The first time I had ever seen the tango danced was in a club in Berlin, where I walked into and it seemed like it was a shot out of a movie, everybody dressed up dancing like they are a professional. that scene made a very big impression on me and I kept an eye out for an opportunity to dance it.

this opportunity happened yesterday

This guy invited me, thought I said I knew how, then when I said I did not abandoned me to go dance with all the other people he already knew and who knew how to tango

😢

in his defense he did take me to the main teacher and asked what we should do, and she said to just sign up for the 6 week bootcamp they do

i am in town for 3 days

And so i did what any sensible person would do and i sat and observed trying to figure out the basic step

I could not figure it out

there was this little slide the ladies were doing sometimes, and there were these little spins that the ladies did, but I could not figure out the basic count, the way that exists for the samba, the salsa, and the waltz.

I kept looking at people for a while though

This guy sat next to me and was chatting me up

I said so whats the deal with them not being able to teach me to do literally anything, is tango not teachable?

He said yeah you really just gotta do that bootcamp

I said well is there a basic step

He said no there is not. there is a set of parameters and then you improvise a lot within them

hmmm

alright

this is starting to be promising.

I ask what is your field of study and he said chemistry

At this point I am like alright

Promising

chemistry people often are not intimidated by challenges, or have special ways of pushing through them. they are used to hard psets and staying up late

chemistry people are also potentially good about explaining clear parameters

I say okay chemistry boy

Are you going to attempt to teach me the tango or give up.

You are saying there is a lot of improv involved

And so can we not improv?

He says it is complicated

I say I am not afraid

So we go and he does some stuff

And is like wow you are a very fast learner

And I am like ...

I have at least 6 years on you and have also danced the salsa, the waltz, and the samba in the past. I am not completely confused

😂

And so he dances with me for a long time and I conclude the tango is my favorite of the dances I have done

🔥👏🔥

It is process oriented

There are principles and constraints you improvise inside of

And the man really does have to lead hard and the woman does have to follow very very hard

Then I see the Austrian woman the man who abandoned me left me for to dance with

And get her number

🔥

the man then hits me up an hour later and then 2 hours after than and then 2 hours after that

Which i do not notice because i am drunk with my friend at an indoor smoking shop, trying to write my sonnet for sonnet movie club

Anyway now I think we all should learn to tango

❤️

Just look at this magnificence. Can you imagine hiring an artist to make this statue on the left, going “nah too erotic, your older brother will know what’s up” and then the older brother makes this statue on the right.

The statues are apparently in St. Paul's Cathedral in Liège, Belgium, and so I guess I am going to Belgium.

If you want to looksmaxx for looking like a Greek God specifically, here are some tips.

Use Olive Oil

You do not need to take an entire bath in olive oil. You can get the spray-on-skillet olive oils, and just keep them around for when you feel like it.

You know that feeling when you are taking too many showers, perhaps because it is summer and you are working out and also swimming? And then you are feeling too dry? You can spray yourself with olive oil a little bit, and then not be that dry. There, done.

It is good for your skin, your hair, and your nails. It can be a little heavy, but that’s why you are just spraying some on versus lathering it on yourself.

Use Elastic Bands

Use wide elastic bands and stretch your upper back. Go on youtube and find some videos. Be inspired. The point is not to strength train with the bands. The point is to stretch parts of your back you normally would not think to stretch, and this gets your back used to being in the right position when you are just going about your day, having awesome Greek God posture, or when you are working out, so that the right parts are activated.

I learned this from a guy in the navy, and then again at my climbing gym, so it’s probably good.

Look in the mirror or on your phone and fawn over yourself

There is no reason not to fawn over yourself. Even if you hate yourself there is probably part of yourself that you like. Such as your sexy big toe. Or how your arm looks in that specific lighting with that one lamp.

Do not go “oh well that just looks good under that one lamp specifically.” Do not insult the Glory of God. If you notice perfection upon you, then enjoy it.

Look at old photos of yourself that you liked and fawn over those too.

Aristotle’s ideas of virtue involved becoming more of yourself, and more of who you want to become, through practice of being that. And so by looking at yourself looking like how you want to look, you internalize the image a little more, and actually become that more.

Literally Go to Museums and Pose Like the Statues

Feel the essence. Do not fear embarrassment. If you want to look legit, bring a sketchbook and some pencils, so that it looks like you are a true artist doing the subject its due service. There are all kinds of classes for all age ranges that mandate going to museums and doing weird things. Just have your sketchbook and some story, and you’ll be fine.

“What—” he said, playing his video game.

Oh. Uh.

She was making guacamole, and this was the first thing she’s said in 20 minutes. He remembered the last book he read, Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. Structural integrity resides both in how materials are assembled, and in the internal strength of the materials. Structures can break down at either point — either due to an internal material weakness, or due to a weakness in the assembly.

Depending on how he answered, his relationship could fall apart right at this moment.

“…Yes. We are having sex…right now.”

Kayla perks up. He must have answered correctly. Her perky breasts in her white crop top excite more aggressively also.

“Mmm,” she says. “Yeah, uh, I love that! So we are edging so hard that actually right now, by not touching me, you are touching me?”

Kamchum was playing Donkey Kong Bananza. He had been playing Donkey Kong Bananza for the past three weeks. He had not touched his girlfriend in this time. He runs a quick enneagram 5 analysis and concludes that his ENFP girlfriend is trying to make the best of her situation. This is very sweet of her, he decides, even though it is distracting him. He wonders what he can say to reward the sweetness.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla moans. She puts down her avocado knife and pulls down the v-neck on her white croptop even lower. “And so when you haven’t touched me for three weeks, that was all leading up to this moment.”

