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"Unfaithful" by I Eat Plants for a Living.

I don't love you anymore.
-Since when?
Now, just now. I don't want to lie. I can't tell the truth.
Goodbye.

Gym, therapy, gym.

But tomorrow I'm going to donate blood and go for a walk with someone, so that's different.

And Thursday I'm going to meet up with someone who will take better pictures of me, hopefully.



I helped post an ECS event on different websites, so I feel like I was productive in that regard, at least.

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"Cul de Sac" by Tomahawk.

Eternity is all used up
And our hell has frozen over
But it ain't that cold
It's warm enough
Sunbathing on the shores of a nightmare
I wish you were here

---

I hope I didn't break someone's heart last night. It's a sad situation, but I don't think there was a way for me to handle it better than I did.

---

On Wednesday, I got to school early and didn't have much to do, so I went to the library and noticed a book titled The Woman Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them. I ended up reading the first few dozen pages of it before class. It was structured as a play, but loosely; the plot was not always clear, and the characters were not entirely explained or described. The effect was that it was dreamlike, a stream-of-consciousness narrative that imparted feeling not through direct content but by circling around the edges of a theme, uncovering bits and pieces of it with each pass.

The back cover says the story is for "every woman who has believed for even a moment that she could change a man's mind by making love to him-- who has imagined that through the sex act she could save him." Although it's couched in sexual terms, I think there is a broader implication too-- that love can fix people. I wonder if I believe that. I don't think having sex with people will make them better in itself, but there is an allure to the idea that love is enough, that love is a transformative power. Even if you have no other power, you can have the power to love. That makes me wonder if it's a fantasy for the otherwise powerless.

Then again, that seems very cynical, and I don't think love as a power is something to be discounted. Even if it doesn't necessarily change the objective world, it can certainly change the subjective world. It can make all the difference to the one who loves. It is something to love. It is something to give of yourself. It is something to care. Not all the rewards have to come from being given love in return.

Sometimes I think I like the feeling of loving someone more than I like being loved back. Not that I would necessarily reject reciprocity, but I mean, if I had to choose between one or the other... Being the one who loves does feel like it has power to it, I guess. You choose to give your love, even if it doesn't feel like a choice at all times. Being loved... you don't have control over what the other person does. You're always in a position where you're at risk of losing the love. Whether or not you trust that the other person will be consistent, I think you can never fully know.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

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I reinitiated contact with someone I used to talk to on OKC. I think it might be the second or perhaps even third time I've done this. He said he had developed a fear of talking to me because he didn't want to talk if he had nothing to show for his absence. He was working on some music last we spoke, and he wanted to be able to share something he was proud of with me. I told him that it was okay and I wouldn't think less of him for being "empty-handed" in his words. It's nice enough just to talk.

It had been roughly six months since our last conversation, and I guess I could have given up on it, but I decided to reach out because I do like talking to him and I also think he could use a friend. He seems very depressed and isolated, and having been in that position before... I just really wanted to have someone who wouldn't give up on me. So maybe it's partially a selfish thing; some kind of vicarious wish fulfillment. But I think it means a lot to him that I restarted our contact after all this time, and I think he could use a bit of a reminder that not everyone will always abandon him if he opens up. He expressed before that he appreciated that I was making the effort to talk to him. I'm glad it means something to him.

I'm still motivated by the desire to fill a lack in the world, I suppose. If not me, then who? It seems hard to find patience, kindness, compassion, and an attitude that isn't oriented primarily around oneself. I understand the "me first" orientation, but I'm also so tired of it. I probably complain about that enough, though.

I am lucky to have had the life I've had, and to be able to focus on things outside myself. I feel purposeful in this regard. I'm also grateful that I've been able to react to my disappointments in life by taking action to improve things, even if it's in a small way, for other people. It would have been easy to just be swallowed up by bitterness and cynicism and write off other people as worthless individuals undeserving of respect and empathy, but I chose not to let that happen. I don't know why I came out this way when plenty of people just become jaded, but I'm glad things worked out like this.

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Well I had a second date with that guy from the last post. We spent all day downtown, going through art museums and talking about the art. It was fairly enjoyable. It was the last day of Joseph Loughborough's exhibition, Notches, at Anno Domini, and I'm so glad that we caught it, because I absolutely loved his art. That might have been the highlight of the day for me. I wish I had the money to buy some of these, but they're hundreds to thousands of dollars each and there aren't cheaper prints available. T_T

"The Plate"


"Harlequins"


It's hard to even describe how much I am in love with these paintings. Not just the two I've shared here, but others... There's so much depth and aliveness to them for me. Date and I had a long conversation about it, which was nice. The paintings are beautiful from an aesthetic perspective, but I also get very strong feelings from looking at them-- this sense of disorientation and pain and intensity and wild, vivid life. I was so sad that there were no more free promotional posters available for the exhibition, but I contacted the gallery asking if I could have the one they have displayed in the window... Hopefully they let me have it!

The other notable part of the day was that we sat in a park and talked for awhile. There were a few caterpillars crawling around, and one appeared on my leg. I was surprised and tried to brush the little guy off, which took some effort. After I had gotten it off though, we resumed talking, and then my date pointed out another caterpillar, much larger, on my bag. That one was intimidatingly large compared to the first one, so I was kind of afraid to touch it. They were the same type of caterpillar, just... the size made it kind of scary. Got that one off too, and then we started realizing that the bench was crawling with caterpillars... we both started frantically checking ourselves to see if there were more on us, then moved away from that bench. I saw a caterpillar hanging from a tree, probably spinning itself a cocoon, and walked over to look at it, and my date put a hand on me and told me I didn't want to walk any further. I asked why, and then noticed that there were a bunch of caterpillars hanging from the tree and I had almost walked into one. Then I looked at the tree and saw that the bark was moving... oh wait, nope, just hundreds of caterpillars. They were swarming the grass, too, and falling from the tree like rain. It just kept escalating, and we both fled the area to look for a caterpillar-free zone, but almost all the benches we found were covered with them.

This was the first caterpillar we saw... we were just walking on the other side of the street some time before going to the park, and I noticed it on the ground. I had never seen one like it before, so was delighted by what I thought was something of a rarity at the time.


Anyway... we spent around 7.5 hours hanging out today, and I'm still not sure how I'm feeling about things, but I think we'll probably hang out again.

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Well, that date was alright. Nothing crazy happened. He thought I was the most adventurous person he'd been out with because I climbed a fence so I could walk along a creek, haha. I didn't think I was doing anything too zany. He was very agreeable. After I got home I described the date to someone else, and they said the guy sounded like a golden retriever. That seems kind of accurate, I guess. He said he had a lot of fun, so assuming he was telling the truth, we'll probably go out again.

The agreeableness is a thing I'm reserving judgement about for now. If he's just like that all the time and never disagrees with me, I think it'll be a problem, but if he was just nervous because it was a first date, I think it'll be fine. I want to see how things go on the second date before I make up my mind about anything.

I haven't been doing very well making progress on this paper I had to get an extension on, but a recent friend has been helping by reminding me a lot and talking to me about the prompt. Even though I'm kind of resistant and don't feel like writing, it is constructive and I appreciate his efforts.

"Crow's Feet" by Gibberish.

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