Should I become addicted to cigarettes? I’ve deliberated and I think it’d be pretty sick. They do it in the movies! It might fuck up my naturally femme voice, but who gives a fuck anymore? Less chance of being put in a concentration camp. Thoughts on this?

I wish I could say it more poetically (I say this a lot). I feel a struggle to write something more profound, more meaningful, more creative, but I feel null. I can’t make myself write something artistic about the last year, all I can say is I’m exhausted. It’s felt like a real inflection point for me, and “5 years” is a reoccurring theme. In this halfway point for the next 5 years, things which I don’t want to detail. Reflection of how I view myself and my identity, how I view others and my connections, how I view myself in the context of the wider political landscape. Things I deserve to feel guilty about, things I’ll regret for the rest of my life, things which I need to be more forgiving of myself, things I need to change. I hope I can treat the next 5 years as the change that comes after the reflection.

Of course things overlap, or things are never a perfect narrative, I’m going through changes and reflection constantly, but I can’t think of another year in the past 5, maybe except for 2020 (another inflection point), where I can name multiple, very distinct and sharp events or changes that have rocked me and my personal life. I’ve cried a lot. I’ve fucked up a lot.

I simply hope next year is better, personal lives, I can’t speak of an optimism towards the larger world. I simply hope the next year will be okay, and we can all be safe, and enjoy the time for the people we care about, or make those important connections or realizations we need to. I thank the people I am close with, you spoil me, I’m not appreciative enough, or I’m unhealthily clingy. I apologize to the people I’ve hurt and for things I can’t be forgiven for, but I endlessly love the people I’ve known and the connections I’ve made, even if I delusionally can’t believe it sometimes, or it drives me up a wall, or I’m selfishly sick of you and want you to go away, or I want to isolate from everyone and everything from the stress or shame. I care about you all.

Please stay safe and warm. It’ll be okay.

Sure.

Love stories can be boring, or trite, and full of cliche, and you write them off with cynicism, say a bouquet of roses. But when you go through an emotional turbulence, these trite stories or symbols can suddenly be full of an emotion, the simplicity makes you sad vs. the complex reality. These stories don’t exist and justify themselves on their own, they are justified through becoming an ironic symbol of a longing for something more simple, a tragedy, a pure essence, and this can become emotionally breaking. Broken rose petals on a convention floor; it re-invents itself and becomes beautiful again.

Yosemite western. Where is the western genre meant to go? The genre is now akin to a medieval fantasy, separate to our own. Maybe it always was, but now it’s not treated as a symbol to follow, just a playground for knowingly escapist stories, or are completely cynical and not attempting to fit into a genre framework and more of a historical fiction that happens to take place during the “western” time period, and to depict this time period with some historical accuracy. But escapist stories can be meaningful too, those myths can inspire us, or can be a mix of both, look at Sinners (if that counts in some broad definition of “western.”) Will we repeat the same mistakes? But the western has been re-invented already, they are either completely cynical in acknowledgement of our pasts or escapist fantasies. Do we regress and repeat the same mistakes of the old society or re-invent. Genre re-definition leads to a counter counter-culture, character hates that westerns were exposed for the myths they were, and wonders what’s the issue with that traditional masculine myth, good and evil. In the end of the story he ends up in an unseen western fantasy with phantom attackers never visible. He tips his hat and vows to fight the good fight, leaving. We later find him shot up full of holes, as he lies down in a stream to die, and feels he died a hero. Maybe he regrets it, but then men are supposed to sacrifice for the greater good, or to prove themselves against the lazy and meek, and he sure as damned hell ain’t no meek. The river and stream is his comfort and he embraces and denies this at the same time; he feels the irrational beauty and sentimentality of nature and the world, he has always felt this way, but he refuses that irrationality and replaces it with attempted meaning and a feeling of Holy importance, that the world is comforting and thanking him for the good deed he’s done.

Repopulate the species, rebuild society after the apocalypse; these stories have been done before, Adam and Eve, Genesis, biblical importance, the characters point out. Reject these narratives, this whole project is about forgetting past norms, we must rebuild anew, not to repeat the same mistakes, but is that ever fully possible, these characters growing up in the past society? They are immigrants to the future, their children will be the second generation without these past burdens, but it’s up to them to both, somehow, avoid the negative biases and only filter through the positive progressions. But we are not experts, how do we interpret these textbooks? But we must show the mistakes of the past to be avoided, but by showing these mistakes do we risk also introducing these ideas to someone immature enough to believe them. Is this a fallacy to believe that even with proper education that someone will still naturally end up questioning their education and rejecting it for these outdated ideas? Do we hide them or show them? The counter counter-culture exists naturally cause there will always be someone with a rebellious spirit? Or is it because of manipulation and ingrained cultural propaganda; Fox News and Tiktok and old traditions. Without these manipulating factors doing all they can to keep going and or revive old and pre-existing ideas, will this rebellious youngster never come to fruition? The reaction to Gamergate was a reaction that was already prevalent in society, so if these outdated ideas aren’t so deeply ingrained in the person to be second nature intuition, these second generation immigrants of the future will have no urge to counter or question it. May they question out of sincere curiosity, but not contrarianism.

