putting on the same clothes as yesterday
June 18th.
I’m listening to True Anon at work. I’m thinking about a number of things, and I don't know where to start. Actually, I do: ECAM. I can probably have that application completed by tonight. The thing is, it's what I've wanted for a while, but now things feel less serious. Like, why would I care about post-production if we’re headed toward heat death? Why would I want to explore the world when my friends and family will be far away?
I will update you more once I get home. But for now, I’ll write a little bit more, because I have a coffee to drink before I go to the grocery store.
I wonder if Matthew truly wants me, because I remind him of himself, and if getting me back would satisfy him. Maybe his wanting to see me, that potential of the future, is what keeps his desire intact. I wonder how he will feel when he realizes I have been available all along.
I think this has already been a wonderful summer. I wanted isolation, some space, I wanted to feel lonely and see what I would do.
I had this insane craving for a Coke Zero earlier. I really wish that I could kick my vices, but even when I can vividly envision a coating of tar on my lungs or the shrinking of my organs, I put off quitting smoking one more week. Even if I think about how I really don’t know what’s in a Coke Zero, the idea of drinking one as a treat takes over. Not anymore, though. I’m boycotting… but I miss them. I bought a pack and put it in my mini fridge the night I moved in, and I was excited to drink one after my first day of work, but they had exploded! I couldn’t figure out how to raise the temperature in the fridge, so after I cleaned up the mess, I unplugged it and haven’t used it since. I bought one more pack after that, then vowed to never drink them again. I think it has been two weeks. Also, now I use the mini fridge for storage. There are some books and clothes in there.
I wanted to make Turkish eggs. I saw a video of it and it looked very good. I’ve been getting more cooking videos. I think it's because I have been neglecting my phone more, and when I do look at it, I interact with stupid shit. I can’t handle everything being serious all the time. I have no fucking power.
I’m going to poach eggs for my meal. I also plan on making a butter sauce for the eggs, which I’ll put into my tzatziki, and eat with bread.
I couldn’t find pita at Dia. There were two types of tortillas, a few kinds of loafs, and one brand for bagels. They don’t sell black beans in jars. They have red and white beans, and they’re not labeled as Cannellini, or Northern White, or Kidney beans. I find it weird. They find it normal.
June 19th
Still having trouble with wordpress. Very confusing, especially because it's in Spanish. The longer I am in Spain, the less I think I know the Spanish language. I am learning more vocabulary, and that I do not understand grammar very well.
I’m really tired of seeing apolitical success stories - as if luck does not have the largest hand in establishing someone’s career, and that we’re not already predisposed to that luck as English speakers, or Americans from large cities, or generally, people who have access to their parents' money. I keep getting these ads of young girls getting internships at corporate consulting agencies. They talk about how they stuffed their resume to the brim since high school, and if I use the active verbiage they use in interviews, I could live the same life too! Then I see another video of someone losing their job, or being rejected for a fucking service job. Everything that I thought at the beginning of college is collapsing. Maybe I was always this disillusioned, I just didn’t have as clear of a picture as to why. Now, I can explain everything happening around me, and I find that the answers are meaningless.
Also, I can't deal with how people who do have to suffer believe that their misery gives them leverage over others. I’m thinking of how immigrants pull up the ladder when they support anti-immigration policies, or how first generation students at colleges maintain weeder curriculums when they become professors, like my horrific philosophy instructor.
Sophomore year, I visited him in office hours and told him I needed help. He mentioned that he struggled in college because he was a first generation student. When I related to him, he gave me this weird look, like he wasn’t expecting me to say anything back. He was a vegan body-builder, and he was five foot eight. I remember the first time I went up to his desk, he was embarrassed when he got up and had to look up to me. Maybe that is why I got a C.
I need help. I do not want to be alone. I cannot be miserable, I refuse to be. I no longer have the protection of my University. It is just me in search of community in an individualist limbo, which if I cannot help it, will lead me into a life of monotony, exploitation, and the guarantee of inflicting that same suffering onto others.
I cannot stomach perpetual war. I also refuse to be complicit in it by following my dreams, or working to accomplish art that will not provide shelter, or will not eradicate the suffering of others in any tangible manner.
All I can offer myself to feel better about this is a mental break. But how can that be valuable? Once I go back to work, the resources I need to create are being depleted and wasted. People throw things away, they forget, they stop paying attention.
