jasminne morataya
home....
home....
June 17
i had already made up my mind to drive barefoot before i left, and thought my boots were in my bag with everything else. but x called me after i got on the 118 and said i forgot them at his house. i drove on. the stretch through sunland felt darker than usual, like the freeway was getting eaten at the edges by murkiness...i could barely see the outlines of the hills. when i got back i stood for a moment in the middle of the street. i was holding my bag and an unopened bottle of rosé. the sky had a grey violet tinge to it. my feet were cold, but not unpleasantly so.
June 18
i went to the livescan place above the hair salon. yellow building. tile, lino, that thin scratchy nylon carpet (grey, black gum spots, covid dance dance revolution standing guide arrows). $67 dollars. i waited in a corner by the fingerprinting machine for a few minutes, not knowing what to do with my hands. the technician’s features were obscured by the plexiglass germ shield, but he was short and balding. he opened a new box of baby wipes for me. i had already washed my hands, but without speaking he attached himself to my right wrist and began to wipe the tips of my fingers. he had an orange shammy in the other hand. it went like this: wipe jasminne, wipe machine, firmly impress jasminne onto machine. satisfactory beep—next finger configuration. unsatisfactory beep—try again. his grip was strong, but his wipes were exceedingly gentle.
June 19
slept in too late—took an overdose of valerian root to escape wakefulness and a headache aiming for the spot behind my eyes. laundry day (parent’s house). i sat at the table and watched the dogs sleep on the tile. there are many things that i am afraid of in the world. resident evil shit, needless suffering and exploitation and death, environment. i took a moment to consider those things. life for me has been really good lately despite these overlapping matrices of pain, maybe because of them. there has been so much connectivity and change occurring in my disjunctive little life, so many opportunities to learn with other people, to try harder...to fight for everyone who’s already lost. i drank turmeric tea and fell into the couch. when i closed my eyes, the dryer alerted me to the dryness of my clothes. i accidentally washed another chapstick.
June 21
i bought an rainbow assortment of scrunchies because my aunt told me if i want my hair to stop falling out in insane body horror-level amounts i should braid it before i go to bed. i stood kinda tilted in the aisle for a minute and thought, “can i do this? is consciously choosing to purchase colored scrunchies indicative of some perilous mental collapse on the horizon, or does just this mean i am finally allowing myself to dress ‘happy’?” i looked at myself later in the slate blue reflection of my corolla. i was disheveled, my clothes were crumpled, all funhouse mirror stretched. got home, and m. called. we talked abt john galliano while i ate ravioli directly from the strainer like they were chips (really fucking gross).
June 22
went to catalina with a. and j., who recently scored some ann demeulemeester sneakers cheap on ebay and hand dyed the leather himself on a whim (psychotic ingenuity...antwerp 7?). long and arduous ascension to the botanical garden, sun in our eyes. my shoes were filled with gravel and sand, i lagged behind a little as they ID’d the native flora. fennel, lemonade berry, jimson weed, and matilija poppies, the flowers that look like fried eggs. lots of other stuff. concrete wrigley memorial—foreboding, ominous temple of doom chewing gum shit, framed by a fog-licked mountain (good venue for a generator show). we spied an island fox while waiting for the bus back down and all of us took the same terrible photo, it just looks like a cat running in the road.
June 23
a day hardly worth documenting. i didn’t rest much bc of recurring sleep paralysis-nightmare hybrids so i was spread extra thin today, felt like hiding underneath humanity’s porch and dying there. i went a few places, bought a plant, cleaned my room, spun myself out a little (but not to the brink). ate a really greasy slice of pizza in my car at some point—folded it in half to finish faster, to forget! drove on the streets mostly, no freeways.
thinking abt everything on the horizon...what i want. buzzing unobtrusively. lately i’ve been feeling my out edges a little more, and nothing seems all that impossible to me, like it used to. x and i just listened to tim hecker’s radio amor in my room...painless
June 24
i feel way too good lately. i feel like i’m gonna reach a terminal point of goodness and then be ravaged by the spidery tendrils of something catastrophic and irreversible. it would hurt a lot to see my little sand castle of earnest ambition crushed underfoot or consumed by the rising tide.
