I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: ‘There! that’s me! You may like it or lump it, but it’s true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody’s inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm.’ As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.

— W.N.P Barbellion, Journal of a Disappointed Man

I IX (1914)—In complete helplessness wrote barely 2 pages. I have retreated considerably today, even though I had slept well. But I know that I must not yield, if I want to rise above the lowest woes of my writing, which is already held down by the rest of my way of life, into the greater freedom that might be waiting for me. The old dullness has not yet completely left me I realize and the coldness of my heart might never leave me. The fact that I recoil from no humiliation can just as well mean hopelessness as give hope.

— Franz Kafka, Diaries, trans. Ross Benjamin (New York: Schocken Books, 2022), 356.

You adulterate the truth as you write. There isn’t any pretense that you try to arrive at the literal truth. And the only consolation when you confess to this flaw is that you are seeking to arrive at poetic truth, which can be reached only through fabrication, imagination, stylization. What I’m striving for is authenticity; none of it is real.

— W. G. Sebald, quoted in David Shields, Reality Hunger, 2010, 62.

When she can’t sleep at night, she tries to remember the details of all the rooms where she has slept…The objects that appear are always linked to gestures and singular facts…In those rooms, she never sees herself with the clarity of photos, but blurred as in a film on an encrypted TV channel…She doesn’t know what she wants from these inventories, except maybe through the accumulation of memories of objects, to again become the person she was at such and such a time.

She would like to assemble these multiple images of herself, separate and discordant, thread them together with the story of her existence, starting with her birth during World War II up until the present day. Therefore, an existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation. Each time she begins, she meets the same obstacles: how to represent the passage of historical time, the changing of things, ideas, and manners, and the private life of this woman? How to make the fresco of forty-five years coincide with the search for a self outside of History, the self of suspended moments transformed into the poems she wrote at twenty (“Solitude,” etc.)? Her main concern is the choice between “I” and “she.” There is something too permanent about “I,” something shrunken and stifling, whereas “she” is too exterior and remote. The image she has of her book in its nonexistent form, of the impression it should leave, is…an image of light and shadow streaming over faces. But she hasn’t yet discovered how to do this. She awaits if not a revelation, then a sign, a happenstance, as the madeleine dipped in tea was for Marcel Proust.

Even more than this book, the future is the next man who will make her dream, buy new clothes, and wait: for a letter, a phone call, a message on the answering machine.

— Annie Ernaux, The Years, translated by Alison L. Strayer

I

Friday

I was walking by some lurking house in Toronto when I was struck by a wave of foul air. What came to mind was the idea of a home for wayward boys, but the plot of land it’s on emits a permanent stink…

A girl I once knew now looks away from me. I look bad, dressed in tattered clothing. I smell bad: my pheromones are rank. My aura radiates invisible stink lines.

Sunday

Apply at Concordia. Send pitches for the Wolfgang review. Read Gravity’s Rainbow. Read Hegel. Go to the gym. Try not to think about money. Apply for jobs.

And at what point during all of this will I find a wife? How can I measure progress there? Instead, I sublimate my desire into exercise and writing. If I can’t be happy, at least I can be a jacked artist. I want to press a plate overhead and publish a novel.

Tuesday

In the VA lunchroom before E–’s first class of the semester. Lights low, plastic furniture, quiet, only a few scared-looking art students with their heads down. I can’t lose the momentum of the APCON piece. One really needs to be constantly sending pitches if publishing is going to work—multiple every day; for the Wolfgang review, for whatever. Publish it anywhere, so long as it’s somewhere (other than here).

Friday

My goal right now is to respond to V–’s email, and to send the pitch to at least one more magazine.

Can’t do the latter. Difficult enough to do the former. Too distracted by thoughts of girls and love. I am not available to women because I don’t exist. No-one cares, and they’re right not to.

Just before 16h—Everything is futile. I have zero prospects. Nothing but sadness, loneliness. Life of the modern gymcel. Life of the modern man. I should go back to l’E and tell that girl the truth: that I liked how her eyes flashed in that ellipsis between dodging drunks.

’Round midnight—Maybe if I wore more tonal outfits, like the guy wearing a white cowboy outfit on the couch opposite me here at CDP. Maybe if I had bigger lateral deltoids. Maybe if I had used sunscreen in the morning for the past ten years, and my face were not so wrinkled; maybe If I were just one degree higher in my profession. Maybe if I had finished that third reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit, someone would love me.

Is ogling women on the street really better than using an app? Infinite possibilities emerge out of the city. The café is here—I’m at one right now; apps are elsewhere. An added layer of mediation. We approach closest to God through reduction (via negativa). For a communist utopia to become actual, it similarly will require reduction (de-growth communism), not least being the abolition of class. Most importantly, a wife will be found by removing everything until only she remains.

Saw E– last week; saw J– and her Lil’ Peep boyfriend today. Next time, it will be C– —or more likely, R–. Maybe A– is back in town. I saw M–’s face floating in the crowd of a street festival. I haven’t seen her in years, but her memory returned immediately. The city’s mysteries conspire with memory, and the meanings they create confirm the purposiveness of life.

When I saw M–’s face floating in the crowd, I felt like I could love her. I’m holding on to an attachment from when I was still naive. She has a connection to the earth, I have a watery depth. We are both graves to each other.

Tuesday

Sometimes one can be so drawn into the pleasure of their sensing-body that we might be mistaken to lapse into idyll, for it is then that Life will remind you of your own facticity. The scorching ray of an all-seeing eye falls on you, and you are brought crashing into an outline of yourself. Who we have been anchors us, a Protestant fetter that privileges one to carry it to this day.

We might disagree on the nature of organism and its connection to cogito, but we all agree on disliking being interpellated. In the course of a life, we grow an avatar that connects to the web on our behalf; and if we fail to repay our debts, it is the solemn duty of the creditor to stick pins through our hollow joints, sending bolts of screaming blue out of the interface. Sometimes we might lapse into idyll, and need to be reminded of our own facticity. The iron edifice of fiduciary obligation.

There’s no more rude reminder of our contingency than through manipulation of this post hoc self. Debt hangs like an alien spectre that phases into the corporeal when you require discipline. A creature of the imagination, yet with the power to turn one’s vision black with pain from nowhere. Don’t make me do it. I don’t like it any more than you do. The trace of the way we lived in the world; who we are, best understood as that which we are no longer. A tether to the past, an Albatross, but—let’s be honest: have we really changed? Aren’t we still the same desperate phylum scrabbling for survival, borrowing money without a plan for how to pay it back from someone whose memory is liable to split our mind’s dioptre?

Remember? Remember? Still there, out of sight but adjacent, still in the same world as you.

hello

Sunday

Felt terrible on Friday night when I learned that F– pet one of the ladies who is always here. It felt like no such thing could ever happen to me. He has a girlfriend, and his girlfriend is also his landlord. The man is living on Easy Street.

Then I woke up too early, went to work tired, barely tried. Minimal effort because nothing matters, I don’t do fuck all.

I remember a dream where my bike was stolen.

Saturday

Idea for a portfolio piece: a short work, almost like a chant, all rhythm, mostly questions. Give it some form, but its function is to list everything I know, everything I’ve ever wanted to learn, everything I’ve ever asked myself. Give it a kind of chronology, make it also a story of coming-of-age. The questions compound. Start with writing Jack and the Bean-stalk in kindergarten (first memory of forming words); then copying out Narnia; then writing stories and poems to express sex- and power-fantasies. The poem I wrote about 9/11. Musical father, visual mother. Both proletariat. Became a philosopher all on my own. Make the reader feel how it felt to be on the outside.

Wednesday

The second (?) time this year I had a transaction declined for insufficient funds. I like that it’s a “coffee bar” here. Has the same set-up as a bar, serves alcohol—although, I will say that this shade of green is not a pastel…

There are too many beautiful women here, with too much skin showing. It’s hot out today. Mini-heat wave. I overdressed. This is not even to mention the nipples through cheap tank tops.

Friday

What are we going to research for the APCON piece?

  • Epicurus is the rain guy
  • Who’s the Eternal Return guy? We studied this in Falcone’s class. I can’t immediately recall because I’m a sub-par student. In a way, it’s like learning math: a useful exercise for the brain, more efficient if you can do the operation internally, but ultimately no big deal thanks to the technology of the calculator (the Stanford encyclopedia).
  • Who are we going to cite for the indigenous cosmologies? Leanne Simpson? What do these cosmologies even consist of?

