have that funny little feeling since this morning like i might have to crawl inside of an old shoe and die. when i feel this way i tend to reach for contact with something that i deem SAFE. for example, institutional recognition is SAFE. brands are SAFE. people who work with me, who work in offices at desks that rise up and down when they hold down a button, are SAFE.

life long thing. if something SAFE is willing to brush against me, then so help me god i will live another day. getting good grades and wearing clean clothes and brushing my hair one hundred times on each side. often i have to tell myself, that i am not in trouble. that i do not have any reason to run, hide. because if i wake up with that funny feeling, like i am not SAFE or like something inside of me is fundamentally cracked and snapped, then I will go out looking for SAFE. imagine that. I go out looking. i think some people do heroin for this reason. i did science fair and do pilates. i don’t even get high.

girls remember how things make them feel. sometimes people are nice in person and then their art work makes me feel like someone is touching me with wet hands under my shirt. or like i am being pinned down and yelled at for no reason. or like they are begging me to see them as something other than what they are. i am sure my artwork is not exempt from conditions. but i work all day and night to keep my spillage clean. and when people love me back they giggle and whisper it to me like little bells.

૮꒰ྀི⸝⸝> . <⸝⸝꒱ྀིა……….. they are young and tall. and they are vegetarian, but they ate lamb chops last night………

not everyone wants to or has to listen, i know. listening makes you love. and we have to be discerning about our love these days, don’t we? im not sure if anyone would be able to love me without some expectation of control. my picky eating and eclectic way of dressing. my proverbial sense of duty.

i have been extraordinary lucky or maybe ruined to have gotten deep immersion in at just the right time. those secret years gave me the faith and foundation that i function from the well of. it was a leap of faith but it was so easy. i never had money back then but i had so much time. not everyone has time and so i understand that not everyone can follow a distant arrow for years of their lives. although now that i am talking to myself the thought arises that you have time for whatever you have time for, and all you have is time.

this is not to say that i don’t have my bitchy moments. i try to chirp all day long, emphasis on try, but I really do, try to clear my cache, and try to do my stretches in the right sequence in order to then cry it and write it and meditate it and know myself know myself. know myself so well, operate from so deep in my body that it is scary to behold. and then also apologize easily and listen fully. and i am a human but i play a special character. and when it’s time to give 50k ppl a ping in their inbox i do my best to make it fresh and sweet.

anyway i could not take one step in this direction without religion. not one single step. i exist in an egg. i can’t look someone in the eye unless i love them. religion has led me like a lamb in my egg towards loving them. it is by definition a prescription for building a good and meaningful life. i have always been obedient. i also don’t think if I was left to my own devices that i could carve an honest path through spiritualism and monotheistic guidelines. i think the whole point is that you can’t pick and choose. you have to vow to be something entirely.

i can’t do anything by myself. i owe everything to others, and so i owe everything to everyone. i have enough humility to know that i can’t choose what to do and how to do it. maybe you can, but i think that is what is ruining us. is that we assume we are capable. well i assume i will get lost. and so i submit. and so i have the strength of angels behind me. i have a code of right and wrong that doesn’t change based on my convenience. due to religion. i have endless courage, and so much purpose that i forget that a lot of people are still out looking for theirs.

along my way a couple of men have noted how this instinct to serve actually would suit me better if it belonged to them. if i belonged to them. but to be honest the same men said they would hang my curtains. and here we are after these years with no curtains. which is a funny thing because i live high enough that no one can see in. i really have a lovely apartment too. they wanted the curtains. and didn’t get the curtains.

my grandma asked me recently why i don’t front my accomplishments. i tried to tell her it’s because i live in an egg. i have nothing to show. i want to be on my knees begging. at all times, i am on my knees begging. i just have read Andrea dworkin, and so I don’t even like typing those phrases out for lecherous eyes. and so that boundless devotion has to express itself a little broadly. through the science fairs and well mannered behavior and such.