He wonders about Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and the limits of language.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla lifts up her skirt, enwetteningly. “I LOVE intentionality,” she says all ENFP-wangled. “I love how strategic and thoughtful you always are.”

Kamchum remembers a scene he has seen in an episode of Rick and Morty, which parodies Hellraiser. “Pain is pleasure” he recalls vaguely.

“Is this pain causing you pleasure?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says. “God, yes. Is it causing you pleasure?”

Kamchum dies on the third Donkey King Kong world boss. He stares at the screen. He has been working on this section for eleven days. A lesser man would have thrown the controller. He does not throw the controller. He is, structurally speaking, a very load-bearing man.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla makes a sound that is difficult to transcribe. She pulls her skirt back down because she needs both hands to mash the avocado. You cannot abandon guacamole. This is something they both understand about each other, in the way that only people who have shared a refrigerator for two years can.

“I feel so close to you right now,” she says. “Closer than even if we were touching.”

“I feel close to you too,” Kamchum says, and means it, which is the strangest part.

He respawns. She squeezes some limes, her fingers wet. Outside, the world is doing its usual thing. Inside, by no measurable standard, they are having the sex of their lives.

maybe not. whatever. I am jealous of them and what they have.

It’s like memorizing poetry, a little bit, to know movies and have a depth of feeling attached to them, and to be able to pull them up from memory and to give people recommendations based on mood, or to feel the mood on a given day and know what to put on, like your friend in Wyoming with that record player who sits and knows exactly which record to play and how to switch them for six hours straight. Oh you don’t have that friend?

This is why I feel like I have enough to die happy. Thanks Salton <3

So I made a list of movies for a movie club the other day, and then recursed on it for a bit, and that’s the most like a cinephile I’d ever felt in my life, until afterwards, when I realized that for every movie I wrote down that we would be watching, I would really like to watch an additional movie that I might like as much as the one I wrote down, or one that is somehow thematically or artistically related.

This using the intensity of positive feelings to then find other things you love that generate positive feelings I think is a core spirit of the thing.

An easy way to do this is to just watch another movie by the same director. It is rare for a director to make only one movie.

Then you will realize there are a few directors you like a whole lot, and you want to learn about more directors. Then you just go and…read about movies. With the internet and AI this is insane because you can get insanely tailored recommendations. Like if I put in our first movie The Cow (1969) I get

The Metamorphosis (2002): Directed by Valery Fokin
The Tenant (1976): Directed by Roman Polanski

And these sounds like really good interesting movies I should really want to watch if I am interested in continuing looking at themes of metamorphosis. Even though I am confused about how I’m supposed to feel about watching Polanski, these are good for recommendations I got in 3 seconds.

It seems like the first step is actually to just watch a bunch of movies and to have some core group of ones you really like, and if you are not watching movies that you actually really really like, unambiguously, that you would be more than happy to rewatch, try to get recommendations from somebody who seems like they know what they are talking about, or try to go down a rabbit hole.

I was not a rabbit hole person. Somebody with good taste sat with me and watched a lot of really good movies. And some of those movies I did not understand. Some of them I thought I did understand, and then I rewatched them, and then it turned out I did not actually understand it the first time.

Some movies I thought I would be really into, and then was not into, like The Machinist.

But anyway…

So you have your core movies that make you happy and then you find other movies that make you happy.

Cinephile is just a lover of movies.

For all you beautiful ladies and gents who are looksmaxxing, here are some words of wisdom you might not have ever heard of before.

On Hair

First of all — Your hair has feelings. It reacts to how you interact with it, how you feel about it. If you love it, it’ll love you back. Your hair is dead, but where it attaches to your scalp is alive. Consider it like tree bark. The outside of tree bark is completely dead, but then as you go more inward, there is a mixture of dead cells and alive cells, and then fully alive cells.

Even though your hair is dead, it is close enough to the alive stuff that how the alive stuff is interacted with matters.

Secondly — get it out of your head that “hair” is the category that you are working with. There’s curly hair, fine hair, asian hair, Latina hair, stringy hair, sad hair, tuberculosis hair — if you can start thinking of your hair with even one adjective, you will be better off.

Why? Because then things like “hair care” and “getting a haircut” start taking on way more specific meaning.

consider this: a hairdresser has to be prepared for any person, of any age, hair type, or ethnicity, to come in during the day and ask to have their hair cut, and they have to service them and whatever style they are asking for. It is a hard profession to do very well.

Compare this to something like getting a wax done — it is basically the same for each person, every time. In fact the less “artistry” you do and the more consistent you are at just following the instructions for the setup, the less painful it will be for the client.

You have some hair specialists who have hair specialties. There are hair artists who do asian hair, who do curly hair, who do bangs, who do men’s hair…

And so it helps you to understand “what kind of hair you have” and “what -kind of person knows what to do with it.”

I used to follow the advice of getting recommendations from my friends about where to go for a haircut. It took me way too long — but not too long — to ask the question, “my female friends I am asking are Chinese — does this matter?” When I started being pickier about my hair, I was paying more attention and yeah — it mattered - a lot. Asian hairdressers would not actually know how to handle my hair. They use a lot of techniques for straight, thick hair, that would absolutely not work on my wavy, finer hair.

