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- as time has been passing, i have been feeling an equally uncontrollable sensation of my life not belonging to me or something. like it's just this event i don't seem to be participating in much, and so could be attending by mistake. maybe i wasn't invited. clerical error. i witness myself willfully allowing opportunities to fade away, because sometimes, for whatever reason, it is hard for me to do things that i know will make me happy. (9)
- i used to like documenting my daily activities. that seemed to help me remember more. lately the things i've been doing haven't felt worth remembering, but i feel like that could just be a mind trick, and if i start writing more again, i'll convince myself everything is basically the same as however many years ago it was when i felt more satisfied or hopeful or whatever it is i don't feel now. (9)
- things i need to do today: write letter recommending myself as if i am tao and he is my employer (13)
- she said 'meggie? oh nevermind, i was going to ask dad to bring bananas but you want fresh air.’ walked downstairs saying, ‘yeah, yeah, i want that, fresh air,’ accidentally like how terry gross says it on NPR, like, ‘FRRRRRResh air.’ (14)
- smoking second American spirit menthol cigarette. listening to ipod on shuffle mode. feel like i’m launching or something. liveblog is helping. there are higher stakes if i fail to complete tasks today. others will know. saw that elizabeth ellen ‘liked’ liveblog tumblr post. swerved into other lane. feeling capable and optimistic and like lame and fragile parts of me are being exposed, but am strangely positive about that. ‘rubber traits’ by why? is playing. about to turn left, to wegman’s parking lot. sky looks like the sky of a day in july 2008, when i had just broken up with boyfriend and walked around 24-hour grocery store, didn’t buy anything, cried driving home, went on cruise to alaska with family the next day. parked. typing is making me equally more attentive and detached about what i’m doing/thinking, like i’m narrating myself from a distance. (14-15)
- proofread correctly-spelled tweet until words seemed more like ‘alphabet-shaped lines’ than language (16)
- mom’s head poked cheerfully into hallway, said ‘can i say i’ve liked your writing since you were a little girl?’ i waved dismissively but not unsociably (18)
- something about now feels like christmas. can hear papers rustling. mom just entered, smiling, said ‘this is a draft, this is a draft, i wrote it as a letter, it’s not perfect,’ handed me a paper. her handwriting was on both sides. i said ‘this is perfect, thank you.’ mom said ‘i think i may have said two or three things two or three times’ and left without looking back. i stood and tripped over basket of pencils, then caught up to hug her before she was gone. she is wearing a green bathrobe. feeling something indescribable about ending up in mom, getting born by mom, knowing mom all of this time. (18)
- read ‘megan has shown a touching, intelligent sense of the absurd and at the same time, the real—sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes purely existential experience of being human.’ read ‘fearless.’ walked to mom’s room. on the bed dad was leaning diagonally towards a recumbent mom, looking at her kindle. they were under the covers and smiling. dad had a towel on his head. said goodnight, hugged them, started walking back to my room. in the doorway i said ‘it’s nice to know you guys are around,’ knowing this was not what i wanted to say, not knowing what i wanted to say, but that i wanted to say something. (18-19)
- seems important to stay in motion. (20)
- i am so many miles from anyone. (21)
- missing something. everything is in order: the engine checks are finished, all passengers accounted for, weather and runway are clear, but this plane can’t fly without a co-pilot. actually i’m the co-pilot. yeah, it’s just the co-pilot here, i’m waiting on denzel, he’s still sleeping next to the pretty naked lady in a trashed motel room and it says ‘directed by: robert zemeckis’ at the bottom of the screen and slowly we learn the lady and denzel have been partying on alcohol and cocaine all night and soon denzel needs to fly an airplane. we do not yet know the lady is a stewardess who dies. at this point in the movie i didn’t know it wasn’t a true story. the movie is ‘flight.’ getting carried away. (21)
- we'd riff about it to better endure it together (22)