maybe you are wondering what happens in the off chance that nothing SAFE is able to touch me. if you are wondering like this then you might be missing my point. as far as i know, my point is there is propensity for safety in every breath, and a million ancient techniques that will happily orient you back towards that. I can pray even if i’m a vegetable. i don’t need anything else. not really. i don’t even need you to accept me. i know better than to care about that. although i still would really like it if you did.

below the paywall is my testimony regarding the retreat i did two weeks ago in which i didn’t speak or eat or drink water for three days. a little extreme. an in depth analysis of the experience will be available later this week on patreon but below this point I am explaining the context and training that went into it.

things are getting real!

luv from ur sotce :*

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i sat next to a woman on a flight today who was going to los angeles by herself to see the hollywood sign. she was so excited for her trip and kept taking pictures out the plane window.

understand that i asked her a million questions, offered to take her picture, and then cried when we deboarded.

we are supposed to take care of each other. if you have the vantage point to make fun of someone, that means that you are supposed to protect them.

because their lives are as difficult, if not more difficult than yours. even at the apex of happiness life is strange and uncomfortable and society has clearly ushered agreeable people who may deserve better into lines. do you know why they wait in those lines also? because it’s fucking free. imagine talking to your friend for an hour and at the end of the rainbow you get a dollop of frozen yogurt or a lip balm. some ppl read substack, some ppl wait in a line. some ppl have vintage denim and read books by dead people. and really we all die

i wish parasocial things didn’t have that shame around them. where i live rn there is no nature to reasonably retreat into away from the drum of consumerism and all the little personal places that you visualize visiting in a city to forget your uniquely mundane circumstances for awhile have closed their doors in favor of more profitable outcomes and most people in america can’t afford to go for a nice lunch and then it’s supposedly a bad thing if someone feels empathy for the people on their phone, who make regular appearances in the free and infinite scroll of entertainment we all engage with for countless hours of our lives.

i can only speak for the zeitgeist i represent of course. but it seems like a lot of players are missing in action.

i wish there was a guy hanging around who was a little weird but he’s alright once you get to know him and everyone lets him come. only he can’t come because the drinks are eighteen dollars, and he’s festered into some niche creepiness that has left him ostracized, and he has to live away from society in the suburbs with his parents because he can’t find something he likes and is good at that can pay him enough to have a normal adult life.

i wonder if i have a superiority complex. we all share one mind and soul but some people receive more lucrative qualities for their lifetime. and of course our own subjective experience is the most rich and deep perspective we can access. for example my birthday is in july, and i think that july is the perfect month to have a birthday. but surely anyone born in any month thinks their birthday month is best.

i know i am on the upper hand of a certain ecosystem because i have been carried into some made up accolades.

and i think a lot about the version of me who didn’t get that way out of the lines, for whatever reason, and if she is okay. i don’t think she is dead in a ditch per se. but i wonder what she longs for, and where she lives, and what she does in her free time.

i know that every day i have to fight to live in a way that feels meaningful and precious and like i am making use of all that has been given. when i am sad, or tired, or discouraged, i can so easily live for nothing. and reader sometimes i am sad or tired until i forget to be.

the most genuine push i see against the regretful languid nature of our time is to be as kind to others as humanly possible. yes i’ll say it. kindness not where ur jeans are from. of course kindness is different from protecting oneself. but when i remember how everything sucks i try to be so friendly, so helpful and accommodating and earnest and encouraging that it makes people confused, or uncomfortable.

helping someone you don’t know figure out the subway system like you are their guardian angel. lurching to pick up something a stranger drops. smiling. asking the people in line what they are in line for. is my beauty secret.

and it lights me up to watch someone slowly realizes that i like them and am not trying to take anything from them.

if you have a minute, would you comment or message what you care about. be honest because i want to know. what do you spend the most time thinking about every day? what gives you fear and rage and hope? is your birthday month the best? i have a feeling of the answers but i have also been surprised before.

maybe no one is getting sicker.