Western by black midi, self aware of its genre, the title even non-specific besides just the name of the genre itself, as if this story is nothing but what “western” is, a symbol for the genre as a whole, boiled down to its pure essence. Presents a character who knows the western is a fantasy. Maybe he is implied to be a movie star and not an actual cowboy, but he also presents himself as living a cowboy life as if it’s reality, but he still can’t help but meta-textually point out he’s in a story. To exist in a western lifestyle, getting into gunfights and traveling through poor and old western towns are presented mainly theatrical. To live this lifestyle is to live in a myth and a story. Maybe someone lived this lifestyle, to travel the late 1800s and have gotten into gunfights or wars, but the theatrical constructed narratives are obviously fictional, the repeated meta references to “silver screens” and “on stage” imply a fiction to his cowboy lifestyle. But even deconstructed westerns may present a more theatrical and mythical old west, and this is true, of course, but those stories are more willing to acknowledge troubling realities than the classic macho masculine westerns were, white hat and black hat. The question of how stories represent reality accurately and how much we should glean from stories and apply it to reality (emotionally, philosophically, historically) is a bigger discussion. Maybe these deconstructed stories are in question too, all just stories. He lives the movie cowboy myth, and not reality.

I wish I had a womb. I don’t want kids atm, and maybe I never will, but I wish the possibility of pregnancy was there. My abdomen contains an emptiness that aches. I wish, I wish…

A review I wrote last year on the performance art piece Shoot (1971) by Chris Burden:

“He stands in front of a white wall and you picture a splash of flowery red to form a large tapestry behind him, but that never happens. Footage of shootings are always awkward and guttural and raw, surreal. We are so used to fictional depictions of violence that seeing the real thing feels off. Fictional mediums ever rarely portray it in a way true to form. The only way to show it properly is to do it for real.“

I would link the performance, but it is shocking, it is gorey. I do not wish to willingly inflict this upon you, directly. If you truly want to seek it out, be my guest, but it’s at your own discretion. This is by no means in any relation to any significant historical event to have occurred recently :3, just a little something I wanted to share for no particular reason.

Found that man reported missing,
He wandered in his home.
It don't seem too bad if you consider
Just what he's been through.
Seems he met up with a gang of thieves,
Who mistook him for a man of means,
They locked him up then found he had no money,
So they let him go again.
Now he's back at home and happy
Just to see the kids.

I wish that I could really tell you
All the things that happened to me
And all that I have seen.
A world full of people their hearts full of joy,
Cities of light with no fear of war,
And thousands of creatures with happier lives,
And dreams of a future with meaning and no need to hide.

Oh, keep it dark.

It seems strange to have to lie,
About a world so bright.
And tell instead a made-up story,
From the world of night.

I wish, that I could really tell you,
All the things that happened to me
And all that I have seen,
A world full of people their hearts full of joy,
Cities of light with no fear of war,
And thousands of creatures with happier lives,
And dreams of a future with meaning and no need to lie,
No need to hate,
No need to hide.

Oh, keep it dark.

I feel like I don't exactly know what I'm doing or what I'm asking, but, I'm looking for an artist to commission who does multi page comic panels, say around 30 - 35 pages or so? Maybe that's an over-estimation, but just broadly, an artist willing to adapt a script I wrote, specifically this one: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61030777/ Someone also willing to do something more gorey/experimental/mixed-media-y and with backgrounds, though I don't mind if the backgrounds were, say, real photographs instead of drawn. Willing to collaborate in terms of the writing aspect too, to some degree. That script is subject to change in ways based on suggestions or criticisms or any of my own personal changes I end up wanting to make, but that script is generally what I want to go for. I'd hope for that collaboration on some level, instead of it just being solely a business transaction between commissioner and artist, but I know that sort of creative collaboration is at its best when people click and its natural, not forced, and I *can* be stubborn or picky in terms of creative choices in my writing, but I don't know. I wanted to add that.

I understand something like this would be costly, and it's not exactly that I have the money for this sorta thing right now, but I suppose to be pointed in the right direction for the future. So, if anyone has any suggestions, or if anyone who happens to read this would ever be willing at some point, I'd like to know! Thank you!

The fireworks sound like gunshots.

I wish I had something more clever or new to say. The leftist who complains of 4th of July, the leftist who complains of Thanksgiving, the leftist who complains of America, American freedoms. “What right do you have to complain?” they ask. I’m not currently being bombed, I live in a safe neighborhood, I can make this journal without censorship or arrest.

