accident. But every so often, there is no such thing as regular life. Every so often, life crowds out loss with more loss." My note: Erasable pens are like the body. It can heal itself/ erase, but the cold/scurvy will bring it back.  pg. 154 

• "As the writer and theologian Thomas Merton wrote, "The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does the most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most." pg. 155

• "Perhaps this is the plainest definition of anxiety: mourning what isn't gone yet. Anxiety is an ever present stage of grief"  my note: My youth. My life.  pg.155

• "In The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion writes: "A single person is missing for you, and the whle world is empty." my note: how do you fill the world? pg. 159

• "An assembly of details. Is this what makes a person?" Pg. 159

• "Depression will always be a challenge to illustrate-- it's woefully plotless, a 'storm of murk' " pg. 162

• "The anxiety may have been a blanket, but the sadness was a knife." my note: my anxiety is a knife, my sadness is the blanket.  pg. 168

• " You can ignore grief. You can push it around your plate. But you can't give it away." pg. 169. 

• "Perhaps if I knew more about God, I would know it's blasphemous to want answers, and perhaps if I knew more about philosophy, I would know it's foolish to suggest there are answers." pg. 191

• "If I desire the kind of life you wanted me to live, one of expansion over retraction, I must pearn to be on the side of the living." pg. 191

Business Lady

 Typical zoom meeting. That's boss lady on top, me, and then our executive director on the bottom. I was wrapped up in a scarf because the basement is incredibly cold, and that's where we take our meetings. 

End of the Year

2025, goodbye
 

November Dump Pt 1 Bathroom Pics

I just love a bathroom selfie in New York. Every single one is completely different. 

1) At the bathroom of a bar Hannah S. and I went to before watching Elysium Fields (her cousin's band) at The Owl Music Parlour in it's final days of being open. I should have done a selfie at the Owl but someone fainted while I was peeing, right outside the door, so I was pretty distracted by all of the shouting. 

2) Selfie (later) at Hannah S.'s house. She and Maxim bought this amazing brownstone in Bay Ridge and every single room is wonderful. 

 

3) Bathroom at the gallery where Tanya's show was. Fancy soap and all

4) Tate and Emma's bathroom, old wallpaper and good, good light. Took my first bath in months, shaved my legs and did a deep wash of my hair. I've been showering daily, don't worry - just not baths. 

5) On my way to meet Adriene at the bar in the next picture, I stopped to buy dumplings and pee in Chinatown. There wasn't a mirror for a selfie I think.

6) Bathroom at Quick Eternity, the bar where I meet up with Adriene, themed like Moby Dick

 

BIG OL DOWN DAY

Spent all of yesterday just not doing anything

literally in bed most of the day.

I slept through my class, last class, zoom

have had so many naps that feature dreams that mimic my reality but slightly off, that it's confusing today. Wasn't that cabinet open? No, that was a dream. Why are the lights so dim in the bathroom? Dream? No, reality. 

I haven't had a fully dead day like that in... years. I didn't leave the house. Had one meal, leftover rice... rice dish, whats that called? Rice meal. Not enough water. How small would my studio apartment have to be to deal with this kind of day. A bed next to the sink. I did manage to shower though. A waste of clean clothes honestly, should have just stayed filthy.  

scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll

I don't see the point, my friends, I don't see the point. I'm so stuck, so so stuck. Achey. Tired. Don't wanna. DO anything. 

**** 2 hours later

Took ONE (1) vyvanse, and I don't want to kill myself. Wow. I think if you have ADHD it should be $20 and available at any pharmacy without a prescription. I just show them my little ADHD card (9.5/10 she got it bad folks, OH-FISH-ALLI).  I forget to take my meds all the time, and also it's (potentially) life saving. 

(I am so lucky I don't live near a bridge because I've decided that's my method of choice and I was one day away from driving upstate to the one I know doesn't have any barriers. You can literally park at a grocery store and then walk back to the bridge and swing your legs over. And then sit for awhile, I guess. People seem to usually sit for awhile before they actually jump. I've heard.)

