another slightly intoxicated poem

dear readers,

    i come to you after a night of dancing. i want to share another poem that has come to me, while i was hella overstimulated and having a bad high. there was a man who introduced himself as Wireless, playing the piano in the hallway of the club, improvising with the EDM seeping through the walls. on the piano was a vase full of flowers on a 3D-printed spinning tray, and under the piano there was a small porcelain lamb. given this strange scene, i was having a lot of visions, and had to write them down. i’ve included some photos i took, but check out @wirelessmusic on instagram for more (see his tagged posts to see the video i was able to take of his beautiful playing). i hope you enjoy my poem: 

there are doors constructing the ceiling above me

somehow i’m reminded of fortt brag, the shopping center 

or the antique store on tremont* street run by a woman who’s 102 years old

but that was three years ago

but the rug underneath me, the doors above me,the lamb 

that is making eye contact 

the man playing piano and the spinning flower vase

i see my world through another’s eye, convinced i am seeing a dream

or a vision from a different life,

a glimpse across the universe 

expecting my sober mind to read this poem, steeped with imagined drunk sanctity, and feel a resonance

    *it’s on bolyston street not tremont, but i forgot this last night. i hope the 102-year-old lady is resting well, wherever she is in the universe. sure enough, i do love the way this poem unfurled itself, perhaps because i see it as another set of fascinating inebriated anecdotes. but i do in fact know myself well enough to see this coming, hence the last line. regardless, i do feel a resonance. 

---

in love and glimpses through the universe,

- ek 

how dogs love us, internal monologues, cyclic time and hair dye

dear readers, 

    as always, i hope you are well. i come to you from the other side of the Void with a few recent conversations and moments to share with you. i haven’t blogged properly in several weeks, and i’ve been missing it. i’ve been lost in thought, with no time to write them down. i try not to quantify my blog posts into how often i post per month, but i’ve been sad to have such little time to write recently. plus, eleventh hour (my normal blogging spot) was closed for a week for what looked like deep cleaning. regardless, i prevail to bring you riveting anecdotes from my life. 

   because of the eleventh hour closure, i’m at rcc dining hall, sitting on the patio in the sun with my knockoff marshmallow cereal and kind of gross “french roast” coffee. there is a girl here with her dog, a beautiful pointer of some type with a sleek chestnut coat. i had seen her walk by the patio with the dog, and then enter the dining and come out to the patio and sit. the dog stands attentively in front of her, fixated on the food she brings to her mouth, until the woman tells the dog to sit and lie down, rewarding her with some kind of meat stick. the woman adjusts herself, foot up on the chair next to her, scarf draped over her head to shield the morning sun. the dog lies at her feet, licking it’s paws like a cat. the woman shifts and i see the cover of what she’s reading: how dogs love us. 

    edit: the day after writing this, i met this woman at a meeting and rode the bus back to campus with her and her dog. i forgot to ask for her name but she was very sweet and what a coincidence to meet her the day after she appears in my blog.

    the girl sitting next to me on the other side- a first year i assume, is talking on the phone. she is wearing a long lacy pink skirt, a tie dye shirt and sunhat. she has rainbow painted headphones and many rainbow bead bracelets, and a rainbow pixel backpack. she’s fending off the sparrows who encroach on her half-eaten hashbrown (although the bird later succeeded).

    she asks the person on the other line if they ever have a voice in their head that knows what to do. i’ll paraphrase: “like leaving home, not talking to some of those people ever again. that hurt but it was beautiful.” she goes on, talking about a breakup. about how she saw him (“jacob”) in the dining hall and got excited, but then sad. “i still love him but i feel like i don’t want to see him.” i feel for her, honestly. but she has a good head on her shoulders. “if you’re not actively choosing to be with someone, that’s not love. like if you don’t wake up every morning… well, i don’t know”. 

    her conversation makes me reflect. sometimes i feel sad about the loves that i’ve lost. sometimes i wish i could have one more hug, or one more final conversation with them. but i’m alright, and i know my dining hall companion will be alright too. i look to the future more than i look to the past. i carry those lessons and knowledge with me to this day. i know the emotional depth that my heart is capable of, the profundity of sadness and raw heartbreak that i can withstand. the (hit or miss) poetry, art, and writing that comes out of it. 

    yet on the other hand, i’m equally amazed by how much can change in two, or four, or six years. i know the depth of healing that has happened in the interim, i carry the wisdom from those loves into my current ones and future dreams. i am blessed in feeling truly and deeply in love now, and to have it be an experience of beauty and growth, rather than one of melancholy. to have it be one of future promise rings, of slow dancing and soul-understanding like i’ve never experienced before. in the words of my dear izumi suzuki, our hearts are intertwined.

izumi ~

    this depth of love has lead me to axelle’s living room, the comfy chair. my first anecdote. it had been a long day in a long week. i was feeling sad, about nothing in particular. i was feeling jealous of my friends, a symptom of the low self esteem i know i’ve been maintaining recently. i got talking about my style, my qualities and values. i asked axelle what makes me important or special to people. even though i wasn’t feeling as down on myself as this makes it seems, i know this isn’t a good thing to ask your girlfriend- even if it’s out of genuine reflective curiosity. in hindsight, i feel kind of embarrassed about how i was behaving, but i suppose everyone has these moments of childish insecurity. regardless, i think there was some interesting food for thought that came out of this conversation. 