The United States is currently building a concentration camp. We’ve already sent people to foreign concentration camps. We already have and had concentration camps. They gloat of escapees being eaten by crocodiles. “Alligator Bait” was a trope/motif in American culture showing depictions of black children being used as bait to lure in alligators.

So what if I happen to be in a safe little hovel? Other people aren’t, my close friends aren’t, bigoted neighborhoods, life long illnesses, risk of deportation. Even I can’t ever really be truly safe, my safety is at constant risk of economic ruin, living just above the poverty line with rent we can barely afford. To live as my chosen identity, at risk of a violence. Even if I still kept living as my birth gender and fit in, I could end up at the wrong end of a gun on someone’s bad day, end up in a pointless argument escalated by a mere weapon, purely targeted in a mass slaying. A culture of violence bred through our society, a victim of a radicalization.

But I am safe, I suppose. What right do I have to complain when I’m not living in a war zone. The US is currently supporting genocide in Palestine, when they’ve decided lives are so flippant, genocide in Palestine, bombing in Iran, invasion in Iraq. The president isn’t president of the United States, he is Israel’s president. He supports Israel more than he supports his own citizens. I suppose I am not being bombed right now.

But the mass death is here too, failing of Covid by government and selfishness of our own citizens, mass death. Defunding of weather services, no warnings for emergencies, mass death. Defunding of government agencies, less staff in the airport tower, plane crash, mass death. Defunding of medicaid, mass death. The Invasion of Americas and genocide of the aboriginals, mass death. All we do is live on mass death.

“What country doesn’t live on mass death?” you may say. You may say what’s done is done, what’s history is history. The natives lost, and America has too much modern culture to just give up, too much of a history of our own people, our own immigrants. But what is history when it’s still currently happening? What of it if you want to acknowledge the past, move on and make amends, if we’re still doing it, when the same line of thinking will be said 50 years from now, and then another 50, continually looking at our mistakes and looking at a “bright future ahead” when that “bright future” never happens. So what if a gay or trans or black or hispanic or native can appear on TV, when we still support genocide, when any of that supposed progress can wiped away so easily, when we’ve setup a bubbling culture underneath that never went away and when the time’s right it can jump out again and replace our current “progressive” culture. Maybe we were progressive for a short time, maybe some window of 2014 - 2019, maybe some progressive ideas were being more thought of, but that right wing culture was always there, we were always still Capitalist, to slowly die in pointless alienated jobs, very obviously, Trump’s first Presidency, the internet was culturally dominantly right wing, I remember, I was there. I was in those edgy circles, I remember hating immigrants and trans people, hating what I’d inevitably became, who I was hidden somewhere inside, but I think now the right wing culture has become even more dominant in mainstream society again. The liberal establishment would still act like they hated Trump then, but now they don’t.

But it doesn’t matter, it was always there, we were always right wing, to varying degrees, the establishment always was. Obama killed innocents in the Middle East, Palestine is a shadow that lurks over every Presidency, every President in modern times has supported their genocide, their murder, their bombings, we were never “progressive.” Maybe this is all obvious.

I go on a road trip, some buddies, some pals, people I knew from middle and high school, some online friends. Coca-Cola, maybe some McDonald’s, a meal designed for road tripping. We cross the American landscape, eventually away from stroads and gas stations and urban development, into a National Park, into a place supposedly untouched. We stand on a cliff, overlooking a valley, trees and waterfalls and Half-Dome, a place that feels immense, almost ethereal, there’s a haze over the whole thing, it looms like a painting. It is so beautiful. I try to find value in American culture, I understand how affected I am by it, how much nostalgia I have, I can give up some part of my logic and feel comfortable saying I am American. But I shouldn’t be comfortable, why do I have nostalgia for this place? For its aesthetics, it’s Americana. I love America, but in an ironic/artistic sense, a spectacle, that hypocritical nature, not the nationalism or exceptionalism, but for the counterculture, for the people who never got a chance to live their true lives, who never got that freedom. America is a land of ghosts, life at the cost of other lives and mass death. To be American is to be a wandering soul, to be dead, to be a misfit, those people on the mainstream are also American, but it’s a different kind, it’s the artificial, the genocidal, the bigoted. The real Americans are the immigrants and queers and enslaved, people who suffered and died, and they shouldn’t even be called Americans. What an insult to be called what hates us.

Happy Fourth of July. Enjoy your fireworks, enjoy your pie, enjoy your loved ones and a good old bottle of Coca-Cola, enjoy it on the graves of the dead. I don’t blame the majority of citizens, they didn’t participate in its past, to happen to be born here, who suffer under economic conditions of its own government, I don’t blame myself, but nobody should be comfortable. We should want out, we should want out of this abusive relationship, we shouldn’t be proud.

https://youtu.be/K1y0LuyugqA
https://youtu.be/DfYLEF5vWPA?si=quLPc77tMnpYmFOs

"A kid could come along in his bare feet and step on this glass--not that you'd ever know. These kids are so tough you can pull slivers of it out of them and never get a whimper. It's part of their landscape, both the real and the emotional one: busted glass, busted crockery, nails, tin cans, all kinds of scrap and waste. Traditionally Watts. An Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia spent 30 years gathering some of it up and converting a little piece of the neighborhood along 107th Street into the famous Watts Towers, perhaps his own dream of how things should have been: a fantasy of fountains, boats, tall openwork spires, encrusted with a dazzling mosaic of Watts debris. Next to the Towers, along the old Pacific Electric tracks, kids are busy every day busting more bottles on the street rails. But Simon Rodia is dead, and now the junk just accumulates.

