6/28/26 - 7/6/26: a million percent harebrained, hexed, and hopeless.

6/28/26

Now that I have my own banding wheel I feel like a real person. 

I admittedly have a fear of the future. One of the more manageable fears is in regards to where my art teacher goals will lead me. I'm also afraid that I'll be quite bad at it. I may be in the beginning. If I am, hopefully I get better and don't stay bad. It all feels relentlessly unknown and scary. But I suppose since everything is unknown there's nothing to be afraid of, right? That makes a whole lot of sense, right?

I got in another hour tonight at the studio. Throwing feels so damn good and so necessary. I wasn't fantastic at it tonight but it still felt phenomenal.

I'm obsessing over the idea of throwing one hundred cups right now. One every day until I hit one hundred. Then bowls, etc. It's a calming idea. Obsessive artistic focus like this is part of the way I cope when my anxiety levels are vigorously augmented. I also tend to start counting how many blueberries I put in the bowl or how many pieces of zucchini I put in the steamer basket. (All my obsessive counting examples are kitchen related since I basically live there at the moment). 

I really want to get some throwing in this week before immunotherapy starts for my mom.  I'm very scared all the time these days, and I wish I found love before all this started so I have some kind of support through all this that feels solid and cozy. I'm not sure why I've been so unlucky in the love department. It makes me feel quite foolish, cursed, and doomed (plus all the other synonyms for foolish, cursed, and doomed). Just a million percent harebrained, hexed, and hopeless. 

When I was on the phone with my brother today we came up with the idea of baklava balaclavas. As in, balaclavas with delicious baklava printed all over them. 

I don't feel like a strong person right now. I'm sturdy in moments I need to be, but essentially I feel like a super soft, breakable, foolish being. Crying in the car has become a thing now. Crying while driving is a skill. 

6/29/26

I have a note in my phone that just says "tahini!". 

6/30/26

I had a spooky dream last night. I was in this big house with some random people I've known throughout my life. It had multiple stories and we all had to do elaborate tasks on every floor. And each room felt massively haunted. The last room I was in before I woke up had a camera on the table and a piece of paper with instructions I didn't get to read because I woke up. 

I've been thinking a lot about my thirties and how unexpected they've been in terms of sheer tumult, and how utterly old and decrepit I feel.

I ruminate on the ways and reasons I've not pursued my art as a career with any amount of real perseverance. The main chunk of time that took me away from my art almost entirely was when I fell in love for seven years. And that lasted until I was thirty-one. It was the most unhealthy relationship and in that case love did feel like a prison. Up to that point I had never had to leave someone I loved before and it was the most difficult thing I had to do.

Maybe in terms of my art career I'm my own worst enemy. I see all these people around me, some of whom I went to art school with, and they are thriving in their art careers; and they're also in these seemingly loving, long-term relationships with a lover they're really in sync with. And I've been in a bad place in my head comparing myself to all these people. I feel like I'm just getting started. Which feels insane. My head yells at me: "It's too late for you! Give up!". My head can be pretty dramatic. It's draining. My head is generally not a chill dude. 

So, back to my own biased review of my thirties so far: no family, or house, or ragingly successful career. Instead, just a heart-wrenching breakup, COVID, and the all-encompassing cancer. My thirties feels ill-fated, laden with so much messiness and fear to sift through. It feels like pure chaos.

I miraculously found clay in the chaos of it all, which has been life changing. I thought I found someone special out of nowhere, too, but then that got messy. I still remember feeling the possibility of us. A distinctly unique, burgeoning feeling. The hope they instilled in me was beautifully electrifying. Up until it hurt and I couldn't see them anymore and they stopped speaking to me. I'm still sad about it. It's a gaping sort of feeling. 

I was thirty-two when my mom got diagnosed with the rare form of cancer she still has. I'm now thirty-five. Cancer is a thief. It wants to steal your life and make it small until it's nothing and you're nothing. It steals your personality and joy and hope. It turns you into a shell of a person. It tortures extensively before it kills you. Tries to kill you. 

7/1/26

It's the first of the month so don't forget to say "rabbit rabbit" for good luck. 

