a genuine diary extract

"Toutefois, la café aux chats est une zone PVP. C'est la melée totale, un corps-à-corps brutal. La clientèle ne connaît aucune décence, ne respecte ni l'intégrité de l'espace personnel, ni les fondements de la vie en société. Les étudiantes se forcent un chemin entre nous pour toucher la chatte sur notre table ; les parenze lâchent leurs morveux sur les chats qui n'ont pas envie de caresses ou même les soulèvent au-dessus de nous pour les faire saluer la chatte ; les passanze dans la rue tapent sur le vitre sous nos yeux... Pour la clientèle du café aux chats, les autres humains ne constituent que des obstacles à vaincre – physiquement s'il le faut."

a genuine diary extract:

"I tend to think of the cat as basically a small, weird, and very dumb person. But sometimes I remember/realise that it's actually a small* animal that lives in my house, whose motivations are incomprehensible to me, whose thoughts are entirely unknowable and completely different from mine, whose gaze is alien. Not in a scary way, just in a Realisation way.

* )

pollution

Aug. 3rd, 2024 03:00 pm
a genuine diary extract:

“I made a stop at some brambles by the roadside that I’ve been eyeing for a while, and snacked on blackberries. Most of them were out of reach, of course, but the accessible berries were bountiful too. They were the usual (familiar) mix of sour and sweet. There were no nettles growing between the brambles – usually those seem to like forming an unholy mix. (The roadside in question belongs to a busy road in an industry terrain. I’m going to get so much heavy metal poisoning but I’m so full of microplastics already that it probably makes no difference.)”

a genuine diary extract

“I continue to be enchanted by the idea that a beast lives in my house, and I occasionally encounter it as it wanders about on its own incomprehensible business. And I can pick it up and hug it like a stuffed toy, and the beast tolerates it for a moment, until it expresses its impatience by wiggling a bit.”

a genuine diary extract

“On peut rater deux des sept cours pratiques ce bloc. Le professeur nous a conseillé de les garder pour le cas où – « If, for example… say… a relative dies. Of course, if you die there’s no problem. »”
a genuine diary extract

“Overheard out of context between two business economics students: ‘Wait, wait, wait. You went out with a guy from finance?’ Apparently that’s a deep place to sink even for a business student.”

some of the notebooks i keep:

diary
i keep a diary in A5 notebooks with lined pages. i'm on my twenty-fourth diary right now.

Great Notebook of Lists
A4 notebook with squared paper, like the notebooks i used for mathematics in high school (in fact the first one was a leftover maths notebook). in these i keep all kinds of lists (TBRs, to do lists, ingredients, ideas...); doodles and sketches; poem drafts; other random notes. i fill up roughly one of these per year.

four-year journal
a much thicker A5 notebook with one page for each day of the year. on each page, i write a 3-5 line journal entry for the same date of four consecutive years. i started on 28 May 2021, so i have almost a year left. it was a cheap notebook and is kind of falling apart.

selection of poems
a notebook into which i copy poems (by other people) that i particularly like.

poëziealbum
notebook in which i ask friends to write down a poem (of their own or from another author), like a vriendenboekje.

Board notebook
my notebook from my year as the Treasurer of my literary student association. that means i'm mostly done with it now, but i still refer to it occasionally and recently took some notes for a proposal i'll submit at the next general assembly.

Editor in Chief's notebook
same idea as the above, but for notes regarding the association's magazine of which i'm currently one of the Editors in Chief.
  • buy fresh lychees the next time i see them, no matter the price
  • experiment with poetic forms & conventions
  • draw & sketch more
  • express love & affection
  • lend out more books
  • unhaul more books
  • eat lots of cherries

Read more... )

a genuine diary extract

"Ik kreeg van het pensioenfonds een enquête opgestuurd. Op de vraag of een pensoen bieden past bij "een goede werkgever" antwoordde ik "oneens". Ik was heel blij dat ik de vervolgvraag kreeg, waarom ik het daar niet mee eens was. Ik heb toen uitgelegd dat de werkgever verplicht is een pensioen te bieden, waarbij ik artikel 1.2 van de statuten van de Stichting Bedrijfstakpensioenfonds voor het Schoonmaak- en Glazenwassersbedrijf citeerde. Het bieden van een pensioen zegt dus niets over mijn werkgever."
a genuine diary extract (name edited)