A few blocks away, other kids are out playing on the hot blacktop of the school playground. Brothers and sisters too young yet for school have it better--wherever they are they have yards, trees, hoses, hiding places. Not the crowded, shadeless tenement living of any Harlem; just the same one- or two-story urban sprawl as all over the rest of L.A., giving you some piece of grass at least to expand into when you don't especially feel like being inside.

In the business part of town there is a different idea of refuge. Pool halls and bars, warm and dark inside, are crowded; many domino, dice and whist games in progress. Outside, men stand around a beer cooler listening to a ball game on the radio; others lean or hunker against the sides of buildings--low, faded stucco boxes that remind you, oddly, of certain streets in Mexico. Women go by, to and from what shopping there is. it is easy to see how crowds, after all, can form quickly in these streets, around the least seed of a disturbance or accident. For the moment, it all only waits in the sun.

Overhead, big jets now and then come vacuum-cleanering in to land; the wind is westerly, and Watts lies under the approaches to L.A. International. The jets hang what seems only a couple of hundred feet up in the air; through the smog they show up more white than silver, highlighted by the sun, hardly solid; only the ghosts, or possibilities, of airplanes.

From here, much of the white culture that surrounds Watts--and, in a curious way, besieges it-- looks like those jets: a little unreal, a little less than substantial. For Los Angeles, more than any other city, belongs to the mass media. What is known around the nation as the L.A. Scene exists chiefly as images on a screen or TV tube, as four-color magazine photos, as old radio jokes, as new songs that survive only a matter of weeks. It is basically a white Scene, and illusion is everywhere in it, from the giant aerospace firms that flourish or retrench at the whims of Robert McNamara, to the "action" everybody mills long the Strip on weekends looking for, unaware that they, and their search which will end, usually, unfulfilled, are the only action in town.

Watts lies impacted in the heart of this white fantasy. It is, by contrast, a pocket of bitter reality. The only illusion Watts ever allowed itself was to believe for a long time in the white version of what a Negro was supposed to be. But with the Muslim and civil-rights movements that went, too."



"It is, after all, in white L.A.'s interest to cool Watts any way it can--to put the area under a siege of persuasion; to coax the Negro poor into taking on certain white values. Given them a little property, and they will be less tolerant of arson; get them to go in hock for a car or color TV, and they'll be more likely to hold down a steady job. Some see it for what it is--this come-on, this false welcome, this attempt to transmogrify the reality of Watts into the unreality of Los Angeles. Some don't.

Watts is tough; has been able to resist the unreal. If there is any drift away from reality, it is by way of mythmaking. As this summer warms up, last August's riot is being remembered less as chaos and more as art. Some talk now of a balletic quality to it, a coordinated and graceful drawing of cops away from the center of the action, a scattering of The Man's power, either with real incidents or false alarms.

Others remember it in terms of music; through much of the rioting seemed to run, they say, a remarkable empathy, or whatever it is that jazz musicians feel on certain nights; everybody knowing what to do and when to do it without needing a word or a signal: "You could go up to anybody, the cats could be in the middle of burning down a store or something, but they'd tell you, explain very calm, just what they were doing, what they were going to do next. And that's what they'd do; man, nobody has to give orders."

Restructuring of the riot goes on in other ways. All Easter week this year, in the spirit of the season, there was a "Renaissance of the Arts," a kind of festival in memory of Simon Rodia, held at Markham Junior High, in the heart of Watts.

Along with theatrical and symphonic events, the festival also featured a roomful of sculptures fashioned entirely from found objects--found, symbolically enough, and in the Simon Rodia tradition, among the wreckage the rioting had left. Exploiting textures of charred wood, twisted metal, fused glass, many of the works were fine, honest rebirths.

In one corner was this old, busted, hollow TV set with a rabbit-ears antenna on top; inside where its picture tube should have been, gazing out with scorched wiring threaded like electronic ivy among its crevices and sockets, was a human skull. The name of the piece was "The Late, Late, Late Show.""

Spring has ended. Summer has begun.

Why??

"We are just the painting
We are the canvas
We are the artwork
When we look at in the broader scheme of things
When we realize that we are not our bodies
The building in front of you is
Nothing more than energy, just slowed down
When we also realize that we are not seeing everything
As it is
Nothing is what it seems at all
A lot of the times this is liberating"

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

“And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality. And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image. Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.”

