iPhone Sync IV

 I'm back bitches. This blog is like my diary, it never ends because I decide that the not-writing periods are just that: in-between, not an end. I can always take it back up. Watch me.

Like last time, there'd be too many photos for a log that would date back to just after the last iPhone Sync, so I'm starting from the end of summertime: summer would be, is always, too much.

Starting off with this banger from Constructing a Nervous System by Margot Jefferson. The book's all about the big influences of her life, the neurons of cultural influence that construct her nervous system. I particularly love this bit, where she talks about (black) male musician personas. While I can't relate to the black part, I know EXACTLY what she means here. My holy trinity: Yung Lean, Lil Peep, Matty Healy, are such carefully-constructed personas and yet so much of their air includes the effortlessness of masculinity that I've talked about before here. The paradox that underlies their legendary status, I believe. Like Jefferson, half of my admiration of them is wanting to be them, to have that same "aura of presentational license." That paradox evident in one slight-oxymoron: presentational license.

This is a big part of my saint aquilia thing.

Excuse the blurriness. Lizzie learnt that Hawksmoor does ten pound off steak and chips on train strike days, so we chose a day that was a rail strike but not a tube strike and enjoyed our ten-pound-discounted steaks.

Freshly-picked from a walk through [Redacted] Meadow. I planned to turn the rosehips into rose hip oil, but never got round to it, of course. Apples were delicious, though. I ate one, giving little pieces to Ciaran and Brian playing video games in the living room to try, and gave one each to Lizzie and Emmeline as we were sitting at Cafe Kick that evening.

Went to Liverpool with Lizzie to attend the PHLEGM art exhibition she was in. Her piece, called EAUK, was brilliant: a power-point presentation about the lives of her friends from the EA UK Sims forum from like 2011, and whom she hasn't spoken to since then. 

We went to a day rave and it pissed down all the way there and during and then I threw up from too much ketamine. I had fun, though, I think? Always hard to tell at raves.

A particularly vulnerable moment.

Carli and Jake as we were on our way to Dalston Superstore on pride night. Predictably, though, the queue was way too long, so we went to the Jago instead and it was a lot of fun:

Jake was late meeting us out because in true pride fashion he was busy fucking his tik-tok-famous ex, lol. I actually don't know Jake that well. I'd met him twice before. The second time I met him, ie the time after I'd met him once, he walked past the window of the restaurant I was working in. I waved at him and gesticulated for him to come in so we could chat, and when he came in it was clear he did not remember me. So this meeting, our third meeting, was an improvement.

Lizzie and I FaceTiming Claire in Nassau as we attended the 1975 concert in Finsbury park. A great day.

The best Ishmael opening line since Moby Dick.

The commute home from work from my new job, my first office job. Which I've since quit, lol. I don't want to talk about it.

When you haven't got a stapler to hold the pages of your essay together with.

I wonder all the time about what happened here.

My first time ever wfh!!

I want all my writing to be koans.

Miles and Joel arm wrestling. I don't remember who won, but I remember it was a long and hard battle.

One of the several strange things mum messaged me from the hospital. I look at this photo and shudder.

Emmeline's friendsgiving, taken on my new-old digicam.

Back home to Aus for two weeks in December, back to Kiko - she seems to have gotten cuter in the year since I'd been home and we really like each other now.

Spotten in Changi Airport - SO Singaporean.

I went to Joel's family home in Dublin for Christmas, where we went for a dip in the ocean on Christmas Day. I was terrified in anticipation, but it was actually lovely. That's in reference to both sides of the comma in the first sentence.

The next day, Stephen's Day as the Irish call it, Joel and the rest of the gang and I went for a dip, again, in the sea - at night this time. In reward, we went to a pub where we played heads up with rollie skins. I also ate my first spice bag, though apparently there's some spice bag vs spice box vernacular tension.

A surprise book delivery from my father. I've read Longitude now, but not yet The Island of the Day Before. I love Umberto Eco's short-form work, but I've never read a novel of his, so I'm excited.

One of my New Years' resolutions is to learn to roll: first cigs, then joints. This was my first attempt at a cigarette as we were getting ready to go to the pub on NYE. I'll keep you posted on my progress but I think it's fair to say there's nowhere to go but up from here.

Phoebe gets it. So does Zadie Smith. There's much to learn from memorisation.

Our labour constituent is called SEAN LAWLESS. A name worthy of an anarchist superhero.

Lizzie's fucked her pointer and third fingers on her dominant hand - I'll leave her to tell that story - so she has to smoke with her fourth and pinky fingers. I think it could catch on!

Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.