Joy Sullivan, From “Culpable”, Instructions For Traveling West

Anaïs Nin, Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939-1947

Ku ren he

酷栠盒

他的爱心被很大

从来没想，

你现在会不这里

怎么做呢

如果没有你

我还吸烟，所以

记得你的记忆

我不会忘我们的生活

我心疼

酷栠峆

真的有意思…

my job involves speaking chinese to actual important biznizz people and whilst in my waking hours I am mid but acceptable at work and in meetings, in my dreaming hours my subconscious serves up nightly dreams in which I am forced to orate classically for hours in front of my boss as if I am second in line for the throne and arguing that my elder brother's proposition to accept tax predominantly in copper instead of grain disproportionately hurts smaller farmers, 父皇之宽容，天下皆知，儿臣恳请父皇三思啊！and then when I wake up it's back to this situation is. uhh. difficult. and there are many angles

i’m sitting in his room. it’s a few days before christmas.

it’s chilly, most of the days, in kentucky. a warm day in the 50s or 60s isn’t uncommon though. one christmas, it snowed. a few snow days a year are all a young student could hope for. the ice storm during my 7th grade year was a pleasant, citywide shut down exception.

anyway, i am laying on his bed. i smoke a cigarette. a red camel crush. bad teacher is on his tv. he needs a shoulder rub.

it’s 1:39 am. bad teacher is still on. he’s fallen asleep, like he always does. he feels safe and comfortable. i like to lay awake and listen to him sleep. like i’m watching over him while he rests.

something strange happened tonight with the new guy i am seeing. we started dating a few months ago. we had great sex for hours the first time we reconnected after six years. he’s a ceo. he appeals to a lot of aspects of my personality, he is a good fit. we have good chemistry. we have good sex. but i don’t feel for him like i do for space cowboy. even if i am weary of his volatile ways. i am okay with being with ceo if space cowboy falls through. i’m okay with walking away at this point.

but tonight. he didn’t text me good morning today. he said he was going to facetime me on my break to show me the house he was staying at. but then he didn’t answer or respond to my text. immediately feeling strange about this, but he does have a tendency to fall asleep early.

i immediately felt he was with someone else. and now, i realize it might have been his worker that just flew into boston. i know this worker. ceo isn’t exactly out of range of his type. but he does have a husband, though that hasn’t stopped a gay man before. i know from painful experience.

but i also got a strange vibe at the end of our phone call. they were both in the work van. i was in my car. i realized worker was different from me emotionally. saw things differently. the goodbye just was strange. i think it was ceo’s voice. sometimes our personalities don’t mesh.

hopefully-maybe i’m being paranoid. but would be cool if i was right. i like when my senses are right.

[[edit: i just remembered him saying he’s hooked up with worker’s husband before. they totally fucked. last night worker had his own hotel room. this morning, ceo doesn’t text me good morning which i found strange. he misses the call with me on his break. i’m at the point where i feel certain they had sex. this will be a good intuition tester, cuz i never know when to listen to something as right, or just in my head. this will be an experiment. cuz i’m so sure of my senses right now. but if i’m wrong, i’m wrong. i know ceo will tell truth. but if they’re having sex multiple times, it might hurt me. this would be the perfect opportunity to tell him i’ve been seeing space cowboy though. and space cowboy is starting to show more promise. he’s beginning to communicate. he’s told me thank you twice tonight. /end edit. ]]

that would be a low jab. but, i am over space cowboy’s house right now. everything in me has wanted a relationship with him. but things have progressed so smoothly with ceo. there are things he doesn’t know. things i don’t know how i will integrate.

but space cowboy, may have a very difficult time integrating with my friends and family. what few friends i have left. ceo and space cowboy have the same interests though. they both build wood furniture and things with their hands. maybe ceo can help cowboy. but he may feel jealous.

ceo works with his ex. his ex helps run his company. polyamory is a thing. i don’t know what will happen. could the two share me?

Oh, the 12th House.

Sometime between middle and high school, I had a dream. I was using Tumblr, logging on, and seeing what other people were saying. There had been some catastrophe, and not everyone had the internet. It wasn't guaranteed. But I somehow had access to the internet, and I logged onto Tumblr through my TV. People hadn't posted in weeks, months.

I thought it was weird that I was scrolling through Tumblr on my TV. This was 2010. It wasn't a flat screen. It was big and chunky and a box. These days, you can check Tumblr on a TV. Technology has come a long way. Airplay. Screensharing. Smartphones.