a.m. came by to start moving out. it’s hard for me to be mad despite multiple documented cases of him fucking me over. i’m pretty sure he doesn’t realize he’s doing it most of the time (i really hope so). we talked for a while. i missed him, he is so charming and effusive w/o trying. i wish him the best. bunk beds w his brother at mommy and daddy’s house for the time being—haha.
i tried to intuitively cook huevos rancheros w/o consulting any recipes. garlic, onion, tomatillo, tomato, jalapeño, sazón goya, achiote en polvo, extra pepper. egg x2. refried black bean. lime rice cos i was out of cilantro. técito.
i still don’t know why i’m alive but i feel like i’m finally starting to be my own friend, and i’ve been a better friend to others lately too...hmm
June 25
pic nick w s. at the lower arroyo. many treats. had to buy another corkscrew when she was unable to open the rosé w a lighter after like 40 minutes of clownish struggle, talked abt distanced sapphic love and the Past and Future. we’re both equally serious abt ruling the aux but that’s our only real point of contention. listening to a lot of music—disordered simulated shuffle button.
slight rosé twist, peed in the dense brush by some white sage. radiated warmth. i’m really tan. getting a tattoo from j. later tonight...the fool from the rider-waite tarot deck. cos who’s a bigger fool than me?
June 26
explosive fight w a.m. today, the last sinewy piece of our connectivity flexed stiffly and tore. i moved some of his stuff last night cos new roommate has been living out of their car and he told me he’d move weeks ago. i felt i couldn’t keep stalling in good faith when this other person was in such a bad situation...but he didn’t get it. i said things that were mean but true, he didn’t get it either. he never got it—he doesn’t understand anything except every man for himself. i hope he makes it to wherever he wants to go.
invisible scissors friendship severed. i waited for him to leave in my car up the street because to be honest his level of anger scared me. observing thru the mirror—windows open, crying stupidly, curled up in the passenger seat. he looked really small at that distance.
June 27
bought some CDs for the whip w j.b. grace jones—klaus nomi—die kreuzen—aphex twin come to daddy EP.
10 to the 60 to the 605 to the 210. cried a lot in my car on the way to my parents’ house...ugly scary mouth cries, hyperbole cries. thought abt when l. would laugh at me for doing that. got more evened out by the time flim started playing.
i still feel so bad abt what happened yesterday...the humiliation of it all. i’m leaving for oregon w r. on tuesday, i am eager to purge myself of old memories through the cultivation of new ones.
June 28
cutting myself out of the pain matrix.
met a.g. at a nursery in the arroyo seco, think i’ll start volunteering there. ecological restoration undertakings that seem life-affirming and tangible. mugwort, currant, goldenrod, white sage, coffeeberry, toyon. no shortage of california natives. there was a yellow lab named petal there, she fell asleep in the leaves underneath a table.
devil’s gate. we lamented the state of things (ruinous environment stuff, golf courses). some datura, erowid trip report. walked around in the tunnel and absorbed the residual spray paint odor. the joy of life comes down to the power of observation, looking and feeling and touching. dirt and gravel in my shoes.
June 29
have to patch my tire, found a nail in the right rear one. fuck! hemorrhaging funds left and right. feeling sexy and joker-ish. want to buy a $1,400 v. westwood lurex corset blouse just to do it. the world’s gonna end soon.
saw m. and then g. and then x. heart swelled w love. been sleeping like shit lately, nightmares and aching and tossing around. dreaming of people who never deserved to know any part of me. sad !
