september

i’d like to write because i’ve been reading my dear friend’s blog and it reminds me of when i used to get home from school and sit at my parents’ desktop and open up twenty or so (mostly food) blogs from my bookmarks folder and eat a snack while scrolling through the new entries (eventually i switched to using the now defunct bloglovin’). especially on fridays, when a number of these blogs would share friday link lists to silly cute thought-provoking design-y internet-y things. the two blogs from that era which i still read steadfastly are cup of jo and smitten kitchen.

i think everybody on the food side of the internet loves smitten kitchen. her writing is succinct and witty and kind, and her recipe thinking is detailed and i trust her wildly. recently i’ve made a number of her recipes:

ice cream sandwich cake (yin & yang) (photo by my most lovely roommate), tarte soleil (i need to use puff pastry more often), eggs florentine (my presentation needs work), oh and mostly artichokes oops, frizzled babies, and steamed and steamed and steamed again (i must blame sk for this newfound addiction).

i can’t remember if i wrote about this here already but web-log to blog, to video-web-log to vlog brings me joy. this also brings me joy.

i’ve been thinking about how much of me is influenced by what is popular. and how i don’t want to be into things that are popular, because i want to be my own cool-unique-one-of-a-kind self (enneagram 4 reference though i self-identify as a 9 but also i am slightly anti enneagram personality test etc but also self-analysis is fun). i am so steeped in the internet and how do i know what is me vs. what is from what is around me e.g. photobooths are having a revival, i felt compelled to read r.f. kuang’s katabasis (i really wanted to like it and i couldn’t put it down but i don’t think i liked it), i can’t think of a third thing, headbands? i don’t like feeling like my thoughts and desires are not my own.

i watched the movie mississippi masala and it’s gotten me thinking that nothing i’ve ever thought is new. seeing depictions of the kind of racism that can only occur between non-white communities is provoking and familiar and important. i’ve been contemplating relationships past and present and i don’t have any good answers for what the hell i’m doing in this one life.

i’d been meaning to listen to this interview of mahmoud khalil for while, and i finally read it today, which felt easier. it was still hard to read. i don’t read the news enough. my friend told me barnard and columbia campuses are still closed, that it’s eerie, uncomfortable. i’ve finally been volunteering at the women’s shelter near me, and it’s uncomfortable at times. my life is too comfortable most of the time.

i went to three cafes today because there were no seats at any of them. there were still no indoor seats at the cafe i am at now, so i am sitting outside with my tepid kombucha, sweating in this 94 f / 35 c weather. clown behavior. i was supposed to be in the subbasement using the microscope this afternoon, but the microscope is broken. monday holidays always feel strange whether or not i work.

this cafe is playing hayley williams’s new album (previously released as singles), though, so i am bopping out and less inclined to leave and more inclined to continue this blathering / linking / thinking. a hot but luxuriously free afternoon.

And I know that you're probably telling yourself
That no one's gonna love me like you did
And I know that you're probably right about that
But someone's gonna love me different
Love Me Different by Hayley Williams

some friendly strangers have smiled at me today so that makes me feel less silly about this silly day in which i have parallel parked in pasadena at least five times, to varying degrees of success. other silliness of the week includes accidentally bleaching my pants in lab and giving myself an allergic reaction while using compressed air because the j key on my laptop kept randomly clicking itself (i think i fixed it but now i’m sneezy).

i’m reading the book every day is for the thief by teju cole and the prose is light but dark and i like it a lot.

have i been walking? no. it’s too hot in la.