rat

Some nights I will walk the long way back, which requires me to walk through a small commercial district alone in the dark, injecting me with just the right amount of adrenaline.

I added another painting to my collection of women curled up on the ground in pain. They say write what you know, but you could easily apply this to any medium. And exactly what I know very well is being curled up on the ground in pain

Today I saw a deer cross the road and I pressed my hand to my mouth, shocked, and let it stay there for quite some time, even after the deer left my field of view. I was walking back and thought I wouldn't mind a death by being gored by a deer as it suddenly bursts from the forest by the side of the road, in the flat purplish light of the streetlamp, a scene right out of Flannery O'Connor.

Read Han Kang's Heavy Snow in the library:

And beside all this lies Ama.

Last line (above) like a cold lance through my diaphragm. I could've cried. They say light as snow but snow has its own weight; this is the weight of water. They say as light as a bird but they, too, have their own weight. What I thought was a male cardinal sitting on the grass was actually a red lawn flag, flickering in a wind.

The probability professor, almost unbearably soft-spoken, is blond and graying. Actually, I can't tell if he's graying or if it's the chalk dust. He is glaucous, like the skin of a plum or the dorsal side of seagull wings. He considers every question thrown at him with Wittgensteinian gravity, furrowed brow holding up half the world.

The Calculus III professor is Western European to a comedic extent, says things like mon dieu when students point out an arithmetic error on the board, and complains about American air-conditioning. (It's ridiculous that I have to bring a sweater in summer...) His long curly hair tied back and up in some way, though this knotted configuration is obscure in its structural soundness—how is it physically possible that it holds up? He has deer-in-headlights eyes and is constantly apologising. Upon a concerned student asking him if he curved the class, he winced and responded I only execute orders, rather unfortunate to hear something like that in an Italian accent but at least it wasn't German.

Bespectacled proofs professor (who has pronounced my name wrong for two semesters and I don't have the heart to correct him at this point) always takes his watch off at the start of class and places it meticulous besides his lecture notes. The wunderkind undergrad who sometimes sits in front of me (his wild hair makes it impossible for me to see the board) does the same thing; are their habits connected in some way? This prof has seemingly made a pledge to himself, moreso than even his ambient population of mathematicians, to only say correct things. He ponders every question with great gravity too, and I've grown to admire these long pauses, which contrast so much with my nervous tendency to answer as quickly as possible without thinking too much on if what I'm saying is even true.

Wish I had better news to give you. The only thing I like in the most remote sense are the paragraphs about my math teachers. They're built on a few months' worth of observations from the middle-row seat; not so close that it's obvious I'm people-watching (i.e., paying the wrong kind of attention), but not so far that I can't make out the details that matter.

an alien studying our culture might think a key facet of the humanities education in the past decades was the ritual printing out of fragments of our online encyclopedia.

Rained today. Caught without an umbrella; got soaked. A classmate, with whom I've become more friendly in recent weeks, held an umbrella for me at the bus stop and I was moved to the point of being dazed. Revisited one of Ben Lerner's essays, The Hoffman Wobble, from which I took the quote above. It's almost funny. Cold wet feet in cold wet socks.

I like the rain and the cold, but being inside of it without an umbrella or coat reminds me that not so long ago, being cold & wet outside might as well have been a death sentence. No heaters of hair-dryers to speak of; just you and your body heat. In cultures like that of the Tlingit peoples of Alaska, being dry and hot is treasured above all as a sign of sure health. I read Tlingit myths (the only Tlingit myth, in a way) of the Raven and was surprised by his sadism (in one story, he tricks benign Deer into falling to his death off of a cliff, for the sake of some petty prize). I read William T. Vollman's essay on unhoused peoples; one of them says to him as a way of genial parting: be sure to stay dry. In Korea (and I hear also in China) where the memories of poverty and famine are still somewhat fresh, they are more preoccupied than the average American with getting enough to eat, so they greet you with have you eaten and depart with make sure you eat enough.

