03312025. good afternoon flounder

last day of march :o

had breakfast with G at my favorite place. it is nice to feel empty in the morning and then to fill up with food and coffee and words

the theme of next month is poetry and being less lonely. every day i will do something in the name of poetry and something in the name of being less lonely

03302025. good evening flounder

tomorrow is the last day of march :o

i have serious difficulty describing books with the language of readers' advisory. i don't want to talk about "appeal factors"

03292025. good morning flounder

three more days of march

today it is important that i complete [assignment] and make a map of april

yesterday i felt good for almost my entire shift. i would say 5 hours. related to talking to []. and []. and little brother during break. when i called he was looking at our chess game. he was like "wait...i know what to do...mwahahaha." it actually wasn't a good move but he always acts like he's winning which i admire about him

there is something elegant about [] and it's not just the formal dress i think it's also the good posture and the stride. he reminds me of this spoon i have, the bowl is narrower than other spoons and has an interesting engraved stem that is very thin right where it attaches to the bowl. i would describe it more (i love this spoon and stole it actually) but am worried using words like "hilt" and noting thickness and thinness will lean phallic which is not what i'm going for. anyways it just feels like an unusually precise instrument for being a spoon

03282025. GOOD MORNING FLOUNDER (i'm being loud today)

thank you to my big sib for buying me a copy of natasha rao "latitude" off the second hand shelf that one afternoon how many ever years ago. i have read it many times since and this morning in the midst of some bad phone anxiety i started reading it aloud which did something for my spirit and voice. a noticeable improvement from the first call which involved one of those "are you sick / no it's just a voice disorder / oh ok...feel better" type interactions. specifically what she said was "oh, well, i hope you get to feelin better" which i appreciated enough to forgive the "are you sick" because i hope i get there too!!!

i become disgusted with people who express desire for me and i become disgusted with myself when i detect a desire for people. both forms of disgust come from hating myself—i realized this yesterday! success

to feel desired. the precedent / to shame

(natasha rao)

the other night tried to explain to the roommate how i question the rejection of "negative self talk" my argument being that i constantly have negative thoughts about myself but am still able to appreciate, in general, my experience, the same way i often enjoy books with unlikeable narrators. to this the roommate said: but you are the narrator. i said sure but i don't have to like her to enjoy the book you see what i'm saying? he said no and tried to explain the concept of depersonalization

(he also said something kind of arresting in response to my claim that i can have hateful thoughts about myself but still basically love myself aka keep myself alive: that's not love. that's something i would do for any random person off the street)

lots of descriptions of women's voices in intermezzo (margaret and sylvia - low, rich, sweet, heavy, soft; naomi - high, clear, pure, bell-like)

her voice warm and bright, certain sweetness he hears like music. coloratura soprano

to feel himself continuous with his own past, to accept for the rest of his life the permanent encircling shadow of everything he has lost. to stagger on, ashamed, vanquished, demanding nothing, forsaking all his pride and self-conceit. grateful that his losses have as yet gone only so far and no further. that god in his unknowable wisdom and mercy has left him this much...cold wet windswept streets. books he hasn't read yet. opening theme of the concerto no. 24. his friends, students, colleagues, their kindly and familiar voices. there he is. hello stranger

03272025. good evening flounder

the voice is pathetic today

often when my voice (literal) is weak my voice (figurative) feels very loud

i felt anxious at the dentist's office today. but then i started to fall asleep in the chair. there was a square panel of fluorescent lighting above me, i kept hallucinating a basketball game inside of it because it kind of looked like an empty basketball court on a TV screen. this was sort of soothing. anyways now i'm at work feeling bad. and i smell like the dentist's

03262025. good afternoon flounder

me and the bowl cut are on a mission to have a good day

tonight's floundering is dedicated to my adolescent chess opponent from yesterday. i will call him fred

fred,

i wonder if you knew how funny you were being. like when you captured a pawn and sent it to the Pit of Roasts and said to it: you're so dumb you thought indiana jones was from indiana!