Anyways, I'm not going to overdose on Vyvanse, it's too helpful for me to sell it to anyone else (mine, MINE), and I forget to take it all the time so like, how is it addictive? I'm more addicted to cheese than meds. I am so curious if I would even get addicted to meth because this diet meth is FORGETTABLE. 

Yesterday was the kind of day that could ruin my life. I know I can do more to fix myself (go outside. exercise, eat better, journal) but like, I could fall asleep on a dime yesterday. I was barely conscious.  I had no control over my body most of the day. The only time I had any energy was when I was lying via text to get out of a meeting and then my muscles turned to pudding again. I'm gonna die in a ditch, I'm gonna be buried in an unmarked grave. I can't DO anything. I'm useless! 

Really Tired

 I've taken 4 naps today: two before I left for work, and two before my meeting this afternoon. 9 minutes each. I'm so tired I'm asleep seconds after I hit the pillow. The third nap I took I could feel my whole body vibrating as I existed between realms for a little bit. The kind of vibrations that feel like a heavy rainfall has turned the lazy streams of your blood vessels into mighty torrents, flooding the banks of your body with fury and and might. More disorienting than relaxing. 

Self portrait [screen capture] of a portrait taken by Shiyara, of me

 

In Storage

I have a dutch oven

I have 200 books

I have vibrators

and a blender and a cheese grater

a can opener

I have boots

and coats

a full size fitted sheet

an electric scooter

packed away in some box there is an alter to my father

and my father's ashes

I have dresses, scarves

bottles of half empty spirits

a witches broom from Tennessee- a christmas gift from my mother

and a vacuum- a parting gift from Nicole

There is a desk lamp, 

and tax informations

a hairdryer

and a clothes steamer

I've been a year without them, so maybe I never needed them. The only things I miss on the regular are the full size fitted sheet (I bought a new one), the vibrator (I refuse to buy another when I know I have one, somewhere), dad's ashes (which- I thought I brought with me. I'll never forgive myself if I lost dad. Although what an ode to our childhood, full of misplacing things in the moves), the Fernet Branca (after dinner, it tells your brain you're done eating), some of my books (most of them, honestly) and the desk lamp (how am I supposed to SEE anything I'm working on??) 

I was thinking of this recently because I just bought a can opener. I opened two cans with a paring knife and a mallet and while it worked, it takes too long and next time I'm sure I'll get careless and cut myself. It turns out that Ester and I both spent several weeks hammering at tinned fish with knives before breaking down and just buying the proper apparatus. I mentioned that the last two I've purchased have broken way before they should have and she said she got the one from her childhood- simple, metal. So, so have I. Fingers crossed. 

I hate the life I've made for myself, but I like the things in life. I like this pandan matcha I just bought, that Nelli introduced me too. I like the little dog I pet in the cafe, and the Vietnamese way of make coffee for 10 hours. I hate my credit score and that it's that way because I have no discipline and that I live like a burden or a coddled child. But I did that, that's my fault. I keep being tempted to blame my parents too, but it's not fair even though it's easy. Everyone else is doing fine in the area's that I'm failing at and no one had perfect parents, and mine were actually pretty great. 

I think I should apply to grad school. In another country. Then I can get my degree and increase my credit score while living someplace where I can rent an apartment without a credit score. I have been thinking of the UK, Ireland, Canada- where I speak the language. 

EDIT: The fucking can opener broke. 

october huji pics so far

 playing pool and eating dumplings with Adriene and Conor @ Mr. Fongs

getting new keys cut for the new studio space ////////    jess teaching class with Buster on her lap

lights reflected in the studio window at golden hour    ///      cooking sushi rice without a pot lid

taking a depression walk in the park and seeing the beauty of the sunset over the baseball fields

watching the ducks, listening to the woodpeckers

a peek into the pond