The third is supposed to relate to process philosophy. It’s a vision of life as inter-connected movement.

The encounter with M– happens here.

Saturday

What’s happening with M–? I felt bad right away, and now I’m worried. My reflex is to fear that she’s going to fall in love. I the specimen am sick with constant self-loathing; but egotism, seemingly the contrary of that basic condition, grows from the same narcissistic seed.

I keep getting picked up—picked up off the street like a piece of trash—; I am “husband material,” as F– put it. I’m easy—“the town bicycle,” as A– once put it. Why can’t I say no to someone? Afraid to hurt their feelings?

Woman need to learn how to decline offers of sex at some ungodly age. The world threatens, and so she needs to defend herself to survive. Whereas for me—for men, it’s an offer; something I want, but which must be offered.

If I were responsible, I would not have engaged with her to begin with…but she was really fun and I’m hard up. I’m not good at pursuing women I have an actual interest in.

Now I will tell her how much I liked her flirting, her attention, and that we are not right for each other and we will not know each other again…

Sunday

Put off seeing M–. Woke up around 10 with a heavily congested nose. Windows closed, dust inside. Dozed for another hour…then went to the cafe on Mont-Royal. One coffee not enough. Beauty everywhere. Fuck it.

For the University of Western Ontario, I’m supposed to submit two academic essays. The first will be my final for the hauntology class, on the uncanny and phantasmagoria. It needs to be revised, which will feel good because it’s profound (for me). I’ve put a lot of work into it, so it must be good-ish. I know I can make it much better. It would be quite amazing if I could properly integrate Hegel, but that would take a tremendous amount of work.

[The above entry was written at R between 14h–15h. I was scheduled for 14h, but there was not enough work so I sat around for an hour before I walked out and did not return.]

Monday

Slept on the couch because too depressed to go to bed. Only left the house late. How am I going to find a new job? Don’t have what it takes to go out looking. I don’t have what it takes to go on. You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. I deserve something better: I deserve a job that doesn’t make me wish I were dead.

All alone on the action de grâce. What should I be thankful for?

  • Fit, strong, muscular, as I worked hard to achieve
  • Face is fine
  • Apartment
  • Good cat, healthy and sweet
  • Hair
  • Tall end of average height
  • Friends who are nice to me, and with whom I mostly like to spend time. They’ll be gone now that I no longer work there.

Wednesday

When I gave my order to the Olimpi-bro, I could feel the girl in front of me’s surprise. My voice reveals something that my visage doesn’t. Inwardness, infinite inwardness.

Later, at Bishop—These diary entries are something, but I will often just skip over a description of the most important events of my life. I need more description of the world outside myself.

Right now I am sitting at Bishop & Bagg, 1.5 pints deep. I’ve just finished sending emails to V– and C–. The first, an apology, as well as an attempt at eroticism. Got explicit, used a few of the magic words.

Friday

Pulled into a sickening loop with Palestine news. Pulled into posting in a manner that is unbecoming because of how pointless it is. Everything seems pointless.

Last edited Oct 08 2024

II

Saturday

I should be putting skin on the bricks when I’m applying for these jobs, but my shoes are too uncomfortable. In my 20s I had a lot of promise because I came from nothing. Now in my 30s, the expectation is that I would have built on that experience. I’m building on salted earth.

The guy at the rally yesterday said “I love you even more [for carrying the Irish flag],” implying that he already loved me just for being there. I felt solidity coming from the Irish identity—even if I am truly just an imposter hiding under cover of whiteness.

Beautiful women surround me at this cafe. The one to my right is French, here with her boyfriend. Beyond her is a British blonde with a Trader Joe’s tote. A classic sign of West Coast Americana. It should be Sainsbury’s. When I heard her accent, I thought she was having a laugh because of how much she sounds like Michael Caine.

To my left is a girl studying theology. Can’t tell if it’s her or the other one sending voice memos. Must be a crush—I can’t imagine doing that with a casual friend—except that I have done it with C–…and J– leaves me voicemail. I’ve never understood why. It’s intimate, yet child-like, uselessly sending fragments of our voice. A telephone call has the normalcy of conversation. A conversation broken into pieces has a verisimilitude like photography. And an intimacy like photography.

K– talks to me. Last time, he sent me a photo of myself but did not address me. Exactly like a serial killer—and yet, I can relate to it. This time he was doing some fake Italian posture (he’s Portuguese, if it’s the same). He doesn’t “appreciate” me or my flakiness. Calls me a flake to my face. Says it ended “weirdly.” I repeat his words back at him.

“Weird is a nice way of putting it,” he says, at a loss for what to say. I don’t have the spine to do freelance work; what’s more, I hate doing “knowledge work” more than anything. I am a flake of dust who would love to be “weird.”

I should send him what I have. It’s the least I could do, and I did a good job up until I could not be bothered. I feel like I just got beat up.

Sunday

Crazy night last night with D– and M–. We went to…oh, there goes my focus…Back at the green bar. Fired. No job, no obligations, nothing to do but sit around in this cafe. I should be applying for jobs, of course, at every single moment of existence wherein I am not employed, but…my brain is too fuzzy to come up with an original phrase. I’m just repeating the same thing over and over.

The clientele here are more professional, yuppie types than at O, where it’s all neighbourhood bros and students. It’s not as comfortable to sit at this bar because the small space creates a pressure to leave. The window at O is my favourite place to sit. A view of the neighbourhood, surrounded by beautiful women. Here, I can see the same platinum blonde that works at SC, who does her hip thrusts in the morning at the Y. D– is like my sister, one of those people who, on a night out, stops and talks to everyone along the way. I know a few people—at the buvette last night, I remembered the name of an old colleague from L. I really appreciate him asking me my name. It was more respectful than not bothering.

Tuesday

In the Beneath Language story, all the work around “adjacency” needs to be cut out. There might be something there, since I’m trying to describe the adjacency of my body—being around people, but separate with them as an important aspect of the narrative of my body. Like when I would go to the library at Concordia, sit down at those desks next to 5000 other students, all of us simultaneously pigs at the trough and little workers in the machine; and I would repeat Kierkegaard’s maxim to stand apart inwardly. It’s okay to line up like just another peon, because inside of me a beautiful soul is glowing.

Somehow, this afternoon coffee has made me feel worse.

Wednesday

Woke up sick and sneezing. No energy, no motivation. Felt like I got everything out yesterday: enough of an effort with the writing for class, with the job interview, meeting up with D–, etc that I am excused in a break. A job interview justifies my break in looking for a job; the writing justifies my break from writing; being sick justifies not going to the gym.

Nothing is an excuse for not writing. If I lost it, I would evaporate.

V– compared me to the Seducer in Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Seducer.

From: V–

Sent: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 at 19:20

(no subject)

Another concern, sometimes I have the impression you want to develop a science of women. Experiments, technical skills. I used to be worried that the correspondance was just a technical exercise where you got to explore your writing skills finalized to your personal project. Are you experimenting with me a method, a technique, a skill that you plan to replicate and apply elsewhere, in the context of the science you are developing? Should I take the hint that you plan to treat me as an experiment? Notice that’s the very exploitative logic of your enemy.

The possibility of naive love is over: that’s what I lost with R–. I peaked, and it’s all downhill from here.

What else? Not much, dear diary. I need to get my nutrients in.

  • garlic
  • parsley
  • celery
  • thyme
  • milk
  • coconut water
  • green tea

Sunday

This cafe life I’ve forced myself into is gruelling. Sometimes I have zero appetite for talking; and yet, I love a cup of coffee. Hot, bitter, mellowed-out to a nice tan with some milk.

Can I get away with using Glissant as the source of my Indigenous cosmology?

  • Mound Builders
  • Architecture as cosmology?
  • Architecture is more metaphysical than the other media?

If we are discuss Indigenous philosophy, we should also discuss written versus oral language. For Glissant, this is at the heart of colonial conflict. Nomadic versus arrow-like reason.