"Sometimes I don't feel like going, and my schedule kind of sucks, but in general I quite like my job. It's so easy to romanticise: Taina, the Master of Arts who can only get a cleaning job in this crumbling society, this decaying world. (Though this first one is problematic – it reproduces the "unskilled labour" construct and the stigma against cleaners.) Taina, the labourer intellectual. And there are more possibilities, more filters to see it through: The autistic person who went though academia but found it not to their taste, finding their place instead in predictable, uncomplicated work with little interpersonal contact, despite others' disapproval. Or maybe, just like Shevek, I'm taking a turn doing kleggich after finishing my education, before moving on to work-play. [...] Who am I? Who will I be? Who will I turn out to have been? Who do I want to be? My options may be limited – unjust world, decaying world – but the perspectives are not."
a genuine diary extract

“Dear reader, I hope you get something from my writing. Entertainment, details about my life, a feel for who I am, signs of the times, historical source material, maybe even beauty at times, it doesn’t matter. I’m doing this for you, whether you’re future me or someone else. I hope it means something to you.”

a genuine diary extract:

"Il m'a proposé quelques meubles, mais j'ai décliné. Les mots me manquent pour exprimer combien j'ai horreur d'avoir encore plus de meubles quand ce sera moi qui déménage."

scheurlijn

Jan. 18th, 2023 02:53 pm
ik ben recent overgestapt op een nieuw merk notitieboeken voor mijn dagboek. het bevalt me over het algemeen heel goed, maar ik kom er net achter dat de laatste 20 bladzijden een scheurlijntje hebben. nu is het ook niet waarschijnlijk dat die bladzijden er zomaar uit gaan vallen, maar durf ik het te riskeren dat er wel een bladzijde uitscheurt? het lijkt me ook psychologisch ongemakkelijk om een maand lang te schrijven langs scheurlijnen en me daar hyperbewust van te zijn...

restraint

Aug. 6th, 2022 12:06 am
a genuine diary extract:

i had my hands full carrying stuff to the kitchen when i bumped a dirty pan against the door. i heroically managed to restrain myself from licking the stain directly off the door, and i think that’s very metal of me. by far the proudest moment of my week.

a genuine diary extract:

Je ne comprends pas la hype des asperges. Ça me semble une obsession bourgeoise d'un légume qui n'a rien d'extraordinaire. Elles sont un produit de luxe parce qu'elles sont chères (est-ce que les asperges sont chères ? vérifier), elles coûtent cher parce que leur culture et récolte sont laborieuses et que la demande est forte, et la demande est créée part leur statut de luxe.
i went through some old diaries to read seven years of Eurovision thoughts and takes, it was quite fun to see! some of my favourites from like 2015 or 2016 are things that, when i see them now, make me go, why? but there were also a number of songs that i had no memory of, but were very good! one such, actually, is Estonia's entry from 2015, which i rediscovered a while ago from an old "favourite entries" list, and found that it's actually a fantastic song. this is why i love keeping a diary.
a genuine diary extract:

“Evil Scientists™ always seem to be, like, physicists or chemists or engineers. I strongly believe we need to see more evil syntacticians in media. The world needs to know about evil syntacticians!"

a genuine diary extract

“I couldn’t sleep. Also, several fun and exciting things happened when I went to the toilet at 02:00:
1. i checked my temperature again, which had risen to 38.6°C
2. i blacked out on my way back to bed and fell over
3. i regained consciousness sprawled in the entire contents of my bin. It would be ever so nice if I could also fall asleep while lying safely in bed.”


a genuine diary extract:

"I love borrowing books from people. I can earn friendship points by reading."

details

Feb. 11th, 2021 12:19 am
my beautiful beloved standing by the window looking at the snowfall

a cup of cheap green tea, slightly oversteeped, bitter but with a hint of sweetness

a smudge from words rewritten and erased too many times

three pairs of shoes drying in the hallway outside three different doors

falling backward onto my extended bed, closing my eyes for a moment and feeling dizzy

the laundry hanging to dry far longer than necessary

a notebook used for a course two years ago, almost empty, so much paper unused

curfew alert at 19:45, phone beeping to warn me of only 75 minutes left until the curfew

so many messages typed but never sent

singing in the empty, slightly echo-y kitchen, no one can probably hear

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