diary 2.03 (Patreon)

april 9 2026

what do I do? I take you close to the nerve. I am, as well as I can, creating the appropriate conditions to let you, briefly, become me. this is what the writing is. this is what it wants to do. the writing wants to kiss you, it wants to be wanted by you, the writing seduces, the writing wears a little dress. the writing becomes me-you. in this brief sameness there is a bursting atom of creation. there is the awareness we are each other. I write to remind you that you are me.

I’m in a moment of experimentation, here. how little framing can the writing stand? in a way the ‘framing’ is the writing itself—all the rest of it is just my thoughts. am I even a writer? I care about craft and beauty. maybe more than that I care about surprise and shock—shocking people into understanding, awakeness, cold water dropped onto the face. I don’t know that much about craft. I don’t know the words for things. this is something I’ve felt insecure about since, while editing my second poetry collection, the editor, a friend of mine, younger, and, I knew, more talented than me, asked for the craft texts I’d read, I suppose to contextualize what I was trying to do—on my end, a cold sweat and crickets. I must have told a lie, made something up. the truth was I’d read nothing, I was twenty-three and operating on vibes. to this day I accidentally surround myself with academics, love to listen to them have hermetic conversations and ping-pong references between themselves. I delight in their company—maybe because if I know they’re willing to hang out and talk with me, then I am, in fact, operating on par. I don’t actually know anything about writing, as in, if someone asked me to dictate what I experience ‘craft’ to be, I would have no idea where to start. I am almost totally unstudied. I could explain, if pressed, why I make certain choices. I could easily point to the rhythm that sounds best. but I don’t know why it sounds best, not for any of this, I don’t know why it works, I just know that it does.

for a long time I’ve been obsessed with greatness. I am fascinated by prize-winners and persistent texts. even there is distortion—is greatness associated with attention won?—but it’s true, it feels true to me, that something really great does, eventually, demand attention. I read pilgrim at tinker creek like I’m a detective reviving a cold case. how did this happen? how could this be? I read clarice lispector, her long winding roads that she constructs seemingly effortlessly, which land me at emerald cities of revelation, every time. I think, why can’t I do that? what am I missing? more than anything I love a long and surprising sentence but I can’t seem to write a single one without it collapsing, or otherwise losing itself along the way. in a letter to his editor nabokov called this quality his ‘sinuosity’ and asked for it not to be touched.

I carry around the feeling that there is something essential about my writing that I have treated as a flaw, and have been editing away.

april 11 2026

dreamt last night that messages were incoming from [redacted]. the dream was this: I was looking at the instagram messages tab, and watching the messages come in, his name in bold. one new reply, two new replies, three. I couldn’t see the text within but I knew he was asking to see me. in the dream I’m thinking: here it is, it’s finally happening.

april 12 2026

pain, lately, in lower right-side back, my weak side. the pain involves the inner-top of my hip, maybe, and the bottom of my ribcage. I feel twisted or improperly positioned somehow. when I wake up my back is in shambles.

I love when the sky-tarp rolls in before rain—I love the muted outside—whistle of wind through the fireplace mouth—here it comes—

I want to be honest. I maybe have to eat lunch before I can be honest. it’s 2:22. this is the one I’m seeing lately, 2:22 or 22:22 or 2/22 or 222 likes on a post, this kind of thing. the internet says the twos are associated with balance and harmony and a need to trust. it means, everything is going exactly as it’s meant to. the other day I posted to my instagram story a little line I made up and have been carrying around: no more than I can handle, no less than I can stand. replies indicated creative liberties being taken with what, exactly, this means. for me the unsaid part is: my life gives me no more than I can handle; my life gives me no less than I can stand. ‘no more than I can handle’, right now: intensity, exposure, discomfort in uncertainty. ‘no less than I can stand’, right now: affection, touch.

I need to eat lunch.

the woman across the street in the ground floor flat keeps flicking her blinds open, looking dead at me, as if to check if I’m still sitting here—then she closes the blinds. she’s just done it again, I can see from the corner of my eye. she’s stood in her bay window, white-haired, like a spectre.

I keep wanting to check my phone. all this posting I’ve been doing means more comments and messages. I love reading them. I think I love reading them too much—or, no, not too much love. I get obsessed with reading them, maybe looking for some kind of proof inside them. proof of what? proof of life—not mine, theirs. are you getting this? do you copy?

april 13 2026

dreamt: ex and I are experiencing a catastrophic, miserable breakup. aggression that I shrink to. we’re in his parents’ house. I have an ungodly amount of personal possessions here, it’s as if I live here, we’re packing it into plastic bags, and I feel anxiety about all of this—why did I leave so many things here, I think, I better make sure I pack all of them. ex is threatening, domineering—he rushes towards me—I stumble back, down those steep stairs that lead up into the annex and shriek performatively, to let anyone in earshot know I’m suffering—ex’s elderly father calls from inside the house, ‘no fighting!’ now I feel embarrassed about my shriek. I scramble back up the stairs. I tell ex, ‘you’re towering over me in the dark.’ I tell ex, ‘I own my experiences, and you own yours.’ I remember these lines exactly. gross feelings, darkness-feelings. together we’re forced to drive all my things back to where I live.

the dream continues: in town, alone now, I turn a corner to find a huge mural for [redacted]’s show, really beautifully wrought. I laugh at the ridiculousness of my day. of course, I think. just my luck. I think, good for him.

together a girl from high school (don’t remember…) and I go to the pharmacy. she is gentle and attentive with me. I thank her. today has been difficult, I say, and I appreciate the kindness.

then I am [...redacted…]. I woke up and touched myself.

then I went to breakfast at the cafe near my house. I didn’t bring my phone; I brought my keys, my debit card and my copy of too much of life by clarice lispector. too much of life collects the column lispector wrote for the jornal do brasil. she wrote this column weekly for nearly seven years. I flicked through the book yesterday. I wasn’t sure why; I saw it on my shelf and needed to hold it. I started it yesterday but it touched me differently today. as I read my chest heaved. loose threads tugged and knotted. this writing reminded me so much of my own. and the weekly entries—it’s what I’m doing now! suddenly everything I’d ever written made sense. suddenly I could see my own excellence through her excellence. I could understand my life through hers; I could feel her life understanding me. as she wrote of the cockroach in g.h.: I could feel her existence existing me.

have I been a good writer all along? has the writing always been surprising, heartfelt, moving? oh my god. have I been doing it right the whole time? am I already great? all this straining for excellence is what was, all along, keeping me away from it.

I ate quickly and walked home at pace. on the street my eyes welled. I tilted my head back; my makeup was done and I had to be on camera soon.

clarice dedicates three weeks of the column to, simply, a transcript of a conversation she had; she tells a little story; she writes that she is leaving to have a cigarette, and returns to say ‘I’m now thinking about turtles’; she responds to letters (comments!). her column was published on saturdays: ‘until next saturday,’ she says, at the end of so many, so casual and sweet.

clarice! oh my god. I have tortured myself for nothing. until next tuesday.