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The contamination of the online feels inevitable and invasive in every aspect of every mundane task at all times. I wake up, check my phone, & to check it I must open each app four times until I have satisfied a craving I can’t originate the source of. I want to aestheticize the mundanity of endlessly scrolling so that it feels like it serves a purpose, but it is garbage cluttering my life until the time is wasted completely. I receive nothing, not even base pleasure, from my relationship to this sphere but I cannot pull myself out of it.
I spent five hours on Valorant last night. I slept for fourteen. I went to get my car repaired (it wasn’t) and I spent four more in the coffee shop. I sent two emails and then requested seven books from the library. I didn’t open one of the five books I brought with me. I came home and ate although eating has recently become an unbearable experience. I drove around. I talked with my sister’s friends. I argued about the role of violence in our country and let him shame me for feeling disillusioned with voting.
Why do I let men talk to me like this? What am I gaining from these interactions? Should I even be assessing something to gain? Am I rotted so deeply that I want to extract something from every single interaction with anyone? (But, especially from men).
I read more of Say Nothing & I thought about historicizing political movements, about secrecy and the idea of a physical archive in the digital age (digital age feels so embarrassing to even type). I’ve been thinking about the North of Ireland constantly. I read some of the final chapter of Ulysses again because I’ve been feeling like Molly more than ever this month.
I think summer always feels like this. I hate the way the air sticks to skin and the way I feel like I can’t escape my body as I walk down the street. Not that I am doing much walking down streets these days. I don’t feel like running right now, maybe it’s the heat. I’m listening to the same album, Samia’s Bloodless, on repeat. My sleep schedule is so fucked ever since I got back from Europe.
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