My private diary I'm reading in public
annotations from July
Good morning, my friends!
Welcome to my annotations. I’ve realized most of my thoughts never make it to the page, they stay in the running dialogue I have with myself, or get scribbled in half-formed notes in a journal or on some poor, unsuspecting napkin, and I realized that I want to talk to you more. One of my favorite comedians, Mike Birbiglila, did something a long time ago called his Private Public Journal and I kind of want this to be like that. Prepare yourselves for unfiltered and nonsensical thoughts…I wish I knew where this sentence was going, I tried to conclude it several times but it has bested me.
I write this to you as I consume Old Bay Goldfish with one hand (did you know they make these? How did I not know they make these?), picking at the keys with another.
Im absurdly leaning over my iPad to the long, now-bent boba straw I’ve crammed into the can of DadGrass I’m slurping down, and I’m cocooned in a massive white robe as my soaking wet hair trickles down my back. The air conditioning in my apartment is clanging like Zeus hammering out a lightening bolt, which makes me want to watch Hercules tonight. You know that morbid little question—if someone held you at gunpoint and said, “Sing a song flawlessly or die,”? Well, each and every time I’m gonna pick Zero to Hero by The Muses, yes indeed! (see what I did there?)
And, now that I have clearly entered a state of flow, I’m seeing that this giant robe I’m wearing actually makes me look like one of the Muses, albeit with a lighter complexion, but I have all summer to work on that.
A few things have been changing the way I’ve been behaving, recently.
I, being a very aware person who is always deconstructing my thoughts and responses to the world around me, as if my psyche was a Petri dish and I the scientist tending to it, have discovered something puzzling within myself: the more I enter the state of flow, the more naturally things come, the more of this detachment I feel.
It’s almost like a high, as if I’m floating, watching myself do whatever it is that I’m doing. This happens most often when I’m writing or creating, and occasionally when I’m with a friend and have that realization that this is what I’m going to think of, when I think of the ‘good old days’.
Inside these times, my feelings seem dispersed, outside of myself. It confused me, as normally when I’m experiencing something I experience the emotion down to my bones, in a very all-consuming way, from the way it makes my eyes feel in my skull to the clenching of my toes, sometimes, I can even hear my blood traveling from my ears to my hands, or my heartbeat at a massive volume, even when I’m surrounded by other sounds. This new feeling is different.
And I have begun to wonder if the sensation I’m feeling is complete lack of self-conscious thought. Not thinking about or within, just entering a different state of witnessing. The first time this happened to me, I was simply sitting and writing in my usual spot, and quite suddenly it felt like I had been pushed through another dimension, I could look around and feel as if I was in slow motion. It’s very peaceful, very calm. It makes me think of all my studies (think: me, with highlighters shoved behind my ears and papers scattered on the coffee table, not something elegant like obtaining a degree from Oxford) on quantum physics and if I did perhaps learn to jump between realms, perhaps the jump was merely in my mind, something I’ll never be able to physically see or hold between my fingers.
IAnother large change I would say, and this one is actually like, wow, life-changing, is that I quit smoking. No more Juul for me! While I was doing this, I threw out all my other vapes, too, then just decided to just not have any fun at all, and gave up drinking as well.
I didn’t have a sip of alcohol for roughly 2.5 months and I am shocked? Bewildered? At my biochemical rebirth. I didn’t have that giant bodily change everyone told me I would have, like that I would get stick thin and lose all this weight and blah blah blah however, I think I got something even better. I feel like I got a newer brain, in a way.
To set the tone, I was not necessarily a heavy drinker, but I was a frequent drinker. I indulged in a glass of wine after work, and then usually 2-3 on weekend nights. Rarely touched hard liquor, with the exception of a martini (straight up, with a twist) and I don’t like beer (why would I drink dirt?).
The funniest part, and I do mean funny, is that I really, really liked having my glass of wine after work. When I decided that my alcohol-cleanse had run its course, I was so excited! I went and grabbed a bottle I loved, uncorked it, and nearly threw up in the sink. My favorite flavor tasted rotten, I actually thought it had expired and called the shop to see if I had accidentally picked up an old bottle, which they thought was quite a dumb question and rightfully so, as all wine is old, and the older the better. I digress. My taste buds changed. I felt very weirded out, if I’m being honest. It was like if all the sudden, your favorite sweater felt like the itchiest thing in the world. I couldn’t wait to get the taste off my tongue, and immediately brushed my teeth, which let me tell you, sauv blanc and toothpaste do not mix, even if you’ve completely over-spent and bought your toothpaste from Agent Nateur, like me. So now, I don’t even have wine in the house.
When I told this to one of my friends, she audibly choked, not the little dramatic kind, the kind that made me nervous I would have to call on my long-forgotten ability to do the Heimlich.* Not having alcohol wasn’t life-changing for me, (quitting smoking is life-changing, but don’t make me talk about it or ill start to weep), but my reaction to the absence of it is. It’s just weird. Its weird to me that something I loved so much now tastes bitter. I know its very good for me, so I suppose I’ll trade it in, but its odd how much I associated (what I thought was) a small behavior with who I was, and by telling other people, either that I was abstaining from or that my taste had changed, caused such a large reaction.
I do still enjoy some wines, though only really natural wines, now. Something with the tannins, I think. Maybe that’s why I’ve also developed an obsession with kombucha (you’re looking at at top-tier member of the Healthade loyalty program, so yeah, pretty cool) and can say that I would rather have literally every variety pack stocked at The Bodega (what we call our fridge) than the 6-8 bottles I used to have on a lovely rotation, chilling in their own acrylic organizers. Interesting, no?
* When I stopped drinking, people got weird. Not curious, weird. I got a lot of projections asked of me, did I have a moment? A divine awakening? Someone even implied that perhaps I had joined some kind of cult of natural living…which bothered me, because for the record, I’d start a cult, not join one. I was asked questions with the intensity of an intervention and the subtlety of a tabloid. Who knew ordering ginger ale could cause such a commotion?!
So, I suppose in closing, as I have written this all in one go (and I am out of goldfish), I will say that I am glad you’re here, if you’ve read all the way to the end.
I picture us in a dim library after hours, laughing over something ridiculous, sliding books across the table under green glass lamps, the window cracked, smoke curling from a shared cigar. I want to be friends. Good friends, even. I think I’m just now starting to realize that.
With great personal aesthetic,
Alexandra Diana
The best articles I read this month:
LONG LIVE BAD TASTE!
Somewhere along the way, we were brainwashed into believing that restraint is the same as refinement. What a horrid, brutal lie.
Personal Style & the Feedback Loop of Identity
The way we are perceived, by others and by yourself, does not merely reflect our identity. It shapes it.