Monuments facilitate inter/intra-tribal social/economic/ideological organization. They are sites of liturgy (public ritual). They use ad-hoc standardized models that are easy to understand across tribal cultures. Their construction depends on a degree of co-operation that implies federated layers of micro- and macro-societies.

These monuments are ritual sites that hold sacred objects; but they’re also pragmatic, functioning as food caches and landmarks. People lived on-site (sometimes). The monuments mark local resources, and people were expected to regularly return to the site.

Tuesday

In Erin’s class, we were assigned to do an “immanent critique.” I watched The Exorcist III that week and tried to do an immanent critique of that film. It’s not very good. Following A.S. Hamrah’s advice, I typically do not summarize plot or give easily-accessible information about the film (I’m not a columnist in a newspaper, but a writer on the internet, where all information is parallel). For whatever reason, I did the opposite here. Typically when I write about a film—which I have a lot of experience doing—I talk about the latent motivations of the filmmaker, what the narrative represents; I try to point out striking examples where we can see formal or narrative elements revealing the film’s underlying motivation. Movies are carefully-engineered weapons whose interests are, ultimately, against our own; we should exercise great caution when dealing with them, and seek to understand the precise manner in which the movie has been designed to corrupt us. What follows is an attempt to write about The Exorcist III (like everything on this website, this is a piece that I return to often).

So much is left unsaid in the film. Most of the horrible killings happen off-screen, for example. But if I say that it’s “more” or “less” of anything, then I am comparing it to other things and being insufficiently immanent.

The plot follows a police lieutenant investigating a series of murders that are being attributed to the “Gemini killer,” a serial murderer already caught and executed years ago. The priest who jumps out the window in the first Exorcist film is now played by the original actor, and a new guy. In his new guise, the priest claims responsibility for the new murders—despite being locked up in a rubber room and wearing a straight-jacket. The face of the original priest appears at the film’s climax.

The film opens with a dream-like murder of a young black boy. He is found in a church decapitated, with silver ingots driven through his eyes. Our protagonist is at the end of his rope. He’s too old and unhealthy-looking for such an active role. He’s constantly losing his temper, screaming at random characters who intrude into the film’s scenes. The film is filled with shouting and unexpected bursts of stress.

In the final scene, a priest tries to perform an exorcism on the man in the padded room. His Bible is torn to pieces by an invisible presence and he is flung upward and pressed against the ceiling. His skin and flesh stick to the padded surface, peeling away to reveal the striations of muscle underneath.

The cop bursts in, revolver drawn. He doesn’t see the priest bleeding in the corner, and instead confronts the killer, who keeps referring to himself in the plural. He wants to make our hero “believe.”

Pinned to the wall by the Gemini Killer’s magic powers, arms parallel to the floor in the pose of crucifixion, the lieutenant rasps

This I believe in…I believe in death. I believe in disease. I believe in injustice and inhumanity, torture and anger and hate…I believe in murder. I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime and stink and every crawling, putrid thing…every possible ugliness and corruption, you son of a bitch. I believe…in you.

The Gemini Killer wants the secular protagonist to believe in the actuality of the Divine, to convince him of the cruelty of an order that permits the evil he has wrought over the course of the film. Lightning strikes the padded floor, over and over. Through the broken surface, arms reach up from spectral fog. We see the black boy from the beginning, face painted as in a minstrel show, tears of blood trickling from the silver ingots hammered through his eyes.

The cop’s speech about scum and villainy is ambiguous. All these bad things seem to be the domain of the Devil/Gemini Killer. It’s unlikely that he is affirming his loyalty to the infernal. The monologue is a negation through affirmation. The film is not that ambiguous. It’s pretty clear about what’s happening, and does not play “Devil’s advocate” and try to represent his infernal perspective. It simply does not both to complete certain causal circles. The power of the film comes from arresting images; excellent craft, combined with a narrative that is clearly outside the American cinema we typically associate with this level of craft; and its lack of resolution. This is not the same as ambiguity.

Finally, the possessed priest, our “Gemini Killer,” momentarily gains control of his body; the cop blows his brains out, the Devil is deprived of a vessel, and evil is vanquished.

Why do I feel so bad in this room? In all classrooms? Too much baggage. I should do an immanent critique of me, here, right now.

Immanent critique of the hospital bombing. In what sense is it real? A bunch of children and injured people were attacked. A strike at a building whose function is to shelter the sick and injured. A war crime by international law; a moral crime by universal law. They try to flatten it by presenting it on a screen, alongside everything else; but its reality spills onto the streets.

We learned new chants at the rally on Sunday. We showed up at Dorchester Square to practise them before going on the march. We were led by a voice that came from somewhere out in the sea of people. They spread, and we were slowly off. It was raining lightly; a ceiling of umbrellas added to the atmosphere of collectivity.

Friday

Wake up feeling terrible. Halloween is one year. What progress have I made? Had sex with three girls, none of whom I respect. I’m as alone as ever, making no progress on finding my way in the world. This is not to mention the professional woes—no job, no job; a deadbeat!

Girl next to me is reading Frankenstein. I’m doing nothing. I have good strength and pretty good technique. A few muscles, at least.

Saturday

There is that idea in Cave of Forgotten Dreams that societies and cultures that do not have writing live outside of history; ten thousand years is the same as a single rotation of the moon.

creation story <–> architecture <–> time / Thanksgiving

The theme of Thanksgiving is the significant part that’s still missing. A paragraph at the beginning and end where I speak in the first person. I say what my relation is to the topics at hand, my relationship to colonialism and whiteness. It’s my place to say what and who I am thankful for. Something sincere and real.

Tuesday

Rally, relational pacing.

  • Reading the hinge: it’s not a comma or a hyphen, but a hinge in the writing

  • Neurodiversity falls into pathology

    • Neuropathy
      • Identity versus neurodiversity

  • Pathology returns to mind/body dualism

    • Brain/body versus mind
    • Life is in the world, not synapses

Thursday

At F. The new guy here is talking about Ezra Pound with one of his regulars. I already didn’t like his attitude or look: it’s disappointing to me that one of the original Italian cafes is now recruiting scruffy millennials. I have a training shift for a full-time job as a server. The indent of the saucer where the cup sits is filthy; the bottom of the cup is filthy because the grill of the espresso machine is filthy. Despite this detail, I will concede that the milk is perfect Italian-style foam.

Right now, my goal is very modest. It’s 11:43 am; if I stay here and try to read or write until 12:45, I can be on the gym floor by 1, then hopefully out by 3pm. Go home just long enough to drop off things, then bike to the new job. Bring book and notebook, and afterwards—you are permitted to get a drink.

Saturday

It’s all hopeless. No prospects. Everything going downhill.

Working on Morning Regrets now, because I feel terrible and it’s all I have.

The key to making this story interesting is to play up the sense of The Block. The reason this character couldn’t talk to the girl at the party is actually something very Epic—it’s very Conceptual. It’s the question of everything. Fictional. Not quotidian.

Hallucinatory. Vision goes black and white. Hearing things, seeing things. Put some more ghosts in there. Kick the cat. Skin the cat.

All this writing does is depress me….

Sunday

Taking a crack at the Western application. By God, it’s all impossible, LOL!

UWO and Concordia are now the main ones, because S–’s endorsement makes me think maybe I actually have a chance.

The weekend has been immensely depressing and lonely. The calendar is an undifferentiated stretch of loneliness. For my birthday this year, I will have no-one to go to the spa with, no-one to go to dinner with. The season is already almost over. C– is probably dead—I might as well join him in Hell, where at least the Devil will be glad to see me.

My only hope is to just drown it all out. If I can sublimate my unhappiness into a creative project, be one of those artists who makes one intense, juvenile work that cuts close to the bone…I always fancied myself the kind of artist capable of producing a diverse body, pieces both intellectual and creative. Someone like Henry James. I’ll take whatever I can get because I have no talent. There’s no Divine Spark within me, no syphilis to drive me to the brink of madness, no early education in the classics, no master who drilled craft into me—all I have, in truth, is my narcissism.

Tuesday

At my new job, I saw the cute girl that I saw at O several months ago. Didn’t talk to her. Too cowardly. She has nice rosy cheeks and a round face. She was studying something related to theology. A domain that I respect, but it’s a bad sign that she’s at the Israeli restaurant.

