doodles of pictures i take
25.03.24
hell week hell week. so many things to keep in top of. but also,,, i feel like my head is going in a hundred different directions. i'm in one of those phases where i want to read everything, watch everything, listen to every song as loud as i can, see every piece of art, walk through every square inch of the city that i can, weave every idea together into some grand display to have something to show for this feeling of bursting at the seams. it's a nice feeling. i like remembering that i do actually have passions and interests and that i do want write more, especially for this site. i have many books checked out from the library right now. "the avant garde frontier: russia meets the west," "erotic nihilism of late imperial russia," "the total art of stalinism." and "the russian experiment in art." Can you tell that i miss my russian cultural studies classes? i have a little post-it note i've been writing ideas on as i read, but as i look back at it, theyre quite broad ideas... the one i'm toying with the most is the portrayal of machines from 1910-1935 in russian art and maybe literature, but also like,,, feeling very drawn to pictorial syntax in russian futurism... decisions decisions. once i get through this week (god willing), i have 2 weeks off. i definitely need to be working on a project that's due right after the break buuuuuut hopefully can induldge in fun reading and writing. provided that this burst of whatever this feeling is continues.
i spent last night on google maps rewalking my old haunts. feeling homesick. homesick cant really be the right word though. it's not my home. i didn't move there until i was 18. but i feel like i became myself there, made my best friends there, changed the most there. cringe but also real. anyways i was retracing my steps and i saw the woman that i often saw from my window last year crossing the street and i teared up. idk she just felt like such a character in my life. she is probably in her mid to late 70s and always dresses in all white (but in winter wears a long black coat) with bright red shoes and black sunglasses. her hair is short and bright white and she walked her dog (i think it looks like a little black westie?) every morning by my apartment. it just felt so strange to see her captured in google maps, wearing the same summer outfit as usual, but on this special day she was carrying a massive bouquet of white hydrangeas and light pink roses. i wonder who/what they were for.
side note that this feeling of wanting to do something also includes wanting to work more on/change up this site. including this very page. it is grating on me lmao. will i actually do it? idk lol. nothing dramatic. just make the design of pages more ~me~ rather than slapdash random background and layout i chose as an afterthought to whatever the page was actually about. there are literally parts of this site that havent been updated since 2022 (i.e. the doodles on this page auurrrjgjjng drives me up the wall looking at them. why are there only 2?? either make more or get rid of them bc 2 over 2 years looks silly.) would like to make more shrines, put more google earth finds, just generally make this more of a projection of my brain lmao. idk. i like neocities. maybe i'm in the minority camp here but i like the balance of independence and social interaction on here, and i want to make the most of what i see as a good thing.idk i'm not making sense now and it's very late and i'm very tired. wgatever. thinking about succession again
16.03.24
busy busy, too busy to think, which is good. i do wish i was maybe a little less busy so that i could talk to my friends more. i get in the #grindset during the day and dont want to distract myself, and by the time i'm done or ready for a break, it's like 2am for them. not cool.
normally i hate this time of year. it has been many many years since i didnt feel miserable feb-april. i know that spring is meant to be the time of rebirth etc etc, but it has always felt like the saddest ugliest season to me and i get worms in my brain that make me a shell of a person for a few months. this time though, i am skipping spring and just heading into autumn. bad life hack: move hemispheres to forever avoid seasonal depression (or at least stave it off for 6 more months).
some classes are more enjoyable than others. i love phonology, so i'm glad that my foundations course is spending a few week on it. i met up with a classmate yesterday for like 6 hours to help her through some practice problems. it's nice to find someone i can just word-vomit around and receive word-vomit in return. they're older than me and says she feels like a mother hen, inviting me over to her house to see her cats or eat dinner, offering car rides to out-of-the-way stores and the kind of advice 15 years in academia will get you.
i've jokingly warned my brother not to follow in my footsteps and to just stay in canada/the u.s. because of how i keep getting messages from unknown numbers that are turning out to be aunts and uncles and cousins saying when theyll be in town to get lunch, or that i need find train tickets in order to stay with them for parts of the easter break. thankfully, my mum's side of the family hasn't reached out. no words to describe the kind of disaster that is that half of the family tree.
as i write this, i'm in the library. my room is being used as a show room for the university's open day for prospective students from 9am to 3pm, so it looks like i'll have to be productive, whether i want to or not. that being said, i have just spent the last 2 hours i've been here fucking around and trying to tactfully reply to my uncle to let him know that i don't think that cryptic crosswords are really my thing, as much as he is trying to convert me. at least i mostly have the floor to myself.
05.03.24
waa i havent been as active on neocities lately as i have wanted to. takes up a lot of brainpower to get into the rhythm of new stuff. in many ways, the workload is actually a lot lighter than i am used to, but also i feel i am kept more busy with it because i am somewhat successfully resisting the urge to procrastinate and am actually getting stuff done as it is assigned. crazy, i know. it's interesting because 3/4 courses are mixed undergrad/postgrad, so the content is delivered in a way that isnt as complex as i was expecting. similarly, in my 1 course that is all postgrad students, i think less than half of the class has a background in linguistics, so we are really just going over the basics, which is nice. as soon as it gets to semantics or syntax though, it's all over for me lol, no matter how simply it's taught ;-;
for once in my life, i'm trying to take some initiative and so i'm the class representative (i'll find out what that entails on friday lol) for my most abstract but interesting course. it's on the structure of conversation and interaction and the prof was colleagues with the one and only M.A.K. Halliday, whom i have mentioned before on this website because of how his work is what got me into linguistics in the first place back in high school. very exciting
i am still failing in the social department, but i am learning that i can get a lot more work done when i'm not always hanging out with people, so maybe that's for the best :') i've also been making lots of pickled carrots, which i have been adding to everything i possible can. so so good. i've barely had time to read, which is a shame. when i do have time to read, i've been reading anne of green gables so that i can return it to the mum of the kid who let/made me borrow it asap, so i've been neglecting bookbug a bit ;-; will try to get back on that once i finish this one. that said, i checked out a book from the library yesterday called "erotic nihilism in late imperial russia" which i am VERY excited to read.
been feeling the desire to play minecraft again... back in 2021 i was super active in a big earth-style server that was really fun, but it resets every 8 months or so and i kind of didnt want to have to build up everything i had made again just for it all to be deleted when a new big update came through. i do miss making big builds though. very satisfying having to get all the materials
