January 01

It is a new year. The previous year facilitated very little progress for my machine. As much as I would love to blame the slow collapse of every element of reality, including, well, the elements, I think I merely found myself in a perpetual state of feeling uninspired. A glaring weakness, I suppose, when every muscle in my body only deem it worthy to move when it’s been blessed by a celestial thought that comes once a twelfthnight. But ‘tis a new cycle around the sun. I fancy myself a pragmatist but I admit that I find there to be an inherent mystique in a new year that tickles me so. I realize that this day is not any more special than any, but my eyes look forth filled with hope all the same. May this be the year where mankind takes control of all years. The year I invent time travel.

Memory from 5 years ago

January 04

January 07

My gardening bed taunts me with guilt from the balcony. Slugs slither across the brown radicchio leaves. I’ve been ignoring it lately. I must take care of them again. Plants filter out the air and improve the oxygen content in a given space. They can filter out odors and they can help keep the air humidity in the preferred 40-60% range. That’s good for one's respiratory health. Crushed dead leaves pepper the carpet by my bed.

January 10

January 12

Do crabs think fish can fly?

January 14

January 15

I stared at my phone for hours again. A number my nerves dared not to dial taunted me to my core. My pen could not write an apology. It’s been four years. I doubt the thought of me even takes a second of his day by now. I pick at the faded scratches on my post-it note.

January 18

I had a nightmare where my inbox was full of emails that began with “Thank you, but”

January 19

Try plutonium.

January 21

Never try plutonium.

January 23

The roads were paved with plasma heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion. I saw a faceless little girl painting in the middle of the street while cars phased through her. She wore a dress of flames, ones that raged but remained calming. They burned yellow at the base, blue at the tip, while clouds of purple smoke flourished around her. The canvas was smeared with red and white paint. The painting looked like what being burned alive must feel like.

January 24

Memory from 4 years ago

January 25

I saw a tyrannosaurus rex on the cul-de-sac today. I can’t help but feel as if the universe is teasing me. “All that work on taking the reins of time when we can produce a billion year old animal with a mere glitch in our system.” Humble yourselves, celestials. The genius of [012] will steal the sands of time from your apathetic clutch.

January 27

I was on my balcony, planting the seeds I ordered online when I noticed a tiny mushroom buried in the soil. The farmer’s almanac mentioned that there’s what they call a “plant rust” going around. I’m not sure of the science, I’m merely a hobbyist, but supposedly it’s caused by fungus from an unknown source and it destroys any vegetation it touches. The first symptom would be orange spots manifesting on the plants’ surface. It looked like a black trumpet mushroom. I plucked it and chucked it as far as I could and replaced the substrate.

January 28

I found a pimple on my cheek today.

January 30

There’s strength in arches.

January 31

I suppose I should have implemented yesterday’s arch design much sooner given my degree in engineering. But, in my defense, I was reluctant to turn the golden beams into an arch for branding reasons.

February 2

My notes are incomprehensible. Every page is riddled with shorthands for words I swore I’d remember that allude to concepts I opted out of writing down because I convinced myself they were common sense. Loose threads of ideas that were lost to sleep are poking their heads out of my subconscious while my knees tremble out of frustration at my inability to pull them out completely. I remember a constellation that I could once see from my bedroom window. It’s name escapes me. I used to stare at it whenever I was in need of conviction. On rare—yet common enough to elicit embarrassment—occasions, I would look at those cluster of stars and I would be able to feel my feet lift off the ground for a moment. I don’t know what to make of that. It makes no amount of logical sense and so one would have to assume that I have merely been insane for quite some time now. But the side of me that yearns to lean into the romantic is convinced that it was a sign that some ambiguous divine entity was urging me on. Encouraging me. Blessing me. Letting me know that I can fly.
The stars are gone now.

February 3

February 4

February 5

Tiramisu almond nuts taste exactly like what you would expect them to taste like.

February 7

February 8

Visions of lavender petals painted the ceiling this morning.

February 10

February 11

There’s a bottle of nearly-finished orange juice that’s been sitting on my desk for over a year. Black rotting clumps have accumulated at the bottom and would occasionally rise to join the mold floating at the surface. I could throw it away easily but I don’t want to. Partly because I’m curious as to what would happen if I just left it. Partly because the more time passes the funnier the mere sight of it becomes to me. It’s just such a pathetically degenerate thing to have, isn’t it? A thousand ninety-five day old bottle of orange juice? I could throw it away in a heartbeat. I could take half a minute out of my daily six hour task of doing nothing but stare at the ceiling and simply throw the bottle away but I’m refusing to. Not because I’m too lazy, but because it’s proof that I am lazy. And there’s something quite comforting about that. To have your surroundings match your current state of mind. There have been a couple of times when I’ve cleaned up (yes, it happens on occasion) and I deliberately opted not to throw the bottle away. Because cleaning up is a lie. A lie I tell myself and the world in order to appear less degenerate than what I default to be. But the bottle is truth. Rotting, molding, worthless, truth.

February 12

February 13

If Shakespeare was such a good writer then how come he didn’t write any plays about time travel?

February 14

He posted a picture of himself enjoying a picnic with his new girlfriend. She’s very pretty.

February 15

Memory from today

February 16

Memory from 3 years ago

February 17

Today, I woke up and found a message not yet sent from my phone. It said “give me something I can use.” I need to lock my phone away when I drink.

February 19

Was he truly a source of inspiration or was my threshold for getting inspired much lower when I wasn’t miserable?

February 22

In addition to my gardening bed, I’ve decided to have some potted plants around the apartment. I opted to start with just one, of course, if I’m to mass murder plantlife via neglect then I’d rather do it one-by-one rather than all-at-once. I tried to remember my sister’s germination method but it’s been such a long time since I last gardened that I’m not sure I did it properly. I put the seed into a folded paper towel and I put that into a ziplock bag with a tiny amount of air and I added a little bit of water. Enough to fully soak the paper towel. I believe that she said room temperature was okay but that warmer rooms were preferable. I turned the heater up. I think she also said that a darker place was preferable so I put it in my closet. I don’t recall why, but I’m thinking it might be because sunlight in an enclosed system would encourage propagation of things besides seeds. That’s all I was able to remember but I think I did it properly because a giant pear tree was almost instantaneously erected in my closet. I used a carnivorous sundew seed.

February 25

I found a cobweb in a wedge of my machine.

February 26

ACTUALLY THROW THE TRASH AWAY THIS TIME

February 28

He works as a cashier. I once asked him what he was working towards. He didn’t understand the question. A part of me pities him. A part of me looks down on him. I can’t even begin to fathom how one lives their life lacking an iota of ambition without having every cell in their body flagellate their spirit. A part of me envies him.

February 30

A black morel mushroom sprouted from my pimple. I am weirdly calm about this.

February 32

Were there always thirty-two days in February?

March 0

...a zeroth day?

March 1

March 1st? Again? What is happening?

March 3

A giant puffball mushroom sprouted from the top of the machine. I sliced it open to see if it was edible. It had a yellowish interior and the silhouette of another mushroom. Poisonous.

March 5

Did I miss a day? I think I’m losing my mind.

March 8

My eyes are perpetually drowsy. I can’t tell if I’m sleeping too much or not enough.

Memory from 7 years ago

March 21

I woke up and had a panic attack today.

March 144

The month is… already over? Has it been 144 days or 12? I can’t tell. Never mind trusting the calendar, the laws of the universe can no longer be trusted. Time has slowed and quickened all at once. Every second lasts an eternity. Then I would blink and it would be tomorrow. I feel mocked.

April 1

April 2

April 3

Month seems normal so far, at the very least.

April 4

My garden is coming along nicely. I planted flowers, potatoes, shallots, radicchio, mizuna, bok-choi, and lemongrass herbs. There’s something about this process that keeps me sane. I’ve always liked creating things, it makes me feel like suffering has reason. I’ve never been good at the arts and I always struggle with engineering and seeing these plants grow slowly has been nothing short of fulfilling. Like I’m raising little kids. I suppose that’s silly because most of these are being grown to be eaten, but I mean it with the utmost sincerity. Their classification as a living thing is more than just a technicality, they truly feel alive, in the sense that you can feel their humanity. Plants move. They’re not inanimate objects. They’ll tell you what they want. They’ll face the sun, they’ll grow around things that they don’t want to be in, they’ll lean towards what they desire, some of them are drama queens that’ll call for your nurture often despite them being physically able to be tolerant of some neglect, some of them are stoic to a fault in that they’ll refuse to tell you there’s anything wrong until it's already too late, some of them leave because they need more love than some of them are comfortable with providing and some of them are trying really hard to be more forward with their feelings and yell “of course, I love you, you fucking idiot, please don’t leave, you’re the last vestige of normalcy I have left.” Sometimes I worry that I sought gardening to give me an illusion of fulfillment while I ignore the things that I must accomplish.

April 5

April 7

It’s already the fourth month and I’ve still yet to make any meaningful progress on the machine. I spend most days refusing to acknowledge that it even exists. Distracting myself with nothing. I resent the existence of the machine. I spend every day in crippling self-loathing because of the machine. It taunts me. Even when I do everything in my power to ignore its presence, I can feel it hover over me like a petulant deity. The word ‘failure’ is constantly reverberating within the confines of my home. I despise the machine. I want to destroy the machine. But the sensible side of me takes over and I opt to destroy mirrors instead.

April 8

Memory from 5 years ago

April 10

April 11

I never could believe in God, which is a shame because I think some religion could benefit me quite a bit. I do loathe how often my STEM peers simply write theology off as some idiotic notion for the less evolved. My sister believed in God and she was infinitely smarter than I. From henceforth, I vow to learn more of the God problem.

April 12

I had the nightmare again. Debris falling like snow. The panning sounds of engines and sirens drowned by the sound of embers fizzling.

April 13

The lavender tattoo on my left shin is burning again.

April 14

you’re running out of fucking money

April 16

The ontological argument, in its simplest form, is as follows: God is the greatest possible thing, and the concept of the greatest possible thing exists in the mind, even in the mind of non-believers, however because it is better to exist in reality than it is to exist in the mind, then God, the greatest possible thing, must also exist in reality since God cannot be the greatest possible thing if it only existed in the mind. As much as I hate my fellow STEM peers, sometimes they have a point.

April 17

April 19

I sat under my closet pear tree today. It confounds me how it manages to stay alive in the claustrophobic abyss that is my wardrobe but it makes me feel a certain way to know that it’s still here. I couldn’t make sense of the tears that kept streaming for what felt like hours.

April 22

My torso is filled with orange spots.

April 23

Fly agaric mushrooms grew from the dirty clothes I left on the floor.

April 24

My sister was very into fungi. Personally, I find them to be completely disgusting, but I sort of get it. They’re the major decomposers of the world, they break down decaying material, they’re a necessary part of our ecosystem. They give purpose to the dying. On top of all that, they also give oxygen to plants and some plants rely on the survival of fungi because they can protect the plants from parasitic animals, and sometimes, in the forests, plants don’t get enough light so they have to rely on the nutrients the fungi can give to survive. Of course, fungi can also kill plants. The fungi don’t care much for the plants. When fungi help plants, they do it incidentally, and when fungi kill plants, they do it incidentally. They can also kill humans, they can destroy lumber and timber products, they can spoil food, they can destroy a variety of different objects and render them unfit for use. My sister once said that she loves them because they teach her that “even parasites have worth.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that most fungi aren’t technically parasites.

April 26

Memory from 8 years ago

April 27

The teleological argument, in its simplest form, is as follows: a watch is a very intricately designed object such that it could never possibly come about naturally, and since there’s nothing more complicated or intricately designed than the universe, then it must have not come about naturally either and that necessitates a creator. I couldn’t understand why all of that means that there must be an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. I can concede that the argument makes sense to justify the existence of a creator. But why a God? Why not, for example, a couple of engineers?

April 30

Gardening and engineering actually have a few similarities. They’re both about using disparate parts to create one functional system. For example, I planted flowers not just because they looked pretty but because flowers can attract bees and other insects to pollinate all the other plants. An overlooked part of engineering is that you have to watch. You have to pay attention to the world. Keep your ear to the ground and listen to the needs of the universe. If you’re engineering, there’s a problem you’re trying to solve. Otherwise, you’re not engineering, you’re creating self-indulgent modern art. So you have to listen and look for what’s missing. In the same sense, you have to go out into your garden and just watch. Watch for what your plants need. Watch for what’s missing. Watch the bees mingle, the snails eat, the plants yearn. Notice the lack of light, the lack of moisture, the lack of protection, the lack of your sister crouching down and planting lavender seeds. I need to stop wasting my fucking time and figure out how to build this time machine.

April 32

April 33

I can’t tell how much of my warped perception of time is due to the universe or my rapidly deteriorating mental health. A part of me is convinced most of it is the latter.

April 35

April 37

There was a frost yesterday. I didn’t prep my garden in advance. Hopefully my plants didn’t die.

April 40

April 43

I never considered myself a particularly angry person but I find myself with bloody knuckles and a broken toaster today.

April 46

The broccoli plants have grown quite tall. They’re starting to grow actual broccoli. The branches were quite thick and I tried chewing on them out of curiosity. My mouth was flooded with water. I really miss him.

April 47

I should be able to harvest soon. The snails won’t leave the radicchio alone but they should still be fine. I’m worried about the potatoes and the shallots. The frost might have killed them. There’s orange spots on their leaves. The mizuna and the bok-choy are coming along nicely. The soil seemed healthy. The poppies just sprouted, I planted some lilies, bees buzzed around the nasturtiums, the geranium looks like what I always wanted roses to look like, the borage didn’t smell like anything but just from looking at them I could taste that some of them tasted like lemon while some tasted like coconut, I think the lilies are dying. I harvested the lemongrass herbs. He used to love lemongrass herbs.

April 50

Fifty. Fifty days! The universe has given me fifty days this month to get my shit together and I’ve done nothing except curse myself for doing nothing. I’m sick of this. Done are the days of procrastination and succumbence to the fear of failure. Tomorrow, I will be a new person. One incredible enough to earn the fantastical title of time traveler. I know that I have it in me to be worth more than the pathetic wench I’ve surrendered to be. May all the friends, family, and teachers that believed in me be proven right. And may the parasites constantly whispering indignations in my head be proven wrong.

April 54

The mizuna tastes a little bit like sweetpea. Or maybe green beans? The garden is like a paradisiacal oasis in this cursed apartment. It’s the only space that’s received any bit of care in the past few months. Everything else has been wrecked by a tornado named neglect. If only I could put as much effort into every other aspect of my life as I do with this garden. It just makes me feel good. Makes me feel like I’m not a complete parasite on the universe. Like one thing I can’t possibly fuck up. One thing I can properly care for. All my life I’ve been dehydrated but every time I water the plants, my thirst is quenched. It almost feels like a return to roots. Like the natural state of being for not just me but humanity in general. Like this is what we’re meant to be doing all along. Interacting with the Earth. Maybe the Earth is currently crying because we’ve neglected it for far too long. That these absurdisms plaguing us are the world’s cries for help, and gardening is a way to answer that call.

But, eventually, I have to leave the balcony and go back inside the apartment. This wretched apartment.

April 57

April 58

I resent having a support system sometimes. I know that that must be obnoxious. I can recognize that I must be objectively lucky to have such encouraging people in my life, but at what point does it stop being “encouragement” and become “enabling the delusions of grandeur of a person gone mad”? I have no talent. They should have known better than to let me embark on this ridiculous quest. Fucking time travel? How the fuck was this meant to end in any way other than mental torture? And now I can’t even quit. Every time I bring it up I’m met with a barrage of positive platitudes that range from “don’t give up, I believe in you!” all the way to “I’ve never met someone as brilliant as you, but I would think it real swell if you could put the bottle of jager down.” They’ve placed their bets on the wrong person. I’m not worthy of the emotional support. Please, just give it to some tortured up-and-comer in desperate need of some. I want to quit but I can’t do it without disappointing everyone I know and destroying everything they’ve come to believe of me.

April 62

Jager has long since lost its taste.

April 65

My carpet is riddled with molding spots and stinkhorn mushrooms have been growing on all of them. The room won’t stop smelling like squid. I feel mocked.

April 69

nice

April 71

I harvested some of the radicchio. I gave it a taste and it tasted awful. Like a bitter lettuce. I don’t know why I decided to grow these. I decided to brine them instead, maybe make some kimchi out of it.

April 72

April 73

KILL ME

April 76

The cosmological argument is probably the most popular argument for the existence of God. Most can come across the argument even without looking extensively into philosophy, in fact, most can probably come up with the cosmological argument themselves as an eight year old kid who’s staring at the ceiling because they’re having trouble getting any sleep. In its simplest form, the argument is essentially: what came before that? There must be something that started everything. A necessary thing for which everything else is merely contingent on. Nothing comes from nothing. Eggs are contingent on a chicken, the universe is contingent on a creator, house fires are contingent on a faulty bit of engineering by a talentless hack.

April 80

Eighty days. Eighty fucking days. I am being fucked with.

April 83

The problem of evil, in its most simplified form, is as follows: an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God cannot exist in a world with even one instance of evil. It’s one of the most hotly debated philosophical topics. Some theist arguments boil down to the following: evil is a necessity, free will exists and our own actions are the cause of evil, the universe in its current form is the least evil it could possibly be, evil is a result of the original sin, evil is a means to test humanity, evil causes suffering and we must suffer as our prophet once did for our sins, and, of course, there is no such thing as something being truly evil because that is merely a subjective notion, therefore God didn’t create evil because evil doesn’t exist, we merely perceive evil in things that are neither good or evil, but rather: simply are. It all sounds like the sort of arguments someone in an abusive relationship would make if they were suffering from severe Stockholm Syndrome.

April 84

Hair ice fungi drape my walls like curtains. They fluttered with the drafts and their silver strands danced like windchimes—the song ringing with silence. Sprouting from the rotting, molding edges of the wooden walls, it befuddles me that something beautiful could be produced from decay.

April 86

April 88

I have watched two hundred and fifty five shows this year. And fifty of them are the same show remade for different cultures.

April 91

The faulty lightbulb above my bed shorted today. I woke up to sparks raining on top of me. I rushed to the bathroom to quell the panic attack. I spent the entire day here.

April 92

I took a walk and somehow found myself in the middle of a lavender forest. The flowers tower to the size of redwood trees. I felt mocked. The tattoo on my shins burned with pain again. Disparate images of memories I’ve buried kept occupying my vision. The day my sister gave me the lavender. “Lavare means to wash.” The forest burst into flames and I was knelt in the middle of it, trying my best to turn back time.

April 93

I decided to order more lavender seeds. I’ve never been able to successfully grow any. I wish I could apologize for failing to propagate her lavender properly.

April 95

April 96

I broke my toothbrush in a fit of rage today. I wasn’t even brushing my teeth. I was just on my way to use the toilet and I felt its aura mocking me for not having used it in months. I snapped it in half.

April 100

A friend of mine suggested that I might be depressed today. I suppose it’s a possibility. That would be the kind way of evaluating me right now. Personally, I favor the adjectives “lazy,” “untalented,” “uninspired,” “failure,” and “fucking piece of shit.”

April 101

April 104

I wish he was here.

April 106

The chaos argument is something I made up just last night while I was staring at the ceiling but essentially it goes something like this: a system this random, this broken, and this nonsensical, must be orchestrated. Natural chaos is rarely this chaotic. To reach a state of absolute distraught requires a perpetrator.

April 108

Oh, hey, this is my favorite number.

May 108

I’m tired. I refuse to even acknowledge what’s happening with the days this month.

May 108

He used to have greasy hair. I never minded it much. I would run my fingers through the strands and caress his skull and my heart would flutter at the idea that another human being would let themselves be so vulnerable for me. I used to be a much cleaner person. A quick glance at my place would make anyone skeptical, I’m sure, but I was. One could even describe me as a germaphobe. I would bring a hand sanitizer everywhere I went and there was never a desk that wasn’t cleaner after I was done with it. But I never minded stroking his greasy hair. I never even mentioned it once. It would barely register in my head. Or maybe it would but the voice in my head that would so often recoil at the thought of germs was overpowered by the sound of heartbeat.

May 108

How many scientific discoveries do you reckon were a result of post-nut clarity?

May 108

My body is covered in mold and black morel mushrooms.

May 108

May 108

I watched the sunset today. I had just woken up. Sunsets are orange because of the sun’s position relative to me, light has to travel farther through the atmosphere before it reaches my eyes—reds and oranges have longer wavelengths than the other colors. Today, the sunset was blue. It was very pretty.

May 108

May 108

I woke up and found my garden covered by honey mushrooms. Like cancerous cysts, they bulged from the plant life and sapped their color. I anxiously tried to rip them all out. It doesn't make any sense. Honey mushrooms only grow on trees, but they infected the flowers, the vegetables, and the soil. The black morel mushrooms on my body grew. I was able to save the garden but there’s this growing anxiety in me that I can’t shake. I choked on air this evening.

May 108

I took a shower today. It lasted for a few hours. The cold water lulled me into a meditative state. The mushrooms multiplied. My mind only thought of him.

May 108

I think I’ve been overwatering the garden and that’s what caused the mushrooms to grow. Overwatering. You can care about something too much.

May 108

He believes in God. I used to make fun of him for that. I’m really jealous of something like that. Maybe it’s not even something you have to believe in. Surely, there’s value even in faking it. To be a part of a community, to have a place to go every week to reset, to be able to tell yourself something when the world looks the way it does. He once said that faith wasn’t an on-off switch. It’s not as if you decide to believe in God and you just believe in God from there on. He said that it’s an active effort. You have to keep choosing to believe. Every day and every second. That’s the key to most things, he said.

May 108

I brushed my teeth today. My gums were bleeding and the taste of iron mixed with the taste of toothpaste. He used to say that he never minded my gingivitis.

May 108

My closet pear tree refuses to bear fruit. I looked into this and as it turns out, it’s not possible for a tree to produce by itself. I feel a little bit silly as this feels like something that should be obvious: a tree needs to fuck another tree in order to make fruit. I’m not entirely sure why but learning that fact left me feeling betrayed.

May 108

There is, as it turns out, an exception to trees needing to fuck. If you graft two trees together, it can fertilize by itself. A self-sufficient and independent tree. I wonder if such trees never feel lonely or if they feel lonelier than any other tree. Surely, it must be one or the other.

May 108

I can’t tell if it’s been a very long day or a very short month.

May 108

May 108

I bit my cheeks hard enough to draw blood. I chased it with jager. It tasted of nothing.

June 2

Memory from 4 years ago

June 5

June 7

Prime numbers, huh? If I was less of a degenerate I might find the will to analyze this and derive meaning from it. But knowing the universe, it’s likely just random horseshit.

June 11

June 13

The plants have stopped growing. 


I don’t know what to do.

June 17

Why am I torturing myself over an ambition that I arbitrarily placed on my shoulders in my 20s? I didn’t devote myself to the sciences or time travel because I sat down and deliberately thought about what I wanted. If I did, why the fuck would I ever choose this? I got into the sciences because I was good at it. I was good at it because I had trouble making friends and overvalued the praise I received from adults when I made soda shoot out of a clay volcano. I carried that feeling into adulthood with little experimentation on other avenues of life. I didn’t take a year after high school to travel abroad and find myself, and even if I did, how the fuck would that have helped? As if I could have researched every profession and given each one of them a fair shot before writing them off. And now I’m sitting on my own vomit that was induced by my inability to excel in a field that only means something to me because I’m already in it. I should have been a florist.

June 23

Spores permeate the room like pixie dust. I spent the day mourning my sister. My tears dropped to the carpet and spawned black trumpet mushrooms.

June 37

I am so tired. I’ve done nothing and I’m so tired. Every day, I wake up and I dread the hours between the next moment I get to sleep. Please. I just want this to stop.

June 41

June 47

There are so many empty water bottles in my room.

June 53

At this point, I’m just proud of myself for not taking a piss in any of them.

June 59

I no longer have anything to be proud of.

June 67

It’s not so bad, this. If I abandoned every expectation I have on myself, if I decided to ignore every expectation everyone else has on me, and if I just simply lived my life accepting that I won’t be anything but a degenerate surrounded by piss bottles—then I would be happy. What’s wrong with that? Why should I not be content with simply living? There shouldn’t be anything wrong with that. I want that. Why can’t I make that happen for myself?

June 71

The flowers died.

July 22

It’s my birthday today. 

I turned my phone off first thing in the morning.

Memory from 1 year ago

July 23

The lavender seeds arrived.

August 30

And now it’s backwards. The calendar is backwards. Great.

August 28

I tried ripping the mushrooms off my skin but blood dripped from the base and I decided to leave it alone. It’s not that bad, anyway.

August 27

He posted something on social media today. He said “life is tatakai.” What a fucking idiot.

August 25

Mushrooms floated through my apartment like jellyfish.

August 23

On our first date, we watched a movie together. I placed my arm around him about halfway through the movie and my arm got wedged tightly between his back and the chair. Could barely move. I started losing feeling in my fingers after about ten minutes and after thirty I had lost all feeling in my arm. That distracted me quite a bit and I could hardly pay attention to the movie. I wanted to tell him to lean forward so I could pull my arm off but I was afraid that it would come across as me calling him fat so I just tried my best to endure it. After the movie ended, he wanted to hold hands and I said no because my hand was still painfully numb. When asked why, I told him the truth. He asked why I would think that he would think I was calling him fat. I told him it was because he was fat.

August 21

August 20

The closet pear tree is surrounded by reishi mushrooms but the tree itself is free of fungi. I spent the day sitting on its roots. For some reason, I felt lighter.

August 19

The tree bore a solitary pear.

August 18

I’m sick of being a slave to my biology.

August 16

The flowers died.

August 14

I ate forty chicken nuggets today.

August 12

Every day I have to rip the fungi off of the plants and the substrate. I’m not sure I can take much more of this. I’m tired of starting every morning with suppressed tears.

August 10

August 9

I tried praying today. I pulled out an old rosary and attempted a prayer for every bead. I still don’t believe, as much as I want to—but she did. She would pray for me if we swapped places. This only seems fair. This seems like the only thing I can do.

August 6

I wonder if this is a countdown to something. If something happens in September.

August 5

August 4

The fungi surround the machine.

August 3

Memory from 4 years ago

August 2

I just want something that proves that I’m not a complete piece of shit before I go.

August 1

The garden is dead.

September 0

Fuck it.

September 0

September 0

September 0

The nice thing about giving up is that it’s actually filled with hope. I’m aware that seems counterintuitive and downright nonsensical as giving up is a sign of hopelessness, after all, but I think the answer lies right there. Giving up is a result of hopelessness. It comes after trying. It comes after long and demoralizing and soul-crushing and torturous trying. Trying gives you answers to questions you’d rather not know the answers to. Questions like “would you feel less alone if you weren’t so self-obsessed?” or “if you apologize, will your skin stop burning?” or “do you have what it takes to stop drinking or are you just forever cursed to swim in a pool of your own piss?” or “is there anything worthwhile outside of this dingy apartment?” or “if you truly put your mind to it, would you be able to take even a single fucking step toward your goal?” or “if you put your all into loving someone and they reciprocated, would you be happy or would you go out of your way to sabotage the only solace you were afforded because you would rather jump off the building than risk getting pushed?” I’d rather not have known the answers to these questions. If I had given up much sooner then perhaps I would be filled with much more hope than I am now. Any good poker player knows when to fold. I think it’s time.

October 1

I ate a box of Castellas today. I don’t remember the last time I felt this peaceful.

October 1

Anna Kendrick was on a talk show tonight. She was really pretty. She was wearing a short white dress that looked like expensive bed sheets.

October 1

I stared at the lavender seeds I kept in one of my drawers. I felt it taunt me. I should have thrown them away before. It feels inhumane to even attempt growing them in a garden cursed with death. I tossed them in the garbage.

October 1

I grabbed the seeds out of the trash can.

October 1

I played ping pong with the wall. I lost.

October 1

October 1

October 1

I bought a xylophone and started to play around with it. I thought it would sound whimsical but every note was like daggers in my ears.

October 1

I listened to a leaked episode of this popular podcast. People have been talking about it all over the net but I don't really understand why it's such a big deal. I've seen some of those floating pixel creatures around the city and they're pretty easy to ignore.

October 1

I don’t think theists have been able to give a satisfactory argument addressing the problem of evil. It just doesn’t make any fucking sense. What kind of all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God, would take her instead of me?

October 1

Greetings [012]

Be not afraid.
You are not in danger.
We are simply asking you to join our cause of slaying God.

We are the strangers. We seek to take back control of our own fates. The universe collapses into chaos and our ranks grow in number. We are everywhere. You pass by our soldiers on every grocery trip, we are stationed at every corner, scouting every digital cave—everyone you’ve never met is a stranger. There is no uniform, there is no ID, there is no base of operations, no chatroom, no email list. We are everyone that’s grown tired of being used and disposed, everyone that refuses to go down with this sinking ship, everyone who refuses to bow to the beings that proclaimed themselves as our Gods. We believe that if we all fight then we can be the Gods of our own universe and rebuild the world as a utopia free of outside interference. A world of normalcy, peace, love, order, and freedom. A world that can promise it won’t end tomorrow. A world made by human beings.

And we want you to join our cause. We know who you are, [012], we’ve been watching you. You are dissatisfied with the world, dissatisfied with your life, and you’ve been afforded no options to change anything about your current situation. You’ve been made to believe that you are miserable because you are inadequate—because you aren’t able to enact change in your life or surroundings. Let us dispel those myths: you are not at fault. The world has failed you in more ways than one. It is time to hold the correct entities accountable. It’s time to stop spending every second of your life torturing yourself in this self-masturbatory cycle of narcissistic misery rumination. You are made for much more. Rise. Liberate yourself from flesh. Live up to your potential as a man. Kill God.

It has come to the velites, [012]. It’s us or nothing. We are the winning side. We out number caesar. The hills will be occupied by the rolling heads of Gods and we will refuse to roll them back up. Fight, [012]. Take control of your life. Save the world. Help the strangers.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” - Hebrews 13:2

Be a stranger.

October 1

Jerry Berry just doesn’t make candy like they used to. They used to make much simpler candy. Cherry-flavored, banana, grape, stuff like that. I understand that, after enough time passes, the company runs out of places to go but surely there has to be a line. Personally, I thought the line was when they introduced used-condom flavored candy but they’ve hit a new low today. This new “velleity” flavored candy just really isn’t hitting the spot.

October 1

The fungi have consumed the apartment. The fungi have consumed me.

October 1

Rumors of a person locked in an eternal battle with Death on a mountain circulated the net today. For some reason, I believe them.

October 1

October 1

I took a dating personality test just for fun. I got matched with the crazy dude that kept spouting nonsense. That felt fitting.

October 1

I’m bored.

November Doldrums

I’m in space. I’m floating in space. The apartment is drifting in space. This isn’t a metaphor for dissociation, I am literally in fucking space what the fuck.

November Scunner

I puked and the vomit froze in place. My feet are planted on the apartment floor as if there was gravity. I have no idea how I’m still alive, how the external pressure hasn’t caused my lungs to puncture yet. Never mind the fact that I should be frozen solid. My footing is uneasy. I’m spacesick.

November Esurient

I shouted into the void. Addressed the universe directly and asked why. If this was their way of motivating me to finish building the time machine then they’ve made a gross miscalculation. The time machine may be the only way for me to escape but that has always been the case and it never got me off my ass before.

November Vacillate

The lavender seeds are rustling like sand during an earthquake.

November Discommode

He blocked me from social media.

November Ecoanxiety

The fungi have nearly consumed the entire apartment.

November Asunder

November Leitmotif

I tried to rip a mushroom from my shoulder again and the squirting blood dropped to the floor like icicles.

November Susurration

I don’t know how long this has been happening but today I listened intently and realized that every single mushroom that manifested in the apartment is constantly whispering “it’s time.”

November Avow

I watched a distant point of light flare brighter before the infinite abyss devoured it from existence. Something about it made me feel closer to God but I’m not sure which part.

November Schmaltz

November Supernumerary

The spores in the air had me coughing all day.

November Mellifluous

The little that’s left of the garden had been frozen completely. Once, I walked up to my sister while she was tending to her garden; she was crying so hard that she could barely speak. I asked what was wrong and she pointed to a batch of potatoes that had been ruined by frost. I couldn’t understand why she would cry that much over something so miniscule, I felt myself almost judge her but, in mere moments, she wiped the tears off and got back to working on the garden.

November Festinate

I just want to see her again.

November Blatherskite

The machine is crying.

November Lapidify

My skin is starting to crack.

November Ineffable

Memory from 1 year ago

November Illation

I think this is it. I can feel it. My death is imminent. I can feel every bit of life being sapped out of me. I don’t think I have much time left. God, I’m pathetic, aren’t I? I guess I’ll never make that time machine. But who knows. Maybe I’ll see my sister anyway. I still don’t know if I believe in God, but when I was conducting research on him I came across an interesting theory. It’s one that works off of panpsychism which is the theory that consciousness derives from matter. That our consciousness is the result of a very specific combination of matter and that consciousness, on some level, is universal. That everything in the world has a level of consciousness, maybe not the same level as ours, but it exists in some shape or form. And from here, many favor panentheism—the belief that the universe itself is God. That all of the different minds are characteristics of the only necessary being: the universe. I’d like to believe all that. And I hope that when I die and every trace of matter from my body has been dispersed, I’ll still be part of this all as one and in whatever form my new consciousness takes, I hope it’s able to find my sister and apologize.

November Vituperate

I deleted him from my contacts list.

November Ikigai

I planted the lavender seeds. I don’t know why. They always remind me of her and I just can’t take that most days. But I guess I would want flowers on my grave too.

November Inanition

I’m starved. The smoke in the air resembled nebulae in space and my eyes were beginning to lose sight. My skin receded into my bones and I found myself gasping for air. I coughed blood.

November Juberous

I scanned the fungi and licked the drool off my lips. I snapped myself out of it and I heard inaudible whispers that registered like sighs of relief.

November Hortatory

The lavenders grew and in the midst of the loud murmurings of all the fungi, I heard a soft, quiet, and familiar “Lavare” and for a moment I felt my feet lift off the ground.

November Totis Viribus

I started eating the mushrooms.

November Aroint

I left the gas on for a while and dropped a lit match right as I departed with my time machine.

December

I took a shower as soon as I got back.