I need a community, a group of people who worry less about appearing revolutionary and care more about acting for the benefit of everybody, of removing inequality. I’m tired of it feeling like a fucking pipe dream. Why do more people have to die?
June 20th
My best summers so far have been at 14, 17, and 21. Now into my twenty second year, I have discovered the formula.
Let me start off by saying I am at my favorite cafe in Zaragoza. They’re playing Crazy in Love, but it's a cover. At the coffee shop I used to work at, we picked 80s alternative music, because it was the only thing that we could stomach on repeat. I wonder if they’re sick of playing covers, or if they just let the time pass and don’t care. I ordered a croissant, and two pastries to take home. It was all five euros.
I’m thinking about the courage it took for me to start going here. I’m conquering my anxieties, because frankly they are stupid. I will make more Turkish eggs when I get home, but first, I have to buy a sieve.
Back to my formula. I have to have all these things:
To Make A Perfect Summer:
Isolate myself by moving somewhere new
Not applicable for age fourteen, but in that case, being fourteen was excruciatingly isolating enough.
Be bored
No roster…
Workout a lot, or go on many hikes and runs.
Cook more
Don’t have a job
I wonder if I could create these conditions every summer moving forward - but, then, would they always be so special? Probably not.
June 21st.
I have decided that I need a vacation. I’m going to purchase some train tickets and an airbnb or hostel, and I need to see what is the most economical option - I started saying that because of Gerri, who buys lo mas economico.
I was about to go to Barcelona, or Malaga, but I need to go somewhere closer. Okay, I bought two tickets on Tuesday for 60 euros. To Tarragona. So ¼ of the price, which is good.
June 22
I’m about to go to the gym. I need to hold myself accountable and just go. So I’ll talk to you later, but here’s a summary of what I’ll be telling you when I get back later:
Okay, I will begin with Matthew. He is a really dry texter. Even just doesn’t text, which is annoying because it makes what he said to me recently so anticlimactic. Telling a girl how much you feel then just fucking off is a weird move, and I kind of want to feed into the anger it causes me, but I also am not that passionate about it because I know I’m stupid enough to see him next month(ish). I just wish he felt a little more intense about me. I want him to work for me but it seems he is too lazy.
June 23rd
I guess I forgot to continue with my list. I imagine that these topics will come up later. They are still relevant.
I’m rewatching the videos from the last month of college for my video. Right now I’m listening to it in the background as I write, and it is so sweet.
This is fueling me. It makes me so happy to look back on my life and it be so beautiful. My friends are wonderful! I hope they enjoy what I make.
June 24th.
I’m applying to school in Germany as well. I should pull the trigger on my ECAM application. Since I have six more days, I think I’m psyching myself out for no reason.
I’m feeling anxious, because these decisions are so large. I’d basically be leaving my old life behind. I am emotional about it. Since I have no one who can relate at the moment, it's lonely, but that also makes it liberating. By the time I have processed the grief that a problem has caused me, they are just beginning to wake up. I wish I had more words to describe how I feel. I’m having a hard time even explaining to myself what I am going through.
I’m going to need to reach out to academics in Michigan and tell them how they’ve helped me feel competent. I wouldn’t be pushing myself if it weren’t for them.
My laptop is freaking out. I think it might be all of the videos and audio files I have downloaded illegally. Honestly, I have been thinking about viruses and cyber security recently. It's truly not that hard to pirate things and there are no consequences for it, so I hardly even think about what kind of shit people could be doing to my data and information. It hasn’t affected me yet. Let’s see if it does, I guess.
Here is my to-do list: [IMG]
I have decided to only worry about ECAM right now. I need to stop distracting myself and just go for it. I am going to make a roast chicken today and I’m going to finish editing the final senior video. Then Argentina, I’ve decided. I’ve been putting it off way too long. Maybe I’ll make an instagram account for my work. LOL.
I haven’t finished the video, but I at least completed the first draft of REDACTED formal. It made me nostalgic to watch it, but I remember how anxious I was at Lake Huron with Thomas. I didn’t like him, I didn’t dislike him, I felt nothing for him, and that’s what I liked about it. I’m really not proud of it!
It seems that I hate fade outs, or fade to blacks. It makes me think of for-television movies. I think it’s tacky. I’m watching There Will be Blood, and I didn’t like how they just used that.
I’m a little lost, since I didn’t pay attention for a bit because I was half watching and half editing. I wonder if it feels weird to be called your own name when you’re in character. I’m pretty sure that Daniel Day-Lewis is a method actor…
Tomorrow I will go to Tarragona.