And that’s the other thing, dear diary: I get a job, and of course they’re on a BDS list! What a joke. I feel paranoid there. It sucks. Palestine pin on my jacket, keffiyah around my neck. I’m going to get fired, and just when I thought I could relax.

The goal is diffuse today. Don’t have much of one. I won’t return to the APCON essay until Thursday, earliest. I should work on Beneath Language, but I’m not feeling it. What I am feeling is the Morning Regrets story…it has good parts—I swear there’s something there!

The first several paragraphs are decent. My starting concept was “realism,” i.e. truthful and authentic, not concerned with plot; but do we prefer instead to make it less realistic, about a guy so lonely he starts to hallucinate, as in Oldboy when she starts seeing ants? A conventional twist, but maybe that’s a good thing: it’s recognizable, and therefore I don’t have to work as hard.

Thursday

The story becomes something else when it moves into a closer analysis of class society (the Hegel class’s society). It’s unfortunately a bit disconnected. If we can get it to the point where it’s doing a serviceable job of describing the characters and social dynamics, then I can add in—more hallucinations? We need something to bring us back to the morning where the narrative begins.

Okay, here’s the plot: you put her name into the computer once, twice, and the third occasion her name swims into view. That’s the magic element: that’s the story of the morning. It ends with a dialogue. It needs to end with an anti-climax (“realistic”), because although there’s change within the limits of the narrative, he does not learn his lesson.

  • Wake up depressed
  • Remember the party from night prior
  • External dynamics of the Hegel class
  • Discussion of sense-certainty with J– and E–
  • V–, guilt and shame
  • Internal dynamics of the Hegel class

We need a better structure for moving through time. We need two more events. One event can be work related…maybe in a desperate moment before work, I enter her name into the computer for the second time.

  1. The first is in bed, when you’re unable to move
  2. The second is before work, when you’re feeling completely useless
  3. The third is after work, when you have some confidence

Despite the rejection that did occur, there is still this unknowability (opacity); still an element of Schrodinger’s love affair. But we have to put this into relation, or into Hegelian terms. The actual and the virtual.

Maybe when you look in the mirror, you see someone else. You don’t know—you can never know whether the Other “recognized” you in that brief flash of the eye—but it’s possible!

Friday

  • Sugar
  • Cheese
  • Red onion
  • Mushrooms
  • Tomatoes
  • Spinach
  • Mozzarella
  • Flour
  • White onion
  • Radishes
  • Tahini
  • Greek yogurt
  • Butter
  • Dill
  • Lemon
  • Parsley
  • Chili flakes
  • Cucumber
  • Pepper
  • Canned whole tomatoes
  • Dried oregano

Sunday

How am I going to talk to the girl next door…I can say: I was so wasted the other night, I could barely speak—but it was so nice to talk to you, to learn a bit about you—it was the nicest birthday gift of all. It felt like God smiled on me; it felt like the clouds parted, and an angel floated down on a crepuscular moonbeam. Not just because she is a smiling, cheerful beauty; but because something happened. From out of the entropic chaos of the world; from out of the constant, impersonal movement of the city, a figure clarifies. Vibrations cohere and become corporeal. I want to learn more about her.

My Thanksgiving essay was rejected by APCON, and I will say that it feels terrible. That and not having a job have got me feeling very stressed. Worried. Failure.

Who else publishes weird little philosophy essays? Who can I send this to? Don’t let it go to waste—it needs to go somewhere—a proper literary journal—this is a good opportunity—but it’s low priority. The essay is bad, after all. I knew that when I submitted it. It’s good that it won’t be published in its current form, because it would be a stain on my record (not that spotless to begin with). Most of my portfolio does not hold up. Instead of worrying about this vain bullshit, I need to get a fucking job.

Monday

Here I am at Cafe D, back in this pit of raw concrete, and the tall beauty that I asked so many people to help me find is here. I had to track down C– just to get her name, with which I did nothing. Learned that his mother died. Will I have the courage to approach her? After having hyped it up so much? I can’t ask her out right now, I can’t. She will immediately perceive how fucked up I am.

What is my plan? Walk back up St-Laurent to the package store; then to Popeye’s, then to—various bars along Mont-Royal?

I’m frozen on this bench. It’s not even a proper table, more like a staging ground; and yet I can’t move. Too afraid to approach her, and too afraid to leave without approaching her. Maybe I should just stay here forever. G– from R just walked by—what a prick. I am stressed!

Tuesday

Unbelievably depressed this morning. I should go back on welfare. I will never have a woman again. I am nothing but failure; a being constituted entirely by failure and rejection who will never amount to anything else. I give up. It’s hopeless. I give up. Fail, constant failure without end. Rejection without end; rejection compounds rejection. An inescapable loop that I will be stuck in forever. Nothing will get better, everything will only get worse. No prospects other than this diary, which I would set on fire if only I had the motivation. I am alone and I will always be alone with nothing but my failures to keep me company, and maybe the brief warmth of this diary, if I ever get around to setting it on fire. Nothing to look forward to. I feel bad that my cat and my roommates have to suffer my presence. I would never dare, I would never presume to inflict my presence on an intimate relation.

Everyone has the advantage, and I have the disadvantage. Top of the pyramid, yet I still have managed to squander my privilege. I even failed at being bad.

Thursday

The party itself was a failure. Many of the people who said they would attend did not; there were a few new friends, but attendance in general was down from last year’s Christmas party, my high watermark. The food was unexpected and greeted without relish. The cookies all had the same texture, but at least they were sweet and buttery enough to get snapped up.

A moment of joy came at the end of the night, but it will only turn out to be another failure. Coming back from the bar after last call, I ran into the upstairs neighbour. Beautiful and cheerful, she felt safe enough to come inside at 4am for a smoke. Told me that her old roommate with the dog named Olive had a crush on me. Her name is C–, and she appeared like a joyful ray from out of a dark sky. Warm, cheerful, bubbly, cute. I was too wasted to make an impression—could barely slur together a few limp questions to try to learn a bit more about her.

For 24 cold and delirious hours, I was riding high on a memory as thought it were Pegasus. 15 minutes is enough fuel for days—we’ll see how long. The next morning, I got a rejection letter from APCON. When I knocked on the door to deploy my Trojan horse (a pack of rolling papers), the blonde answered; and as usual she seemed grumpy, unhappy to be disturbed. But who likes when a stranger knocks on their door?

Friday

A bit of encouragement from the world hits the brain like a chemical injection. The ecstasy of optimism. A good lead, a possibility: an interview that went well, at a nice little restaurant, for an employer whose standards I recognize as being at least on par with my own. Hope. Hits like an amazing drug. It feels like I’m floating on air. Of course there’s a storm-cloud, which is the fact that I have not so much as done a trial shift. He has infinite options, just like she does. Still: when I left, I rushed around the corner and fell to me knees on the asphalt. Facing Mecca and the low metal fence of socialized housing block, I said a prayer of thanks.

My Concordia letter of application needs a section on the diversity of my academic knowledge. This should go into the part where I talk about—my genre. How my genre is informed by my background. I’m trying to bring together a wide range of different knowledges to develop one very “cool” practise.

The Western letter is missing references to their faculty, but otherwise it’s done.

Sunday

Infatuated with anyone who pays attention. “I don’t like to talk about myself.” I try to remain mysterious, and I’m proud of this (feminine) trait. I did not realize how easy it is to see through my guardedness. The very sexy blonde immigration lawyer—you know, the one who paid attention to me—she was easily able to uncover my stupid tricks.

Wednesday

Two days since I gave my number to the girl upstairs. I paced the landing where our two doors let out for ten minutes before J– took pity on me, knocked for me. When she opened, she was wearing a silk robe and a scarf in her hair; she saw me and looked down at herself as though to say, well, this is how you have found me; and? I didn’t know what to say—it was one of those comedic moments where the head empties itself. At the crucial moment, all my Works decay, and “Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”1 She won’t be in touch. I know, because to do so would be too active for the feminine. It would be an explicit admission of interest, and would thereby negate the feminine power of mystery. I know the power of mystery very well. When I told her that it was nice to talk to her, she agreed, and I believed her…I believe her now. But she has other things to do. She is not going to be so forthright in signalling her interest. She can’t—structurally, logically. It makes no rational sense. If she calls me, if she texts me, that would be her activity. She is a woman—she is not going to be the active one, and nor should she. It would be a weak, un-lady-like move, and she’s not weak. I don’t even want her to: I want her to signal passively that she is interested, but I want to be the one to initiate things. I am a man, after all, even if a pathetic and wretched one.