    i’ll spare you the long winded debrief, but i was essentially wondering what my “self” was. who am i without the clothes that i wear, the music i listen to, the things i “like”? what makes me like those things, and how do those factors influence my “true self”? is there even such thing as a “true self”, independent of external societal influences? the idea of “my true self” being “who i am when no one is looking” (from that popular quote) might be a total illusion. scientists think it’s such a mystery that particles behave differently when they’re being observed versus when they’re not. they wonder about the implications this has for physics and the science of “consciousness”, but don’t we operate the same way?

    at the most fundamental level, what is the self made of? i guess this turns into the nature versus nurture question, which i ponder a lot. there were more intricacies to this conversation i’m forgetting, but i’ve explained the gist. this conversation morphed into one about internal monologues, since i have a prolific one and axelle seems to think very different from me. we talked with their roommates about this as well, explaining the complexities of each of our mental worldviews. 

    we deduced that there must be a spectrum of internal operations. on one side, a full blown internal monologue (what i experience) with full or semi-full narrative thoughts that may or may not be heard, “seen”, or just sensed. of course, people who experience a full internal monologue can also visualize things, but it’s not the primary way we process information. in the middle, a narrative that focuses on the gist of a situation. axelle’s housemates’ boyfriend described this: instead of thinking “i need to knock on the door because she didn’t answer her phone”, he thought “call, door, knock”. on the other side of the spectrum, there’s what axelle experiences, where they visualize thoughts through images, emotions, and physical sensations. they process information through the body, through emotions and re-imagining literal situations, instead of drafting soliloquies in their heads as people like me do. at least in some cases, this seems to make it harder for them to have a “filter” because everything isn’t run through mentally before it’s said. 

    axelle tells me, “maybe this is why you love writing”, and i agree, although i also think it explains why i am such an overthinker. indeed, i think i’ve been overthinking more than normal recently (not necesarily in a bad way), especially after my several rewatches of Ghost in the Shell and my continued work on my Divine Machinery zine. i love the work, but it’s definitely a mind fuck that makes you rethink your whole reality. 

the progress photo of another zine, debrief upcoming~

    another anecdote i want to share is the funny intro questions that we went through for a recent meeting. we were all struggling to think of a fun question. we started with “what’s your favorite color”, but then added “what’s your favorite shape”, “have you ever been in love”, “what’s your deepest secret”, and “do you think you make good first impressions on people”. 

    i answered blue or green, spirals, definitely have been in love many a time (and cherish the experience of being in love, even in moments where i’m single), and that i don’t think i make good first impressions on people since i apparently come off as mean and disinterested (this could be a whole blog post on its own). i couldn’t think of a deep secret. i love these questions because they’re the kind of deep conversation starters i want to have in social situations. i’m filing them away in my brain for a future party setting.

    another funny anecdote happened in a text conversation with my sibling, who normally talks with an air of chronically online. they are almost never deep, but they were super stoned when we were texting, and i mentioned that i’ve been listening to bts again for nostalgia’s sake. to my humor, he simply wrote: “time is circular baby”, and i find that quite true and funny coming from him.

    many coincidences have been happening recently. i had been scaring myself a little, because i have recently really wanted to dye my hair again but keep thinking that its going to completely wreck my hair. i want to have long and luscious natural hair, but also have some color and interesting style in it. i had been really contemplating this, feeling as though length and health needed to be totally sacrificed for color, until i passed an older woman, probably 70s or 80s, with long hair down to her waist that was dyed entirely magenta and purple. we smiled at each other as she passed, and i was too much in awe to compliment her hair but i hope she got the idea. i am feeling very inspired and might add a little color to my hair soon. until next time!

---

in love and circular time, 

- ek 

p.s, i think i’m going to shift to posting in times font. it’s maybe not as aesthetically pleasing, but i think it’s easier to read and write. this being said, i might change my mind sometime.

assorted thoughts, theories, and dreams

dear readers, 

    another short post today. i feel shrouded by many fragmented thoughts and interests. instead of one cohesive blog post, i thought i would share some of my recent musings, sorted into categories for easier navigation but kept messy and intact. 

    my blog feels like a message in a bottle to someone in the future, who stumbles upon my url and can explore my life and my brain through my writings. i want to cut through time and share my devotion with spirits, my future self, and strangers in the past or future. i hope you can imagine these thoughts as various pieces of paper and objects on my messy desk, and that you are in my home, sorting through and exploring. the photos are all from the san jose museum of quilts (highly recommend, might post more photos soon). i hope you enjoy.

moments and thoughts from my notes app:

