DateIndex No.
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Dec–2021Self-Study #163 3:21pm, Friday. Here I am back in LA. Lunar eclipse. Days of heaviness, dread. I don’t feel any of myself. It’s difficult to write. No narrative. The letters difficult to shape. Bruises on my arm. Short hair. Different car. Reading Fire in the morning. Fire here at the counter of this café. Fire as a companion to my new insomnia, my out of body, out of time. New espresso machine, old jeans. This blue notebook. I don’t know where to begin, there is so much blue in my heart, so much water drowning behind my eyes I feel like if I start I’ll never ever be able to stop, drowning in all this blue. Forgetting to eat for an entire day and then two meals at once. Wine I pour but don’t drink. Coffee I drink but don’t feel.
Pentax UC-1
Dec–2021Self-Study #162 He touched the ends of my short hair joyfully and I thought, wait, am I love in with him? Is this the grief talking? All my blues mixing wildly together. At the table I tried to explain where I’d been these recent weeks, that act of summation that has felt so devastatingly confusing, unreachable. Who am I if I can’t speak myself in words?
Pentax UC-1
Nov–2021Self-Study #161 what I know for sure: after this experience I will never again be responsible for the care of a living thing. not an animal, not even a plant. certainly not a man. I will care only for myself and my art, & that will be my liberation as a woman. 

thunderstorms.
Mamiya C330
Nov–2021Self-Study #160 the sound of bats

my sleep still a disaster. waking frequently, sleeping superficially. awake today at 3am. but at least no more hallucinations of his pain.
Mamiya C330
Nov–2021his tripod
My Cousin Rachel
Final Harvest, with an index card notating his favorites
Mamiya C330
Oct–2021Self-Study #159 cafe cubano. petty arguments over the blinds. washing his soiled underwear. endless pills. accidentally leaving the car running. forgetting to shower (if I showered?). a smell I can’t get out of my nostrils, of urine and bleach and flesh and artificial heat and

“unfathomable emotions”
Mamiya C330
Oct–2021Self-Study #158 I was hopeful I would finally sleep last night but again, barely. sitting across from him in the hospital yesterday I felt the adrenaline drain from my body like a plant wavering on its stalk. yes, a relief to see he’s okay (is he okay?) but it’s almost like my body can’t take everything in despite my best efforts. my psyche as if swinging between extremes in order to construct some cohesive container of feeling. relief to be here, fear to be so far from LA. a sense I’ll be here maybe only two weeks, a feeling like I’ll be here forever. a sense of my own strength, a confrontation with my weakness.
Mamiya C330
Oct–2021Self-Study #157Best Western Crossroads Inn, no focusMamiya C330
Oct–2021Self-Study #156 afternoon. stuck in traffic on the bridge and wanting to fuck.
Mamiya C330
Oct–2021Self-Study #155here in el paso now, feeling one thing, then its opposite. a sense like my life as I knew it is crumbling in my wake. what to protect? what to rebuild? the truth and illusion of distance, of movement.
Mamiya C330
”autobiographies, erotics” ©2005-2026 Amanda Shank