It took me some time to go from that, to realizing that the people who understand my hair are people who do curly hair — and especially people who have specialized in cutting curly hair dry. Now, I mentioned that my hair is wavy, not curly. Actually when it is shorter, it is basically straight. This is what I mean. “What kind of hair I have” is not completely obvious. If I want my hair to be long and wavy and actually look good, I need to go to somebody who specializes in curly hair. This is not completely obvious. This took a bunch of thinking, and a bunch of experiences actually paying a lot, to people who really did not know what they were doing with the bangs-like parts in front.

It can also help to go to somebody who has your same hair type. This way they know what the pain points would be from personal experience. This is not necessary if the person actually has studied a specific hair type for 10 years, and themselves do not have this hair type.

and this is why going through this process is better than just looking at reviews — you have no idea what these people who give the reviews, what their pain points are, unless you read something like “my wispy blonde hair is really hard usually and this person nailed it.” Then if you have wispy blonde hair you might want to check out that person.

When you have done the thinking and have thought about what kind of person might be able to handle you, then telling them to do whatever they you want to do with, or telling them to tell you what they would want to do if they had full artistry, or telling them to do whatever they want within a range of ethoses, can be a pretty good idea.

Other thoughts….

products.

If you travel, the products stop working. actually though, if I fly from the east coast to the west coast, my products like, do not work as well.

The air is different. the water is different. The way my hair looks just ends up being different in hard-to-explain ways.

I like to have some expensive products that work extremely well that are my signature me products that I order online, and also have some CVS brands that I consider reliable and can just go to the store and get it wherever I am.

But often when I travel, the expensive stuff doesn’t work as well at the new location.

I had found Garnier Fructis to be too intense. Too powerful, too drying. Maybe it works well for some people, but that and Herbal Essences I stay away from, even though both brands smell very exciting.

I like Pantene, OGX usually. Redken, Tresemme. I do just buy ones that look cool in the flavor I like and for the hair type I have. Buying random shampoo for curly hair tends to work pretty ok for me. And then I have an expensive conditioner I like that I order online, but it sometimes randomly doesn’t work as well, and at those times I don’t like using it all up, and want to try using a bunch of something cheap instead.

Other thoughts…

the vitamins that are advertised as “hair skin and nails” do make your hair skin and nails better — or at least the ones I’d tried. Collagen.

Scalp massages are good. Do that for yourself

Cold water is good.

I found it very interesting to read people’s detailed accounts of their experience. I thought I would write a note about what it is like to live without food noise as part of that conversation.

I wake up in the morning. On a completely normal day, I am not hungry at all, and not thinking about food. If there is a free hotel breakfast, or somebody is making breakfast, I would have some, but I would try to go on a walk outside first if it is possible, because otherwise eating right after waking up usually feels pretty bad to me, digestively speaking. I can generally get myself to eat 30 minutes after waking up if I have to. If I am hungover, or did not eat much the day before, or something unusual is happening I might be starving. But generally, I am either not thinking about food at all, or I am completely starving and need food basically immediately (probably needed food during sleep for some process and would wake up pretty messed up).

I have acquired a taste for very good black coffee, so I’ll have some of that and then do some kind of fasted workout. Then I’ll come back and have a protein shake. I am lucky because I actually very much enjoy the taste of protein powder, and there are a few premade shakes I really really like, and like as food rather than as protein shakes.

I really like bananas, and so if I have them, I’ll eat one of those. Then I will go do something else and not think about food for a while.

After a few hours I will realize I am hungry and that I should eat lunch. I will be pretty ambivalent about the lunch. A caesar salad would be fine. So would steak and broccoli. So would any sandwich. Often I have leftover pizza. I often eat leftovers for lunch, because that is fast. I try to make it a bit festive and not eat it too fast. Usually I would make a cool tea, or have a cool drink to pair with the leftover lunch. I would try to have some vegetables with whatever the leftovers are. I try to make sure I eat the lunch, because it would be pointless to fast in between breakfast and dinner too much, versus just having a good lunch, and then a light and earlier dinner, and then fast longer at night. But I can easily prolong eating lunch or forget about it for a long time, until I notice my mood is not great and I am having too many weird thoughts. Then I realize I should probably eat.

After lunch, I do not think about food, because I am full. Dinner comes and I’ve always lived with people so either I cook or we cook together or people order food or I decorate more leftovers. It is very rare that I would crave sugar, though sometimes I do crave ice cream. If I drink a protein shake, I generally don’t need the ice cream though, and if I eat ice cream, I can be very happy with less than a scoop.

If somebody brings in a decadent desert, I will have some and not feel guilty about it, because it is special, but too much sugar at night messes with sleep, and so I will be wary of that.

Then, I do not think about food. If I stay up past midnight, I will get hungry again, but the trick of drinking a lot of water or a lot of different calorie-free beverages works very well for me.

And so I go through my day mostly not thinking about food 90% of the time unless I am hungry. If a picture of a food I like appears on the TV, in a show or in an advertisement, I will think about that food though. I am extremely impressionable when it comes to visual food on TV. I also sometimes think about sushi, when I am hungry and want sushi. This happens once or twice a month. Usually what makes that feeling go away for a while is going and eating sushi.

Core for Movie Club: The “trickstery filmmaking” collection:

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

• The Cow, 1968, Dariush Mehrjui

• The Cell, 2000, Tarsem Singh

• Rashomon, 1950, Akira Kurosawa

• Santa Sangre, 1989, Alejandro Jodorowsky

• The Cyclist, 1987, Mohsen Makhmalbaf

• Mulholland Drive, 2001, David Lynch

• Videodrome, 1983, David Cronenberg

• Pig, 2021, Michael Sarnoski

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962, John Ford

The point of this would be to have a diversity of filmmakers, countries, and time periods, including both classics and cult-classics, showcasing what can be done with the craft of filmmaking both as filmmaking and as storytelling via filmmaking. Trickstery probably isn’t the right word — I’m talking about form in the sense of form versus plot in books, and form here in that the films are doing something interesting with time or perspective.