Of course she is not going to call me. The entire structure of civilization—no, but φύσις (physis) itself is against us. It’s not merely that we are neighbours, and therefore there is an inherent risk…but all our meetings are contingent on admitting attraction. I thought there was some admission of attraction when she came into the apartment at 4am and told me her friend had a crush on me—but there remains plausible deniability. At this stage, it would only work to move things along by “accident.” That is the most frustrating aspect of dating: everything must appear “accidental,” as though there are no stakes involved.

I can’t tell if it’s me or the world. I always feel the need for a subterfuge. There needs to be some excuse. A woman will not simply agree to go out with me, just as one does not simply walk into Mordor. She will not simply admit that she is attracted to me, will not concede that she wants to know me and be known by me. There needs to be a pretense—a network of excuses, justifications; otherwise, she makes herself vulnerable. And why would she make herself vulnerable to a stranger? It’s quite frustrating, but I understand it. What I don’t quite understand is how to transcend. This whole discussion is upsetting to me. A woman knows that I am an attractive guy; we have plenty in common. There’s a lot of compatibility. She saw the books, the TV, the red flag, the nice apartment: she knows that I have tastes and interests and probably feels some curiosity to know more about me—just like I am curious to know about her…but “human society is an anti-physis.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Bord and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 94.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Bord and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.
Kafka, Franz. Diaries. Translated by Ross Benjamin. New York: Schocken Books, 2022.
Shields, David. Reality Hunger, 2010.

  1. Shelley, Ozymandias. Accessed online.↩︎

Last edited Oct 08 2024

III

Saturday

Work last night was intense, but good. Reminded me of the good jobs I’ve had. Doesn’t pay as much, but it’s fine. The wine list is not particularly sophisticated, but the service is at a high level so it’s okay.

Sunday

  • Mom: tote, chocolate
  • D–: W beers, book, chocolate
  • R–: cliff bars, W beers, O shirt
  • N–: socks, chocolate
  • C–: Pantone mug, chocolate, record (?)
  • J–: Knotty boy, McK shirt

Monday

First day of snow. Suddenly the winter we were waiting for has Become. No longer just an extended spring, but winter—season of snow.

Today the goal is to send draft letters to all my referees; to work on the portfolio; to work at the gym at 80% of my last PR week; to shave.

Tuesday

Sent the letters. Today is about receiving feedback from S–, and about working on the story. Morning Regrets has become The Path to Self-Consciousness (it still has both and neither title: the first is just the filename; the second is a working title, but it’s not appropriate for the story’s aesthetic mode). I’m still working on integrating those prayerful insertions of the name into the computer. The narrative will end at the moment of sending her a message. Wow. It should have been on Twitter, the website that I actually use; but it’s more funny that I had to use an adapter to pipe my message into another communication protocol. I used Messenger to slide into the DMs of an Instagram account. Hard to convey how funny that is. You can’t make that sort of thing up, so why would anyone ever bother trying to? I will never understand claims to fiction invented whole cloth.

Thursday

Writing and working, a very strange combo. The job is taxing my ability to memorize things. I need to remember all the recipes for the cocktails, as well as the menu. The floor plan is simple, but also needs to be memorized. And I need to remember how to do the job. That memory is in my muscles, thankfully, which are bigger than my synapses. All the language, the vocabulary. What else? Cleaning is easy; everything else is hard.

I’m writing at the same time. Tomorrow I can work on the story. Right now I work on this word and this word.

Invocation to the person I love, want to love. That’s the goal. To bring the piece to the end. It needs more action.

11h—At O. The plan today is to work on the story and nothing else. Aside from that—we have gym in a few hours, and then—work! A structure is emerging.

Friday

A bunch of girls at CG speaking English loudly. To some extent, things have taken a turn for the better. Next step…girlfriend?!

For the story…

  • Need to make the timeline more clear. More of a spring vibe for the present-day timeline; more of the glory of weather.

  • How does the V– anecdote relate to anything else in the story? How do any of the parts relate to each other? The idea is…fixating on the unobtainable, in spite of what’s in front of you. I am incapable of precisely identifying what a theme is, and I don’t actually think that’s the writer’s job, anyway. When I say, “the theme is [whatever],” what I am saying is “the emotional well from which this language springs has [whatever] affective–conceptual quality in the foreground of my mind.” The artist does not identify their themes, the critic does. The artist can only say what their affective state is at the moment of conjuration.

  • The last thing to do is add in the element of “praying” to the computer; entering J–’s name into the phone 3 times. It can end there. Make it happy. Or, tell the truth and don’t mislead by pretending change will be enduring.

Saturday

Standing at the bar adjacent to the espresso machine at O, a place I’ve never stood before. It’s typically for friends of the baristas; in this case, it’s a “liminal zone,” where I stand, waiting, until a better spot emerges. It does allow me to see behind the bar in a way that I definitely don’t like. I don’t like Contemporary pants: sweatpants with elasticated cuffs and cargo pockets—the pants people think are appropriate to wear to work. This counter ought to be strictly reserved for friends because I, the public, should not have access to this sight.

Moved up to the window. The only wobbly chair in the house. Next to the Frankenstein girl, who is knitting yellow yarns, a purple hardback notebook in front of her. No copy of Shelley today. According to this very diary, it was back in October that I made note of her.

Trying to read some Baudelaire, but I woke up melancholic. The thing I most want to do is stare into space.

LOL—just read an email from V– saying she wants to have my baby, pay my student loans, support me as a writer. She also wants me to fall in love with her, make her my wife and keep her in Montréal. I won’t be able to devote myself to anyone but the one I fall in love with spontaneously—with whom the early parts of the relationship are adventurous, exciting. V– has not changed my conception of the truth.

Right now, the kinds of truths I feel driven to divulge are about being lonely and alienated; about my past, what series of unfortunate events might bring a man to the brink of despair. If I fall in love and get a girlfriend, I will want to tell that kind of truth. The two are (to an extent) mutually exclusive. Can’t tell the truth of being single without damaging a future relationship. The truth of being lonely, self-hating, self-conscious, horny; the truth of how one falls forward into love…

Monday

The story is about a guy who says the name of a girl he likes into his phone 3 times; and on the third time, her name appears.

Maybe the diversions into E–’s character are what gives you the space to get into the present. Paralepsis: find a point of commonality that is more meaningful than having the same bag, and bring that back to the present, make it into something real. Something about how different the two of you are.

What does sense-certainty have to do with anything? It’s vaguely related to this idea of unconscious recognition, of the crush, Hegelian Desire. The idea is that you’re thinking about it before you become aware that you’re thinking about it.

The story falls apart. This dialogue on sense-certainty needs to move back and forth through time; we are listening, remembering the conversation; and at the same time we are at Reservoir, looking at the tattoo on a girl’s chest, thinking about where the rest of the pattern must fall—on the tits! She notices you noticing her and gives a coy smile on her way out.

Tuesday

Spoke to C– yesterday afternoon. He is doing much worse. Now, going to Trinidad will have the quality of a rescue operation. Now there’s a higher calling than just lounging around.

Wednesday

Went to McK, felt foolish for thinking I still had a connection to the place. I wanted to give J-L one of their shirts for Christmas as a token of me, a sign of an accomplishment that I was proud of (holding down that job for about 3.5 months). The place is so massive, institutional, busy, powerful. My time there didn’t make a dent, even though it made a huge dent in me.

Walked by Hard Knox, thought about R–, put up an “I <3 Hamas” sticker. The Sud-Ouest is the lair of my enemy and I don’t belong there. I felt invisible, like no-one—like no-one knows me. Zero power, zero recognition, zero presence. Doesn’t help that I invited a bunch of people to the Christmas party, and few responded. Now I’m going to try to write?! It’s so late in the day….