maybe i am getting sicker.

maybe everything is as it should be.

i am posting this late at night depending where you are. i am about to start a silent retreat that involves no drinking water or eating for three days. i will tell you all about it the next time i write to you.

xo

paul came through right when it started. and i didn’t want to be made to feel better. i just kept saying to him please go away, go away, please let me have this.

let’s get really quiet now. let’s go low to the ground so our ears are touching the soil. you just breathe there and i promise i won’t tell you anything stupid. i won’t say anything stupid and i won’t tell a single lie. in the end all the lies are only to protect. and by stupid i mean i won’t make this into a show. took me forever to find a way to lay this down. and it’s going to happen to you too. i guess some people do die under a lucky star. they just close their eyes one night and don’t wake up in the morning. but even with the best money and science, it is usually brutal and ugly.

she passed a certain threshold and it felt as though a coin had fallen from the fortieth floor and landed on my sternum. but also like it had been pressing there all along. because how had i not noticed sooner. that she wasn’t getting better.

there was a day around then where my keys fell from my hand and clattered onto the sidewalk and i just stood staring at them for awhile until i walked away. and at some point it started raining, and the heat was loud in my ears like i was under a wave.

when another girl, my age but seeming so much younger, learned a similar piece of news, i was on the couch, and she burst out crying, big sobs howling and contorted. i was wearing a white dress. i tried to be polite and leave her to it. but really i was fascinated by something hard to say. that she had all of that to give it right away. and how it meant, somehow, that hers would quickly recover. and mine wouldn’t.

first her skin got all crepey. she always had the softest skin. that was something people said to her when they touched her. not that people often touched her. she was difficult to touch. but when someone brushed against her skin they’d remark upon it and she’d say yes, i know, very curtly and with her eyes cast down.

then it was the occasional call, the occasional bad spell, where a medicine would change or a procedure would require revolving caution and care. and the bad spells would compound.

she would go out every night in her nightshirt and pot around the planters. it was all mossy and shaded, but she managed to grow great big geraniums. she told me she had seen something otherworldly out there. she was hesitant to say. blacker than tar and silky like a ribbon. it had been living in the bottom of the planter. i’m telling you, because you’ll believe me, she said. when it noticed her watching it, it curled up and then slithered away.

she’s a good person, everyone keeps saying. and it’s true, that she is good, although i’m not sure what good is. she isn’t nice but she is so nice. she isn’t nice but she is kind. when she was really in the throes of it i asked her if she wanted a wheelchair, so that she could be outside, and she looked at me and said try that amelia, like it was a threat. try that and see what happens to you. when i came to her i brought her a bar of soap shaped like an alligator. she couldn’t walk but the alligator was in the soap dish by dinner.

when i wake up now the night is so black i could drop a pin in it and it would echo forever, wobble forever, and a certain feeling comes over me that something is so lodged, so stuck in me, so tightly wound that i will spend forever unraveling it. does she feel the night like this, I wonder. thats the trouble about darkness. in light i know where i am and where you begin, and we are separate. and in dark we are all one.

lord i no longer believe. it feels childish, foolish, boring, to ever consider whether you might be wanting more than you deserve. to consider any path besides being as close to each other as we possibly can. trust me we get so much less than we deserve. and then every thought moves me towards that magnet. such as when the horse guy said you don’t want to use my headphones, they’re all gross and waxy, and i said i don’t mind them, and i meant it, because we’re bodies. or when you told me that you had been depressed, and i had a feeling like how could someone like you get depressed, no, no, never you, and then i made you eat five pierogis with little green peas.

a gray sky erupting with crows. a black snake in the garden. when we checked her fever last night her voice sounded like a little girl’s. i remember we had nothing. every room was an unfinished drawing. you used to draw me all the time. i would give anything to be back there, having nothing except you.