1. the recent trend of people favoring and romanticizing “rot" over leisure. everyone wants time to "bed rot", to "brain rot”, whatever. No one wants time for leisure. No one seeks out of leisure as much as they just want to be left to their bed to “rot. I think it is indicative societies drive for productivity and the shame that comes from rest. with the ideas of “bed rot”, people maintain the negative connotation that’s associated with rest, instead of pursuing relaxed and peaceful leisure- that in many cases, makes us feel more healed and replenished.
2. thinking about how funny it is that we learn things like applause from our parents. like we’re not quite adults yet but we all know how and when to clap, the whole etiquette. we learn from experiencing it, from being told by teachers when to clap in the school auditoriums, and i just think it’s quite whimsical.
3. If I'm so committed to being a cool old person who does a lot of interesting creative things in old age, I have to be a lot less concerned about getting all of the cool things I want to do done while I'm still young
4. my spanish teacher explaining catholicscm better than i’ve ever heard it on april 27, 4:52pm. Someone had asked about the book we’re reading, where a child named panchito dreams that santo niño de atoche heals his sick baby brother. Our professor explained the idea of many saints or spirits, manifested through different people. To paraphrase, he said they’re “human expressions of the divine, the baby saint is a representation of the helping hand of god. At some point in time, a miracle happened around a certain baby and people believed god manifested through the baby. It’s not that it’s many different people, but communities see divine power through different images that make sense in their context.”
5. closing prayer from art in oceania class - "Our ancestors want to find us as much as we want to find them. Let us fly free of our restrictions, our knowledge baskets are stored safely away” (blog post on tattooing and oceanic cosmologies to come)

overheard

1. at the airport at 5am: "just the longest piece of super sticky tape early in the morning, what could go wrong?”
2. "it was weird how everything was predetermined”

future amateur research projects/things i want to learn more about

1. i would be interested to do a study of race indicators online. i’ve been thinking about how it seems very trendy a few years ago for everyone, particularly white people to put their ethnicities and flags in their instagram bios. i also wonder about the thumbs up and other hand emojis, as well as slang and use of aave and more. White people often use the yellow “default” skin tone while in my experience, most poc use whichever skin tone is most accurate to them. i think it is often considered normal for white people to use the “default” emoji color because of the way whiteness is normalized as the “default” on our society. but then some white people (usually older) use medium dark skin tones in their emojis either because they inaccurately estimate their skin tone, or are trying to show some weird solidarity? so perhaps emoji skin color use is based less on people wanting to represent themselves as individuals of a certain racial group, and more a “neutral” signal? there is a lot of race signaling happening and wondering what the consequences or results of race indicating are online because of anonymity or other factors?
2. study of how people sit on the bus (which seats are most frequented), and what this says about human nature
3. wanting to study the culture and sociological dynamics of erotica, fetish, kink, sexuality. also queer theory, grime and it’s connection to whiteness, leaky and “dysfunctional” bodies (pregnancy, birth, chronic illness and disability), theories around intersex, fatness, etc. want to continue my studies of DEVOTION, but also DESIRE
4. paraphrased from an instagram reel: "the public (space) is conceived of being complimentary to the private (space and ruling class)” —> study how this shows up in santa cruz/california with high rise condos, third spaces, spaces of unhoused community
5. want to understand Kairos better. described to me as referring to the immeasurable moments of experience and transformation—recorded as sentiments and narratives. measured by interactions, moments, intimacies, transitions, and transformations.
6. want to write and blog about Izumi Suzuki, Issy Wood, more about Jon
7. in addition to my WIP zine about religion, i want to understand how people rationalize their existence, regarding souls and spirits, linguistic understanding (how does our language shape the way we see ourselves and the world), the idea of internal monologues (perhaps an interview between me and axelle as we exemplify the two sides of the internal monologue spectrum), and the possibilities for connection between people

---

in love and messy compiled thoughts,

- ek

a drunken poem about meeting strangers

my “girls carrying shit” offering: 

digicam, lighter, herbal j, world’s strongest jungle juice

dear readers,

    a short post tonight (i promise). i haven’t uploaded much this month, not that i worry myself about my posting frequency (as i truly see this diary blog as The Void), so i wanted to share this poem i wrote while i was drunk the other night and waiting for my bus. this night was the birthday party of an old class friend, who i connected with but never really spent time with outside of our allotted hour, monday wednesday and friday. i had run into her on the bus (everything in my life revolves around buses) a few days earlier and lovingly received the invite, despite our tentative friendliness. axelle couldn’t go, and the one mutual friend me and the birthday girl shared couldn’t go, so i dared to go alone. i couldn’t think of a party i went to alone since the age when i was single, over a year ago. i challenged myself to be talkative and try to maximize my “npc” interactions. 

    as a bit of a side note, i have mixed feelings about the perception of strangers as npcs, because i genuinely believe that everyone is complicated and immense, and i’m honestly a little obsessed with learning the details of these “npc’s” lives. what words they can’t pronounce, what their childhood toy was, their relationship with their mom, their dreams. this being said, i like labeling people as npcs because it challenges me to engage with them to shatter the illusion. it pushes me out of my petrifying shyness to learn these things about people. a party full of strangers is the absolute best place to do this. low stakes, high concentration of people who’s complexities i have yet to discover. the most fun place of social observation, analysis, and engagement. especially when everyone is a little tipsy, people tend to get deep and honest. weird questions aren’t as weird anymore. i mention this in the poem, about discovering clues to people’s destinies and dreams.

    i had a ton of fun at this party because i truly took advantage of the situation to maximize my interactions. in the words of some Internet people, i was seeking out little side quests, interacting with the npcs to learn more about them and my world. in hindsight i regret the moments i spent awkwardly against the wall- a powerful reminder that regret is omnipresent no matter the actions, but it was a vast improvement from my usual level of avoidance. i feel motivated and moved by this experience. it’s harder in situations where i know people and the social stakes feel higher, but i feel as though i have already started implementing more of this mindset and practice into my days since the party.

    for context i should specify that it was Rio themed, so everyone was dressed up as birds or characters from the movie. i had painted a little cardboard hat like a bottle cap, which i reference. i have cleared up a few lines for legibility but more or less kept everything the same. it’s unknown whether or not these people remember me, or the conversations we shared (or the game of truth or dare we played), but i hope you enjoy this poem.