Saturday

  • Unsalted butter

  • Malted milk powder

  • All-purpose flour

  • Plain, unsulfured baking molasses

  • Orange x 2–3

  • Ground coriander

  • Whole nutmeg

  • Green cardomom

  • Granulated sugar

  • Ginger

  • 750ml dry red wine x 2

  • 750ml ruby port

  • Raisins

  • Almond slivers

  • Allspice

  • Phyllo

  • Pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, malbec or merlot

Monday

Post-party. Weak. My body, but also the event itself: weak. I need to get my application packages together, because I’m about to lose my chance to work on them! Plus, I have no time to shop.

The plan is to chill and rest as much as possible before the work week begins tomorrow. It’s going to be difficult. And I will have no chance to go anywhere. No car of my own.

In the New Year, I will return to the applications. This week I will focus on my gifts. Otherwise—what’s going to happen with—anything? I’m over-reaching, doing damage to my reputation. Just by trying to exist. Stupid—chill out. It would have been better if—today, I’m just chilling until I have to go meet the person for the Pantone (®) mug, and then go to the gym. I’m getting one gift. I need to stop by Wills at some point to get beer. I can get some of that for R–. Mom gets a tote bag, and—? N– can get some socks. D– can get some—book?

Thursday

I can sense that I’m approaching the limit of what I can accomplish with the Morning Regrets story without a long lay-off and/or some help from outside of me. Obviously more could be done to make it cohesive overall; certain themes that appear in the beginning need to re-appear. More could be done to make the topic of sense-certainty relevant to the rest of the story. Religion, God versus woman, love and loneliness, waking up in the morning—how it feels to be so objectless. Without meaning! Blah blah….

Aside from that, we need to just fix up the letters, remove the excess semi-colons (as S– suggested), etc. Then we need to prepare the CV and the documents for Western.

Sunday

On the train to Ottawa, then to Toronto. What a difference this mode of transport makes. The staff are attractive and in a good mood. The other passengers are also attractive—more so than on the bus, certainly. I can hear the gay laughter and chattering of one of the girls behind me. The bus is so angry and unhappy. I remember some of those early rideshares: they felt like world-historical events, honestly.

I feel close to getting a girl. I feel close—still thinking about the one conversation I had with that girl from PR. She’s my type—what is it about her? She has an air of seriousness, yes. As ever, what makes her my type is that I believe I recognized my attraction to her reflected back at me. She knows that I think she’s hot, because she presents herself as such. And there’s some confidence that she thinks I’m hot, too, far-off and vaporous like a cloud.

I’ve seen her boyfriend. He’s nothing special. Lumberjack hipster type. I’m more of an army hipster type. But I’m serious, and I have prospects, now, wow! Two jobs?! Maybe even grad school?! What! Not to mention—all my training! All my computers!

I want the ultimate x230. 4 core processor, full HD display. New speakers, new Bluetooth + WiFi chip, new everything inside. The display is most difficult (and expensive).

Of course I will have to flash the BIOS, coreboot, and clean the ME…I’m also looking forward to getting the new keyboard, of course, that’s obvious. I wonder if there’s some way to get USB-C plugs for data, or to replace all the USB 2.0 with 3.0. Of course I will want to reinforce the lid, make it stronger and more secure—less flexible. That seems to be the main concern.

And of course I want the higher-quality cooling system. Keyboard. Perfect screen. Would have to still do VGA out, have the option of attaching a second screen.

Thursday

At PR. J– was being very touchy as he asked me about my holidays, about my family. Double handshake, laid his hand on my shoulder, and even cupped my face. I like coming here because I feel seen—but he still gave me coffee in the tiny cup—and he’ll still charge me for the larger size. WTF!

What do I have to do…I need to work on my applications. For Western. I still need to figure out what my essays are even going to be, then edit them.

Friday

Nightmare service. So many fuck-ups. Now I just feel terrible. At IdG for a beer. D– has lost her respect for me…I’ve lost face. Will I even keep this job? Who knows. The insult added is that the stakes, the fuck-ups, are fractional compared to the past. In the past I’ve had real responsibility; huge groups in the palm of my hand; an international reputation to uphold….

What else makes me feel bad? In a moment of horniness, I proposed to V– that we should take a vacation together, and now I will need to tell her that it’s a bad idea—or else follow-through with it. I can’t tell which is worse.

Can I finish this stupid notebook before the end of the year? I found myself at work fantasizing about A–, a girl I have met twice. Fantasizing about being her boyfriend. Sex, yes, the process of her becoming my slave. Everything I would do to her. I want a steady girl so that I can begin the process of unleashing the full force of my energy on someone—anyone. No, not anyone, sadly; the sad reality is that my pride holds me back from indulging fully in women that I don’t believe are right for me. After work, yes, when it’s hot out—and then we can put our feet up together….

Wednesday

Head still swimming. Entire inner world destabilized. Went to the gym yesterday, somehow. A miracle, really. Felt quite weak on the overhead press, and generally un-co-ordinated, but I managed to do eight exercises. Four sets of dips, very long rests. One steam / cold plunge.

The house is falling apart. Chaos reigns. Can’t think about that. I need to do a proofread on all my documents, then submit. Get it out of the way, then get some tool to unscrew the faucet and try to fix it. Then—what the fuck, it’s leg day?!

Thursday

Very sore from the workout. Feel bloated and sloppy. Not taking enough time to care for my body. Not enough time for self-care. I’m here at CG, I feel sick, but it’s in the nose, not the lungs. Too cold, with the window open at night. My lips are chapped. I’m not taking care of my mouth, face, skin.

Today I need to at least finish edits to The Truth is Haunted essay. I should also try to submit it somewhere because it’s fucking good. With that many revisions—plus, the topic is genuinely important. The problem with this piece is that it’s too academic to be an essay for a general readership; and it’s not too entry-level academic to be submitted to a decent peer-reviewed journal. It needs to be either completely re-done for a general audience; or it needs to be actually filled-out, which would take like, two or three times as much space.

2023 was probably my most consistent year of training yet, and it marked several milestones—including my move from a strength-focused, powerlifting-style of training, to the so-called “endurance” methods associated with hypertrophy.

Tuesday

  • The hegemony of ASL
  • Grammar of signing is on the face??
  • We the Dead (book)
  • Diagrams for when you’re stuck
  • Self-publishing a book
  • February 6: bring some material?
  • Look for motifs in the shared document?
  • What paths does the writing give?
    • Are they the intention of the writer?
  • A time of mediocre thinking
    • That’s what has led us to Gen A; illiterate
    • My back is killing me. I did deadlifts earlier, and we don’t have chairs…
    • She’s bothered by a review

Wednesday

Back at PR, caught up with my friend. Crush is not here. Good/bad? Who knows.

Now it’s time for the next project. It’s time for the Spinoza story. This one also has a weird timeline. We need to come up with better techniques for moving through time—we can practise, at least.

What will I read? Well, today, what I should actually do is try to put together some resources on writing workshops. That’s one objective; the second is to think about where/how I can improve The Truth is Haunted.

Saturday

I’m afraid to go back to PR because the force of my attraction to that girl is just breathtaking. I want to imagine a long life together. She has a boyfriend—plus, I’m the client. Impossible to puncture the membrane; or, at least, ill-advised folly. I bet we would be happy together: I can tell that we would.

Why? She’s not dissimilar to J–: they are both kind of sallow; but they both imply secret depths. They’re both serious in that way. I wonder if her boyfriend is serious, or just a fling? He’s not as good as me: no man is. How could he be? I am an artist, an intellectual, an athlete. I have great depth of emotion; I have lots of cool, unusual experiences; I have great integrity and sincerity. I’m fit, I have a nice face. I have very little social power. I’m shy. I’m neurotically guarded. I’m vain, narcissistic, which is why I am so prone to self-hatred. I have no life. Gymcel! Bad teeth. I’m desperate: desperate to give myself to a woman. This one seems like a good choice because—I recognize her. From where? Just from myself, you know.

The next stories to write: Spinoza story; Korlin story; the story of Me as an Artist.

Sunday

Having a real drink at PR?! Funky playlist, girls with their arms showing. Did I get close with A–? Who knows—all I know is that I can’t ask her out five minutes after some other guy. But—I think she’s very cute; I think she thinks I’m cute—we chat well, etc; she doesn’t know everybody…

Now I’m a Bishop & Bagg. The bartender is very professional to me. I don’t really invite the homely style of service. That’s fine. The beer has a kind of sour taste.