"[last lines]
Jake Hannaford: Who knows, maybe you can stare too hard at something, huh? Drain out the virtue, suck out the living juice. You shoot the great places and the pretty people... All those girls and boys. Shoot 'em dead."

Hey, look at this now! A car crashed into a coca-cola truck, cranium cramping up my style. My legs are now behind my ears and my hands are below my feet. Cracked windshield glasses like a sniper rifle. Attempting to clambor out of there but all is nothing but a snapping and lacking of movement, sardine canned on sun shined sparkling crinkling pristine crunched up designed for death! Clamping the metal at the asphalt away with my feet while my hands push my lowerupper body away from red orange yellow flame now engulfing smoke black up to my eyeballs as it is all a haze and I drown in crikey bloody well off out of here up up and away!

Oh leaping lillies leaking liquid on lupin's momentarily immobile snoozing snooping sneaking snout, sniffing spitting sneezing streaming squeezing out the little droplets of water running river down clay craggle crack seeping deeping down earth, eternal earth rock rumbling crumbling crashing comet.

"Slim ye, come slum with me and rally rats' roundup! 'Tis post purification we will, sales of work and social service, missus, completing our Abelite union by the adoption of fosterlings. Embark for Euphonia! Up Murphy, Henson and O'Dwyer, the Warchester Warders! I'll put in a shirt time if you'll get through your shift and between us in our shared slaves, brace to brassiere and shouter to shunter, we'll pull off our working programme. Come into the garden guild and be free of the gape athome! We'll circumcivicise all Dublin country. Let us, the real Us, all ignite in our prepurgatory grade as aposcals and be instrumental to utensilise, help our Jakeline sisters clean out the hogsole and generally ginger things up. Meliorism in massquantities, raffling recipts and sharing sweepstakes, till navel, spokes and felloes hum like hymn. Burn only what's Irish, accepting their coals. You will sooth the cokeblack bile that's Anglia's and touch Armourican's iron core. Write me your essayes, my vocational scholars, but corsorily, dipping your nose in it, for Henrietta's sake, on mortinatality in life of jewries and the sludge of King Haarington's at its height, running boulevards over the whole of it. I'd write it all by mownself if I only had here my jolly young watermen. Bear in mind, by Michael, all the provincial's bananas peels and elacock eggs making drawdust jubilee along Henry, Moore, Earl, and Talbot Streets. Luke at all the memmer manning he's dung for the pray of birds, our priest-mayor-king-merchant, strewing the Castleknock, Road and drawing manure upon it till the first glimpse of Wales and from Ballses Breach Harshoe up to Dumping's Corner with the Mirist fathers' brothers eleven versus White Frairs out on a rogation stag party. Compare them caponchin trowlers with the Bridge of Belches in Fairview, noreast Dublin's favourite souwest wateringplatz and ump as you lump it. What do you mean by Jno Citizen and how do you think of Jas Pagan? Compost liffe in Dufblin by Pierce Egan with the baugh in Baughkley of Fino Ralli. Explain why there is such a number of orders of Religion in Asea! Why such an order number in preference to any other number? Why any number in any order at all? Now? Why is the greatest island off the black coats of Spaign? Overset into universal: I am perdrix and upon my pet ridge. Oralmus! Way, O way for the autointaxication of our town of the Fords in a huddle! Hailfellow some wellmet boneshaker or, to ascertain the facts for herself, run up your showeryweather once and trust and take the Drumgondola tram and, wearing the midlimb and vestee endorsed by the hierarchy fitted with ecclastics, bending your steps, pick a trail and stand on, say, Aston's, I advice you strongly, along quaith a copy of the Weeds and Weeds act when you have procursed one for yourself and take a good longing gaze into any nearby shopswinder and you may select at suppose, let us say, the hoyth of a number eleven, Kane or Keogh's, and in the course of about thirtytwo minutes' time proceed to turn aroundabout on your heehills towards the previous causeway and I shall be very cruelly mistaken indeed if you will not be jushed astunshed to see how you will be meanwhile durn wheel topcoated with kakes of slush occaisoned by the mush jam of the cross and blackwalls traffic in transit. See Capels and then fly. Show me that complaint book here. Where's Cowtends Kateclean, the woman with the muckrake? When will the W.D. face of our sow muckloved d'lin the Troia of towns and Carmen of cities, crawing with mendiants in perforated clothing, get its wellbelavered white like l'pool and m'chester? When's that grandnational goldcapped dupsydurby houspill coming with its vomitives for our mothers-in-load and stretchers for their devitalised males? I am all for me for freedom of speed but who'll disaoeraguss Pope's Avegnue or who'll uproose the Opian Way? Who'll brighton Brayhowth and bait the Bull Baily and never despair of Lorcansby? The rampant royal commissioners! 'Tis an ill weed blows no poppy good. And this labour's worthy of my higher. Oil for meed and toil for feed and a walk with the band of Job Loos. If I hope not charity what profiteers me? Nothing! My tippers of flags are knobs of hard-shake for it isagrim tale, keeping the father of curls from the sport of oak. Do you know what, liddle giddles? One of those days I am advised by the smiling voteseeker who's now snoring elued to positivity strike off hiking for good and all as I bidly well bdly ought until such temse as some mood is made uner privy-sealed orders to get me an increase of automoboil and footwear for these poor displaced and a bourse from bon Somewind for a cure at Badanuweir (though where it's going to come from this time -) as I sartunly think now, honest to John, for an income plexus that that's about the sanguine boundary limit. Amean."