June 30
40+ hours personal wakefulness record cracked. double effexor— circle of communion wafer bits around a tweaked vampire. pancito, crackers, cherries. i swam and swam and swam, went under and inhaled. brain-eating amoebas apparently follow along thru the olfactory nerve of the nose and enter the brain thru the cribriform plate in the skull, but it will be a few days before i know if i got them or not. will update as necessary.
followed thru on a tip from g. and bought a pack of hunters at a gas station in stockton (while listening to stockton). smoked maybe three of them, two w the filters twisted off. the rest slid out of my flannel and into the river as soon as we got there. quit again.
not feeling any particular way. i would really like to be dead right now, but mostly in jest. goodnight 🧤
June 31
cinder cone volcano. sinking into the ash and stone, hurling my soft shitty body against a demonic 85 degree vertical incline. fell a few times and spread myself out on the rocks.
got to the top and collapsed along the mouth of the crater. felt emptied out and unbirthed. watched r. walk to the very bottom, receding into tininess. i read and listened to pavilion of dreams by harold budd, saw the reflection of the sun in the periphery of my glasses. mind wandered...thought abt being in love, being a mother, learning and teaching. heart still. sometimes i forget that there’s hardly a world left to inherit, or naively that it could all be fixed in time. rien à faire !
recovered some sticks for the friends i promised them to, kept thinking one in my pocket was a chapstick bc of its shape, but it wasn’t.
July 1
i feel so fraught with longing, but i don’t know for what or whom. for everything maybe. feelings like that aren’t supposed to be resolved i think, cos they’re great motivators.
enjoying the glowing promise of this new month. excited to volunteer and work again and make incendiary devices...pushing big rock uphill.
by a waterfall. napped on a sloping rock, my hat pulled down over my eyes. but whenever i really fell asleep i would start to slide and hit the rocks below (happened thrice). shocked my spine, bit the inside of my cheek, crinkled the toe i broke in santa barbara...also went thru two different short books on zen by two different people named suzuki—they said opposite things but i guess that’s the point.
July 4
my little sandcastle of...generative optimism? renewed purpose and strength? anyway it’s falling over. i don’t know why or how. the tide is eating it all up. i’m a fucking idiot.
things are fine. i ate eggs benedict for the first time today. i’ve been having honest dialogues w myself, consistently working towards set goals, thinking really hard abt the kind of person i am and want to be. why do i want to die? the pins and needles cracked skull feeling is so strong and it doesn’t make any sense cos everything is fine !
i walked by a couple on a hike today and the dad asked the mom if the baby was eating his hat instead of wearing it. she said yes and he took the hat away from the baby. another dad was telling his son about some of the different trails. the son complained in a playful sort of way. the air was sharp and dry. patches of dirty snow.
July 5
fortuitous detour to alpaca farm. a baby was being born as we arrived. bloodied pink towel—jackie kennedy chanel suit. marinara sauce placenta strewn along the grass. hot day, cloudless.
the baby writhed and moaned on the towel like the eraserhead baby. i understood implicitly. it’s hard to be born and harder still to use your legs. mother was serene, close by always. grazing. the baby couldn’t stand after an hour, which is apparently unusual. even its head looked too big for its neck. woman injected it w a b-complex and gave it a little dextrose solution as a pick me up.
by a river later. a blue heron on a rock, in the stream. damselflies swirling around. reading a book about “conceptual blockbusting”—exactly what it sounds like...less than worthless.
July 6
rose garden in portland. getting vertical in the grass, removing layers of clothing (socks, t-shirt, flannel, r.’s nuclear orange puffer) and putting them back on slowly. hot-cold, sun-cloud-rain. burning a little incense. reading a jungian interpretation of tristan and iseult...helplessness caught in my throat, conquered by the wine of love.
anima + animus. wholeness—trueness. smile mourning every new and tender thing that will die someday, forever from now. radio amor thru the headphones again.
i keep nurturing the development of prickly feelings, but they chafe against me so nice. recalling the time i read a lover’s discourse at mission dolores park (alone, totally alone) and jeweled tears fell out of my eyes...alchemical and perfect.
July 7
tossing and turning...restless leg, r.’s silly puppy snores. dreamless and wound up and shivering, 4loko headache. i got dressed (thrift flannel, emergency pants from the energy sink w*lm*rt in redding, dirty socks from the day before) and walked outside. called x. the moon was up, the sky was that crispy faded violet color again—old t shirt. chest heavy w mysterious want.
looking up and down the street, eyes peeled for raccoons or burgeoning serial killers. the ground was neither dry nor wet...cold. bone cold. pinkish nose. back in bed, no sleep still (painful).
later, much later, driving on the i-5. moody and swirling w low feelings. the thought of being seen as a means to an end instead of an end within myself...i’d rather be extinguished. but maybe hills like that aren’t worth dying on. i have so much pride, but in a way i do deserve it. every last lashing.