- wish there was a grindr-like iphone app for lost wandering shitheads, so you could locate others. i probably wouldn't use it. (23-24)
- ‘late as usual,’ trailed by an animation that becomes an exclamation point at the end of the title graphic. this would happen before every episode. (24)
- would be funny if that was the last thing i’d type before a fatal car collision. or if this was the last thing. or this. or this. or this. or this. or this. okay guess it’s not going to happen. (24)
- three men in one-piece jiffy lube uniforms are smoking cigarettes by the garage. looks like an edward hopper painting. wish i was one of them. (25)
- i don't know why i always dread pulling into a driveway or seeing my apartment building when walking or any of the other ways I've arrived home. always feel better when i'm on the way to somewhere. (25)
- i just want to always be near the smell of someone i like, whose presence is like equal parts 'hallucinogen' and 'antidepressant' and 'anxiolytic,' like i can just look at them and think 'great, now they're here, time for me to sit back and listen to all the surprises.' that sounds lazy maybe. i want them to want a person like that too so i can be like that for them too. doesn't seem real or possible. think i'm always on the verge of experiencing one of two extremes about other people. have experienced these rare insane manic connections, like 'beyond my wildest dreams'-style connections, which i've probably only felt so intensely because i've wanted to feel that way (often remember things and think 'you were just ignoring something so you could feel something else'). on a chart about how i feel most of the time most of my dots would be in the middle-to-'opposite of intensely connected to people' spectrum. when the opposite thing feels extreme it also seems attributable to disappointments about close relationshops, but think it for real only involves other people to the extent that my ideas about their intentions are caused by this arcane primal fear that always seems to be experiencing itself over and over from some hidden location in me, syncing infrequently with my awareness, more often surfacing as a vague and nearly-constant desire to apologize for something i’ve done, will probably do, or have already and unstoppably been doing ‘this whole time,’ just by being alive. but neither of those feelings, even the extreme connection thing, have anything to do with other people, i don’t think. they are both supposed to be feelings about other people but they are both about me. think it’s impossible for me to be close with someone in the way i think i want to be, or that most people are, or that i’ve thought i’ve been or something. the ‘sit back and listen to all the surprises’ thing seems more hopeful than the ‘maintaining extreme closeness over time’ thing, for me. like, if there’s going to be anything. actually it might be the same thing. i don’t know. like ‘even when i’m so connected i’m always so alone and so tortured by a fear which cannot be expressed clearly' or whatever it is i’m saying with this bullshit—like, what is the point? would it logically follow that the the point of ‘feeling connected’ to someone would be to just continue feeling so similar that you eventually sort of become them, but then you’d just be the same thing, which is the same thing as being alone? MAN FUCK THIS SHIT MAN LISTEN TO THIS BITCH OVER HERE, ACTIN ALL LIKE IT’S 9:47AM BUT IT’S 1:51PM AND SHE TWERKIN ON ADDERALL AND NO SLEEP TRYNA MAKE A FUCKIN SHIT ASS SENTENCE MAKE SENSE THAT DON’T EVEN MATTER LIKE WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN NOW BITCH, NICE SENTENCE, WHERE THAT $1,000,000,000,000 CHECK? WHERE THAT PENTHOUSE AT? AIN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO WIN THE GRAMMYS OR SOME SHIT NOW YOU BITCH ASS WRITIN THIS GODDAMNED SENTENCE FOR TWO HOURS? HM? SMELL YOUR GODDAMN ARMPIT. THAT’S RIGHT. SMELL ON THAT A MINUTE. MMHMM. THAT’S RIGHT. THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT. YEAH I THINK IT’S TIME TO GO TO THAT GROCERY STORE. I THINK IT’S TIME TO GO TO THAT FUCKIN GROCERY STORE FUCKIN SEVEN HOURS AGO WHEN YOU WAS ALL ‘TEEHEE GOING TO GET A STAPLER AND A FOLDER NOW BECAUSE THOSE ARE THINGS THAT I WANT AND NEED OH BOY LOOK AT ME GO!’ YOU BETTER HOPE I DON’T LOOK IN A MIRROR SOON BECAUSE BITCH, IF I SEE YOU LOOKIN BACK AT ME, YOU AND ME IS BOTH IN PIECES. P-I-E-C-E-S. I THINK YOU KNOW I AIN’T TALKING REESES BUT NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT, FUCK YOU YOU STUPID SKINNY ASS HO, GETTIN ALL PROUD WHEN YOU BE STARVIN YOUR SKINNY ASS SAYIN ‘IT’S HEALTHY’ OR SOME SHIT. I WANNA STRAIGHT UP X-RAY THE SHIT OUT YOUR HEALTHY ASS ROTTEN ASS DIGESTIVE TRACK, SHOW A BITCH WHAT HEALTHY IS. GET Y’ALL FUCKED UP STOMACH AND ‘TESTINES UP HERE ON THE COUCH WITH ME SO YOU CAN SEE FOR YOURSELF ALL THEM HOLES YOU BE MAKIN THAT GOT YOU SIPPIN ON THAT ANTACID! BITCH—NOW I KNOW YOUR ASS GOT NO PLACE TO GO BUT THE FLOOR AND NOT CAUSE YOU AT THE CLUB—AND YEAH, SOMETHIN BOUT YOUR LEGS UH, THEY JUST NASTY, UH, I DON’T KNOW, SHIT DON’T LOOK HUMAN TO ME PERSONALLY—BUT GET THAT SHIT TOGETHER! THAT SHIT’S THE ONLY SHIT YOU GOT! YOU STUCK IN THIS SHIT! OH YOU WHININ WITH SOME LONG SENTENCES BOUT HOW YOU SO LONELY OH YOU SO SAD AND ALONE I SEE UH WELL UH, UH, SEE HERE M’AM, YOU ARE USING DRUGS TO THE EXTENT, UH, M’AM, ALSO WITH THIS UH, YOU SEE, THIS UH, M’AM YOU EAT THIS FOOD AND THEN YOU VOMIT, THEN UH, THE LAXATIVES, YOU SEE? M’AM, AND THE CIGARETTES? UH, M’AM, AND FOR HOW MANY YEARS? YOU SEE WHERE I’M GOING WITH THIS M’AM? M’AM? OKAY GREAT GLAD YOU SEE, GLAD YOU SEE, OKAY. GREAT. GREAT, WELL THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN IN AN EFFORT TO TELL YOU THAT IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. WE HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY. IF YOU LOOK OUT THE WINDOW YOU WILL SEE THE CAR WE HAVE PREPARED. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE? THIS JOB? YOU TOOK THIS JOB, REMEMBER? YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL FAMOUS ACTOR? YEAH MAN. HELL YEAH MAN! FIVE YEARS MAN, WELCOME BACK! YOU JUST GOT SO DEEP INTO THIS ROLE. METHOD ACTING. YEAH. YOU GOT SO DEEP INTO METHOD ACTING ‘THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY OF MEGAN BOYLE’ THAT YOU FORGOT YOUR OWN IDENTITY. RELENTLESS, MAN. YOU. ARE. RELENTLESS. (26-28)
- stepping as softly as i can, trying to be unnoticeable as i pour a cup of 'my little secret' which i carry back to my room, where i feel about six years old. this happens every time. i don't know how to stop it (29)
- REMINDER OF MY GOAL: TO LIVEBLOG DAILY ACTIVITIES WITHOUT PRIVACY AS A FORM OF NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT, TO 'ACT BETTER' (31)
- i am going to the grocery store. WHEN I GO TO THE GROCERY STORE I WILL WALK IN THE DOOR AND BUY THE THINGS I SAID I WOULD BUY, THEN I WILL LEAVE. MY DEAR CHILD, WHAT EVER STOPPED YOU FROM DOING SUCH PRACTICAL THINGS? seems so pointless…this entire thing…entire…jesus…laughing…wish someone would call me on the phone…kind of… (31)
- trying to see through rainy windshield(...) mistaking a lot of things for other things (33)
- saying i had to leave by 7:30 is an example of a trick i do to avoid being late when i know i’ll want to be late for fun but the stakes are high and if i drag my feet there will be consequences. fake early deadline. classic stakes-raiser. high stakes mental clock readjustment. just another trick up the sleeve of old woman rickets (42)
- i shouldn't have talked about my high stakes consequences trick, that invalidated it (43)
- i want everyone to be doing this too, liveblogging all the time. a future where no one talks and. damnit. i used to picture this bleak all-white 'matrix'-like people-harvesting room(...) where everyone just sat silently, and that was the future. thought 'maybe that would be good if everyone was liveblogging' (46)
- held apple i found on my car’s floor as i walked to condo, thinking ‘mom will feel good if she sees me eating the apple.’ made plans to take first bite of apple once i saw ‘the whites of mom’s eyes.’ saw that i’d left condo’s door wide open but walked inside confidently and nonchalantly, bumping into mom, who i reflexively said ‘night night’ to, then hurriedly bit apple to ‘make up for lost time.’ mom smiled and shook her head a little. i laughed and said ‘night night sorry hello goodbye.’ (47)
- like underneath the reality i normally experience there is another version of everything--maybe infinite multiple layers of concurrent realities (48)