(not all my captured pieces went to the Pit. some of them you sent to the Burning Fires of Hell and others to Albuquerque)

when i took several minutes to move and you began chanting, in a perfect spongebob narrator voice: 10...hours...later...

when i captured a rook and you were like, EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. i said i didn't know rooks were so emotional and you said: they actually go through a lot in their lifetime

fred,

you are going to be an awesome chess player and a funny tween. maybe don't make so many fat jokes though. you can do better than that

[coworker] told me he had a dream several people came to tell him he had cancer and i was one of them

there is something almost unbearable about being at work lately. not a hatefulness but an extreme sensitivity. sometimes it all just feels really absurd. like why am i trying to decide if i should keep trying to answer this caller's question or if i think he's j*cking off on the other end. why does the security officer treat every interaction like it's open mic at the comedy club. why has the librarian opened the conversation by sharing the results of her colonoscopy. i want to feel close to you people but not like this

03252025. good afternoon flounder

got a bad haircut (in a good way) so am feeling weird

hope i make a friend at the chess meetup tonight

03242025. good afternoon flounder

reading poetry today

"i admit you may have gone / too far, wanting / words to mean what they mean / but who can blame you? / you were given a name." (cameron awkward-rich)

there are only a few coffee shops that i go to regularly

1) the one with the patio

2) the one with the long table

3) the one that is a bar at night

i have only ever gone to #1 in the evenings. actually in the summer on real dirtbag days i've gone in the afternoon with the goal of reading an entire novel. i have read two books this way: "practice" by rosalind brown and "a history of present illness" by anna deforest. i've noticed #1 tends to be less white than #2 and #3. one time on a saturday night i looked around and it was just me and some chinese international students which reminded me so much of undergrad, in a way that this town never does, that i got emotional. i almost always go to #1 alone but i have been there twice with [], once with [], once with [], and of course four times a year since 2022 with P, a rare tradition. something special about #1 is it is located amongst a few wide and quiet streets great for skating. i started coming to #1 when i first moved here before i had a job. i would get chamomile tea and apply to jobs and freak out and watch NBA games. now i mostly get an iced americano with simple syrup or london fog and instead of freaking out about jobs i freak out about school. i find the med students there comforting, they are always staring dead-eyed at their computer flashcards and asking you to watch their things

"small emergencies this morning— / none of the pants fit & you have to be / in public. As the train pulls you underwater you try to remember the last time / you touched someone else on purpose / & today closes & opens again as a room / where your body does not exist. / What is it that breaks your heart / exactly?"

03232025. good evening flounder

so tired in a bodily way. the cat is sleeping next to me like a baby bird. just ate a whole orange. the apartment smells like cheese because the roommate is baking massive amounts of something with gruyere as a main ingredient. i work a long and late shift tomorrow. two young men from the church of LDS approached me at the lake today. one said, "can i ask you a random question?" but the question was just if they could talk to me about jesus christ which was not even random

i felt really lonely watching the sun set

03222025. good early morning flounder

the cool thing about staying in touch with an ex you dated a long time ago is you can ask them questions like "have i always been this depressed" (when you forget) and they can be like "yes"

called mom, she said my voice sounded bad, i was like yeah. she was like, drink more water. i said i've been drinking water all morning. she was like, try holding it in your throat longer #traditionalchinesemedicine

goal: get really fast at typing on the numeric keypad

to practice here is some of pi

3.141592653589793238468643383279502884197169399375105820974944

maybe it would help to practice with a metronome

i actually still remember my elementary school student id it was 0886249

08862490886249088624908862490886249088624908862490886249088624908862490886249

can't decide if i like using the thumb to hit 0

saw some flounderers talking about intermezzo so i have retrieved it for a reread and am going to take down some lines

ivan? different. used to think he was one of these sexless beings you read about. sort of amoeba blob floating in a jar.

some book descriptors that turn me off from reading a book: "saga" "odyssey" "sweeping tale"

the only kind of sweeping tale i want to read is a tale about sweeping. and i actually i really enjoyed the cleaning scenes in that jen beagin book

we were allergic to each other. never had a real conversation in our lives. folds the tissue up and puts it in his pocket. oh, you take conversation too seriously, she says. life isn't just talking, you know.