The Cow is a very famous Iranian film, from the golden age of modern Iranian cinema. So is The Cyclist. The Fall is basically a complete favorite for some people, and is known as Tarsem’s masterpiece. The Cell is a more “hollywood” film, but I really really like it for very specific reasons that I won’t say as that would spoil the movie a bit. Roshomon is a classic, and then Santa Sangre is a classic in certain circles, but most people have not seen it and is a movie I think everyone should see, but if you really hate horror it does count as horror and I have seen some people be disturbed by it, and one couple have a fight about it after one party found it disturbing, and one party found it deeply beautiful.

We could have a film club just watching the ten David Lynch feature films, but absent that, I think Mulholland Drive should be on this list.

And then Videodrome is fun and on theme and is also a cult classic.

I would say if I were suggesting movies for a film club for my first run, I would use this list. A lot of these do something about the question “what is a film” or “what can be done with filmmaking” that I consider cool.

Other movies I have not seen but want to check out are:

• Three Stories (1997)

• Seconds (1966)

• Performance (1970)

• The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
  

Additional: The “beautiful movies” collection:

• The Fountain, 2006, Darren Aronofsky

• Solaris, 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky

• The Holy Mountain, 1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

These are just stunningly beautiful. I would say these should be watched on the best setup you can get. These are just terrific big, grand, operatic movies. Solaris is very very famous. The Fountain a bit less so. Having a mix of “classic important movies” and other stuff seems important for a film club! The Fountain is the movie by Aronofsky one might consider the director of Requiem for a Dream to be capable of making, given the beauty of that film, and Aronofsky really delivers here. If one liked Requiem for a Dream, went to see Pi, and then was disappointed because it was “smaller” then expected, The Fountain is the really really big masterpiece.

Holy Mountain is something you might have seen if you’re into Jodorowsky, but then otherwise might not have heard of, and it’s excellent.

There will be many more beautiful movies on this list. I like beautiful movies. But these ones you can tell that the beauty was in large part “the point.”

Additional: The “children are people too” collection:

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

• Where Is the Friend's House?, 1987, Abbas Kiarostami

• The Lure, 2015, Agnieszka Smoczyńska

• Let the Right One In, 2008, Tomas Alfredson

• Dogtooth, 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos

I have a soft spot for movies that feature children as complicated and interesting, with depth of emotion and as central characters. You would notice that four of these are not in English! I find that foreign films capture children better.

Additional: The “uncomfortable and sexy” collection:

• Secretary, 2002, Steven Shainberg

• The Duke of Burgundy, 2014, Peter Strickland

• Dogtooth, 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos

• In Fabric, 2018, Peter Strickland

• The Lure, 2015, Agnieszka Smoczyńska

• Wild at Heart, 1990, David Lynch

• Blue Velvet, 1986, David Lynch

• Santa Sangre, 1989, Alejandro Jodorowsky

If you feel like watching something pretty sexy but also with the potential that it may feel very uncomfortable I think that’s a category worth fleshing out.

Additional: The “masculinity and grief” collection:

• The Cow, 1968, Dariush Mehrjui

• The Straight Story, 1999, David Lynch

• Pig, 2021, Michael Sarnoski

Stories with central male figures, dealing with traditional masculinity subject matter.

Margarita Lovelace has died of —

Oh dear. We had a worksheet last time of four ways to die, and we discussed our favorite ones.

I do not know if every hospice organization has its members go through these exercises, and I just was not in the right premed circles in college to overhear these conversations.

But alright. Let’s go.

I wrote that of the four choices listed, I would prefer to have both arms and one leg amputated, and then die of old age. (The other options presented were dying painlessly in four months, after learning about it and learning there is nothing you can do, dying in 5 years from a debilitating cancer, or dying instantly, right now, from a heart attack).

(Everybody gave different answers, when discussing this question! The reasons were very personal, and also varied based on if dependents were in the picture, and life stage. It was deeply moving to hear everybody’s thoughts.)

I see that if I live to old age, what is likely to take me is heart disease or cancer. I imagine I would have some compounding illnesses, perhaps a strange cancer that they can’t really diagnose, and before figuring it out I would die of a respiratory disease because I kept socializing, or something like this.

Perhaps I would sort of faint and waste away, listening to audiobooks and watching movies. I would insist that somebody come in and turn off the motion blur setting that makes everything look like a soap opera.

I would also insist to be near a window, and for there to be plants around me. This way I can look at organic shapes and chill out.

Maybe I would make paintings until my dying breath, or keep memorizing and repeating poetry. Maybe I would get a heart attack playing tennis.

I am not sure what this meditation is supposed to accomplish — I hope I am doing it right.

The idea behind including this in the training is that people are much better at this job if they have grappled with their own mortality.

The second idea behind it (I bet) is that there isn’t actually that much they can do to prepare all the new volunteers in the three all-day sessions before shadowing and on-the-job training, apart from general explainers of the different staff, departments, and basic protocols, but still they would want to do something so that we bond and understand what we are getting ourselves into. And so preparing us emotionally in this way is probably the best way to use our time, rather than — I don’t know, oral quizzes on protocols.

But enough on the meta. Obviously I am distracting myself. I am supposed to be writing my obituary! They sent us a “fun” obituary to read as an example, and some of us will be reading ours out loud.

Ack.