[written approx. 11:45pm, april 17]

drunk and I feel like the bus I’m going to take home was divinely chosen for me between the sea of other buses. I feel spiritually connected to this bus and it’s inevitable driver.

drunk and alone had a party

Asking the girl McKenzie in the kitchen if she knows about divine machinery

Asking what her dreams are she says child psychology 

Then she answers that she wants to write a book

She needs time to think about it

I ask if it will be a novel

She says it will be sci-fi

I recommend her Set my heart on fire

The boy plays guitar to stim

And we dare him to confidently pretend he knows a stranger

Audrey and Amelia have been together for four and a half years

i talk with zoe and dhalia about dykehood while waiting for the bathroom 

daddy yankee is younger than i thought he was

so many lesbians at this party

and everyone loves the bottle cap hat, the paint still on my fingers

i ask people their names knowing i won’t remember, 

and that i probably won’t ever see their faces again

but because it’ll give me some drunk insight into the destinies assigned to them

and i pass them drinks

in love and drunken bliss,

- ek

unspeakable amounts of love

dear readers, 

    i come to you with a message from the archives. the following text was written sometime in the spring of 2025 and last edited on october 1, 2025. for the sake of this post, i have kept it as it was written. know that this excerpt is very old and dear to me. it’s a little out of context for now, but i’ll add some reflective thoughts at the end.

“ there are unspeakable amounts of love in the farm kitchen. this one-room building is where we gather during all hours, in the quiet mornings or frigid nights. here, the sink doesn’t drain unless you crank it with two hands, there is never a trash can, and only two outlets work. there is a scary hallway and the bathrooms have showers and posters pledging to conserve water. if you stand on the porch, what has become the designated smoke spot, you can hear everything said from the inside, but it’s near impossible to hear what is said outside. this thought scares us, so we try not to dwell on it. we only figured it out when the so-called 'agroecology gays' were making their pseudo kale salad in the porch sink, trying to barter with elsie for lemon juice by yelling through the closed windows.

in the mornings, fog hangs in the cool air, lingering over the crops and toying at the steps up to the kitchen building. ” 

    the first thing i want to address is the “pseudo kale salad”. i can’t remember what this meant, so i’ll leave it up to your interpretation. now, let me set the scene for this excerpt and this period of time. i wrote this in a phase of my life that i cannot adequately summarize here. it was characterized by intense comradeship, beauty, and community. there were countless instances of circumstances i described- late night or early mornings of food preparation or security briefings. it was always the same group of people who showed up- more or less, and although i wasn’t close with most of them, i began to notice their habits, their senses of humor, the dynamics between them. i was a first year, among mostly third or fourth years who were jaded from the encampment but seemingly revived by the energy of a new year.

    i remember the “exclusive” feeling smoke sessions with sonya or rigo, the community education we’d do in backyards or on public picnic benches. i remember those long working hours, the phone calls late into the hot summer evenings. taste testing each others cigs or carts after meetings, warm dark walks back from the library, waiting for the bus together. i would come home late and leave early the next day, boasting about my upperclassmen friends (even if everything i said was a little bit of a romanticized stretch). 

    i remember in april when we all drove out to watsonville to see leehi in court. afterwards, we all walked over to the japanese x mexican grocery store across the street. i remember the japanese tv show they were playing behind the counter, and the discussion about the trials of ebt. i don’t remember if i ever got anything, but i remember kaia buying pandan flavored ice cream and we all tried it. there weren’t enough spoons so we chiseled it out of the container with wooden chopsticks. frances had driven a group of four or five of us, playing saweetie and megan thee stallion. i remember we talked about music- jill scott and kendrick and such. we followed mira all the way home, recognizing her car from the Palestinian flag sticker on the back window. this is when i found out frances and sonya had dated. 

    (as a side note, this was also when i found out that they were all seniors, not third years like i had thought. this was devastating information to hear. i immediately went home and made a playlist called Green ice cream is turning me blue, to process the shock and grief. it wasn’t ever the end of the world, but i struggled with thinking- and acting as though i had more time than i did with them. in hindsight, i should’ve cherished my proximity to these people more than i did.)

    i remember elections. how late everyone was, how i brought a big bag of snacks and drinks across two bus rides, and how sonya and the others had to still make a grocery outlet run. i remember the jewelry making, the sign painting, the circle we sat in like we were gossiping around the fire at summer camp. there’s still a paint stain on my watch band from when jamie hit me with their paintbrush. i tried pacifico for the first time from either ivy or rigo- whoever let me siphon some from their can, and loved it.

