*** 6.8.25, i turned 26 yesterday.
i don't think i have much to say about it, emotionally-and-growing-old-wise. but it was a very special birthday, the kind of day that makes you feel incandescantly happy and grateful; it's been nothing but storms here for the past week and a half or so. it was sunny yesterday. i was also lucky to have my birthday fall on ILD for summer so i got to go to a fancy high tea meetup my local comm organized and it was really nice. i liked my coord and tried to be very indulgent with it and focused on wearing items that i get the most excited over and got a lot of compliments and questions and stuff*. and afterwards we went to a rhythm game arcade and then got korean food for dinner. it didn't rain or thunder once. i felt very cared for and loved and that's all thanks to my partner.
i'm coming down a bit from the high of such a wonderful weekend and experiencing some melancholic feelings now. and some more apprehension. and thinking man i need to quit my job. but i was very happy this whole weekend and i don't want the happiness of this weekend to be overwritten. and i don't think that reflection needs to be tied to sadness or making good things feel more sad when you turn them over a few times in your hands.
* one thing i've noticed about my comm is everyone is a little scared of proxy shipping or doing things that might be considered 'taboo' within lolita spaces. my bf and i got asked numerous times where our rocking horse shoes were from and we were both met with very obvious 'ohhh's of disappointment every time when we told them they were bodyline via taobao for pretty cheap. like, are you not glad that you don't have to buy VW? someone asked me where my large orb was from and i explained that while it's probably from the same factory/manu as authentic VW i don't think VW is worth the pricepoint since it's just plated costume jewelry so i bought it off taobao for a fraction of that original pricepoint. the person i said this to does have an authentic VW orb and she was like 'oh yeah i regretted buying it because it's not made very well. i should go get some from taobao now that i have my one authentic piece' ??? lol. fair enough i get the swansong of wanting to have ONE designer brand piece but all that money you could have saved...i was surprised.
having to explain to all these people, many of them older than me (i'm pretty sure my partner and i are some of the youngest people in our comm) how workers will take some of the goods before they get properly branded and sell them for cheap/not at full brand price point and still make a profit was just...wild to me. idk how people live like this. i know/have known for a while that lolita comms have weird attitudes towards this sort of thing but personally i'd take buying a VW orb directly from some underpaid person who works in the factory for like $12 than spending $300 to buy the same orb on VW's shop and, while purely my own opinion, i think it's more 'moral' than buying from VW directly at that point. it was strange to be the one person a lot of these people have ever met who isn't staunchly in the 'do not ever buy a dupe of anything' camp.
all that said i've liked being part of a comm but i'm glad i didn't get started with wearing stuff within the space. i have more fun wearing it on my own anyway. but being able to celebrate my birthday in such a quintessential lolita space enjoying yummy food and drinking from delicate teacups in an old buliding was really nice.
*** 5.31.25, tattoo 2 + hex mundi perfumes.
maybe branding's rotted my brain but i want to get one of these lone star beer can guys rust makes.
i had some perfume samples from hex mundi come in the other day. rachael (blended + named for the blade runner character) and possession (for the old horror movie) ended up being my favorites. i had a surprisingly emotional response to rachael. the perfume notes are petrichor + violet + tobacco + leather + tart cherry. i didn't think i'd care a lot about it; i'm not particularly drawn to cherry and it tends to be a pretty dominating note as well as being blended mostly in sultry/sexy ways that i'm not drawn to. but i love blade runner (both movies) so obviously i gave in. but this. a rain-drenched sad cherry, a single blast of red color in a dreary landscape. it gets the upheaval of rachael's character in that movie quickly: a femme fatale by design and pitiful by nature, programmed to feel like she is alive and cursed to feel deeply lonely for daring to believe she could ever be 'human.' anyway i'm blaming part of this on the fact that my period started a day later but i smelled it and got deeply sad for her and her character.
as for possession, the other perfume that stood out to me, it's kind of everything i've wanted since i first started getting into perfume. matrimony vine + vanilla orchids + cement + creme + amber. yeah this has it all. a green-forward but still quite vanilla scent...but wow that cement note comes through. i think it channels the spirit of possession and especially the architecture in the movie wonderfully. anyway this does it all for me. powdery florals. greenery. vanilla. something bizarre as hell (cement). it's sweet and traditionally 'good' to smell but with just an element of coldness to it. you are not welcome in thie perfume's landscape even though it smells inviting.
