. . . . in which i am on a cruise, working remotely trying to fix a bug before it gets to production . . . i am anxious to avoid its paging katya, who i think is also onboard . . . matt is also there and we talk philosophically about the design of things, he seems stuck in that phase however while i think i have a simple solution . . . the problematic part is a top-level queue constant that has been clobbered in an upgrade . . . richard is sitting across from me and seems annoyed that i am distracted with work and wasting his time . . . i go back to my room to change into something more flamboyant, maybe leopard print, while still trying to get the code to completion . . . when i come back out i am surprised to find that richard has organized a suprise party for me, and there are hundreds of people seeming to cheer me on, but i don’t know a single one of them . . . i assume they are all old flames of his, mostly older white women . . . .

only just realized the other day, after 20 years or something, that do you know how to waltz is not a waltz, it is in  time, HOWEVER, the bulk of the song is more or less the harmonic structure of the sung part - the 3 chords - played roughly evenly though smeared by delay and the brushing of symbols, almost arrhythmic but suggesting a protracted and abstract waltz, an interior waltz of the fucking mind, around the unknowable part of my experience that only you have seen, or maybe i just thought you did and you thought i did yours and maybe there’s something in that even though we were just kidding ourselves, but its sufficiently potent nonetheless to be destroying me once again

. . . . in which i find myself on the moon. there are shards of broken glass everywhere. when i decide to leave i realize i have driven there and it is going to be hard to make it back. i drive off an incline and thanks to the low gravity kind of launch into space but can’t see the earth anymore . . . i am anxious i am going in the wrong direction. i land on another place on the moon, but see there is a whole city there of people. i go into a local shop and there is a tall, slightly alien girl there and i ask if i can touch her breasts. she ignores me and explains she is trying to leave the moon but can’t. i then apologised profusely. . . .

i thought i was going to dread dad’s birthday this year but it somehow went by unceremoniously . . . lucy had talked about going to london, the imperial war museum, i’m not sure if she did but she has a lot of shit going on as the old saying goes. she’s been in the hospital with terrifying gall stone pain. on the day before kira messaged me telling me that her mum has been diagnosed with brain cancer. i offered to talk but felt like an oaf throughout. there is nothing comforting i can tell anyone who has to witness someone who is close to them die of brain cancer. maybe i did better than i thought. it just all hurts so much. but i guess not everyone has to watch someone abuse and neglect someone who is close to them who is dying of brain cancer. and lie and cheat and steal. why couldn’t it have been her. i hope i can join lucy one day when she’s doing better and we’ll all go to the imperial war museum. and maybe i’ll get a place in devon and she can stay with me and we’ll all be safe there forever.

another awful day after a night of no sleep after an evening of stabbing pains . . . it occurred to me at some point when i just couldn’t account for how bad i was feeling that maybe it could be time to go back to tms, though i’m unclear on whether i’d get medical leave for that and for how long . . . i just don’t understand my mental health anymore . . . i envy people who figured out how to stop their negative self talk and that was it for them, because i also did that and yet there’s so many other layers to it all, it’s like i slayed that part of my personality but instead of reaping any benefit i have to go on living as a ghost in their depressed world, i almost don’t notice it anymore, it’s just part of the background, that i’ve accepted that i don’t have any ambitions or goals or hopes, feel doomed all the time and have absolutely no executive function ever, just cannot do anything . . . is it going to be like this forever . . . i don’t think tms even fixed any of those things to be honest but i need to do something . . . the only other idea i have right now is bupropion which gave me some executive function back, but came at the cost of even more wrecked sleep, low level anxiety all the time, the disorienting feeling of always being stuck in a terrifying loop and yet wanting to stay there, and feeling like i might pass out or die, or have a panic attack, or actually have a panic attack . . . i guess i could also try psilocybin again but i’m also terrified of that now too with my declining physical health . . . maybe it’s a good time to find a new therapist while i still have some enthusiasm for that. i have no regrets about dawn. i just felt in the end that neither one of us believed she was helping me, or that she had grown to resent me. how quick she was to say goodbye to all that . . . she almost seemed relieved. but part of that conviction was that i must try something new, and i have to see that through while i still can i guess . . . .