   a long time ago, i wrote a sort of love letter for my dear friend rigo. in it, i recounted a few other memories that ill share here. i wrote about doing security together, "communicating in stupid hand signals while buried beneath our kuffiyas” and that moment on the beach after a vigil. the sun had set long ago and the moon was high, plumb with its reflection in the calm ocean. jamie, rigo, and i were sitting on the lifeguard dock, smoking rigo’s cigarettes and dangling our feet over the railing. jamie was talking, but i am certain rigo and i were communicating in silence. he’s one of the only people to not graduate last year. we’ve gotten closer this year and i’m so grateful. perhaps we were both wishing for that, or both processing the departure of the friends we had, and needed to lean on each other for support.

    i remember flying kites under a brilliant sunset, “security” night walks around the neighborhood to smoke and talk. trips to oakland with christine and sacramento with jonah and mercedes. somehow giving myself food poisoning the night before 4/20 by my own cinnamon pistachio rolls. i remember our pizza, kabobs, and persian love cake. i remember feeling so close to everyone- hattie complimenting my music taste, hitting jack’s bong (aka blowing the flower everywhere). 

    hints of the meaning these people and moments held for me are still buried in my life. the zines and flyers i have saved, screenshots of instagram and spotify accounts or funny texts. jamie’s balloon animals, frances’s lino stamps, our altars, canva downloads and spreadsheets. i wish i had documented more of my memories and lessons from this period- or even remembered more. looking back, it kind of feels like the peak of my experience in community organizing. maybe i’ve become too salty, but i regret taking these simple things for granted. 

    if you’ve ever smelled an old perfume scent and been viscerally brought back into a past period of your life, you know what i’m talking about. it’s that feeling of being awake early before everyone else, when the fog still hangs over the bay and the crops. when the birds and the cows haven’t woken up yet, when the city is still opening its sleepy eyes as the sun crests the rolling hills. it’s being squished in the back seat requesting songs, hearing stories about people you’ll never meet, trying to mentally photograph someones outfit to emulate later. it was phone flashlights, forgetting to season the beans, putting online usernames to faces, roleplaying ridiculous scenarios, assembly line burritos, zine cutting, meeting “new" people for the hundredth time. 

    i’d be remiss to leave out the other beautiful things that filled me life these days. this was largely in spring quarter when i had great classes and a beautiful budding relationship. excitement was tangible in the sweet air and warm sunlight, for everyone. they had all been talking about their plans- for graduation, for summer travel or work or moving. we discussed some big dreams, all of which have fallen to the wayside, but i felt held and included. frankly, a lot of my infatuation with this period might be as simple as me not having been disillusioned from organizing or college yet. i know i wasn’t really as immeshed as i felt, but i still recall these moments with such fondness.

    this is also, of course, not to say that there’s not beauty in my life a year later. today i had a beautiful day where i woke up next to my honey, did some class and org work in the sun, had an insanely good salad (ingredients listed at the end of this post), and smoked with friends. all the best parts of last year, with even more connection. i saw what may turn out to be my future house, fingers crossed. i made a new playlist, called Creator Creating, about the divine energy i’ve been feeling in my life, and the intentions i have for a beautiful and delicate future. 

    this future will be full of soft early mornings, where the fog still creeps through the streets and the birds are yet to wake. it will have more zine making days, now my own instead of mass-printed ones. it will have food prep for strikes and events, but also for people whose names i know. for birthday parties and sunday mornings, for visits to the farm, road trips, tenderly shared cigs and secrets. i can’t wait for my beautiful house, for my dance parties, for more art builds and cans of pacifico, for friends crashing on my couch after visiting from the bay. for drives by the courthouse and years of separation from it. i see tenderness through herbs, birthwork, community health. i see a future career that is healing to both myself and others. 

    i thank god or the universe for what i have now, and all that i know i will receive and create in the future. 

    it’s 1:15am, and i have to wake up to get a book and some varnish from downtown. really riveting stuff, but i’m going to (attempt to) wake up early so i can recreate the serene moments i’ve described. i suppose this post is a reminder to revisit your beloved memories, to send gratitude to the influential people no longer in your life, and to look forward to beautiful things in the future. i feel hopeful and truly blessed. i feel powerful in asserting that i am the creator of my own destiny, and i will continue to stay creating.

---

in love and green ice cream gratitude,

- ek 

ps- the salad

arugula, pistachios, sliced dates, cubed strawberries, tarragon sprigs, date balsamic dressing. it was so dreamy

on male friends

dear readers,

    i come to you from a cafe in montreal, conflicted and a little blue. recently, i witnessed the end of a very short-lived friendship. i say witnessed like i wasn’t the one repeatedly proclaiming to the world that it was over, with pride and more often than not, with an apprehensive melancholy. 

    in eighth grade, around 13-14, my closest male friend dropped off the map. he stopped texting me, talking to me in class and asking to go to 7/11 after school (the favorite activity). it was around the time of covid, which coincided with our graduation and transition to high school. he was in a weird social position, friends with mostly girls but seemingly desperate to be accepted by the boys in our grade. his family life was turbulent, with an anti-vaxxer mom and homophobic dad (from what i heard from a mutual friend years later). when we were about 11, he had told me he had a crush on me, and i had rejected him. nevertheless, it hadn’t really impacted our friendship. we grew closer over the following two years, until he was my best friend. sometimes i wonder if my rejection hurt him more than i could gauge, and he had to stop talking to me to protect his heart. 