*** 5.30.25, surprise it's about swans again
from killing for company from the great annhilator:
And now we're slipping through this millennium
We should feel sorry for the people
And can I kiss your skin?
And there is hunger in the desert
And missiles in the sky
And every soul is interwoven
Before the wrong or right
i titled this 'surprise it's about swans again' but really it should have been 'songs that make you think about metal gear solid'
*** 5.27.25, swans.
since getting my tattoo i have felt more and more connected to swans. i suppose it only makes sense now that i have one as a part of my body. i have always felt a kinship with them through swan lake growing up, wishing i could play or be odette, but now i simply appreciate swan iconography more and more and want to carry more of it with me. i think i shied away from it for a while, feeling i couldn't claim something so feminine, being transmasc. deciding not to medically transition felt like a difficult enough acquisition; i could not want to be a swan. it would be one thing if i transitioned and then decided to reclaim swans. but like this? no. it felt too transgressive. anyway i don't think i was consciously aware of it. i did the same with unicorns and my lady amalthea, sorry girl, i'll never again shy away from owning up to wishing i was half as ethereal and beautiful as you and that i was also a unicorn forced to be a girl. come to think of it as i type this, odette is much of the same just in the opposite way -- a girl forced to be a swan. i have no interest in dissecting that more than i have already in this post but maybe i'll circle back to it later.
anyways, after i tried to go on my swans the band kick again and i found that michael gira quote; cis 'respected musician master of his craft jack of all trades who creates punishing soundscapse' musician michael gira who named his no-wave band swans because they are "beautiful creatures with terrible attitudes" and released their first album aptly named FILTH which mostly just sounds like a guy screaming and playing ugly chords on his guitar before slamming it into drums...i dunno. i guess i felt like i could go back to it. so i did. and now i have that swan. and now it's more a part of me than i ever thought it could be again. whether i realized i was avoiding swans or not. it's nice not to avoid them. my only hang-up is that now it seems like everyone is getting into swans at the same time as me; everyone has tired of fawns and now needs something else...and here i am, too. haha. the desire to be different always sinks its teeth into you even when you think you've outrun high schooler individuality complexes.
*** 5.21.25, true detective s1.
i overall really liked true detective although i think it shines the most in the first 4 episodes. definitely have some nitpicks with the last 2 episodes especially, however, i really really loved this shot from 1x08. coupled with "well, i know we ain't in alaska, but it sure looks like there's a lot more dark than light." / "in the beginning there was only darkness. if you ask me, the light's winning," as the last two lines of dialogue for the season. rust seems to be having his "deckard finding a toad in do androids dream of electric sheep?" moment here when he hallucinates the supernova. a fake miracle is still a miracle. how can anyone take that from you?
*** 3.30.25, the count of monte cristo + food poisoning.
got some terrible food poisoning on monday and it really took me out of the game. feeling much better at least. but i feel very behind on everything i want and need to do. regardless, i finished the count of monte cristo today and i thoroughly enjoyed it. it was much easier to read than i was expecting it to be and the language in it feels quite modern and fresh; i was surprised at just how easily dumas captured people's human energies and how much it connected present-day to these made-up characters of the past. people have changed in very little ways i feel. "hope and wait." what an apt summary.
"Monte Cristo pulled him gently forward. 'Is it not appropriate,' he said, 'for us to spend the hours we have left like those ancient Romans who, when they were condemned to death by Nero, their emperor and their heir, would sit at a table decked with flowers and breathe in death with the scent of heliotrope and roses?'" i liked this quote a lot, probably mostly because i was like omg heliotrope mention. either way, documenting it here.
*** 3.11.25, gender.
i shaved the tails of my eyebrows off the other day which sent me into this state of thinking about gender again and performativity; i'm past the point of needing to really label my gender anymore and so much of my dysphoria is social rather than physical once i started mostly hanging out with trans people everything else got much easier for me to deal with. a 'ma'am' from the barista doesn't bug me. anyway i put off getting into lolita for so long because i thought for sure it would just aggravate my dysphoria even more, but i found it lessened it--lolita is, to me, almost akin to drag. it's a 'me' put on for a personal show that is still very true and real to who i am but performative and rooted in fantasy, someone who can't 'actually' exist and yet does. and i've found it actually makes me feel more confident as being nonbinary in my day-to-day. shaving off the ends of my eyebrows too, combined with some super blunt baby bangs and a huge bonnet and princess sleeves--this is obviously just for me but it feels like someone who simply isn't 'real' or 'can exist in reality.' and yet here i am. in the same way people don't understand that you can be trans and not want to medically transition. i guess feeling so performatively feminine has made me more comfortable in being a nonbinary person who is pretty much always just read as 'a cis girl'; choosing the sort of doll-like princess femininity that fascinated me as a kid but slowly felt more and more off limits the older i got and then became rooted in dysphoria as i understood more about myself--choosing it and playing it up to such a fantastic degree has really been freeing. and however little dot rectangle eyebrows and baby bangs play into this too, i dunno, but i like it. i feel like a digital angel clad in velveteen; a desktop shimeji ad on a community-run forum in 2001.