The “fun one” included surviving people who loved them, pets. Communities they were involved in. Cause of death. What loved ones said about them.

What real ones have I read in my life? I’d read the ones of people I know who’d died. I’d read completely garbage pieces doing a hatchet job on people I care about. I would make a few clicks on Facebook and be checking someone out, only later realizing they had died, and I’d read that. Or a celebrity who I was checking out who I didn’t hear any news about for a while.

I have no idea what anybody would say about me because truth be told I don’t know who would be around to do any of the saying. I hope that my friends would say that I was a good friend. I hope they would say that I was ethical and inspiring in some way, and that I moved them, and helped them live the life they wanted to be living in some way. If I write this as if I died suddenly, tomorrow, that would also be a bit of a different activity — and really intense.

There would be a focus on immediate family as my main locus of identity. “Survived by” the other immediate family members. But there is so much life that this would fail to capture. So many other “Survive by” people who would be on that list.

They might know who they are, and might know who the others are, because they are in Signal group chats with each other.

And then ah! what would all my Signal chats say?

I am getting too emotional, thinking about it!

The other post I had in mind for today was “Bro I am Not Avoidant I have Negative Schizotypy” which would have required a lot more research explaining negative and positive schizotypy, and both feel equally risky to me!

So I took the Kinsey Scale Test the other day, because people around me were talking about it and then wrote a quick post after reading some Sartre, Bisexuals Should Be Existentialists.

The test gave me a 3. I am not sure how I feel about that, because I do not feel like I have enough context on how other people talk about their own position on that scale, and generally what the differences mean in reality, for this to mean too much for me.

Scales like that make sense if fleshed out in actual social context, and so I will attempt to describe some of mine, to see if it inspires comments from people sharing some of their own context!

• I think I would be happy to have something-like-a-wife, if I also have a husband. If I only have a husband, that would be ok. If I only have a wife, I would keep searching for a husband. If I have a husband and no wife, I still expect to have very close female friendships. If somebody wants to be my wife, and I want to be her wife, I don’t think I would wait to have a husband “first” in order to make the having a husband part of my identity “more real,” but I would tell her I’d still be on the lookout for a husband. Since most states don’t allow polygamy, this would be complicated, and so I do not expect anybody to want to be my wife under these conditions of future uncertainty! This is unlikely enough that I do not think about legal edge cases. I do not expect most men to let me have something-like-a-wife on these conditions either, though I see it as more likely.

• I often do not feel female competition as a default. If somebody is doing female competition dynamics with me, I will grok it and do some stuff probably, but I do not have an innate disposition for female competition.

• I do have much more of a radar for female friendship. If somebody wants to be friends with me, usually I keep a lookout for what shape might work for us. This can include a sexy shape. I do not turn women away for not wanting something sexy, and I also do not turn them away if they do.

• I tend to have an easier time liking women if they like me, and then I have an easier time even more if they have some degree of sexual disposition towards me.

• I am mostly demisexual, unless I do some specific things in which I am being more sexual because somebody I love is into it, or because it is part of a broader context or broader game and I am able to bring a lot of those positive feelings into my feelings about the sex. This means that it can be hard for me to want to have sex with anybody, really, versus doing aura-connection-stuff, and so my default is it do aura-connection stuff versus more overt flirting.

• I do not know what the “game to be involved with a lady” signals even are. It is possible I miss a lot of them entirely. Or it is possible that they are pretty overt and I do not miss them. I have no data that I trust from myself on this question.

• If I meet a couple, I usually do not do things like get close to the woman, so *that* I could get close to the man. I think I have noticed some women do this with me — where I am with a man they are interested in, and he is with me, and so they are talking to me. It is with too much eagerness often and too fast into a kind of depth, but it is also not sexual towards me. The mismatch in them going fast and deep and me not liking it would often later be revealed that they did have sexual feelings, but they were towards a man and I was the obstacle, and hence the weird feelings. I am not fully sure about this though. If there is a couple I usually get close to the woman to be close to the woman and get close to the man to be close to the man. Usually my interest is not based on gender but is based on how they react to me / if they like me / if they are assholes or not.

Anyway, I don’t know what this is for. I am curious about other people’s experiences, and so I will share!

obviously I can’t do my actual writing yet or I would be doing it. But I generally believe that doing something is better than doing nothing.

but all of that is the boring stuff

the real thing I care about is if I can’t think about the things I want to think about, then having larger pieces, put down here, might mean that I can do something with those pieces later.

if whatever I am thinking about that was a slurry of words I put into blog-post shapes, then the next round later I can look at multiple blog posts and “find” the blog posts I didn’t write because I could not conceptualize those blog posts because I could not see it in my mind.

I would like a better process for this. Some kind of fairly simple method for inter-blog-post mathematics that I can hang out with and think about, or if I am not sure what to write about, I can pick a few blog posts, run some process on them, and that produce something more complex and closer to whatever I envision my “real work” to be.

Maybe let’s think of an example.

The past few blog posts, including this one, were pretty math-y, but not really related to each other.

Actually the past 12 blog posts are all ones I care a fair deal about getting a “good” version of, but it feels pretty out of my current skillset to do that in a timely manner.

But that also doesn’t make sense to me as real. There are probably ways for me to think about those, and work on those.

Maybe I don’t want to edit old blog posts, because there are new blog posts to work on, every day!

But that doesn’t make sense to me either, because I can just make a new blog post that is a revision of an old blog post.