Matthew will not be my friend for five years, he said. I’m thinking about whether that makes me feel accomplished, like I successfully made him love me enough that it would be too painful to be friends, or if it just proves that we cannot be together. Or, maybe, a third thing. I still am dealing with my feelings for him, and it just gets worse when I think about the future.
My chicken roast was okay. I felt really weird touching a full chicken, and its skin was eww and the feeling of its bones cracking as I seasoned it was visceral. I might not do that again. It also made too much chicken - I don’t think I’ll be able to finish it all. I’d offer some to my roommates, but that gesture feels out of character for our relationship. And I doubt they’d accept my scraps.
Maybe if I get up on time I’ll do the 30/30/30 challenge that I saw on Tik Tok. 30 protein, 30 minute walk, and I forgot the last thing.
Field Notes:
This week, I was invited to go to a small rural town outside of Zaragoza to translate for my boss and a colleague. An American man, who worked for REDACTED, was overseeing an irrigation project on a public farm. He spoke little Spanish and they imagined he would appreciate another American around during his visit. I think there was some sort of translation error when my boss, Paula, was telling me about why he was there, but I gathered that a lot of money was entering this little neighborhood we were approaching. Everyone in the foundation was excited at the prospect of funding.
We picked him up at the train station at 8 in the morning. He’s this father-age, bald white guy with All-Birds. He has a suitcase that is supposed to look expensive. He shakes everyone’s hand, and I admit, it feels refreshing to hear such a stoutly American accent in the middle of Zaragoza. I felt like I was letting go of a weight for a moment, speaking so comfortably about where I was from in Marin County and where I grew up visiting in San Francisco. He had gone to UC Berkeley. We talked about how he moved to Portland, Maine during the pandemic, after living in California for almost a decade, because it was too expensive, and he wanted to be closer to family. I got confused for a moment because I thought he said he was from Portland, Oregon.
I’m translating a little bit in the car, but I’m kind of fucking up. I tell him it’s because I speak Venezuelan Spanish, and Spanish Spanish is a little different to what I’m used to. That’s okay, he says, because he can fill in the blanks, and all of the explanations added together make some sense. I’m realizing at this point that since I’m kind of shit at translating, it really wasn’t necessary that I came. So, I’m sitting in the back, kind of dissociating. I let myself look out my window and study a part of Spain I never assumed I would see, because I don’t know the name of it and Google Maps isn't loading, so I can’t find out. The REDACTED guy says something about the U.N. He turns and makes a sly comment to me, like, America doesn’t take anything that the U.N. says seriously, am I right?
I didn’t find that very funny. The U.S. has consistently delayed or stopped work on a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. All of a sudden, all the chummy bonding we made over the Bay Area sours, and I don’t find him comforting anymore.
We arrive at the town, and meet some more people from the Foundation, some farmers who could explain the project more personally to the REDACTED guy. I’m just observing him now, because my role has been dissolved. He looks out at the construction sight and he asks how many laborers they pay. One man says that sometimes it takes just two people. Okay, the REDACTED guy says. Why don’t you have more? Another response. Where do you source them? They’re from the community. Why don’t you outsource labor? Why don’t you hire more workers and pay them less? We have labor laws. In the U.S., we do too. He looks at me funny.
He says something about how in the United States, that was a method that was used to lower costs. I’m shocked, because he opened the trip by expressing how happy he was that the project was under budget. So why does he need to decrease costs illegally? Who did this guy think he was, entering a rural part of a country he didn’t even speak the language of, thinking he could cut the wages of immigrants the way he’s used to at home? He was cheeky about it, saying the quiet part out loud, admitting how rampant wage exploitation is in the U.S. and how fundamental it is to our construction and maintenance.
When we got back to Zaragoza, my boss and her colleague offered me lunch, because they were going to take REDACTED man for a meal before he got back on the train. I told them I had a lot of food at home, which you know is true, I have to finish my chicken. But I also left because the REDACTED man had horrible vibes, and I couldn’t stand being around him any longer. I just wanted to go home.
I told my boss about what he said the next day, and she was at a loss. I think she believed the man to be more noble than he was, because of her faith in the project. She hadn’t expected a fraud, a greenwashed hippie from the lesser known Portland.
He walks the Earth believing that it belongs to him. He is a penny pincher. He was just doing his job.