"Chapter 3

"Here, decent, well-intentioned Franz Biberkopf suffers a first reverse. He falls victim to a cheat. The shock is profound.

"Biberkopf has sworn to be decent, and as you've seen, he has been decent for several weeks, but that was really just temporary. In the long run, life finds that too prissy, and it cunningly trips him up. But to him, Biberkopf, that doesn't seem very nice on the part of life, and for a long time he is disgusted with such a mean, dastardly existence in the teeth of all his good intentions.

"Why life proceeded as it did is something he doesn't understand. He has a long way to go before he does."

You will probably never read this, and it's probably better that you don't anyways, not that I think you want anything to do with me ever again anyways. I apologize for acting so awkward to you, I apologize for being so cynical, I apologize for revealing secrets I shouldn't have, I apologize for being cringey as a whole. I apologize for getting you roped up in a toxic dynamic between me and my partner. I'm sure you would have been a better partner than me. You were a better artist, you were more genuine in your self expression, I didn't understand art, on an emotional level. My understanding is cynical and logistical, trying to "win" at art to boost my ego. I'm sorry for being an egotistical leech to you in general. You're more of an artist than I am, more of a human being. You don't deserve the harsh treatment life has given you and I don't deserve the spoiled treatment I got. Nothing but jealousy and regret. We can never be friends ever again. I'm sorry.

Let me change my picture, who tf got pictures at 75 KB anymore??? errrrrrtttttttttttttttttttt

Hurry upppppp

I mean fuck, I don't know what I'm even doing. My emotions are so confusing. I used to treat my transition as just a, I don't even know. I wanted to identify as genderfluid, but a part of me felt this mud, this act, like I was faking it. It didn't feel right, it felt uncomfortable. Using she/her didn't feel right, but something in me still wanted to, and the idea of HRT came up, and I didn't think I ever truly would, or if I did do it, that it wouldn't be genuine, that I'm taking this "transition" act too far, and here's to say there was no denial here, my feelings felt genuine, it felt more forced to transition than it did to simply stay a man. But I kept going, I got HRT, and I felt the same. I didn't feel much different, and I still felt like a fraud. I had a correspondence with someone who I feel I ended up using for my shallow need for validation, and I am truly, deeply sorry for what I did, but I can't make up for it or continue to try and lie. But they felt like they lifted me up, they made me feel I was on the right path, and I am truly thankful but regretful I didn't have the ability or genuine affection back to help you. Maybe there wasn't any way to help back, but that's an excuse. I never corresponded again. Maybe all of that was a lie too, a narrative to tell myself, to make sense of my confused emotions. I don't know if I ever really felt that much different, or changed as a person much, but at the time I did feel a confidence. For almost a certain amount of time I felt like I could be happy, genuinely happy, and have hope for the future. Life comes back at you, my depression comes back at me. Not that anything tragic happened, but I went back to how I usually am, depressed and numb, and I had been on HRT for a few months, but there was a gap, I ran out. I feel I restarted the whole transition, the little 3 months of progress was lost. I got back on it, and I felt happy to do so. I started thinking of other women, other trans women, I'd feel oh so jealous, I'd hug my little jealous heart. I considered fully transitioning, which is another thing I told myself I'd never do, I would always swear off fully transitioning, that I didn't want to be fully feminine, that I want to just be something in-between, androgynous, genderfluid. I felt as if I never had any dysphoria, that I was fine with my dick, fine with my manhood. In some way, probably influenced back when I would post edgy memes in instagram about trans people shooting themselves and watching snuff videos of people being ripped and crushed, I have some kind of ego about things that are "male." In my own way, cause I hate football, I hate the men who drive in big trucks with rebel flags, neo-nazi dating university types, I was never really about that (and really I knew I had some attraction to guys for awhile and was somewhat open about it, to some people online anyway, and a furry, which I kept hidden from my irl friends, but at some point I couldn't keep my little heart hidden and I told them). But I valued intellect, some kind of intellect I thought I had, and would associate with some kind of masculine identity, and within me on a subconcious level, these gender markers are obviously stupid, that I think intellect and being into "mature arthouse movies" makes me masculine, but I can't shake the feeling. I can't shake this association with masculinity and knowledge and intellect and maybe that's killing me inside in some way. It's one thing to know when some internalized societal feeling is toxic and even hurts the host themselves, but it's different to change that feeling, that I still have these sexist feelings inside. And I don't mean to change my interests, I'll be into the same things I'm into, but I can't get rid of these gendered associations and maybe that's preventing me from doing what I want to do.

