Order
Today is the day I sort.
There is a day, maybe a week into my time off, that I must sort.
I didn’t know today was the day.
But then I walked past my bookcases of old journals and I knew I had to sort them.
It seems like when they say pregnant women need to nest.
My downstairs neighbor just had a baby his name is James, James comma sweet baby.
I took all the journals off all two bookcases and sat on the floor.
No matter how many couches or chairs I have, for real work, I am always sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Which is probably great for my future joint health and flexibility.
My major life regret is all the times I didn’t put the year on my journals.
WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING
Then I’m sorting through looking for some sign of a year, or a day of the week and a date.
It’s annoying.
Sometimes I’m able to sort it into: before real job), before becoming a teacher, before significant breakup, pre-moved to New York.
But I went to NYC a lot before I moved there, so sometimes NYC content is in books FROM EARLIER PERIODS.
I mean, it doesn’t matter when things happened.
It doesn’t matter that they happened at all.
What does matter is me seeing that I sat around with friends deciding the classiest and trashiest alcohols. I said rum. How I’ve changed! Or it’s still trashy, but I love it now.
What matters is I saw a brush with an ex that knocked me silly, and now I don’t even remember that. it happened.
So many times I started over.
This is one horror of aging, realizing that you have to start over, and over, and over, and over.
At least I have.
I never had a real straightforward life trajectory.
I find my past self to be a mopey, adorable tyrant.
Which might be how friends would describe me as well.
I ran across, “I didn’t have a drink because I’d had one the night before,” and I thought, huh, I sat around socially and never asked the host to open the wine I brought.
That would not happen now.
I am tired. I seek ease and pleasure at every turn.
Well.
I seek wine.
Hah.
In my old journals, I am always making to-do lists.
These are always worthless later on.
grocery
cat litter
see D, M
ask about 536
I sorted journals by year.
I let someone on youtube talk about how the rich dress.
I got dressed, and intended to leave the house, but I saw my bookcases of books, written by other people.
I knew I had to re-sort them all immediately.
I was back on the floor.
Reds, oranges, and yellows are always together, toward the top.
I made some shelves of blues and greens.
Then black, dark.
Then whites.
Then creams.
A guy on youtube talked about how the narrative structure of “The Walking Dead” failed.
I love that cultural analysis and criticism is so pop now.
Used to be you had to take a class on novel writing to get that kind of chat in your ear.
=
I finally got out, to coffee.
What changed my life the most during covid was not getting to go out for coffee and write.
Honestly I had built my life around that activity set.
I have so few journals in the 2020- now category.
I feel this is my first summer covid-free.
My first summer in six years with money, and without covid.
I drove to get coffee because it’s gross hot.
I remembered the hottest I’ve ever been: the summer I tried to move to NYC.
No one I knew had ever moved anywhere except for work.
I didn’t know how to do it.
My air b n b landlady was a piece of shit.
She neglected to mention, in her post, that her rental room had no air conditioning. It was July. In Brooklyn.
I went to buy a fan.
It didn’t work.
I took it back.
The only nice thing about this story is that the store where I bought it was called “Fat Albert’s,” and they sold absolutely everything except food.
Like Target. Except everything was shitty.
They gave me a new fan.
I got a bag of ice from landlady’s freezer.
I put it on the back of my neck and aimed the fan at me.
I could not sleep.
I left during the day, and when I returned she asked me. not to leave the. fan on. when I wasn’t there.
Her place was full of crystals and she did energy work.
She was the first person I met who created a lovely new agey space for her nasty little soul.
I mean, God bless her, I also have a nasty little soul, as you can see.
Now journals are sorted, books are sorted.
By year and by color.
When you write something down, WRITE THE YEAR.
June 5, 2023.