July 8
left early, covid test in san jose—anxious to be fine and see everyone i’ve been needing to see. psych was late to our phone appointment, he had to talk the person before me off the ledge, haha. opened up abt new and scary flurries of sui-ideation, no matter where i am or what i’m doing. short duration but very strong.
having fun when the malignant stain appears above my head like a dripping mud halo, spreading itself thin over the contours of my silly eyes, my spork nose, my sly dog smile. a long, thin fissure running along the miraculous newly paved super incline i’ve been on for months. what’s up w that shit !!
oh well. the medicine bottle is bigger now. my psych, he sounds exactly like x.’s dad, very armenian, a little more dispassionate...but no anger there. jumping into a funny project w l., gonna do a clan of xymox-ish cover of the macarena w her.
July 9
had to finally address the nail in tire situation. i was being a coward and gonna get e. to put the spare on for me in the evening since he lives pretty close, but i watched two youtube videos and fortified my nerves enough to attempt it myself. fucked up my back a little, maybe a lot. won’t know until i feel it. $191.28, 2 hour wait.
woman at the tire place looked like simone weil.
July 10
22 2 months from today. i don’t know if life is going my way or not. need work on my film before the fall...in no danger of ever being a financially solvent artist, which should technically be a freeing realization. but i am stalling, film-wise...taking too many frivolous detours bc this is a new height, a new depth of feeling that is so “me—you—everyone” i’m scared to touch it. i have never been this sure about anything, but the sureness makes me want to retreat instead of meeting the work head on, which has to change soon (now?).
July 11
yesterday i talked to j.b. abt tape loops for unrealized films. had a freakout about resident evil world on the heels of reading the first essay in fanged noumena + a youtube video abt deleuze and i cried for like an hour abt how useless and archaically romantic my drawings and projects are, but cooled off. maybe video isn’t like archaic...but i want to be strong enough to defeat racist algorithms and (redacted) gentrifying housing complexes and start a (redacted) cell. SLA 7-headed serpent type shit--rhizomatic and unpalatable...incorruptible. not sold or bought. i hate how the left eats itself on twitter and goes nowhere fast.
July 12
went on a walk and talked to a.g. for a min. we just kinda flex our trinkets...our junk pile...old pics of mom and grandpa. so-called trinks. i have a lot of movies and books on the queue now, fat stacks. i was telling him that i want to know everything so i can just tell people everything and they don’t have to suffer or languish as much as i do. solemn commitment to exegesis, hopefully forever. burning the candle at both ends
July 13
i hope i get into the teaching credential program, i’d feel pretty adrift and stupid if i didn’t. i i have a lot of books on critical teaching and alternative styles of pedagogy already and the thought of shielding kids in underserved communities in the moments before our untimely deaths seems really like...i’d want to live for a long while before killing myself...like two or three more decades honestly.
i hit the mausos today cos it was 92 degrees in the apartment and i wanted to wear a nice spring fit instead of a wretched summer one. i wish the libraries weren’t closed. mountain view for less than 20 min, forgot my sketchbook like an idiot. went to forest lawn’s stupid freedom mausoleum, wasn’t as cold. so much stained glass abt the founding of america, revisionist and galling. thanksgiving and big bronze of george washington outside. found the grave of billie dove w/o looking at it, the good witch from wizard of oz.
July 14
don’t feel excited abt recent drawings or ideas...wish i was neat and contained and could compose a decently arranged comp and paint it slowly and not have masses of curly fence scribbles and useless hearts everywhere...the sketchbook is looking very art therapy lately in a way that lances me. i want to be an industrious little craftsperson.
having difficult conversations. it’s fine, i’m fine. we’re all just trying our best. we’re becoming better versions of ourselves, hopefully.
