Diaries02.cda

The diaries throughout my adolescence

A spouse portal.mp3

I started writing diaries at 14. I still keep diaries at the age of 31. This was a place I used to write in great detail about my experiences with crushes. If Carl Jung were alive and talking to me, he'd comment that this was a portal to talk to the animus/anima. In this era, I don't think the animus and anima are as separate as they were in the 19th/20th century. You are writing from yourself, to yourself in the future.

These diaries in the image above are diaries I kept from adolescence. These were bright, filled with text and images I drew from my experiences of interacting with my crushes. I wrote in bright gel pens, too. I stopped writing as much when I was studying at university. I started writing diaries again after 2018, and the diaries I keep now are plain leather-covered with black writing only. This is the process of life, and what life can do to one person. I even started writing 'Dear Animus' in the openings of each entry instead of 'Dear Diary', sometime after 2020, because I might as well be direct.

I don't think anyone knew I kept diaries, because I didn't tell anyone when I was studying in school. Back then, I hated writing because I associated writing with academic writing. The writing without the I. I remember a teacher reading out my prose in English class, and everyone laughed at my writing because it was bad. And then when I went to university, I was told I wrote awkwardly. I only wrote so bad, because it wasn't my voice.

Cultural lessons.mp3

Sometimes the target of infatuation isn't the person, but the cultural capital they embody. It regularly becomes gamified in group dynamics where economic and social capital are present. I don't think anything breeds it more than an authoritarian setting.

I noticed this in a lot of institutional settings, where people like to play cupid and ship people as a form of social bonding by the water cooler. This also happens with fictional characters, so no real or imagined people are safe from the cultural fetish. 

Post-infatuation.mp3

I don't get infatuations anymore. It feels dull but peaceful, not having that high of being attracted to the positive possibilities from unfulfilled potential - this lack. It means the characteristics I've projected onto an external person have been integrated into my own personality (this is why it's commonly said as a phase linked to youth, as the personality is still developing). In some ways, it's quite fulfilling - you're experiencing a moment with people the way they are, and not through your imaginary fantasy, and you don’t have to perform to them how you want them to perceive you as. It’s exhausting and the energy could be used better elsewhere. This dynamic is not romantic or sexual in nature, but as a companion - a familial love. This is why I secretly like the vibe at small funerals, because people can be themselves, share the moment of connected memories, and talk about the person they love, despite the unfortunate circumstance. I can't write the same about high-profile funerals, though, because these are mired with being watched, and I can't shake the knowledge of actions becoming strategic. This is why posting on social media, photos of funerals is distasteful, but posting a photo of a celebrity's funeral is socially approved of, celebrated even. I read a joke somewhere that wanting to be famous or well known is a type of self abuse, but it’s not hard to see why it could be genuine reflection. One of the reasons is that people tell those they are enamoured with what they want to hear, and not what they need to know. The person becomes institutionalised over time - like when parents mollycoddle their children - that’s how love can also be destructive.

I don't think being fulfilled is synonymous with finding a partner, even though culture likes to marry up that internal state with external markers. The key term is internal state, and not the performance of fulfilment. It's not something one can show to the public, because showing it to the public brings it into dispute over whether it is actually wholehearted. It's a bit like giving money to charity. Maybe the louder something is, the more it has something else to compensate for, but we have intuition to signal to us; sometimes it's just vibes and discernment. 

Hidden track.mp3

I write 'I think' and 'I don't think' a lot, because I feel that a specific nuance of confidence in personal opinions/truth is the root cause of a lot of problems in this century, especially when more than one personal opinions and truth can exist at the same plane. It’s possible that having the need to have only one truth recognised is a symbolic way of remaining on the top. I’m thinking about some of Freud’s far-fetched theories, and it’s possible he created some of his controversial theories as a way to dominate the field at the time, as a lot of people would be talking about it, putting Freud in the academic spotlight, even if it meant in a critical negative way. It’s the same way as what the rage baiters online are doing right now. The attention economy existed in some form before the internet, it just wasn’t directly linked to money. I don’t think the algorithm is evil, I think it’s just an external man-made invention of what we label as the evils within us and have disowned.