interneting
4.05 miles
i’ve been under the weather the past couple of days, which means i’ve been spending too much time on the internet, too much time in my own head, coming out of the haze today (let’s hope). i’ve been feeling rather cynical about lots of things these days, and i’m not really sure how to fix it.
various thoughts from the past couple of days:
the need to record everything.
written as i sit here writing about my past week. in my feel-rather-miserable-might-i-have-covid-should-i-be-working-what-is-my-life state, i finally decided to try using beli (restaurant tracker). what else do i track? books (goodreads), my period (clue), walks (strava), (haven’t used letterboxd yet but have thought about it), my entire life (google calendar, photos, notes app, my journal, this). it makes me think about the urge to remember oneself and study oneself and present oneself to the world, all of these things intertwine. when does studying oneself instead become about what other people think about me, or was it always that?
encounters with old friends.
this is often a thought around my birthday. my parents told me they are not friends with most of the people who were at their wedding. friends are circumstantial. the internet makes it easier to reconnect with friends from different stages (if one wants to). things change as friends get married or break up with longterm partners. i saw (on instagram, sigh) a straight girl contemplating that if she gets married one day, her best friend will be a man, and this has stayed in my mind longer than expected.
taste as discernment. taste as distaste.
this is an ongoing contemplation with my friend boog. one i thought about in my sick haze as i increased my time surfing through substack, clicking links to clothes and perfume, scrolled on instagram (and deleted and redownloaded instagram), online shopping to fill the hole.
the possibility of life on mars.
it would be remiss of me to write about the internet without mentioning the green brothers, who i rediscover every couple of months, always delightful. this morning, i listened to them talk about potentially biotic chemistry on mars, caffeine, and the dangerous addictive internet (until i got distracted and decided to write my own thoughts here).
efforts to get off my phone:
i started watching ugly betty and the summer i turned pretty and atlanta and i couldn’t really get into any of them. i’m supposed to be reading the emperor of gladness for my book club but it’s really quite sad. i started the novel interesting facts about space and maybe i like it.
my globe is from sometime between 1983-1986 (!)
alt. i am very ignorant and historically uninformed. i apologize in advance.
discovered on a call with my friend sofo, using this very helpful chart. this is a globe i bought very early into my living in pasadena, from the pcc flea market, i believe. i have not used this globe enough. yesterday i discovered:
east and west germany are colored on my globe (united in 1990) (this is when i realized my globe was older than i realized)
there used to be north and south yemen (also 1990)
the democratic republic of congo used to be called zaire?! (until 1997)
pasadena is labeled on my globe?! (the labeled california cities from north to south are: eureka, red bluff, sacramento, oakland, san francisco, san jose, santa barbara, pasadena, los angeles, long beach, and san diego)
i did take a walk (and record it) yesterday (is this still a walking blog?). the weather’s been cooler this past week, a godsend. earlier this week, my car battery died, and after a friend helped me jump it, i drove north from my house for a while. i’ve been north of my house, but somehow still hadn’t really seen much of the fire damage with my own eyes. i passed by the aldi i used to go to and that i saw on fire on tv from my parents’ house. twisted architecture and broken buildings, but mostly empty plots ready for rebuilding, real estate and developer signs, fewer cars on the streets, intact houses surrounded by nothingness. i hesitate to write this here and include these photos, i think about friends and strangers whose entire lives have been uprooted since january, documentation feels strange. but it’s just a mile north from my aparment, as i was reminded on this walk i took yesterday as well.