The idea I had—the new idea that’s pulling my heart is some kind of artist statement. That has to do with distinguishing myself from the rabble. No: it’s about what it feels like to be surrounded by so much talent: it makes me feel completely pointless, anonymous. Reading Knausgaard on the page was shocking. His novels are typeset like Stephen King books—they’re huge. The style is too transparent to support the kind of citation-laden writing that qualifies as Something. Every citation needs to be narrativized. That’s the key, and it means that one must also be highly selective.

WTF am I on about. The question has, is, or was about whether I can somehow manage to support something like this without coming across as a huge cunt. “Ouch, my poor wounded ego, all these talented people around me.”

There’s got to be something! The idea was to—I’m so distracted by everything happening around me. I can’t believe that there’s a trivia night happening, lol. (Also, I’m now drunk.)

Okay. Artist statement. The idea was for a story about A–, basically. That’s what inspired me. How it feels like to be around people who are superior to you. At least as good, but superior for existing more than you.

If we write another story about not existing, we are 2 for 1. On a definite theme here. The guy who does not exist. It’s a terrible perspective for a story, but highly symptomatic of a certain type of person.

So that seems like a go-ahead. If we have 2 stories that are on a theme, then that’s basically halfway to a book. That’s a pretty pathetic little series: we have to find another perspectival dyad that we can use to approach—whatever the same object is.

Right now I’m writing shorter pieces. Hopefully they can all be workshopped and brought to market. Maybe together they will work. Who knows.

After that will come an actual novel. We have to do like Faulkner and just tell stories that mean something.

Of course, what I want to do is nothing like Faulkner. What other perspectives can we offer on the same thing? What is at the heart of these two stories? Modern subjectivity? The loneliness of a pathetic man?

The problem is that I don’t have much of a perspective. No. Look, I have access to something—it can be what I make it—and that’s that. I can make it what I want to.

Girls I am currently obsessed with: - A– - PR - ? Not that many, I guess. Natalie. Why am I so bad, why is it so difficult to actually connect with people? What do women think? They have have their lives—they have options—they are only going for a meet-cute that falls in their lap. Or rather, with a dude that is competent enough to actually make something happen. So even if I have an undeniable connection with a girl, she won’t lift a finger, or—she just won’t do fuck all. And I—am too proud to be with a woman who won’t respond to a connection. The only relationships worth having are the ones that are completely effortless, in a sense. Like everything in life that’s worthwhile. The best way to make progress is without effort.

The other problem is that no-one really thinks like this. Are there Romantics out there? Part of me wants to say that the times have simply become too hard…but all my relationships had an element of Romance—and they weren’t really that long ago. It’s like I have become hard of heart. I am the one who has changed!

Met Steven, a very sharp old guy, but one who is limited by his perceptions. Met Trey, a Texan here on a mission of love. Good for him.

Saturday

Sick—did fuck all this week. Today I got an email that I was accepted into the University of Western Ontario. The financing seems very generous. The guy said they were impressed—by The Truth is Haunted, and that dogshit throw-up from FMST 222?! Wow, LOL!

How am I going to feel if they let me into Concordia? It might kill me. WTF!! Right now, I am avoiding going home, because it’s full of people. Strangers. Scared. I met a girl, sort of—she was so nice! Sometimes I feel like an absolute piece of shit. I’m terrible at my job. I am going to work in a restaurant forever—I should be so lucky! 2 jobs, full time…if I ever am married, then my motivation to work in restauration will be gone.

The grass is always greener—elsewhere. If I go to UWO, then I will have FOMO from not being here. If I go to Concordia, then I will always wonder—what might have been.

That girl—has a shop; and she has an old, blind greyhound. She’s a local celebrity. She’s funny, she’s cool, she’s really nice to service staff. She likes her funky natural wines. She addresses me in English. Wow. Radiant energy. Red carpet vibes. Powerful—so what’s she doing with me? Nothing: it was all a dream…

Sunday

The one girl is too young; the other is too powerful.

Now at Bishop & Bagg. It’s quite a privilege to be meeting a woman, even if she’s “merely” a friend. Have to remain normal.

Tomorrow, the plan is to—wake up at 8am and walk downtown to the thing. After, go to HOJO to meet the lady. Then go to the gallery, then go to work at the gallery—then go to the gym and do the full-body day. And of course I have to read like 40 pages of Holderlin, or whatever.

My mind is empty right now, other than the stupid anxiety of whether or not my friend is actually going to make it. The whole thing is BS. But it’s the price I pay for her friendship, I guess—the anxiety of not knowing whether she can follow through. She’s still very powerful. But what else…

Monday

The newsletter project should have an automated (“AI”) component. The narrative is frozen in time, repeats from one year to the next, but modified.

Thursday

  1. There’s nothing connecting the “weird” opening [of the Thanksgiving piece] to the rest of it.

  2. The actual “narrative” part with the natives is unbelievably half-assed. Make him a real character, and give some more details of their travels.

  3. The giving of thanks could be better integrated.

  4. All the descriptions of nature, etc need to be expanded or integrated. What’s the point, exactly?

This girl next to me is unhappy that she will never be able to compete as a bodybuilder.

Saturday

New notebook, new occasion to complain about how lonely and sad I am.

I want to think about the polyamory story. The question is—how to begin. I want to stay in my POV, but in such a way that I can fully inhabit the mind of the secondary main character.

The point is to show how my experiences as a guy doing polyamory/open relationships reveals that the whole pursuit is vanity, insanity, hubris. It works, or advantages, the man, just not this one.

The temporal framing is also important. That thing with E– and N– happened at the onset of the Online Dating Age; it also happened when millennials were the youth culture—the Young Ones. Now we are in a different place. Ostensibly mature, with different interests.

What scene am I most interested in? What drives me? It’s not just a question of reliving my “glory days”—this story has a real pedagogical interest.

No matter what, we don’t begin with me. We begin in the present. The trivia night is a good setting because of how over-the-top geared towards millennials it is, with the questions and the music, LOL!

Opening with A– is a good idea. Sets the tone—and the theme. Establishes some important character traits that will be important later on…but we want to get to the point of D– giving her speech, telling her story, ASAP. That’s the first major incident. The inciting incident? Where we get the first taste of our theme—strategies one how to love. Sexual differences.

Next, after that, is D– telling her story. A friend’s suicide, her boyfriend making out with another girl at her home. Sick and twisted. She tells her whole story, including mimicking his voice, etc; and only after, through my candour, do we learn that she is pretty much entirely responsible for her own situation. She made the bed that she’s unhappily lying in.

At that point—maybe we mirror her story by having me tell my own story; and that’s how we frame the analepsis.

The problem is that my whole story is too long. We need to settle on a particular scene that is capable of representing everything. It’s probably the conversation I had with E–, where she gamed it out and concluded that open relationships don’t work—they are a sacrifice: you can only be with people who are themselves into open relationships, which is a terrible punishment. It means that you can’t be open to the spontaneity of true love—the two are incompatible.

But another key thing is to describe N–’s psychology, and her entire rationale for why she thought it would be a good idea. Which is that, when she was 16, she and her best friend fucked the same guy—and to her, that’s being in an open relationship. That’s polyamory, LOL!

Key to that dynamic between her and I, how it played out, is that I somehow managed to find myself with E–, who is a AAA quality human being. No shitmuncher; not basic; my “superhero,” in fact. While N– is reading to me from her diary about how she’s fucking some random off of Tinder who rolls over and starts playing video games…E– and I had a true meet-cute, not to mention a courtship.

Monday

  • Celery
  • Pepper
  • Chicken
  • Carrots
  • Parsley
  • Green onion
  • 3.5 lbs russet potatoes
  • Red onion
  • Banana
  • Large yellow onion
  • Tomato paste
  • Garlic

Friday

I have this feeling of being emotional, but not knowing why. Is it truly sourceless—or am I guilty about not going to the gallery? Or do I feel bad because I had to contact R–? Or is it lingering food poisoning? What do I want to do, really? Just walk forever? It’s so nice out, after all…maybe I should just—go for a walk on the mountain. What else do I have to do in this shitty life…February, lonely. Or—just shoot me. D– is very annoying, and her callousness hurts my feelings.