But I thought I wouldn't actually fully transition, that I wouldn't fully ever socially transition, present as if I was a female, trick cis people into thinking I was a female, be so good at the act that I could, so good to be called slurs and be catcalled on the street. I still had facial hair, and I liked my facial hair. I even shaved it, my partner was there, he encouraged me to shave, and I didn't fully shave, but I felt that uncomfortable fraud feeling again. My face almost looks too feminine, my face could pass if I dressed right and had my hair the right way. And it scared me, I didn't like it. I felt uncomfortable, I felt I was trying to push against a wall I shouldn't be. Trying to make myself keep doing something I'd regret. Later, recently, the idea of shaving came up again. There was an LGBTQ event, some meet and mingle event, and I wanted to shave. I wanted to feel more fitting into this female identity, even if I didn't want to. I liked my facial hair, I looked like Walter Becker, I thought. Someone I admired and respected, someone who felt they fit that artistic "masculine" intellect. Respect and class. I did shave, I shaved it all off. At first I was embarrassed, showing friends and my mom, I felt as if I was coming out even though I wasn't. All I did was shave, men do that themselves all the time. But then I got used to it, now I prefer it, and I feel myself quickly tumbling into this identity I seem to want, even if I feel I'm forcing it, that on some subconcious level I do want this, wanting to fully present femme, wanting thinner shoulders, even thinking of bottom surgery at some point which is something else I said I'd never do. But then I start getting these feelings, these feelings of not fitting in. The LGBTQ event was a bust, my perceived improvement of my social skills failed and all I did was get drunk in the corner with a friend. I was an intellectual outcast. I was BETTER than these people, these LGBTQ folks of the mainstream. But I was outcasting myself from a niche, and I feel I just, don't fit in. That my interests simply don't match up with most LGBTQ people or furries. I hung out with someone who went through their own denial and acceptance phase in high school. They'd draw furry art and show people furry memes while vehemently denying it. Now they're more of themselves, as far as I can tell. There was another person there, and the hangout felt like nothing. I was silent most of the time. Maybe they thought I was decent company, but I really don't think so. I haven't spoken to either of these people since, and previous attempts at interaction with this high school pupil ended in a brick wall. But there was this feeling, this massive feeling of not fitting in, not fitting in with furries, not fitting in with other gays. But I have this aesthetic surrounding the entire thing, this tragic aesthetic, this depressing demeanor. They talked a little about some depressed thoughts, but I filled in all the gaps, I fill in this tragic narrative of their lives, a narrative I don't have, and I end up feeling like this is something I need to qualify fitting in, to qualify fitting into a trans identity. That I somehow need to have a tragic past, to have a trauma, to have an abusive parent, to have a suicide attempt, to have someone commit suicide on me, to have a rape, a molestation. But I was molested, I was molested by a neighbor, when I was young. I was in elementary school and he was in high school. I rarely talk about it, maybe I am now more. I am trying to justify my depression. Was it my parent's divorce? Was it a bunch of mini self traumatizations of people offing themselves and the parent's discovering their exploded corpse? People crying, losing someone. What am I even doing, why do I type these words? There is no structure to this. I feel pathetic, I feel my depression isn't justified enough, I feel priviliged even though I'm on the verge of poverty all the time.

I read this story and I feel jealous. Why do I feel jealous? Why do I somehow want these interactions, want these friends? Want all this sex? I am jealous of sex too, that I never got many chances and every sexual encounter was never lived up enough to the fantasy, that I'm gross, unattractive, fat, overweight, spoiled. I want to be traumatized, genuinely traumatized, and then maybe I can feel justified in my transgender identity, in my niche subcultures, to fit in, be able to listen to the same music, be able to share the same depressed stories, to be able to share the wrist scars. But there are no scars. Why do I have this fetishization? A genuine festish, is it? Does it make my hard?? Does it make my female dick hard??? Should I compare myself to Mishima to feel good? More masculine intellect? That he wanted to be a tragic figure despite the self awareness that he wasn't. That he was a coward, self aware of being a coward, self aware of his grim fantasies, able to philosophize over his contradictory nature. I never had a fetish for gore, or rape, or anything. My words are tumbling out, I cannot speak. My fingers turn invisible, I turn into a ghost, I start to disappear. Maybe I deserve to disappear!!!! Is my depression justified or am I just spoiled? Why am I unhappy with the people I'm surrounded with? Why am I unsatisfied with my loved ones? Because they don't fit into some transgender narrative? That they don't feel like the friends an LGBTQ person should have? Cause they don't fit into these stereotypes in my head? That I'm just shallow as a whole and don't feel appreciative of them enough, that they don't ask about me enough? But they do, why do I dismiss my partner like this? I've told him everything but its not enough for my validation, its not enough for what "image" of a transgender person should fit into, what an LGBTQ person should fit into.