- feel like that’s what motivates most people to talk: a desire to find a less-talkative human source to smile and be a repository for their endless talking. something they can really empty themselves into that churns and re-forms all the things they said into minimal blips of encouraging feedback. depressing. it might seem like i’m being the ‘talking person’ to you now but it’s different because you are choosing to read this and… i can’t sense you being there…or something… i feel like i’m alone, transcribing my thoughts onto something with RAM. have felt consumed by the menial task of downloading my thoughts onto this document since 9AM, maybe. i know i’m not really saying anything and there has been a lot of it but it feels good. like some kind of exercise. (49)
- ...but is like ‘pure morning’ or something—it will be like ‘teehee we have secrets’ and i will always feel this warm thing and talk about you to people years after we stop talking. i’ll say, like, ‘yeah we both knew all of those songs’ and i’ll miss you deeply but i won’t know what to say to you anymore. it won’t make any sense. (54)
- there is this good feeling you have when you’re younger, like a teenager to maybe 25 years old, that the world is ready for the possibility you have to offer it. there are schools giving you tours, meetings with little committees, loans from people investing in what they think you will bring to the world. people are depending on you, sort of. passively monitoring you, in hopes that the good thing they thought would happen to them will happen to you instead. you have all of these ideas about what you want to do with ‘your life,’ which is hard to imagine because it seems so far away. it feels like you can do anything. feeling like you can do anything makes you feel like doing nothing, which is okay, or…what else could it be but okay. they must be preparing another ‘you’ with the training you didn’t receive, to guide and someday replace you, and however you fill your life while you wait is inconsequential. maybe you do too many drugs or have bad relationships or get in trouble with money or police. i don’t know. so you think ‘there is still time, i will take a break. after the break the bad thing will feel over. people will have forgotten and maybe i will have changed or forgotten. then i’ll get back to all of those other exciting things i was going to do.’ there is so much time. but the break thing. i don't know. you end up 27 waking at 4PM feeling like some kind of experiment. like you have switched from the thing you used to be to a new thing that’s being studied. but you don’t feel important enough to be studied, no one is actually studying you. you have just allowed yourself so many ‘breaks’ after so many ‘bad things’ that you feel the best thing is to isolate yourself from the possibility of more bad things, and sort of hope no one knows this, or. people wonder where you went, you think, but you hope no one is really paying attention, and they aren’t really. the ‘experiment’ thing is more like this sensation that the people who talk to you feel like they need to be careful. they are aware of the things you thought you would be. they want to be careful not to remind you of those things, or pretend you are still capable of those things. you can see when they are being kind to you, just in little ways, like you are way more aware of when anyone is kind to you accidentally, and it fills you with thing, this sadness for yourself and for person who did the kind thing and for everyone who wants a better life. you don’t actually feel the ‘everyone’ but you have this idea that it’s probably everyone, and the feeling… the wanting feeling after the accidental kind thing…the feeling is big enough in your body that you feel confident saying things like ‘everyone.' (55-57)
- have been looking at internet and listening to ‘last days of disco’ by yo la tengo. responded to ex-boyfriend’s g-chats. our lease expires in 11 days. he showed me this song. last night he said: ‘honeychile(,) ive been pronouncing the ultimate E as a long E(,) member when we walked over that bridge’. the bridge lead to atlantic city, i think. maybe we just ended up in atlantic city later that night. i had started living in the apartment again. this was during the ‘less arguing than joking but usually one or the other, before it got sad’ time. sometimes i’d want to talk about why we broke up or what we were doing together if we weren’t together anymore. then we’d talk more and i’d remember why. typed this in phone the morning after ‘bridge day:’ ‘Light moving through windows seemed fast, flickery/sparkly, Z’s face smiling, the thing i said or read: people’s faces when they’re sleeping or just waking are always honest. remembering walking over bridge and how clear and expansive and low to the ground sky was, wanting to hold onto that memory and