Despite a series of successes in the new year that I can’t deny, I still feel—very empty. Unchanged. Like a failure, essentially. My fear is that I will need to fully wallow in happiness before I can actually be happy—before I stop thinking about how nice the other lawn is. How green. How beautiful is the other woman. If happiness is a treadmill, my heart-rate has not really been raised quite yet. This is the kind of emotionality we need to bring to the poly story—it will only, or rather, it is conceptually about economism of emotions. Gameification. What is going to be most efficient, what will get me results most quickly. The most bang for my buck.

Ultimately, yes, the story is about trying to find love. But it’s a corrupted sort of love. It’s corrupted by all the trappings of modern society—everything that is designed to lead us astray. To corrupt our minds.

What are the scenes? What scenes do my life depend on? Meeting Eric at Casa, and then later on he says I’m gay.

Tinder is first invented. Using it at O–’s mom’s condo on King Street. Rob has already developed one strategy of being selective, while J– has developed the opposite strategy of being indiscriminate.

N– and her friend fucking the same greasy guy; convincing herself that she’s poly as a form of cope, while he’s laughing all the way to the pussy bank.

Developing a romance with E– as N– winds up regretfully fucking some gamer. Ha, ha, I win. And she met him online, too.

My loyalty to N– leads to the downfall of my relationship with E–: the desire to have-cake-and-eat-it leads to nothing. She called it, too. You are restricting yourself to a subset of the population, the men of which are typically some of its worst specimens.

D– and the post-Ethical Slut. “Ethical non-monogamy.”

First there is her “sado-masochistic” relationship with Yas, so hilariously mis-named. Again, a man is laughing on his way to the pussy bank while a woman is doing emotional labour. The key to this is her telling herself that the relationship is of a certain type, while he nods along, uncomprehendingly.

Then, there is the way she poisoned the well with Eric by trying to enforce this stupid ENM standard—a mirror of what happened with E– and I? Except that she was a far more high-quality individual than he is. And he and I as the men in the situation, both had a lot more to lose.

The scene of their final breakup, with the dead friend, the make-out with the other woman at D’s place, etc—all very perverse. Like a consensual Bret Easton Ellis story.

Saturday

Surprised to be greeted by name at the PR cafe. Funny that this cute young girl I see at the gym, with the SLEEP shirt, now walks in. Everyone both lives in the neighbourhood, and hangs out here. She’s very stylishly attired, and with a very cute, fey boy. The milk in this cappuccino is making me nauseous. I like how every accoutrement here is on theme—that’s how I need to do my place. Pick a theme, make sure all the colours match. Re-do the floors.

So far, two scenes in the POLY story: going to Bishop and gabbing with D–. Then, also, using Tinder for the first time with the boys. 2012.

Using the Bishop scene to anchor the flashbacks is a good idea, but how do we go back to Tinder? What function does that story serve? Mostly to (a) date things; (b) to indicate how different things were at the outset, versus the present of online dating; and (c) to talk about how the gamification of these systems was a social inevitability from the outset.

We have to set up the whole thing with N. in order to really get into the poly aspects of the whole thing. We have to set up the intensity of the romance; but we also want to skip a lot of the blowback, because it’s too much to get into.

The three pivotal scenes: (1) first kiss, where she says she doesn’t want to be exclusive; (2) the intensity of our reunion in New Brunswick, where she then talks about wanting to have sex with some guy; (3) the break-up and reunion; me meeting E–, then her reading me a literal diary entry where she describes having sex with some guy who picked her up—feeling excited by the thought of the pain she would cause me—and then he rolls over and starts playing a video game.

The Campbellton interlude should include a moment of—well, the scene around the fire truck. I ask her why she wants to be poly, why she thinks it’s a good idea. She tells me the story back in Chicago. Under the tree. But she also rationalizes it—it’s based on wanting to economize on her sexuality.

This recurrent theme of gamification is like the faith versus Enlightenment debate. Quantity versus quality.

We then go into the time with E–. Must do her honour, but the only scenes I have in mind are (1) the meeting—the TRUTH of the meeting; and (2) the scene at O, where she’s crying and telling me how the whole things is insanity. This should be the middle of the story, where the themes are spelled out and the stakes made clear.

The question, of course, is how to connect all these scenes. How do we anchor them around the meeting at Bishop? Not everything can be a story told? Why would I be telling D– all these stupid anecdotes from my “glory years?” It doesn’t fit. She would never sit still for a story that long. I would never seek to tell her all of these details…

And that means we need as many stories, scenes, from her perspective as from mine. We want this story to be more-or-less equal—gender parity—to represent a POV different from my own. It’s a technical exercise. A level-up. And it’s part of the same series as The Path to Self-Consciousness—there’s a continuity somewhere.

It’s not going to be balanced if all of her stories are from the present, and I’m the only one allowed to have a backstory. Or maybe that asymmetry can be part of the work? Since I have nothing happening in the present—and she has everything happening, and seems incapable of learning.

Science versus faith. Gamification of love. I can talk to her more about—what? If she’s ever been in an open relationship before?

Sunday

Failed to ask out A– again—spoke to the guys at PR about it a bit, and had a beer—now back to just being alone, I guess? Comme toujours.

It’s a question of chance—luck—which means my best bet is to simply increase my chances—increase my odds—that’s all I can do. Yes there is an element of chance, but as the Agent of Law (the man), it is also on me to make things happen. My responsibility is to make the world conform to a vision. It’s all on me—poor little pond scum.

Friday

Saw C– leaving with some man on Valentine’s Day. Then, later heard them fucking; then, he left at the same time as me, early in the morning! REJECTED! (Me not him.) Feels bad. It makes me feel worthless, in fact. I am a piece of garbage. She’s not interested in me. No woman is. They’re just not interested. How did I ever manage to score a woman—any of those times I did? I fooled them, perhaps. Now I’m damaged goods. There’s no hope for me. I can’t be with anyone. I’m a pathetic loser. I will never be happy. I’m broken.

LATER—Feels like a punishment to be sent home early. And without my dinner!

Try to put yourself in the mind of a woman. They want to not waste their time—and they want to feel safe. They feel safe by knowing that you are a part of a network—and knowing that they are part of your network.

For Lent, I have given up. I’m not supposed to be trying. Satan tempts me at every turn. There are demons everywhere.

This place (Isle de Garde) is big, powerful, French, and quality. I would hold it up as a gold standard—well, I would if I were an ambassador of Québec. There are couples everywhere—it’s all I see—like the whole world is people fucking—everyone but me!

Women want to know all of these things about men—but all of these things are not me. All these things they want are not things I have to offer. I’m not fit—I don’t have what it takes—I’m pond scum—I deserve to be alone…

I have given up for Lent. I have given up. Failure. Bad news comes in threes: I"m still waiting for the curb stomp. Do not write a letter to E–. It’s impossible to justify.

How did I become such an incel? I was always this way, and it’s only chance that has led me to taste the non-incel life. Pure chance—this is the life that I am led to. That I am meant for.

Do not compromise your values for this bullshit. Never had to in the past. Look at me through a woman’s eyes: he’s at a bar, so he has at least some money. He’s at this bar, so he has some taste…but he’s alone, so he has no friends, or he’s a loner; and he’s writing in a notebook rather than looking at his phone. This is the extent of his plan. No plans—no friends—loser! Sad, pathetic loser.

When I look around—it’s just happy people enjoying each other’s company. All of them seem rapt. I have never been in such a situation. Is it true that this writing is a substitute for companionship? It is true that I did not write so much when I was in a relationship—but I also didn’t have the clarity of purpose.

But—I also didn’t have the emotional motivation. This is part of God’s plan. I must suffer before I can become who I am. I will go through this phase of extreme emotional motivation—then, I will come out the other side a seasoned pro—then, I will be ready to love. That means I need to finish this cycle of negative thinking.

Monday

Nothing to look forward to. No meaning. No life. No future. Only memories. Circling the drain. No prospect of happiness. I feel happy when I make a pretty girl laugh. It makes me feel whole again. The best part of my week is Sunday, when I have the chance to make a pretty girl laugh.

I have become hyperfixated. It’s now actually destroying me, and it will continue to destroy me until it’s over and done with. Until I quit, or until I am released from this mortal coil…Another parasocial relationship sucking my blood, killing me, destroying me, draining my life-force.

Last edited Aug 20 2024