So I exhort you, reader, to stay warm and dry and to eat.

Yesterday as I was walking to campus I found myself between a conversation of two birds, a repetitive chain of call-and-response. I tried to emulate their call with a whistle but my lips were too chapped or there was not enough air in my lungs. By the end of the day I had forgotten the melody.

On someone's website (sorry, I don't recall the link) they described themselves as the most serious person in the world and I commiserated. It seems that I've regressed and fumbled my way back into teenage self-seriousness.

Here's a piece of neurotica about me:

Sitting with my knees tucked up to my chin, my socked feet on the chair, I try to put my laptop on my knees but realize for the first time in my life that my right leg, being slightly longer than my left, results in an uneven surface. I wonder since when was this the case.

Lately I've found it easier and easier to bite the inside of my mouth when chewing, as if the configuration of my jaw has ever so slightly shifted. Like finding a mole that wasn't there before, your body always has ways to surprise you. When I find these things I always feel foreign to myself until I quickly become accustomed to it.

I took off my watch and the smooth backside of it—the casing of the lithium-ion battery—was warmed by hours of contact with my body heat. But as I held it in my hand, finally separated from my wrist, I could fool myself into thinking that the warmth emanated from it, as if it were alive.

I read Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami, Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another by Kobo Abe. Something about the cold weather makes Japanese literature really enticing.

In Sebald's The Emigrants he writes about his primary school teacher, Paul Bereyter.

It was not only music, though, that affected Paul in this way; indeed, at any time—in the middle of a lesson, at break, or on one of our outings—he might stop or sit down somewhere, alone and apart from us all, as if he, who was always in good spirits and seemed so cheerful, was in fact desolation himself.

As I read this chapter I found Bereyter to be a strikingly familiar figure. An intelligent and melancholy man who was so idealistic he seemed naive, perpetually misguided. One of Sebald's observations sealed the deal: Bereyter would often bite into his handkerchief out of frustration with his young students. This is literally just Ludwig Wittgenstein, I thought, and sure enough, the Bereyter chapter was partly based off of stories of Wittgenstein's stint as a teacher in rural Austria... I guess this is exactly the sort of déjà lu that Ben Lerner talks about in his retrospective of Sebald. So continues my participation in the various limp sadnesses of writers, musicians, and other artists. The sort of sadness that doesn't freeze you off from the world or brines you inside resentment, but instead renders you soft and permeable, from time to time throwing a wrench into your heart. As if he [...] was in fact desolation himself.

I went to a poetry reading night and got inspired. Here's a stanza from a poem about one of my teachers:

Behind him the ghost-markings on the board
left over from the previous class
depict the wheel of samsara
at whose dusty center he stands
in complete silence

Today I went out to eat dinner with family friends. At some point I was eating a mussel. Its greasy, nacreous interior echoed the mother-of-pearl in my earrings which echoed the perfume I wore, J-Scent's Tsukishizuku (mother of pearl). Though, Tsukishizuku does not evoke any kind of marine iridescence. Rather, it smells like you are slipping into a massive, fleshy white flower, sliding deeper and deeper, never hitting an end.

My god, I thought, this is all I've ever wanted, to be at this much of an accordance with the world. After days of stumbling around within suicidality so thick that it nearly blinded me, I felt like I could really see and feel things again.

But I know that this clarity is fleeting and that it will pass away from me like a guttering flame.

I'm thinking about two ways to learn things that have fallen by the wayside in terms of mainstream pedagogy:

There's a hole in my dorm's wall into which my thumb fits perfectly. Sadly I didn't report it to housing so I might have to pay for the damage once I move out.

This week I bought and used stamps for the first time in my life. I felt like I was being inducted into some secret society.

November was so bleak and I know December will only be worse. Despite this, I don't feel much of anything. The perfume I sprayed onto my scarf lasted for almost 48 hours; recognizing this was the last time I felt any positive emotion.