the little boy who was calling his little brother "may may" (short for mason) which is like how i am mei mei (little sister)

03212025. good morning flounder

they did a moonchild song at the jazz jam yeyuh

last night i remembered the friend from high school who would sometimes sing the perry the platypus theme music quietly while in transit. like we'd be walking to the car and she'd go "doobeedoobeedoobahdoobeedoobeedoobah..."

i think a lot of people would be surprised to know how much they mean to me

one thought i had last night was that maybe my fascination with/adoration for [] is not real and could disappear at any moment

sometimes when i have to wait until lunch to eat again after breakfast it seriously feels like i'm fasting

just finished "white fur" by jardine libaire because i had to read a romance novel

there is just the palest blue light seeping through the curtain, there is elise's long hand, there is just this kiss, this cathedral of a moment when she presses her mouth to his, her eyes brimming with crystals.

*saving for "cathedral of a moment"

a stubborn, poisonous feeling is creeping into her, and she recognizes it. she loved block parties as a kid, the hot dogs, the cake, playing tag through all the adults, who cursed and laughed and smoked reefer—everyone happy, all night they'd dance, grandparents, kids, the bad boys, the dirty girls, everyone was invited, no one stayed away. and then that feeling, as the crowd shrank, they were folding up the long metal tables—see yez—g'night, now—stumbling and giggling, fighting, sealing tupperware, stubbing out smokes, finishing bottles, someone throwing up behind a car. she'd feel rage, a disappointment so vicious she couldn't be consoled, touched, even approached. i hate you! she said to anyone nearby. c'mon, shug, her mother would say, firmly gripping her little arm. party's over.

*saving because i understand

he still has the basic face he brought to every occasion—the mask that can outlast anyone's prying except hers. she could tell, from the day they met, that he hadn't given up. his act was to pretend to care, but to pretend so badly it looked like he didn't care, protecting the dear and tender truth that he did care. he wanted to love somebody.

*saving because i had to read several times

03202025. good afternoon flounder

sometimes my voice behaves like a creature that can tell when it's in an inhospitable situation, or when there's not enough room for it. and trying to force it out feels inhumane. so then the question is not how to strengthen my voice but rather how to domesticate it

gonna start drinking again just like how i started reading fiction again because drinking is basically like reading fiction :p

flounder,

i am h*gh at the jazz jam. while h*gh i am having thoughts like, i hope walmart is still open,

03192025. good evening flounder

idk how to get better at chess

hiatus kaiyote "dimitri" is awesome

realized recently that i haven't listened to frank ocean in like a year. i listened more consistently to frank ocean when i was dating men. men were always talking about frank ocean. i did not mind that about them

talking to [coworker] is kind of like having a different kind of younger sibling, one who says things like "it's not that you have a resting bitch face but sometimes you have a you're dumb and i don't want to talk to you face"

i like when i ask [] a question and instead of just answering me he has to draw a diagram of something

03142025. good morning flounder

getting so tired of school

james blake "tell me" is awesome

03122025. good afternoon flounder

this morning i asked [coworker i never talk to], "when [coworker's close friend who quit last year] left, how did you carry on??" he said, "honestly, i haven't" and this explained a lot

school is too much. one class ends this week which is good. i don't know why i'm having such a hard time, the stuff is not hard

03112025. hey flounder

having a pretty bad time

things i apparently can't handle today:

• person asking for every DVD she can think of with "kevin reaves"
• coworker sending a call to me instead of the other coworker because the two coworkers are watching horse videos together. cute actually
• meeting new coworkers. who are you people
• the very sight of []
• the very sound of []

having trouble speaking again. treatments i've considered:

• trans voice therapy (A suggested trying T, lol, the accidental transing of bluet. but jk this would not address the symptoms)
• asking [incompetent HR employee] if we can just practice her calling me and me doing the library greeting, over and over again
• seek anxiety medication

the coworker who helps me feel sane and not alone is leaving. i am not taking it well