July 15
watched the godfather part ii last night. the revelatory scene in the hotel where diane keaton calls her marriage w al pacino an abortion was like...oh my god. i hate to leave that world. tunneling head feeling when i think abt my life, my research, the curly-fenced naive love inside me that my body is too small to hold. i wish i was fredo whispering hail marys on the boat.
July 16
days pass and i can’t stop them from doing so, even if i really wanted to. with l, plucking cherry tomatoes from the garden and eating them like candy. we made a curry, watched serial experiments lain + universal techno. eagle rock’d, saw a fire in a homeless encampment on a hill.
July 18
friends. sad sad thing, but not without optimism. driving away from the valley and realizing that it might be a long time before i could go back out that way. crying loudly from the recesses of my mouth, gross.
l. again. k. too. lake w r. and friends. badminton. easy easy to be w them. on the phone for the latter half of the night, in my own little world. sweet and silly and painful in equal measure.
July 19
walking around w r. in their neighborhood. vegan cupcake, iced coffee...more american spirit hunters, and they rolled me an amsterdam shag. sitting at the lake, a different one. geese and ducks and pigeons. i’m a big fan of those light brown speckled ones, they bring me a buzzing jolt of joy. my heart is full and wanting. i am ready for anything.
we wrestled in the grass...i’m so weak and silly! easily defeated. a man behind us yelled that he was going to put the sun out with his fucking flame. he stood crooked on a bench, legs bent like a crow.
called and texted x. a million times because he sent me a distress dispatch re. his stomach at like 8 in the morning. i thought he was dead or hospitalized, but he just slept in really really late. what a guy!!
July 20
my legs are fucked, twisted torsioned tossing and turning comforter rustling until the sun came thru the blinds. weird but not unpleasant dreams. falling up.
circling the graveyard like a roomba w a.g. long time no see, walked around cursed energy sink westwood for a while after too, talking, on the hunt for trinks. easy and effusive, not too tangled, listening and being heard...i feel real and honest and whatever the opposite of unhinged is. hinged. i feel hinged.
went home. huevos rancheros again! rice, bean, homemade roasted salsa. fucked up the flip on the eggs, they were supposed to be over easy. very good. thinking of my mom.
July 21
got pan de elote for mom. parents were watching this movie abt like.. sex trafficking. w rosario dawson. non linear narrative structure. i left before it was over.
m. is subletting a room for a month in a house. pro: huge yard + garden. con: the whole house is built on a disastrous slant. m. says she’ll put oil in a pan and it will all flow over to one side. she made me fusilli w zucchini, tomato, garlic sauce, basil pesto, other things. parmesan. matcha drink. i ate quickly. i am eating a lot lately, i’m glad i don’t own a scale cos maybe i’d let myself get neurotic over it. whatever. i feel good.
other m. came on his lunch break. good to see him! they both watch way too many movies. he told me olivia de havilland died and i said finally! a little too emphatically. 104 is too much life.
July 22
m. again...we were bitten half to death yesterday and still not a citronella candle in sight. she had two beautiful ladies there, fellow alums from cooper. delicate features, nice eyebrow shape. 6 degrees of separation type beat bc one of them knew e. in the grad department. texted him abt this, finally got to see my performance in anti-fa the musical...nothing to write home abt.
had an audience w the hello kitty rosé. maybe i should stop bringing that around, i don’t want it to become a character trait. lately i feel too frivolous and maybe evil and maybe a little. killable. even the things that are serious aren’t really able to touch me. i’m too empty !
thinking abt eternal recurrence and how i will live to experience all of this over and over and over. saw a coyote on figueroa and ave. 60. ghost white matted fur thin and twisted receding out of headlight range. gone like that. i shivered in my car. bad omen.
July 26
brought spring roll and ga nuong to r.’s.
meditating on that fact that i’m a little flaneur girl with soft frivolous little marshmallow problems that are inconsequential and not worth worrying abt bc world ending. every suffering or ego torment or (redacted) spitting in my mouth is on an anime redemption arc character dev type beat. idk if i’m just delusional and vain but it’s like being carved out of marble and made more real as time passes (galatea). each time I’m faced w cute training wheel hardships i gain emotional depth, inner resolve, my hair/skin become softer...mucho cariño y respeto to los haters, los emotional vampires caught in spidery codependency matrices...see, so fucked !