in that memory how much i wanted to hold onto Z, all yesterday feeling his presence as a kind of absence that must be urgently protected, like when all of a sudden i know i’m dreaming and the dream becomes about how to prevent waking, simultaneously touching and missing him, how easy it was to talk until the drive home from AC, it was almost perfect, then things we’ve done to hurt each other seemed louder and more present than the music, scenery, my hand on his thigh, etc. Watching shadows of branches making the light move fast and smelling how he smells, thinking “none of this will stay,” watching his eyeballs move under his eyelids while he slept like they were looking at fast moving things too, finding spaces in his body for my body to fit even though it was uncomfortably sweaty, now im gone in a car with nothing to hold onto. Now merging onto 95n, a feeling of ghostly temporary deafness/blindness in right side of face, like right now in a parallel universe i’m having a stroke’ (58-60)
- mom said something about watching ‘les miserables’ i said ‘in a half hour?’ she said ‘yeah but knowing you, it probably won’t be a half an hour.’ thought ‘perceptive, mom.’ she is right. no, i’m going to prove her wrong. i’m excluding a ‘totally fascinating, integral’ conversation about pizza, just to prove mom wrong. i will watch the movie on time. hope you’re happy, mom. you are depriving all four people still reading liveblog of hearing all of those hilarious things we said about pizza. (68-69)
- while the pizza was baking mom and me listed all the places we’ve ever lived. i wrote a list of the places. (70)
- sad about things. no more apartment. this is how it went. all that hope in the beginning, and this is how it went. on the phone i said, ‘our lease expires in like a week, then i’ll like, never talk to you again’ and we laughed a little, but i think that’s mostly true. made plans to hang out tomorrow…there is some movie…i don’t know. the last little dingle-berry hangings-on of a relationship. being nice all of a sudden to honor some thing. the hope you had, maybe. the other day he said ‘isn’t it weird that no matter what, we’re always going to remember each other, like, we are the people we are going to remember?’ it was funny. (71-72)
- printed 115-page liveblog manuscript. satisfying to hold. happy. happy little shithead deluxe edition idiot deadbeat dad megan boyle (have been referring to myself as a ‘deadbeat dad’ a lot lately). (72)
- 9:07pm: fedex was closed. yoga is done for the day. did not write cover letter. (72)
- want to pay someone to read this and diagnose me. nagging prescience that there is something i can’t see, an obvious problem outsiders can see clearly, that knowing would help change. feel that thing i’d feel on sundays, knowing school is tomorrow and i haven’t done my homework. disappointed in me. (73)
- called ex-boyfriend to say i wasn’t coming. left him a voicemail like ‘hey-a thissa the pizza guy, manny, you ordera errr uh pick up your phone.’ called again. he said he was sad to hear i wasn’t coming. i said something about not wanting to think about what to bring. he reminded me most of my stuff is there. i said ‘if i come can we go to the library tomorrow morn—er, afternoon?’ he said yes and that he had written 4500 words today and felt good. i said ‘i’ve been doing that too, it feels good.’ he said something about being focused on words like… ‘high’ but he didn’t say ‘high’… but then that he had gone, alone, to 3G—a bar we joke about because of its presentation as ‘extreme hot spot,’ located on the corner of 3rd st. and girard st., that when i first saw over a year ago, made me think ‘we’ll be living in the neighborhood where ‘things happen,’ this is the ‘happening’ neighborhood.’ we’ve never gone inside. tonight when he left, a group of people asked him to take a picture with them, and were like ‘why are you going so soon?’ he seemed drunk talking to me in the first conversation leaving wegman’s and drunk in the conversation just before midnight. but. seems too complicated to talk about this, the dynamic between us, my wants for going, my ‘knowing better’ but not really, how… you know a person over time… there is sadness… you cause sadness and disappointment in each other but you don’t stop, or like, you almost stop, you’re basically completely stopped until your lease expires. and then you know you won’t know them anymore. you know you will forget most of it. but they’ve been the most consistent thing in your progressively insignificant life for 18 months. you’ve done and said everything mean and bad you can say to each other but it’s also never been hard to laugh. yeah i’ve laughed the most in this one. relationship. but also felt the least similar to… the person… a fatal dissimilarity we’re both aware of… goddamnit. (74-75)