Anyway, I see my blog posts are building blocks for other blog posts, and also building blocks for their own best versions, and if I never get around for actually doing the good versions or writing the interblog-post-super-special-good blog posts, whatever I managed to do is still up on here.

that way I at least don’t feel this weird pressure in my head in which I am trying to do something that is way too hard for me, on some axis, without even making progress on figuring out the axis.

this blog post itself can be better, under my own complaints of my other blog posts. it is also unfinished.

it falls under the same rules and limitations as everything I am talking about here.

I can probably think more deeply about this “math between blog posts” I care about and this way of making my blog posts better that seems impossible

but my issue is conceptual, it’s not in the writing

it might be in the writing, the two can be coupled in unexpected ways

There are many magnesium supplements. A bunch of them are meh. Magnesium Oxide which is commonly found and pretty cheap actually isn’t the best one for absorption. You want something better, like Citrate, Glycinate, or a combination one of a bunch of different magnesiums.

A bunch of the supplements have a bunch of other vitamins in them too. These can be okay, but I would actually stay away from those. If you want a multivitamin, I would get a multivitamin. I would keep the magnesium pure due to how you would be taking it.

You want to take the magnesium in the morning, after you are done fasting and are eating or whatever, and you want to take it at night, sometime before bed.

The magnesium helps you not feel so weird in the morning. If you are having weird scrambled thoughts, it helps with that. And then at night, if you are having weird anxiety or intrusive thoughts, it helps with that. It also, being an electrolyte, helps you feel more “hydrated.”

Because you are taking it at night, having magnesium mixed with a bunch of B-vitamins for example would disrupt your sleep. You don’t want that. And because you are taking it in the morning, every morning, you don’t want it to have a bunch of other stuff either so that you just know what you are taking.

Now, why am I so magnesium-pilled?

Magnesium gets flushed out of your system in like 23 hours. It doesn’t even stay in you for a day. It’s an electrolyte, remember. It also does not get stored or made by you. If you didn’t eat enough magnesium that day, you just don’t have enough magnesium that day. You don’t have “past” magnesium that you can rely on.

This contrasts heavily with iron. Iron gets stored in a bunch of places in your body. If you are iron-deficient, you probably have been iron-deficient for a long time, and it will probably take you a while to become less iron-deficient.

Not so with magnesium! It is not stored anywhere. You cannot go inside your own fat or inside your own bones and crack open a chest of magnesium.

Given how many things magnesium is used for, I have a theory that random things just feeling wonky or weird can be due to lower magnesium at any given random moment even if your “general” magnesium levels appear completely fine on every blood test. If it is a hot day and your body needs a bunch of magnesium for some random homeostasis thing, guess what, now you have way less magnesium for other things that might need it.

Because it is in such heavy use and in such heavy use for so many different processes is why I am thinking, alright, not having enough can actually create a bottleneck somewhere.

To add - different things magnesium is used for

To add - study showing how much less distance soldiers can cover in 95 degree weather, versus 85, versus 75

Let’s suppose you check your blood pressure and then ask GPT and it says it’s quite high and you should probably go to an ER to see how serious it actually is.

You go, you hang out for four hours, they do an EEG on your chest, they take your blood, they put you on medication, maybe give you some Potassium after learning yours is low which affects heart health.

They do not think you are in imminent danger of a heart attack or stroke, and so they send you on your merry way to follow up with your primary care doctor (which lol you do not have).

You ask them their recommendations. Do you take this medicine for longer that they gave you? Do you take a different medicine? Do you keep taking potassium?

They say they don’t really know.

You mention that you take some uppers. You drink coffee every day and you smoke and you are on ADHD meds — all of which are known to increase heart rate and then, blood pressure.

You ask for guidance around which intervention to do.

They say they are not sure. Yes — the coffee and the smoking and the ADHD meds are not helping the blood pressure situation — but ostensibly you are smoking because you are addicted, ostensibly you are on the ADHD meds for a reason, and coffee is common enough that if you really like it or need it for work or addicted to it also then singling it out as the culprit also would not make sense if you can cut out one of the other ones —

and so they say to just keep measuring your blood pressure and check with your primary care doctor.

But so here’s the thing — ask dynamical systems questions, get dynamical systems answers.

Sometimes there will be a clear-seeming answer inside of the dynamical systems answer — YES this specific thing is the highest leverage point — this is the thing you should edit.

If you are getting a lot of UTIs for example, just take cranberry. Just do it. Any form. Real cranberries, cranberry juice, cranberry powder, cranberry gummies. It does not matter. Just do it. Yes you can try things like showering more or whatever but by far the biggest thing is just eat some cranberry. It doesn’t have to even be every day. It can just be multiple times a week at literally random times. If you go to the doctor they will mention the cranberry thing.

The cranberry is a leverage point in the confusing dynamical system around whatever causes UTIs. Oh you go to parties a lot. Oh you travel a lot. Oh you don’t drink enough water. Yeah maybe but literally if you do something cranberry related, the difference between your cranberry life versus your not cranberry life will be night and day.

Now, if somebody came to me with a UTI dynamical system question, I would have a cranberry answer.

Something like this is what many people end up hoping for, because it is awesome. It is really awesome when this happens.

“Ah yes you have this really complicated problem but there is this very clear thing that doesn’t unbalance the whole system and just makes things better.”

Usually though when somebody has a dynamical systems question, if they go to a smart person about it, the smart person will ask about the components of the dynamical system, with variable degrees of thoroughness, patience, and time invested. Then they might find a leverage point, or a way to escape the traps in the system, or an answer like “if you increase this thing this other thing will decrease and everything will be way more balanced.” More likely than not though they will parrot back elements of the system that are confusing.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to be helpful, or will not be helpful, or are telling you things you already know. It usually means you either have to find in yourself the specific question you really had, or spend more time talking to them.