drove home the long way today after meeting sharon downtown . . . gave me lots of time to think and reflect on the turning of the seasons. i always feel so many things this time of year, the end of summer, the dying of the light, the sun hanging lower in the sky glancing sideways through the moribund trees, the shifting sense of realities, and on comes lion/lamb and it brings it all up again. after spending a long stretch reflecting on how unhinged i must have been (i guess ironically in the creation of all this, too, but on it goes) i am suddenly craving once again the kind of attention emma gave me years ago, the feeling that there is something unnameable contained in this album that only we understand, the fact that if there was any truth in that (and there isn’t) i guess we have to keep continuing on understanding that secret thing alone, separately, and how unbearable that is, the fact that i may be going down, spinning out of control again and there’s nothing i can do about it, the fact that everyone eventually leaves or i leave them, emma, claire, mimi, roxane, richard, dylan, dawn, my whole fucking family, the fact that mim died and dawn more or less laughed and that she will never know what that meant, the fact that i have wondered so often how emma might have felt about that, the fact that i have wondered so often if emma had ever wondered how i might feel about that, every single time that i hear her voice, the fact that i never really understood what precisely immune meant to you and i still don’t but i can probably guess, the fact that alan seems to have a deeper speaking voice than me but sings way out of my range, the fact that katya might explain all of that to me tomorrow if she’s still talking to me after i started talking about clitoria quite unnecessarily, the fact that i made emma throw up that time, the fact that i could never recover from that moment, the fact that i never deleted the files like she asked, the fact that it took me ten years to fully appreciate what a shitty thing that was, the fact that was it me that was stalking her, the fact that she seemed to be done with you when you joined that cult and i could never recover from that either, the fact that her last email seemed more motivated by fear and trying to manage how unhinged i was while she was grieving her whole heart out, the fact that i still responded like a fucking idiot, the fact that she was always so much of a better writer than me, so polished even when being clandestine, and all i can ever do is leave behind an even bigger heap of abandoned shit like this, the fact that i was only ever writing for her and honestly that might still be true, the fact that she will never read it, the fact that megan falley hates alllowercase because you’re not ee cummings and she’s right but she will never understand what it meant to be on livejournal in 2003, the fact that i still can’t, the fact that i see things totally differently now and don’t appreciate how i was treated but still want that feeling sometimes, the fact that i still wish you the best, whatever that can mean after what you’ve been through, the fact that i told katya that diary-x was where i learned to code and i don’t know if anyone else knows that, the fact that now i think of it it was most likely emma that taught me my first javascript and it’s possible that nobody knows that, the fact that i probably just stole snippets from her and bastardized them, the fact that i don’t write javascript anymore, the fact that i could never think of charlie and lola the same way, the fact that that’s so fucked up and i don’t think anyone will understand that, the fact that you might feel the same way about that and there’s some bitter fucking solace in that . . . .

. . . . in which i am assembled in my living room with an indistinct group of people . . . we are watching a film on the projector but i am only half paying attention . . . i believe i am talking to my partner but i am unsure who that is in this space . . . the film becomes notably violent and starts to demand more of my attention. a girl is being raped with some graphic detail, a penis and balls appears to foreground the scene, there is a struggle and perhaps the sound or suggestion of someone being shot to death . . . the gun is a strange contrivance that looks like a gauntlet . . . a bullet is extracted from it by squeezing one of its fingers . . . the camera retreats or zooms out to reveal that the scene all along has been a darkly colored vintage car with vivid red interior set off against harsh lighting at night, there is an older woman with blonde hair at the wheel and other members of the family in the back . . . i then realize that the person behind me in the room is my mother and she silently walks away in disgust . . . .

. . . . in which i go foraging in a beautiful food forest garden in a place that suggests the english countryside on a breezy summer’s day . . . the entrance is unusually convoluted, like three gates that were all opened on top of each other . . . when i find my way in it is lush and overgrown . . . downhill from me, on the edge of the boundary that goes onto a thick, impenetrable forest is a collection of giant, eight feet tall books and the suggestion of a house just beyond view . . . i am preparing for a recipe in a book shared with kira that invokes nigella . . . it is a dessert she recommends that requires chokeberries, which i am now picking, called “asphyxiation pie”, though seems more like a cobbler or a crumble to me . . . there is a note either in the book or from kira to savour the rich gravy that will form in the bottom and not to discard it . . . i am left with the image of dark black astringent berries in their juices oozing from kira’s mouth and staining her teeth black . . . .

katya suggested emdr to perhaps get that fucking evil bitch queen and her hellspawn out of my fucking head, which i hadn’t even considered, and i don’t know if i should even tell dawn about it . . . maybe i have? and got no response. shouldn’t it be a big deal if i say it’s a big deal. every day, the ambient hate, pointless negotiations . . . or maybe i haven’t said anything about it because it’s ever-present, too obvious perhaps? still i’m too old and tired to get a new therapist at this point. is this what she’s banking on? maybe let’s start with the emdr. or the mdma. or why not both?

tried to stir things up by keeping busy for as long as i could muster this weekend, met kira, got a massage, ate a new seasons sandwich, tried a probiotic soda, ate illicit candy, got my car serviced, practiced the bowser shortcut, picked up native plants, picked up my prescription, got local frozen custard, got high, got fitted for some new running shoes, socks, paraphernalia, took myself out for mushroom pizza and na beer, shopped for garden furniture, got my car cleaned, and when i came home the same yawning emptiness, the lack of any narrative, sense of self or purpose, barely enough to feed myself, and i think dawn will just nod and summarize, is she doing anything above chatgpt at this point, i don’t really feel like even she is advocating for me anymore, move over darling, do i just need a good steak, or to come off the omeprazole, or live in another timeline, or

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