Could that dream have been a premonition? Of the decline in use of Tumblr over the years. I had just discovered Tumblr in the 8th grade. I was one of the first users, back when hipsters and mustache and converse pictures were just about to become the rage. Myspace was still around, though becoming a graveyard more and more by the month. Scene kids never die though. Rawr :]

~

What could the dream have meant? Perhaps that TV would be my own demise? My armageddon?

When I first read about the 12th house, I was a first-year at Centre College. The 'best' college in Kentucky. Private, small, liberal arts college with a hefty endowment. Most people have never heard of it. So much for the prestige and recognition.

I read Liz Green's article about the 12th house. I had just started getting into astrology. I'm smart. Was an IB / International Baccalaureate student at one of the best high school's in the city. But astrology gave my little 18 year old mind & heart some peace of mind. Homework and ambition can only do so much.

Harvard. Thanks to Gossip Girl, Brown University became my dream school. I applied Early Admission, seeing as the acceptance rate was slightly higher, and I thought my desire and longing to be upper class would carry the weight for my acceptance. AAAANNNHHHH!!!! Nope. Try again. You were just an above average student, thought not straight As or rich and well connected. Of course, this got my admittance to other good schools. Just not an Ivy. You probably would have hated it anyway, seeing as you had a nervous breakdown your second semester into college. And that was only two hours away from home! :) Rhode Island? not a chance.

My intuition told me not to go to Centre. But my ego persisted. I wanted to go to the best school in Kentucky, and I wouldn't settle for less.

I got so drunk the weekend I visited campus my senior year. The guy blamed himself for letting me get carried away. But I knew what I was doing. Granted I didn't mean to get that fucked up. But I wanted to get drunk. My bad homes.

-

So, I wanted the conventionally successful life. I did. Graduate college in four years, maybe be a banker or something. Make money. It really seemed so simple to me. Then my life became a living hell. Torture. I became so reclusive. Would walk around in the night, and miss my classes in the morning. I had no money. No car. Surrounded by strangers, rich strangers, in a small town two hours from home.

I fell apart.

I ended up in the Psych ward for a week. Took the rest of the semester off to join a new religion, the Mormons. Came back the next Fall only to be completely miserable again in a couple weeks time.

I guess I just thought I could handle it. I wasn't disciplined enough to stick it out. I was crazy enough that it became too difficult.

I was in fact crazy. I didn't realize it at the time. I do now. It's why I blacked out all those years.

Thanks, 12th house.

The 12th house in Astrology. The house of Psych wards, Prisons, Monestaries, Rehabs. A single drop of water in the vast vast ocean.

The unconscious. Spirituality. Bipolar disorder. Photography. Drugs. Weird religion. Gay.

Boy, I had it in for me. All things considered.

I realized though, my dad's Sun was also in the 12th house. Mine and his. So I guess we asked for this. We're in this together. Two wackos.

Great.... :(

I guess what they say is true.

The 12th house makes you crazy. I'm living proof. But it also gave me psychic powers. Gifts. The days you feel like you are completely drowning, though, are the worst.

学式 · some studyblr aesthetic

so once me and my wife were watching a documentary where a snake ate like a million eggs. that snake just went to fucking town on eggs. and the snake made the eggs look so good that i kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it, and eventually it was 11pm and i ran out of willpower and decided to eat one (1) singular raw egg just to prove to myself that the snake was surely a liar.

the snake was not a liar. texture is like, super important to me and raw eggs are very Texture so i had another one, and then another one, and then another one, and eventually i ran out of eggs.

i had like, fifteen raw eggs.

i didnt really know how to explain this momentary madness to my wife, so my Plan was to put all the eggshells into a grocey bag, and then throw that grocery bag in the dumpster, and if she never noticed that would be Excellent and if she noticed immediately i could lie and say that the eggs went bad.

except i cant lie very good, and of course with murphys law being such, i got salmonella.

so i threw up a lot and my wife asked me what poisoned me so and i tried very hard to dodge the question but i was oozing shame like oil from a room temperature cheese and eventaully i gave in and told her everything and to her enormous credit she was more flabbergasted than actually upset. she did make me promise to not eat any more raw eggs, which i have stuck to, and she gives me weird looks during nature documentaries now as if desire was the only thing keeping me from eating thousands of pounds of krill anyway i made a joke earlier about being able to eat my age in eggs and my sister in law in law made a drawing to comemorate the moment and also because it was my birthday. she's excellent. thank you 10000000% @cintailed. you should all visit her page and admire her work.