But don’t just give up when this happens.

A bunch of her furniture is still here. But it is rearranged. The place looks entirely different, but it is the same apartment.

A bunch of her friends and family and boyfriend’s friends and family are all coming. It will be a jolly affair.

Anyway, I am hosting.

I have hosted enough parties that the question of “do I get to party at my own party” is very important to me (especially if it is my birthday party) and so I have come up with a set of moves that I repeat. I like making hosting as easy as possible. Here are my own reminders to myself:

Have a bunch of drinks. Make them self-serve.

People should just see the drinks. They should be in a pretty clear area that this is the drinks that are expected to be taken. Have water, and sparkling water, and whatever you are hoping people to drink. Maybe it’s beer. Maybe it’s tea. Maybe it’s decaf tea. You can kind of guess that if it’s out there people will go over and take it to drink because they aren’t sure what else they are going to be drinking.

They aren’t going to go inside of your fridge. Nobody goes to somebody’s house and just starts going through their fridge unless they know them really well.

The choice of drinks is important, because people will be talking about the drinks and getting into a mood from the drinks. If you don’t want to put the very important deep thought into this, just go with a bunch of variety, but don’t not have anything.

Better to have things you yourself like drinking, because then people can share your mood, or to stock up higher on things you anyway normally buy. That way also you know that stuff you want to serve people is stuff you generally have around anyway.

Have a bunch of napkins, have an obvious trash can

You can’t want to answer questions like “I need a napkin” or “where’s the trash.” Just have it be obvious.

Have some food

Everyone is happier if there is some food. Some people would have eaten already, some would not have.

The same rules about “not bothering” apply to food. Make a giant salad, a giant thing of pasta, a giant thing of pulled pork with mustard. Bread, boom, done.

If you are putting out a charcuterie, get two loaves of bread or two things of crackers. Things of cheese and things of sausage are big, and dense, and bread and crackers are floofy and whateverful, and so the ratio of density to floof is worth considering; you want to get more bread and crackers than you think you may need for the folks who are low key going to be making little hummus sandwiches.

Have blankets

People who otherwise were going to be weird and antisocial now can be cozy and cute instead.

Have music

People who otherwise were going to sperg out now have something their mind can process to triangulate their social anxiety against.

Have an outfit

It doesn’t have to be amazing, but yeah you do need clothes, and what clothes you pick can set your own mood a lot.

At some point in a bisexual’s life cycle, perhaps a decisive older lesbian makes a move on her and thus sprouts her new potentialities. Now follows a crisis of identity; am I a real bisexual? How much was I supposed to like it for it to really count?

For me, it was a woman ten years older, wearing an all-white suit before the summer ends. She had shoulder-length brown hair. We had a mutual friend, and so I sat down beside her. She touched my leg and ordered me a gin cocktail. I drank it, and then she ordered me another. That’s when I thought that she might be interested in me.

That day (and the encounters after) was a day that ended up changing my life. I could have continued to go on as I had been, flowing through the universe, letting things happen to me. But she made a move, and then I had to decide what to do with that.

Sartre’s central claim in Existentialism Is a Humanism is that existence precedes essence: that we are not born with a fixed nature that determines our choices, but instead become who we are through the choices we make.

The bisexual, in being straight-passing, has to make a choice to become a bisexual. Or more precisely: she has to choose against the ease with which the world will make her straight.

To date men, she can be passive. To date women, she must become intentional. She must take some fucking risks! She must signal her intents, interpret people’s signals back, risk becoming suddenly legible in what she wants. Action is incriminating and produces evidence in reality that you cared about something enough to go for it.

It is one thing for loving women to be inevitable as it is for lesbians. It is another thing to feel that one could love women. “I could move to Berlin.” “I could quit my job.” It is another thing to reorganize one’s life around that possibility.

The actions count a lot more for the existentialists.

Sartre writes:

Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.

Sartre might actually argue that denying your bisexuality is actually living in bad faith.

So build your life! Build your bisexuality! You can do it!

Sacha

DESIRES UNSUITABLE for MODERN ROMANCE, or

Ash Ketchum was not a man renowned for his penis. Though he was considered a best-in-class pokemon trainer, and the exploits in his teenage years were still the stuff of legend, he had one persistent problem…

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24 days ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · SexMoneyArt

and on my interest in this piece, proceeded to read other pieces by Sacha, including this one:

Sacha

Instead of Gratitude Meditation Consider Seething

“Psychologically unhealthy people, eg you and everyone you know, don’t have desires, at least not in the normal sense. Wanting things is scary …

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6 months ago · 17 likes · 1 comment · SexMoneyArt

at the same time as I was reading these, a friend sent me this classic Bob Ross pastiche video:

I interacted with all of these while accompanying someone getting an MRI at a hospital.

The juxtaposition of content and environment was, high. I walked around a little bit; big noninvasive cardiology and imaging wing, lots of hallways, fluorescent lights, kind of dumb, reading kind of dumb works of genius. Forcing myself not to giggle too loudly

What I enjoyed most about this was this second piece, “Instead of Gratitude Meditation Consider Seething” is about getting in touch with your feelings of wantings things even if the thing you want is dumb or illogical, because that feeling of true want aligns in you a really important way.

And then that first piece about poképhilia is an example of exploring what one such desire might be for some people. The story is an isomorphism with any fetish, and “Instead of Gratitude Meditation Consider Seething” suggests that the pure want behind a fetish is worth taking seriously and thinking about (even though some fetishes can be artificially created or destroyed through Pavlovian means).

And so having the wrong feelings about these articles (ebullience) in the wrong place (hospital) did make me feel like I was extra tapping into the intended instinct.

I am familiar with practices (like mindfulness) that teach you that there are no wrong feelings. The feelings that mindfulness usually interacts with in the training materials are feelings like anxiety, panic, worry, hatred, anger — feelings that are kind of floaty and temporary. Something like a forbidden sexual fetish usually is not floating by like a cloud, for you to put aside so that you can feel your more permanent self. Something about fetishes seems like it is more ingrained in your self.

And so enjoying the thrusty language of this work in a place where I am not supposed to be reading them or enjoying it put me in a headspace where my own feelings became more potent by contrast. I can “witness” my own self-consciousness and shame in a way that mindfulness probably intends, but the spacial reality makes possible to actually do.

I would encourage people (and myself) to do this more, going into places and feeling things that you don’t feel allowed to feel there. Like fucking in a church, but fucking in a church may actually not mean that much to a lot of people given how much of a trope it is.

It is odd, for me to write this stuff, knowing it would appear on a specific dashboard. That also feels wrong feelings, wrong place.

It goes into what is a photograph. It is the only art medium in which that which was taken in the photograph was really there in real life as it was really — and there are things about this that are really trippy in that in looking at the photograph you are looking both at the object that is the photograph and what was there as the subject of the photograph. Barthes then ends up talking about his dead mother.

It’s a wonderful little book.

A book I have been working on, Afantasia, is based on the structure of Camera Lucida. I owe my friend a synopsis of it. Let’s give it a shot.

Afantasia (as I’ve been writing it) is a hybrid memoir-essay about desire, and selfhood, my experiences in sex clubs, BDSM, and other silliness, told through a relationship with my teacher Arya, that starts off as the method for the book and then as the book progresses becomes the subject.

The book starts from my inability to “picture” what I want sexually and calls this blankness “afantasia,” — the missing space where fantasy is supposed to be. From there, the book moves through a series of “firsts.” And then it kind of falls apart…

Camera Lucida also ends up contradicting itself in parts, takes on different moods. I did not intend my book to be any longer than Camera Lucida. In fact, it was an experiment in writing a very short book to completion.

But I still need something to happen…

Camera Lucida is an elegy. It was published shortly before his death. People are known often to talk about and think about their mothers before their deaths. In thinking about his mother, he was likely also thinking about his own mortality.

Is my book an elegy for something? A lost innocence? Am I secretly thinking about my father?

I do not know…but I need a central image that the book moves to, the way that Camera Lucida ends up with the image of the mother — the only image that is described, but not shown in the book.

There is a specific image that came to mind, when I talked through this book with a friend. He said that I do not have to have a whole plot in mind, it can just be a book of things that happen, and the same thing is shown in different ways.

There are places I don’t want to go, that I don’t think I’m ready to go. Like that in high school I thought that maybe if I had sex with a guy he wouldn’t kill himself, even though I didn’t even know him. Or that scene I saw when this woman’s husband was hospitalized, and I saw her give a massage naked to another man. I wondered about that, and concluded well what else the hell is she supposed to do.

And there’s a sadness there. I don’t know what it means though. The point of the book was how much the real culture around these orgiastic excesses ends up being tied up in these real sadnesses. There’s a different between porn and these underground scenes, because that’s the difference between fantasy and reality.

I craved his wisdom.

“Bojark how do I keep plants alive the way you do.”

“I don’t know man, I can’t really give you tips because so much of it is plant knowledge. The computer will give you most of it.”

Inspired by this, I went to a plant store with healthy-looking plants and bought a pothos. I asked the woman selling me the plant how to take care of it. “Water it once every 13 days.”

Pothos is famously easy. On day 5 it had yellow leaves already. I was assuaged by a buddy — it’s winter, plants aren’t meant to live in winter. But this specific plant was living well, just 5 days ago, in a different apartment, in winter.

I googled it, and the answer was that either the plant was under or overwatered. There was a 50/50 chance I would get it right. It was day 8, and so I thought maybe I had overwatered it a little in eagerness earlier, when I watered it just a little when I brought it home. I put it through GPT, it said it was overwatered.

I had fallen ill along with my plant. When I was better, my plant was not. It occurred to me that I could take the plant back to the store and see what the lady says.

I dressed up the plant in a bag so that it doesn’t get too cold and carried it to the store, shamefully.

“What did you do?” said the owner.

She did not hesitate to look it over. “I will look after it for a few days, see if it perks up. I will water it all the way through, and then that should do it.” A week later I came back to get it, and it was completely cured.

I asked what she did. “It was just thirsty.” So I had gotten it wrong, GPT got it wrong, and her initial instruction not to water it for 13 days was wrong.

Since then I had put it in a larger terra cotta pot when it seemed like it was starting to wilt — maybe the roots need more space — and then watering it whenever it seems like it will be thirsty soon.

If you asked me “how to water it” I would just tell you the vague instruction — water it when it seems like it needs water.

Thus is my initiation into plants.

Something changed for me after this experience. Seeing the plant start to die under my watch and then come back to life under someone else’s did convince me that something about this seemingly random process really was not random, and if the instructions are sometimes not seeming correct, then I still can rely on my faculties of observing the plants a lot more.

I had kept a parlor palm alive since then too. I make sure to put these plants in places where I see them. If I am looking at them every day, I do notice how they are doing.

With every plant that is healthy for a while, I give myself permission to get a new plant. And so now I get to have a third plant.

I do not have a green thumb yet, but at least know now more about what people mean about the expression.