the flan, which i know i’ve posted before. as seen in the “four years and i still cry” meme. but it’s been six years.

    on the other hand, prior to his irish goodbye, he had tentatively come out to me by confessing he had a crush on another boy. this is another factor (i assume) contributed to his cutting of contact. maybe the homophobia in his home made him retreat into himself. in fact, i remember in high school hearing that he called it “just a phase”, and that he was now friends with the sporty, frat-bound boys. (indeed, he is in a frat now.) my heart always broke for him, because i feel like i witnessed in real time how his kindness was whittled down and his spirit dimmed. 

    in high school, it was always awkward to see him. i remember being at a party once in junior year and running into him. i don’t remember if we exchanged any words. he had obviously noticed my boyfriend at the time, who was standing next to me, and that seemed to make him a little uncomfortable. i remember him looking a little sad, and feeling brokenhearted after the moment. i still sometimes drive by his house when i’m in our home town. below, i’ve included the birthday card he wrote for me (i’m not sure what year), so you can understand how horrifying this situation truly was:

circa 7th grade

    in hindsight, there’s no animosity. but from the tone of this letter i think you can tell why it broke my heart for him to leave my life. i don’t blame him, and although we’ve never discussed it, i feel as though the aforementioned reasons give explanation enough. i still think about him often, and have considered reaching out to him. he still lives in boston, and is in a frat now. at risk of sounding cliché, i hold out hope that i’ll see him one day, out and proud, unafraid to be kind and vulnerable. in some ways, i wondered if i could’ve done more to have helped pull him from the clutches of toxic masculinity. i wish i could’ve lived with more humility, and inspired both of us to be more of ourselves.

    this is all to say: i struggle to connect with men. i don’t have any close male friends and haven’t since eighth grade. i don’t have daddy issues, as i have genuine connections with male family members that embody masculinity safely, but since eighth grade, the closest i’ve got to a male connection was back in junior year, and even that’s a stretch. i reckon i was more of an emotional support outlet than mutually respected friend. myself and his other female friends were often aware that we were “mothering” or “therapizing” him. 

    i’ve felt close to a few men i’ve been involved with romantically in the past and called them my best friends, but that creates such a different atmosphere. oftentimes i interpret wanting to be friends with a man as romantic attraction, which is its own issue. and although i’m grateful for the experiences i’ve had with men and all that they’ve taught me, i’m equally grateful that i’ve forever chosen to move away from dating men. 

    i have one (cishet) male friend, R, which has been an interesting journey. when i first met him i thought i was in love with him. as i got to know him, i definitely developed love for him, but i quickly realized it wasn’t romantic. on top of this, it was tinged with being a mentor-mentee, quasi-fraternal relationship, so it quickly turned away from possible romance. we’re not as close as i wished we were, (a problem that, like most ailments in my life, is something within my control). he graduates this year, but i intend to soak up more of his wisdom and laughter before he leaves. 

    

    my love for R aside, a lack of male closeness still stands. it is evident that patriarchy has always gotten in the way of my male friendships. if their compassion isn’t destroyed by expectations of toxic masculinity, the gendered dynamic wrenches us apart. i think i can have good platonic relationships with men, but i’m not sure if it’s in my near future. 

    recently, i thought i was making a new male friend. i’ll call him fred as an alias (palo alto reference, if you get it). i immediately felt that a gendered dynamic was visible between us- i felt myself adopt the kind of teasing (often misinterpreted as flirting) that i usually save for men, but spending time with him wasn’t difficult. we bonded through shared complaints about organizing and the people involved. (interestingly, this can be compared to R, with whom my conversations consist of wisdom about and love of organizing). fred leant me books and walked 2 miles both ways after a meeting just to talk with me for a while. we talked organizing and we talked theory. he told me about his childhood and we talked about music. maybe i was naïve in thinking that i understood him, or i fell victim to the “i can change him” mentality. 

    fred was the type to be borderline mean in a meeting, dismissing someone’s idea as blatantly bad, but then text me immediately after asking if he had been rude and how to improve himself. he once expressed that he liked hanging out with me because he thought i was more intelligent than everyone else we knew (i’m sure he feels this way about himself as well, and was just happy to find a conversation partner he found stimulating). evidently, i did not think this was a red flag at the time. i think the fact that he relied and confided in me made me overlook the fact that he truly was being mean regardless of the quasi-apology texts afterwords. a lot of the issues with social cues could be excused by him being super autistic and super russian. i never believed he was a bad person, and i still don't. i still think people dismiss him too easily and don’t care to get to know him, which i’m sure adds more reason for him to be mean to them back, but i also don’t want to keep giving him excuses for being an asshole.  

    long story short, this man still confuses me. he is strange and hard to understand, but at the time, i took pride in the fact that he was opening up to me. perhaps in a selfish way, i was proud to be the only person to bother getting to know him and to be “approved” by him. we had inside jokes, we would be thinking the same thing and making pointed eye contact during meetings, and we would debrief after while looking at the stars and roaming the streets of santa cruz. i felt that our friendship was sweet, intimate, and understated (aka, i could hardely tell if he actually liked me or just liked the company). i should specify that he's gay and i’m a lesbian (and very seriously involved with my bae), so there wasn’t any weird romantic vibe. regardless, it was comfortable.