i wonder if mana-sama felt similarly when he started wearing EGL and made moitie; ignoring that he is of course a cis man. anyway, lolita for all!! alternative fashion for all!!! gender expression for all!!! y'know, funnily (or maybe interestingly is the better word) enough, the only time i've had anywhere near to a weird experience while wearing egl was at a gay bar. maybe i'll write about that another day, but i was surprised that out of everywhere i've worn a coord to, it's the place i expected people to be the least weird about it where people were acting bizarre and like i was being weird lol.
*** 2.27.25, man.
so far 2025 has been rough. not for any real rhyme or reason; i'm just burnt out and tired and feel like a white hot star existing without putting anything out or into anything at all. small white dwarf star. i know it's just seasonal. i know i'm sure to feel better in the summer. but whew. 2 almost 3 months in and it's been unrelenting. i struggle to get out of bed before 11; i struggle to stay up past 10. i am awake and i do nothing it feels. i had two days off work this week and that was nice. very needed. saw a concert. that was nice. i wasn't even excited. but it was nice. sigh. life feels sort of distilled and tracked by the little bottles of 5ml perfume oils; breathe and live and be transported. i'm glad in a world that sometimes feels cloyingly sterile for me to exist in i can have these: crystallized scent memories of places that do not, have not, and will not exist.i struggle so much to maintain anything this year. it will be better, but it is hard, and i am embarrassed by it being hard when nothing happens at all.
*** 2.20.25, on cruising (the movie!! lmao).
on valentine's day the boyfriend and i went to go see a sold-out (!!) screening of cruising starring al pacino at our local independent theater nd i have not been able to stop thinking about the movie once since we saw it. i kind of expected to feel sort of whatever about it but i absolutely loved it and think it's pretty damn brilliant. just absurd enough to keep me on my toes and yet quite grounded. i get why people didn't like it at the time it was coming out but i think it's totally worth going back to. we liked it so much we bought the blu-ray in the lobby, resulting in me having a truly bizarre but admirable tiny collection of blu-rays and dvds (i have 5 at the time of writing this; the thing, akira, american psycho, star wars episode III, and alien).
*** 2.6.25, hello.
one whole month already. can't believe i was updating as often as i was in nov-dec and now it's been a month without me touching this section. this time of year always feels too fast and yet unbelievably stagnant too. i wish i could say i do less entries here because i'm keeping track of time in my hobonichi but i've been pretty bad about keeping up with it (although i've been trying to backfill and just take up the space i haven't been using with stickers). existing is hard in the way that i sleep in far too long and work and am exhausted after work and then i have to go to bed; chores falling to the wayside, my body something i can't really hold up. i've been writing more but nothing personal or large-scale but it's nice to at least feel like i'm still being creative.
*** 1.2.25, happy new year.
i cut my thumb on a chestnut yesterday trying to peel it open. i don't know why this feels like a sign for the year, but it does--not a good or a bad one or a promise of things to come per se, but a summary in a nutshell. or whatever hamlet* said. something about the serendipity of it. i don't know why i want to call it serendipitious, but it feels that way to me. when i was out drinking on new years our bartender excitedly told us that our year was going to be good because our total came out to be something like 56.66 and she thought the 666 was also serendipitious, then tried to explain that she loves numerology and doesn't think 666 is a scary number. to her it's the "human" number. it highlights an intentionality on the physical and seemingly mundane. i thought it was a bit of a funny thing to explain to two queer people to not be afraid of 666--i can promise you despite my obsessive compulsions i have no fear of a number anymore, HIM beat that out of me with the song "your sweet 666" years ago. but more importantly i thought it was very sweet of her, i like her a lot and usually see her working there whenever i go. next time i will have to ask her what her favorite number combo is. i feel closer and closer to people every year and i'm thankful for it. anyway, may this year treat everyone well, i'm sure i'll update if my chestnut sign-from-whereever amounts to anything.
*act 2, scene 2: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams."