so baaaaaaaasically everybody’s bullying me just because i’m so cute and popular

what’s the cutest place in england to go to in february/march? maybe corn wall

i haven’t fixed lucky numbers yet, but i’ve made a album cover. i think i need to release it with fewer songs, because i’ve lost faith in some of them. we’ll see.

london graphics centre. picked up a few books. a midori md paper grid notebook, sakura pigma micron pen, pair of tombow brush pens. zz got the same but the paper is ruled. we wandered around soho imagining what if we lived here. 1 bed in the middle of soho. local station: tcr. local park: hyde. nice night. kitchen table. seinfeld.

nice week. good week, yes. not much to report. silly stuff during the day. good stuff at night, good stuff in the morning. long saturday, we walked and walked. 20,000 steps. i’ve been making these omelettes where you beat 4 eggs w/ 60g greek yoghurt + 40g mozzarella cheese. rly good, flufy. lucky made it on saturday. it was great. qima for coffee. green valley for groceries.

thursday was nice too. beautiful morning, weird afternoon. akub for dinner. very nice. made something like that milfuf wedge / garlic yoghurt for lunch on sunday with pomegranate seeds. etymonline says “pomegranate” means, like, “apple with a lot of seeds” or, like, “seedy apple”. cabbage w/ yoghurt + apple with many seeds seeds.

steadily improving with little dips.

hello, darling! :)

drink some water!

on the day we met, i subscribed. £5 a month. for the guilt. so she’d write more. i wrote my postal address down on the back of my computer so she could take a photo and write me a letter. when i was in Portugal she wrote a longer piece, i read it in the little cafe in idanha-a-nova drinking cheap lager. i talked at length with annemarie about how good the writing was, about how talented this young lady was. that it’s raw and it’s angry but it’s there and i want to see it. and i said the same to gabi in the back of the taxi when we met in the castles in Sintra.

i’m sleepy tonight, it’s late to be writing. i worked well this week, i understand what’s happening at work now and where it came from and why. we worked from home together most of the week. tuesday night we hit a spot of trouble, but it was the last of that kind of trouble for a while. repaired over falafel, knocked out of ketosis, on the same team. that’s how it got fixed, stayed fixed.

z’s brother left the country. i’ll miss him. he’s a nice boy, and funny.

i’m working on an e.p. at the moment called lucky numbers. it’s a promising set of tracks so far. i have some demos, but i mixed them in an extremely loud cafe on Saturday and i think i did kind of a bad job so i’ll have to mix them again. i hope it’ll come out on February 14th.

i’m happy. stable and happy. can’t remember feeling like this in a long time. can’t remember feeling like this before. i made a nice curry tonight. tangy. z made labneh and pink pickles for snack plates. tangy. maybe we’ll make some of that keto bread that’s just eggs + mozzarella + greek yoghurt. it’s delicious, you just put it all in a lined sheet and stick it in the oven and then it’s bread of cheese. the days are very busy, lots of walking, lots of little events. my avg walking distance has tripled over the past 5 weeks. resting heartrate down. i’m feeling life-curious. i’m going to live forever.

strangely empty building. never seen another soul who seems to live here. just that ghost who haunts the elevators. we let a guy in who was delivering a package one time. he dropped it at the mailboxes on the ground floor then got into the elevator with us. he pressed 3, we pressed 4. when we got to floor 3 he stepped out, looked around and got back into the elevator with us. he seemed to apologize, i’m not sure if he made a sound but he moved his body like he was speaking. it was tense between 3 and 4.

these valleys below my eyes are turning into canyons.

on jan 8 i wake up at 4am fully refreshed. zz stayed up late night writing. it’s bitterly cold, she wrote about the cold. the radiators have never worked in this place. have to call somebody. there’s a bus in thirty minutes and until then there is this cold. there’s a thermostat in the hallway, i turn it to thirty, nothing changes. there’s a cupboard in the hallway behind the coats, i’ve never opened it, i’ve never seen anyone open it. inside i find a white panel. on the panel i see a little drawing of a radiator. next to the little drawing of the radiator is a button. next to the button is the word “OFF”. there’s also a little drawing of a tap beside the word “AUTO”. i remember that zz told me that sometimes the water is hot, and sometimes it is cold. the heating never works, the water is sometimes hot and sometimes cold. this is consistent with my findings. i press the button beside the radiator. the house growls into life. i go from radiator to radiator turning their valves until they hiss and gurgle happily and obediently, as ready as any of us to be hot and to be warm and not cold.

the bus is in five minutes now. i know that door is a one way road until zz wakes up since i lost my key fob. but this is the best use of our time. she’ll wake up to new heat, i’ll collect my eggs and collect my cheese. get some clothes and a speaker. charge my headphones.

no one else is ever here
except that old woman
who haunts the elevators 
and that young woman
with the sandwich
who i didn’t ever see again 

WFZ week except for Tuesday. we were productive and drank tea with mint and ate very well. i baked a cake for zz’s brother on friday. a sweet banana cake with a sour cream chocolate icing and pretty strawberries.

Saturday was emotional and difficult at times, but sweet and important too. We went to the Horniman museum to look at all the dry animals, and we went to the Planetarium to look at all the far stars, and we ate mushrooms and talked deeply and held each other and cried.

i am happy.

hi everyone:)

Welcome to twentytwentyfour.

On new years’ evening i ended up going to Simmons with some people from work. i kissed the prettiest girl in the world at midnight. facts. periodt.

After the celebration of fire and glitter and paper falling from the ceiling, we left. I really needed to pee but i haven’t been able to bring myself to use the boys since i grew my hair, and i haven’t been able to use the girls since i cut it. so i just sat there bursting.

afterwards me and zaina got some halloumi and houmous and salad and chips and went home. i drank a little, but not much. i enjoyed simmons, exceptionally. it’s fun to be alive.

It’s funny how peoples faces change as you get to know them, and your memories of them before feel like they’re about a different person because of who they are to you and how they look to you.

in the morning when we wake up we set up our diet. it’s like mine from last year, keto + vegetarian + no alcohol. i took a 1 week break between christmas eve and new years so we could celebrate with abandon. it’s gonna be a challenge but isn’t it fun to be in something together? it’s fun, yeah.

israel has locked itself into a death spiral with its policy of reëstablishing deterrence through fearby disproportionate response. its existence relies on the nations around it being afraid, but it’s too much this time, too wanton, too abject. so they are just gonna start world war 3 because they can’t do what is right and they can’t back down. i read one book and now consider myself an expert on the matter.

tuesday we work from home. at work i’m having a little trouble because i haven’t had an easy time focusing for a few months.

all the days are kind of blurred together. a bright happy blur of lilac and white and yellow and pink and blue. it sure can be hard to learn a person while they’re learning you and you’re learning yourself. the good parts are exceedingly good, and the hard parts aren’t bad.

i guess i can’t do this chronologically… i’ll try to start taking notes during the week again… here are things i can remember:

  • i cooked
    • i made labneh
    • i made some pretty tasty flatbread with only: eggs, mozzarella, greek yoghurt + an oven
    • zaytoun + za’atar on everything
    • i made a few tasty paneer curries
  • it’s nice to fall asleep and to wake up
  • i wrote some good songs
  • i am extremely happy + relaxed
  • there was a little blow up but we fixed it.
    • and she bought me flowers.
      • they’re sitting in water in my teenage engineer field range water bottle on the nightstand.
  • lay on the bed working while you pray
  • a lovely evening in dim light with snacks
  • anxious on thursday evening

i’m so tired right now that i keep falling asleep while i’m typing, and when i keep myself awake my dreams start chattering anyway. i’m that kind of tired where i’m going to start hearing music in my mind as loud as if it’s playing on speakers beside me. i will cook dinner now for when Lucky gets home from her 2 hour walk.

i can never really figure out how to write happy, and i’m not quite ready to think about anything else.

anyway, that’s all i’ve got. i’ll start taking notes.

love you, sport. have a good one. see you. x

feeling lucky

i’ve put myself in a position where i can be hurt now. but she will never hurt me, not on purpose. look at her, she’s an angel. we will, of course, hurt each other. everybody hurts each other. but we will be forgiven, and it won’t happen that same way again next time. i’m optimistic.

my yearly tarot predicted this month would be The Sun.

it is.

i should draw fourteen for next year. 2024, all even numbers. i trust it, trustworthy year.
fourteen cards. one for every month and two for the theme. this year’s theme was learning to take as easily as i give. death and rebirth in the desert. oscillating like a freshly plucked string.

christmas eve was perfect. christmas day was perfect. boxing day was strange but beautiful. close and beautiful.

christmas eve i spend all day getting ready, writing, tidying up, eating cheese and helping Lucky with the shopping. when evening falls i head to the bus stop. Lucky’s coming from Green Valley. i get there a little early so i slip through the open gate at Bromley-by-Bow and wait on the platform.
we walk home, laughing and talking. lots of laughing, lots of talking. lots of plans, always plans.

Lucky has a little panic about the size of her todo list, we jump up and launch into inaction. it really felt like we were about to do something, but we get distracted by each other and delay everything until the morning. just after midnight we make a pledge to each xxxother.

christmas day. we have had our menu planned since the 22nd, finalized over dinner on the 23rd. groceries shopped on the 24th. the morning is 50 open recipe tabs & typing up a timing schedule in Notes.app. under the wire, last minute, zero hour. (zero hour and eleventh hour both mean the same thing?) it might appear to the untrained observer that we don’t have our shit together, but scholars of Taiichi Ohno & W. Edwards Deming will recognize JIT Manufacturing when they see it. jerusalem bagels, gazan salad, cauliflower cheese, carrots and parsnips, roast potatoes, quorn roast, freshly made cranberry sauce, vine leaves, labneh, houmous, za’atar, olives, crackers, cheese and shloer and wine and mango monster. one of the best meals of my life. one of the best days too. so near and tender. so fun, so playful-stressful. we played a few rounds of chameleon with Lucky’s brother. we walk alone together. she puts on a little music, i listen to a podcast. we walk in circles holding hands. my heart could burst right out of my chest.

boxing day starts early. dark and lazy. up at 5 and dressed and out the door quite soon to walk for hours to the station. the district opens up as we get to Tower Hill, so we take a shortcut. breakfast grenade bar and coffee. she to Brighton, me to Blackheath. i make poor food choices, walk for hours more. hop a bus outside the cinema, and clamber up the stairs to home. cozy in bed, i put some tabla samples on the op-1 and have a napcident which messes up my sleep schedule. i finish reading Finkelstein’s Gaza. —gotta get to sleep because i’m going to Brighton in the morning for a work-from-home date.

—27th special. she introduces me to her friend who leaves us to work together in the cafe. she takes me out for dinner. we eat plenty and drink a little wine. we get a little room above a gay bar and sleep soundly, waking early. just after midnight we make a pledge to each other. it’s cherries season. i lost my aiaiai headphones. we get a little coffee and do a little work and eat some fries and we head home.

in the morning it’s working from home + eating Christmas leftovers for the last friyay of the year. we get a little mint tea in soho with her cousin and her cousin’s husband. then she takes me to a little irish bar with a customer-facing-dumbwaiter where i drink a diet coke and a sparkling water and we talk about the future. and the past. and we pull up the zapruder film so she can compare her butt to jackie onassis. jackie o’s got nothing on Lucky.

i’m in a rush because i’m late for doing nothing for 6 hours (not a joke). here’s a list:

  • winter wonderland tickets
  • regents park (cute, pretty)
  • ¿¿¿Levant Kitchen at Selfridges??? ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿delicious???????
  • rain, skip winter wonderland
  • sleep apart nobody knows why
  • <3
  • nye i’m not doing cheese in the bath instead i’m just hanging around in london town until midnight so i can kiss somebody and go home
  • all these people i’m being introduced to love misgendering me immediately in reply to a sentence where lucky used a correct pronoun
  • my life includes a lot more min tea than it did two months ago.

love u bye