    until we were in the accountability meetings. in broad strokes, some of our collective organizational behavior was being guided by him, in relation to other groups we work with. some feelings were hurt and trust betrayed with multiple people, social repercussions were had. it was brought to our attention by some club members and we gathered to discuss what happened and how to move forward. it was myself, fred, another person who had been involved in the hurt feelings, and the club members who were facilitating. myself and the third person (both afab and conditioned as female, mind you) were quick to take accountability for our lack of communication and respect. we apologized, took the blame, and were ready to discuss how to move forward productively. unsurprisingly to some (yet embarrassingly shocking to me): fred denied any responsibility, instead explicitly blaming several other people by name, despite his primary involvement. most of this issue was semantic, so it wasn’t even a matter of him standing on principles. he just could not admit he was wrong or that he hurt people. it wasn’t just that he refused to apologize, re refused to admit that the hurt parties were valid in being offended by our disrespect. honestly, with his track record i shouldn’t have been surprised, as he hasn’t always shown the most attention to people’s feelings. it wasn’t even that he paid attention to mine, i just hadn’t been blatantly disrespected by him (yet). 

i’m not really sure what the point of writing this big long post was, besides catharsis. besides expressing my grief about the loss i feel, not only of this friendship but the ones that came before it. it’s not necessarily that fred was a great guy or a great friend to me. it wasn’t that any of the other ones were especially great friends either, besides the boy from eighth grade. i guess this post is just a somber recognition of the ways patriarchy strip me (and men i could love) of connection and wholeness. 

i have visions for male friends, and i think it’s possible. i intend to get closer to and stay close to my current close-ish friend R. i suppose this is the first beginnings of prayers that will let me experience connection and relationships free of suppression. like my eighth grade best friend wrote,  to make friends that “make me happy and push me to be the person [i] know i can be”.

in love and somber prayers,

- ek

"confidence” and growing down

dear readers, 

    once again i have come to eleventh hour meaning to lock in and have fallen victim to the siren call of my beloved blog. i think this will be a short post, but i start every post thinking that so we shall see. 

    on the bus a few days ago, i had a spiritual experience. i was listening to young miko’s new album (it’s mid), feeling a surge of motivation to lock in on my spanish learning grind. i was on the eleven going downtown, but sitting on the right side of the bus, so my view the entire time was of the rock wall on high street. i felt like that cartoon of the two guys in the bus and i was the one looking at the stone cliffside. regardless, i felt joyous and pensive as always. 

    i forget how i started thinking down this path, but i was thinking about the people i admire, and trying (as i do pretty much every day of my life) to discover the secret sauce that makes them admirable to me. i have written many lists of their physical similarities, piercings or specific articles of clothing. i stalked spotifys and instagrams, thinking that maybe if i posted or listened to the right thing i would be put on the right track. i took up their interests (most of which are genuinely interesting to me as well, i should say) like djing, graphic design, painting, and cigarettes. 

    my biggest fixation was always what they looked like. since most of these people are admired from afar, i was obsessed with their online presences, trying to deduce whatever i could from their curated digital footprint. what i constantly got stuck on is the idea of “ancestral swag”. that might be a bad way to put it, but let me explain. a majority of the people i am exceedingly in admiration of are people of color. this is perhaps a coincidental pattern, but not inexplicable. this is because a lot of what i admire can be reduced to “ancestral swag”, or the way a person deeply incorporates their ethnic and cultural characteristics into their unique style. for example, grillz on black women, mexican girls braiding ribbons in their hair, indigenous beaded crafts, tattoos in other languages, any type of traditional clothing, jewelry, or motifs that people use to craft their personal style. 

    i’m sure a lot of it is grass-is-greener thinking. i’ve never received implicit or explicit messaging that my features aren’t beautiful, certainly not from a racial or ethnic standpoint as i’m white living in america. maybe it’s just our society’s fucked up beauty standards, race aside, that you’ll always be missing something. this being said, and my white advantage being acknowledged, i really resonate when people talk about resenting or feeling dissonance towards their features. i feel as though i’ve improving my relationship with my appearance recently, but i still sometimes dislike my forehead, my pale skin and dark body hair, my jawline, etc. 

i’ve always been inexplicably attached to this image, it makes me feel very safe.

    the first of my bus epiphanies was (and don’t make fun of me for how obvious this is): it’s not all physical. in my pondering stupor, i came to the completely blatant realization that my idols are simply self-assured and confident. they all have vastly different styles, aesthetics, niches. i worshipped a multitude of things, but was searching for one singular key that would grant me self-satisfaction. none of them are top models, they might not even be considered conventionally attractive. but i admire them because they’re creative, kind, self-assured, unashamed- confident in who they are. the secret sauce isn’t genetic, it’s not about who can wear certain clothes or who has the most instagram followers. it’s simply a matter of trust and love in oneself.

    it feels embarrassing to admit- even to the Void that is this blog, that it took nineteen years to seriously realize these things. it’s easy to brush off confidence as something that grows naturally with time, but i’ve found it’s actually incredibly difficult to cultivate and very labor-intensive. maybe this says something deeper about me, but it feels a lot like breaking out of the addictive cycle. every time i berate myself about something small, or feel the urge to resist an interaction to minimize potential damage, i have to manually correct the patterns. i feel like i’m beginning to put myself through behavioral therapy, and with that, i notice all the ways a lack of confidence was truly wrecking my life. 