- running on a little treadmill inside my heart, wearing his light blue gloves, beaming and saluting me. mom and the gas man. (392)
- vanilla-scented girl i ignored due to her 'extreme seeming to look at me' (410)
- 'quietly enduring'/'patiently restraining' (413)
- exuding anxiety during lower-stakes things like saying 'hi' (413)
- not enough time to go to ikea to look at tables. which is good. i want a free ass craigslist table. mama just love smelling that ikea smell fuck you i like smelling it and lookin in all them fake ass rooms they made look all nice (415)
- heavy traffic. that is okay. i'd rather be in traffic than anywhere else. want to re-read 'slapstick.' (419)
- want to keep partying with mom (445)
- giant lufthansa airplane flew over me. so huge and loud. it's going to jfk. jealous of everyone on it. (451)
- a tall old asian man wearing an adidas track suit smoking passed on my right. would rather hang out with him than anyone. (451)
- at some point it was directly or indirectly addressed that i wouldn't be going to the navy (453)
- tried on adam's and lauren's clothes they put in 'donation bags,' felt carefree (453)
- he said things i didn't understand but i didn't know how to ask him to clarify (457)
- have been typing zachary, feels like 'bankruptcy.' filing for emotional bankruptcy. (459)
- pile of dirt make a wish (463)
- MAY 25, 2013 : plan of action: just be absent today (466)
- what is the thing i want? (469)
- she had soft warm small hands (475)
- she asked 'as you the most depressed you've ever felt' and i said 'yeah' and laughed (480)
- heard my voice sounding 'far away' (502)
- i know what 'soberly waiting for the time to pass' feels like. i know what everything feels like. pictured myself in a transparent box at the coney island freak show behind a belted gate in front of which is a plaque that says 'UNABLE TO BE SURPRISED BY ANYTHING.' (503)
- meekly thought 'no one from mexico is reading anymore,' looking at statcounter. meekly. it's always 'meekly' these days. big bad boyle and the no-good meeklies. felt a little better writing this. looking at the lack of africa and asia. i am failing africa and asia. there used to be someone from alaska, i am failing them now too. (504)
- ...worried about worrying, next level worrying (504)
- HUMORLESS ASS DAY (517)
- will it help to call mom? (520)
- overwhelming debts. i'm the one who decides the feeling is 'overwhelming' but knowing that doesn't change anything or comfort me (522)
- liveblog has made me aware of how long it takes me to leave a parked or driving car (522)
- tao wrote 'live blog' in my copy of 'taipei,' i didn't see until now (523)
- looked at pictures of courtney love and thought about her life to the extent that i could envision this period of time as a memory in the future (525)
- this was fun. this deteriorated. (528)
- at some point i said 'someone should name their dog 'june fifth, two-thousand-three' (535)
- writing about all of this feels sad. i don't know why. shouldn't 'not knowing why you feel something' cancel out the feeling...like...you do a geometry proof and it results with 'there is no way to solve this' so you move on? (536)
- she cried about the part where i'm in the fourth grade, putting glitter on my eyes and wearing the purple t-shirt every day so aliens would see me and come take me away. she said 'i felt that too, as a kid. i didn't know that's why you did it.' i said 'he got it wrong, it was seventh grade, and only on fridays. do you remember herman? my herman necklace (ball and chain necklace with a glow in the dark alien charm on it)?' she said 'oh yeah. oh, herman.' (540)
- like liveblog is my version of a living in sims-like video game. holding my phone like i'd hold my DS. where the hell is my DS. it was a DS lite. it was pink. what happened... (549)
- thought 'it's summertime baby and i'm your snack daddy' in austin powers' voice (550)
- she had gold lipstick and a jamaican accent. felt like she was my fairy godmother (550)
- sang along to nico in the car (551)
- brain hiccups (552)
- the pros and cons of going outside (552)
mar 29 2023 ∞
aug 29 2023 +
aug 29 2023 +