:D

i am healthy. i haven’t experienced too much violence. i get a lot of stuff in the mail and my friends are pretty. there was a time when things weren’t this way but it’s not really relevant anymore. unless I decide that it is, which i don’t. so i don’t complain. i just want everyone to know that I am real, or was.

though there isn’t any real reason to be. at least not in the circles I dally or with the people who are inclined to give me money. realness can be selfish. always poking at the cavity instead of making things nice. still I show up. i do my phone work until my retinas burn. i do advanced bridge pose and order bleach on the computer. the texture has been sanded down to a methodical hum where you actually can get the whole cake and eat it too. only it’s made of sawdust and glucose. and you head towards the next one, which might be different, or better, and dodge the blobs of your psyche.

sometimes i hear a story where someone is so brave, and so true, that all the light rises up into my chest. but usually the people with these stories aren’t allowed to hang around.

as everything drones along half of the time I am not listening. because when I listen deeply I have to be alone. and then my animal body starts writhing and really I cannot fly off with it.

i am certain that a good hearted person is also the most sincerely evil. trauma carves depth like a crater and you are left blinking and wallowing if you don’t get ur ass on the train. i know a kindergarten teacher who likes being choked until there are stars in her eyes. in my case i am using other people’s money to buy a pretentious comb.

i am trying to say that a lot of lucky ones have requilinquished (sorry idk how to spell) the humility of accepting their unfashionable parts. when i see that stuff in someone (rude, lisp, crazy haircut, crying in public) i only ever feel kindly towards them. but the lucky ones ascend the humanness. and I do wonder if their hearts are looking everywhere for something or if they have numbed all the way out. and if I ask them they say they surely have their hearts and cannot find them.

still I wonder how the comb betrays everything. i used to laugh in the face of beauty, because I knew that there was nothing there. now I still know but it feels good to be smooth and clean. and I like how shiny it makes my hair.

not longing to be consumed necessarily but more like the feeling of climbing a tree, the fear and rush of scraping a knee, a little of that all the time. doing it for a reason. what love feels like, or doing something that really matters. i don’t want to say i’m depressed cuz i like looking at butterflies and flowers. and i stay scrupulous in my routines and organize my mind and nobody knows when i don’t want to exit the bed in the morning because i do get up eventually and i don’t tell anybody that i didn’t want to. who would I tell that to and what would it do? i guess i tell you.

use code “hmm” for 20% off!

or visit the diary which may not be valid for much longer

i had to pee walking back from the park so i went into a restaurant that hadn’t started dinner service. there was a girl working the bathroom who didn’t speak english. after I peed she started washing my hands for me, like how they do in clubs. and it was the first time someone had touched me like that in a really long time. and I kind of liked how she felt weird about it and so did i. and i kind of didn’t. i don’t know. I have to go.

below- ten places in manhattan when you want to feel human shaped and miserable. and i don’t like going to some weird organic wine bar either, i like to be really alone.

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More than a lamb I am a small green snake or a series of frustrating questions about one. More than not I answer questions without actually giving anything. My grandma taught me how to do that. My slipper comes off in the rain. My slow blinks are as coy as a bride’s. My button falls off my blouse and rolls into the sewer. Maybe you can help me find my button. Maybe I am tactful. Much of today lacks tact. Many miss their fathers. Maple syrup makes me uninhibited by the way. Makes me take off my stockings and walk into traffic. Makes me fall asleep drooling on the wood chips.

Most people need their solid world. Many say, why don’t you have a lamp, or a chair. Maybe this is protection. Maybe not. Man tells another man that I’m an influencer for mentally ill girls. Mentally ill girls! Man tells another man that I’m working on my novel. Man says I’m an artist. Man says I’m an actress. Man squeezed my hand so hard during hand shaking that tears sprung from my eyes as if they had been waiting there. Maybe the feeling is that someone somewhere must owe me something, because there must be more than this. Make me pancakes please. Maple syrup me. Make me my medicine. Might be something good for me.

My neighbor said an untoward thing and now we are not friendly. My neighbor told a man that she made me so many matchas. