Hamilton

pros:

lovely nature and trees (have yet to go hiking)

very comfy house. 

can get back to my hobbies and am making progress on my book (the three-body problem which K has his own copy of!!) 

being on my own, seeing all the things i can achieve (which is a lot so far). testing my independence and pushing it one step further by living alone, driving alone, running errands alone. 

gas stove

cons: 

the pass to like ratio. opened up hinge to see what it was like and there were lots of caucasian guys working in .... construction and receiving? ooh one crane operator. Gianluca moved back in with his mom since his stepdad got sick and realizes that's a "-ve" for some people so puts it as his first thing on his profile. Blake loves the ocean and sharks. you think you've found someone attractive, but hey he's a pipe fitter. everyone loves tacos and tequila. 

the neighbour. someone who tows your car for being in your driveway without informing you is guaranteed to be a little crazy. 

I've been agonizing over whether to buy or save on shampoo...the longer time goes on the wider the sunk cost gap grows. which leads me to...the fact that I couldn't bring a lot of favourite things (favourite sunscreen, favourite clothes, COAT??) to hamilton. 

more to come!

story

sally and nathan were a potential couple long before they became friends. 

nathan met sally on a dating app. they started talking during the pandemic [long dark winter] and studied together. he was up in the north and she was in the city, and he enjoyed her alternative pace of living. 

sally found nathan’s presence soothing and his sense of humour wholesome and kind. she was finishing up her degree while nathan was just starting his. they had different backgrounds but she was okay with it. 

things started changing during the tail end of the pandemic and lines started appearing outside stores. sally took the opportunity to meet more people, and soon she was going on other dates with men in real life, instead of over video chat.

nathan’s life remained the same. 

that was possibly the reason why nathan was so keen to ask sally out, but she kept deflecting.

in the end sally made a decision and told nathan she wanted to be friends instead of something more. 

so they were now friends. friends that sometimes joked about sex and made suggestive jokes with each other. the bond was seemingly still there.

over time, sally becomes fed up with dating. she returned to nathan on a video call and ranted about her life. nathan seemed to enjoy the updates, but sally didn’t know that he was also going on dates with other people. 

he told her one day offhandedly as he was planning a city [toronto] trip. his new girlfriend lived very close to sally, and sally supposed that was the reason he told her. she wonders if he would have said anything if new girlfriend didn’t live in the same city…

sally its now single. she looks back on the [pandemic] long dark winter times with nostalgia. she remembers a time with nathan where they shared a mutual understanding and  camaraderie. sally sees the world as her oyster, any and all people on the neurotypical bell curve are compatible to her. 

 

Thinking about my calgary friends

 I woke up this morning with the idea that I should go to starbucks and buy a pumpkin spice latte and drink it outside on a patio. The first day of October demands a day such as this. Yesterday and Thursday I barely went out, so I need to make up for all of it today. 

 There were some police cars outside my building today. It seems like some glass fell from my building? Seems like such a small issue for 4 cop cars and a couple lengths of police tape. 

Later

It turned out to be a person that jumped from my building. Poor person. Their body was covered by a blue tarp but my roommate said she could see the body when they removed the tarp for a second. The first day of October, ruined for them. 

 Sure, i’ll go to a restaurant or an event at nathan phillips square alone but only if i’m feeling particularly spiteful or liberated one day. Most of the time I feel sad or lonely about the idea of being on my own all the time, and i think i really need to unpack that. 

Leave society

 This is always something i dreamed of doing. Moving to a small town and cutting off contact with everyone. Solely for the purpose of regaining my humanity and life force back from modern society

There would be a couple of adjustments. Like not using a smartphone and only basic mail and internet functions on the computer. 

Maybe i feel this way because living in the big city has done some harm to me after all. Instead of intellectually thriving and growing i feel all of my knowledge decaying. I feel depressed even after a course of antidepressants.  Maybe there’s a process to these stages of grief because when winter comes and the cold preserves my brain better I’ll think otherwise. But still, staring down the edge of an icy cliff on a beaten trail in the hamptons sounds nice too. I cant wait to escape into my library books. 

homeless people in toronto

it finally happened today. the normally out-of-control homeless man outside of 7-11 was found passed out on the sidewalk. a fire truck came and took him away.  

earlier today i went running and while walking home on yonge street, i passed a woman who was wearing only a t-shirt and turquoise panties and had paint on her feet and legs, and was muttering to herself. it always feels precarious walking on the same side of the road as these people, but the cruelest thing is that no one knew how she got here. so no one can help her unless they want to cause a scene. 

yesterday during my shift at the st. lawrence shoppers a bruised and disheveled woman came for her daily witnessed dose of (a very high dosage of) narcotic drugs, but there was a shortage of one of the drugs. obviously, she did not care to understand or even listen, and instead spent 20 minutes standing at the counter yelling about how she has to wait and how her ice cream that she just bought was melting. it was frustrating, but i can't imaging what her life must be like. there might be signs of domestic or sexual abuse, and human trafficking (which is on everyone's minds right now because of the campaigns going on), but we have to see past that in order to do our job. you try to express yourself, but no one is hearing you.

is it worse to live amongst perfectly dressed and clean people in a sterile city or living among these cases of humanity at its lowest and feral state? 

to me, muting life feels wrong and as a result i feel as if i've lost the creative, imaginative life force. i can't see anything past the surface right now. 

 I want to adopt either a dilute calico or ragdoll or Siamese or bonded pair of kittens

One for the history diary

 

congratulations!!

you wrote licensing exams!! you spent money!! maybe your hard-earned life can start now. 

2021 was a bit more wild and eventful. reflecting back on 2022...it feels like nothing has happened yet. i've been living in a limbo. now there's 4th covid doses and monkeypox on the news, and that utterly stupid trial between johnny depp and his ex amber heard. crazy things do happen every year, but it's hard to imagine something crazier other than what's happening right now. 

i was calmer this year. good job me. even during pebcs and osces. i guess i was trying hard to keep my heart rate down and not let the feeling take over. 

i had a good attitude towards people, and kept being honest with friends and tried to be as emotionally honest as i could. that was my new years resolution. 

as a kid, change and new adventures was fun for me, but now at 26, i feel more hesitant to engage in change. maybe that'll be my next resolution. how to better deal with change. 

vulnerability

 May 18

Tyler gaca 

Fantasy worlds

Every time i open my email i think to myself while swiping to mark as read, shut up CPHA shut up indeed linkedin who gives a fuck about ur message and words i should really unsubscribe that will show them haw haw

Having great discussions. Draft on here can be useful. Make sure to write down the ending to normal people

Oh god the psychology of it all. Marianne and connell’s relationship is something i wish for but also don’t really want because it’s so depressing. I could have one of my own, it is so cerebral yet from a distance it it only seems natural. They are drawn to each other through time and distance and I think the ending of the book really encapsulated their entire relationship. There’s no point in beating yourself up about what could’ve been. 

I think that I was pushing myself too hard to be environmentally conscious by not eating beef and not buying clothes, when even rich and poor people alike are not objectively that environmentally conscious of the way they live  

Ileana says I write candidly because i use a distinct language. But I think that only applies when I’m writing about myself. If I write about others I immediately become more objective and I have a harder time finding the words. It seems only natural to me to want to archive my writing so I can look back and rediscover who I was. I thought and I keep thinking about keeping a diary so I could write a book later, because that and itself is a much more real representation of me as a person. Because I am being more objective.  

I think about myself talking to Laurel and saying that I never really forgave her for ignoring my request to talk about our shared sexuality at the time. But I understand that she had to work things out for herself. These scenarios would be fun to write and/or read  

There are two types of people, no matter what the world tries to tell you. There are the people in fraternity clubs with the high end suits and long weekends of binge drinking and partying, and on the other hand, there are the people who sit in the dark with the glow of their computer screens reflecting off their glasses, Neo before the matrix, who catch rare glimpses of their reflection in the subway and turn away in indifference, who simper at the frat club people. I guess i would like to believe that both types of people wish to become one another. 

It’s these kinds of thoughts that make me feel like I would be a poor mother that throws her child into the abyss of the real. 

 

consumerism

 ai weiwei's birthday was today, i found out from instagram! 

but then a fact check on wiki/google showed...

I've been thinking about consumerism and capitalism a lot lately. I've been trying hard to stay happy without buying so many things, but now i feel that there's a lot of worth in buying little things to make you happy. Reflecting on my practices, like taking wind-down time every night, trying to let things/arguments/unhappy thoughts go, not doomscrolling or being more aware of my instagram usage, trying to control less, journalling more, easing the negativity out of my brain so i can wash the dishes, and such, I think that sometimes I deprive myself of things on purpose. I became interested in zen buddhism during undergrad to counterbalance the competitiveness and negativity i noticed around me, and in that environment and context it helped me to cope. But now I think it's time to re-examine my relationship with the idea that less is more. I honestly think I'm having these thoughts now because I realized it's time to buy new running shoes instead of using the same ones from my undergrad. I think I've owned 2 pairs of running shoes in my life. 

Especially as an artist-archivist I feel drawn to notebooks, stationary, painting supplies, artworks to collect, prints, stickers, washi tape, scrapbooking and archiving, making clay things. A recent purchase was a leuchtturm notebook and after i bought it i felt a bit more whole and alive. i thought of a new way to journal. drawing on the ipad is not enough for me sometimes, and i find myself reverting to more tangible/object-oriented mediums, like 3d tapes, papers, cards, layers of ink and pencil. also cleaned my ink pens (procrastinating never felt so nice) and they both write smoothly now. i even want to do something with my pill bottles/antidepressants/vials of stuff. 

I started selling some of my items that I no longer have use for and bought some tamagotchis to play with. personally i think that is in itself very zen, although sadly the joy of buying always surpasses the joy of selling. and i think i'm able to return to a mindset where i don't care really what others think about my art, i just make it to make myself happy. Re-visiting our morikids blog recently, i felt really proud of what we've accomplished. even if it's a small project that we eventually forgot about, it's still really fun to draw our OCs and be part of that world again. fleshing things out is really fun again. (hopefully) does this mean my depression is slowly fading away and there's a light at the end of that tunnel?  

parents are coming to grad. it will be hopefully a nice trip for them. time moves on, and old wounds are healing, but fresh ones open when i hear about the health of my extended family. i watched season 2 of ugly delicious today and dave chang said his son was born the day after anthony bourdain died and it was impossible to process how life and death could brush each other by so closely, as grace so elegantly put it. hearing that, i felt a bit of perspective, just for a moment. 

May 4 is almost over. There’s a nagging voice asking me where am i going and why do I keep listening to myself? Had a thought during yoga today, that I do not want to do something hard because I like tension. and that all the negativity is in my head. and lower back haha. I studied many chapters about antibiotics today and i think i am going crazy and next time i see a bacteria question i will just not care. i started posting pictures that are very personal on my fb and insta etc. it feels good to be authentically me.

My meeting with the cadth ceo and observations and learnings that came out of it 

She had a lot to contribute and we bonded over Beijing. And the best part? She added value to our talks, provided education and some tidbits of information (although I am so curious to pick her brain more). She was so curious and motivated owing, in part, to her role, but she just seemed like an overall optimistic person. We just created a whole universe of farmers (her on mental health and working from home). She was very pragmatic about patient focus and transparency from the government perspective and she encouraged me to keep working in community so I don't lose this perspective as well. 

April 18. Snow fell today in large torrents. Reading Ai Weiwei's memoir, I am both humbled and scared to be Chinese. I wonder if a girl growing up in China today feels the same sense of wonder I feel when I see snow (chrysalism). 

Flower

Empty

acoustic guitar

crystal drops

candle 

book 

Lonely feeling

philosophy 

Cards