some notes from the past week (5/1 - 5/5)

- It's AAPI heritage month, which means that anything I find irritating I will be labeling as a hate crime. - On Sunday I was feeling very unsettled thinking about how I have almost no recollection of what I've been up to for the past several months. When I was having dinner with Shalma the previous night and tried to recount my general state of existence since I'd last seen her, I felt empty. "Who am I?" I thought, anxiety mounting, "What has my life been like?" - I added a newish maybe-friend to my close friends list and notice when he watches my close friends stories on Instagram. I feel anxiety about my maybe-delusional-ness about whether we're actually friends creeping in whenever I think about this too much. I feel like adding this person was fine in that we have potential to be good friends, especially given a shared interest in nightlife/music, but I still feel weird about it, worried that they'll think I'm trying too hard to be friends with them or something. I'm crossing over into emotional management mode again, I don't want to have hope about friendships developing and be let down when they don't materialize. - Shalma and I also talked about how it felt like the culture of NYC was seeping into and infecting our minds, how "cool" has unconsciously become the immediate orienting axis by which I perceive people. Every morning on the subway I look at the outfits of the women around me and immediately make judgments I know to be untrue about what kind of people they are. - "I feel like we're separately experiencing the same things right now," Shalma says, and I agree--I get the same feeling while talking to her that I do when I read Juhi's e-worms, like our lives are progressing along parallel planes. - I remember something else about SF: Juhi's car. Ori says that whenever he comes to SF he likes to take a picture of the car. "Hit me, bitch," Juhi muttered as someone tried to cut us off with a left turn. For some reason it looked totally different than how I remembered it; the exterior reminds me of the artwork for the Bill Callahan and Bonnie Prince Billy album. - At the botanical gardens the cherry blossoms are beautiful but the crowds make experiencing them less pleasurable. Unexpectedly we find ourselves moved by the bonsai collection. - Had a hot dog from a cart. - Sat in Tompkins Square Park with Olive and had dinner together at Raku, one of my favorite meals in recent memory because I felt we were so connected with each other in those couple hours. - “When was the last time I counted something in my head?” Today while trying to calculate the new rent I owed with my roommate I kept mis-reciting the numbers I was supposed to subtract from each other. - Xander, Maya, and I talk about being memory-less. “I feel like I’ve only started to regain sentience this weekend,” I say. “I don’t even feel like I’m sentient yet,” Xander replies matter-of-factly. - I get hate-crimed on Monday morning: instead of being able to apply my unused monthly sugaring credits towards getting my leg hair removed, customer service denies my request and I get charged an upsetting amount of money. - I hit a coding groove after dinner and listen to Can, thinking of Juhi's latest e-worm post and the term "krautrock." - I pay $5 for a banh mi for dinner and eat the whole thing without any comprehension of hunger or satiation. - The tulips, once drooped over the sides of their vase like a moody indie rock album cover, stand straighter and taller as the petals unfurl. - I’ve been thinking a lot about spring and how this year feels different. In college, spring felt like a melancholic, generative time: be wistful, walk home alone from the library at 1am in the middle of the street, marvel at the budding and blooming. In the past couple years (aka as I've gotten less depressed), spring has become an energizing time where I feel myself propelled forward by the collective sense of rebirth and anticipation. Catherine talks about the sweet spot being the time when you can open up the apartment windows. I was so anxious to be away for almost all of March and part of April because I worried that I would miss the magnolias blooming, but it seems to not have happened this year, the trees in Union Square skipped straight to the leaf-growing phase and magnolia branches weren't sold at the farmer's market this year. - One morning when feeling quite angsty I try to ruminate more about feeling disembodied. "Is this moment not enough?" someone posts on their Instagram story. - Catherine responds to my texts describing the difference between a crush and a LOML. “Ok i like That,” she says about LOMLs. “It’s good to keep some things from ever happening.” - I think scornfully of Andy when he suggests hanging out with him and his girlfriend, the more I talk to him the lamer they get. I am young and the world validates my arrogance. - We expense Chik-fil-A for lunch out of despair. Mike seems depressed. I learn that orca shirts is its own apparel category in our databases because of the sheer volume of orca shirts being bought and sold on Amazon.com. - I get dinner with Sam and Shereen, where we drink enough wine that my vision blurs, then we go to Clandestino, where Marc Razo from Max Fish (or his doppelganger) is working the bar, then we go to Reception Bar, where we get another cocktail and snacks. We pick up Alec along the way to Tom and Jerry’s, where Sam gets us pickleback shots and we sip on our beers halfheartedly until Sam decides he wants to go home. - I listen to Young Guv when I see the album in my Apple Music recommendations, recalling that Jake had posted about it, and am pleasantly surprised by the feeling of immediately liking the album. Katie and I agree it’s “no frills indie rock" of the dad-leaning variety, which is rare these days.