    again, this might hint at deeper issues than the average persons’ insecurity, but i would always wait until passing periods were over to walk around campus so i would minimize people looking at me. i used to brush my teeth in my room and spit into the trash can to avoid possibly seeing people in the dorm bathrooms. i try to walk on the right side of the road, so drivers and passengers couldn’t see me as well as they passed. i duck into bathrooms or “go the long route” to avoid people or crowds. i used to despise mirrors, clothes shopping, and photos. i have gone through nearly every one of my college courses without raising my hand one single time during class. 

    i’ll never forget what my former boss/mentor said to me once, in a one-on-one check in. she, a licensed therapist and social worker, had asked how things were going at school (senior year). i opened up about my social anxiety- my hiding in classrooms, my awkwardness in my body and my “inability” to be self-confident. 

    she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “are you really trying to blend in?”

    i was caught off guard, but i said yes. something along the lines of “that’s the way it is, i’m just an awkward person”. i think she laughed at that. to paraphrase the following conversation:

    dennie: “i don’t think you’re really trying to blend in. you dress so colorfully, you’re so tall and have good posture” (true). i was genuinely speechless.

    “maybe you’re trying to blend in because you’ve been taught to, but your subconscious is trying to make you stand out.” 

    i think about this conversation constantly. she read me like no one ever had, and made me realize the biggest contradiction of my life. since i was a child i was participating in talent shows, friends with every kid in the grade, always participating in class. i would wear feathers and fake flowers in my hair, piling three skirts on all at once and dying my hair bright blue. 

    i could blame it on covid, on the transition to high school, on my career-obsession with “normalcy and professionalism”, on being told my teeth and height were unattractive. all probably contributed, but i honestly don’t care to go down the path of soul-searching for a reason why the shift happened. tldr is; for whatever reason, i shrank into a shell of myself, socially. but for the most part (besides junior year, that’s a whole other story), my style didn’t change a lot. i still dyed my hair and gave attention to my posture. i cared deeply about school and did well. i let my self expression flounder, let my values be swayed and my flame dim, and i let my social confidence wither away entirely. but still, i was the same little kid, just grown up.

    this is what i mean when i say i need to grow down. i need to reconnect with the inner flame of my younger self that made me excited about the world, about making friends, talking to strangers, dressing up and standing out. my sense of identity was solid because it was coming from the inside out, not the outside in. i feel like in my recent years i’ve been seduced by the “cool girl” aesthetic. the packaged and consumable model of success, girlhood, and most offensively- honesty. for a more in depth take on this, i liked mickey galvin’s video stop trying to be cool girl. it furthered my self-intervention, and made me realize how important internal sense of self is, regardless of the exterior form it takes (especially in relation to fashion and thinness). my favorite quote is: “your job as a human and in your own development, whatever age you are, is to create new conditions in which a new personhood could happen.” 

    additionally, i think as i reconnect more to my ancestors and their spiritual practices (blog post on this otw hopefully), i’ll come to appreciate my physical beauty more. i always remember the quote that goes something along the lines of: your face is the result of thousands of people’s love. i think once i center myself to that anchor, in relation to the grief and reclamation necessary for “white” people like myself to become whole again, it’ll get easier. 

    further on this point, i think i have a new thing to embrace. although i recognize how i should really be focusing on my inside → outside re-grounding, my new focus is impurity. i saw a video about how some random white celebrity (idk her name) is radical for embracing grime and physical dirtiness in a society that wants white women to be pure, soft, clean, etc. i got thinking about how so much of my internal pressure against my spirit is in pursuit of this soft, clean professionalism. it’s the reason i haven’t gotten hand tattoos or more facial piercings, or why i want to have a “normal” hair cut and color, and wear fairly normal clothes. it’s why i’m obsessed with whitening my teeth and why i layer on perfume to cover b.o. it’s why i anxiously shave or pluck my facial hair, even if i think i’m “natural” by having leg and armpit hair. if i want to deconstruct these (white supremacist) beliefs in society, i surely have to start with my own body and mind, which i intend to do starting now. this is the path to my own ancestral swag, true internal self love, and subsequent confidence. 

    although i still struggle with the aforementioned insecurities and anxieties, i think my fortitude has improved over the years. this blog is a letter of gratitude for how far i’ve come, and a promise to myself to continue with increased clarity. writing this, i am filled with the motivation to continue to improve. i have to admit, i’ve been failing. the same day i rode the bus and had this realization, i passed someone i knew at eleventh hour, and although she didn’t see me, i didn’t say hi. honestly, i’m proud of myself for even choosing to walk by her and risk an interaction, instead of going “the long way”. but next time, i will speak to her. and the time after that, i will talk to my bus driver and interview the strangers in dunkin donuts. and the day after that, i will chat with the interesting man sitting next to me in eleventh hour, or the girl next to me on the plane. i accept that failure and struggle is part of the process, especially in unlearning something as deep as self hatred and the avoidance of rejection. i know it’s a protection mechanism, but i think it’s time to grow down.

with love and self love, 

- ek