Free things I stumbled upon recently that I really appreciate:

1. A whole new bag of recycled clay.

2. A round, 10 pound metal weight that I've been using in my exercises.

The new immunotherapy for my mom started today. I am living inside hope right now. Muscular hope. 

Favorite parts of today:

1. Sitting outside in the sun with mom, our heads tilted back, eyes fallen closed. It felt good to sun-bathe with her. 

2. Making turkey burgers. Forming the patties was satisfying and felt clay-like in nature. Raw meat is much more moist and slippery than clay, though, but not as wet as slip. That would be gross. 

3. Seeing my friend at the clay studio who I haven't seen in a while and receiving the most incredible clay creature from them. They are the coolest. I'm going to attempt to paint a portrait of Divine for them since they didn't get to visit their grave in Maryland like they wanted to.

I really love friends. I miss my friend from college that moved away. I remember how sad I was when she moved.

7/2/2026

The Blob, starring Steve McQueen, could also be called Attack of the Killer Jell-O. 

The Fog could be called The Original Widow's Bay.

They should make a crossover of The Blob and The Fog and call it The Blobby Fog.

 

7/3/26

4:09 A.M.: I have so many unsettling feelings swirling. He keeps popping into my head. It's been almost six months now with no let up: he swirls around in my brain like perpetual laundry in the washer. I've never been prevented from seeing someone who brings such an ineffable spark to my life. It feels tortuously anti-joyous. I hate it.

The immunotherapy is good so far. No ill effects.

7/4/26

I sometimes don't know why I try to have a life outside of my mom's cancer. It's not gone yet. And it's like I'm pretending it's gone when I go and try to have a life outside of it. The cancer just laughs in my face. I look at every single person and I'm jealous. Life looms large around me and it seems nice for people. I'm so tired and I just feel extra trapped sometimes. And I have too much time to think of all the ways I've fucked up my life up until this point. I'm too much time in my head because so much is off the table now that gets me out of my head, like swimming, for example. We're back to isolation times. Or close to it, anyway. It's looming. The immunotherapy just started and it usually has intense side effects for her. I can't believe this is happening. I don't want it to be happening.

The fireworks feel grating to me this year.

One of my favorite Fourth of July's was a massive hike I went on with my family years ago. It was this big mountain in New Hampshire and I got massively bit by bugs. It was pitch-black by the time we were coming down the mountain and we could hear the fireworks in the distance. 

7/6/26

I burned my fingers tonight. I'm calling it the green bean debacle. The raging hot stinging sensation across my knuckles right now feels as if I've dipped my fingers in Mount Doom. The fires of hell are tingling across my fingers. 

The fantasies I have about my life are important. They're things I want in my life and picturing them already in existence is helpful. Tonight I'm imagining myself alone, making art in my studio with a documentary on in the background about the life-cycle of trees; about libraries, surly serial killers, or gibbons. My cats Gothmog and Mr. Fishsticks are nearby in cozy cat-beds. A friend who's creatively stuck calls and wants to go for a walk. I need a break anyway, and the evening calls for a walk to clear the head. This fantasy has a few important ingredients that never leave my mind: an art-infested life filled with friends and cats. There are a few important things missing from this particular fantasy, but this is what my mind supplies me for tonight. I like it. It beats imagining the worst. 

The best baked good item I made recently (as in yesterday) are blueberry corn muffins. And the best movie I've seen recently is Bugonia. 

I was thinking recently about the ways people leave someone's life. Everyone's style is so different. Some people don't talk to you about it much and unilaterally decide. Some appease and act like you're still going to go on that hike but then they never make any actual plans and just hope they can disappear without ever overtly rejecting you. Some don't explain or talk to you at all and just go for the full-on ghosting. Sometimes they date you and reject you for someone else and then act like they still want to be friends. Whatever someone's style I think I'm too delicate for all of it. I'm not ever prepared, even when it's those I share no real bond with. When it happens with someone I truly care for, that's a whole other story. I don't know how to explain that kind of hurt. It hurts so much and stays so long in my body that it starts to feel like a haunting.