July 27
peanut butter and honey fig sandwich. $30 carwash + tip. 2016 slate blue toyota corolla...safe in its insensate plush womb. driving a lot, all over. listening to and getting super brain damage from hot girl summer rhetoric but it’s fun and easy.
posted up at r.’s house again cos it’s my safe zone. she landed a gallery manager job w 45k salary + paid vacation today...so crazy hot. i feel like such an idle little vagrant in comparison. modelo time w j.b. at the lake afterwards. i wish i could get paid for hanging, that’s the only arena in which i really excel.
trying to divest ruinous reptile brain energy into like...shibori and knitting and being saint rose of lima but in the ig DIY atelier drip world. volcel summer.
July 28
woke up to a call from armenian psych. he referred me to a sleep study for my legs and upped my dose again. what i really want is to get all of the teeth knocked out of my mouth. i want to see my blood pooling on the ground, in the space underneath my tongue, on my sheets and on the walls and on the blunt object i’m being bludgeoned with. i went back to bed and didn’t roll out until 2. i haven’t washed my hair in 4 days.
laundry day. a fire on the mountain north of my parents’ house. knitting catatonically and watching 12 monkeys. taking screenshots of nuclear test mushroom clouds. i know i’m headed for very good things bc i’m very determined and ambitious! i’m serious abt everything i want to do...but the poisoned core inside of my glittering self-actualizing exterior doesn’t want any part of it. someone should strip all of the meat off of my femur and wield it in the air like a club.
July 30
headache conversation between two individuals who categorically reply after being replied to, felt like a game of pong. a. called me on accident, and when i tried to schedule a catch up phone call w her in the future she was really curt to me. had a difficult talk w x. abt everything that’s been on my mind lately and was mean to him too...like passing the torch or something. this feeling is contagious.
listened to songs about leaving and down colorful hill in my car. resisted the urge to eat at mcdonalds today.
love is a place and I live there.
August 1
shadow-boxed in front of the mirror, shook myself dry, took a deep breath...then stood transfixed over the little table for like 12 hours straight (different positions) to exorcise the synaptic snapper brain gremlin responsible for all recent wire-crossings, both good and bad! hand fell clean off! ate a bookshelf nectarine and a thimbleful of probiotic drink, cup of roommate-brewed lavender(!))) coffee, cabbage scraps. skin hot w sleeplessness—for what, for whom? my burgeoning love for jasminne (twisted, resisting, past-present-future-encapsulating, happy-sad, generative-ruinous)...despite all of my recent bids for connectivity w others (abortive—successful—or just jokes between jokesters) the truth is that it’s me, always been me...me, my (reluctant!) soulmate!!!!
August 2
all of the friend breakups i’ve had in the last 4 months have been aha lol. personally devastating cos the connection never just faded away w these ppl...intensely theatrical and final endings only (art schoolers eating each other’s feelings). and while i have many more feelings for them than i have room in my body (good-bad, nostalgia-freedom), i’m on a super cool upwardly mobile life tip. thankful for everyone i have left even if our interaction is minimal. now is the time to invest in jasminne stock bc my life is dope and i’m doing dope shit...not beholden to institutions or money or making myself smaller than I am for anyone’s comfort. i’m so excited abt going back to school ! i’m so excited to learn and teach and love and protect ! and it’s so easy to love u now that i love myself (not always, but way more than before). happy w all of my recent bids at connectivity w others (abortive—successful—or just jokes between jokesters) but the truth is that it’s me, always been me...me, my (reluctant!) soulmate!!!!
i don’t even think the impossible thing abt me comes down to a matter of integrity, or being right—wrong, or residual haunted pangs of filthy catholic ethics filtered thru r.d. laing or whatever...i just don’t have an inside voice. i need u to know exactly how i feel abt u even if u couldn’t care less