I feel an urge to be forever melancholic, to fit into a tortured artist stereotype, to fit into the poor traumatized transgender stereotype, and I feel for the people who experience trauma. I want to just hug them and cry, I wish they could be happy. I try to force myself into their shoes and try to experience their trauma to feel good about myself. To justify my own depression and dismiss the genuine depression I had, the victim of a toxic far right culture when I was younger, the sadness of my parent's divorce, arguing in the morning and banging. To dismiss the molestation, to claim it had no affect on my mental.

I just want to be girl. I feel jealous. My partner mentioned wondering if I ever transitioned when I was younger, if I transitioned before my male puberty, and they didn't mean it in any malicious way, just a comment that it would have been cute if I did, but the thought makes me sad, it makes me want to cry. Maybe my younger self could have been happier in high school, maybe they could have been more of herself, maybe she wouldn't have fallen down into some far right pipieline. But see what I'm doing? Would that have made me happy? Would I have ever considered it. I never considered it till I was older. Who says I wouldn't still have been depressed and unhappy? Would being trans in high school make me more depressed? Would I still make the same friends I value now? I try to paint a tragic narrative to justify my own sadness.

I think I just want to be female, to present femininely, to be recognized as female by the friends I value most. They already accept my identity, but I feel I'm failing to fit into it, but I'm torturing myself with these narratives.

I just want to be female, if I can ever get over myself, get over these overdramatic ramblings. I want to be a girl. I am a girl. I am female. I AM.

A close-up of Hugh’s wrist, which is unmarked. Where potential self harm scars should be there is nothing. Hugh has never harmed himself in his entire life, or ever felt like doing so, but he rubs the wrist at the idea of the fantasy, the idea of wishing for a tragedy and trauma to justify his worthless existence.

Just for now, just for now, just for now
Just for now, just for now, just for now
It's that time of year
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside
If just for a little while
Lil B, Based God
King of rap, I can bet my money on that
Can't face the facts that a young guy killin' shit
Give me another shot and I'mma come with my mask on
Seen a lot of growth since I came with the Vans song
Now it's '09 and I'm runnin' with the Based God
Fire in my eyes, mix my soul with the napalm
Mix and master, all I need is dro and one mic
One pad, one pen, iPod, dim lights
Feelin' like a plane when it's up and it's in flight
Dressing everyday like I'm dead with the pinstripe
This a few things that show that I'm the rawest
Spend the cash everyday so I'm ballin like Spalding
Want beef, like six I'll have you baldin' like Baldwin
Your favorite rapper out, I'mma lay 'em in a coffin
No talkin' when I'm talkin', cause it's legend, pay attention
Only time I sat in class was when I'm serving a detention
I fuck with Soulja Boy, get money nigga
Everytime I see rappers, all I'm thinking, "I'ma get him"
In the booth or in the streets, I been known to tear and rip 'em
Fifteen and sixteen, eyes breaking down the system
Nobody can tell me nothing, I was living off my system
Head fucked up, I thought it would be cool to go to prison
Watching Hot Boyz on BET getting all these women
So I got my gold grill because I'm thugged out with 'em
B-Town, Waterfront, and I put on for my city
We done did it for six years, just reached twenty
A lot of dudes I grew up with didn't see twenty
Everytime I have a birthday, I'm thinking, "God love me"
Everytime I hit the beat, man, I do it for my Mom
Workin' hard every day, I'mma make it where it's mine
I'mma hustle all the time, like Lil Wayne do
If you up against me, you get ate like grapefruit
My first reaction was like, just chill and stay cool
The rap game is slow, and it just ain't cool
Always jocking on my style and it just ain't you
Only time I feel you is if a based boy do
Because I'm a rap god and a based boy, too
I can listen to the hate and put the volume on mute
So the only thing I hear is the horses in the coupe
And when the roof go down, it reminds me of my chick
Getting money off the floor because I'm trapping like a bitch—
Like Gucci Mane said, but it's rich nigga clique
And my name is Lil B, you can call me "king of rap"
I done did a few things and I'm never goin back
Mirror mirror on the wall, shit, I'm askin who the man is
Lil B for "Lil Boss, " I'm prayin to my canvas
I deserve the crown because I'm speakin for the masses
And I'm into weed, I'm gettin chiefy like Kansas
Word to the wise, you should fear the competition
Because I'm the only vet that's a Based God spittin
And you ain't in the game until you make a thousand songs
And you dyin' for this rap, 'cause it's the only thing you love
Birth of Rap
Birth of Rap

TYBG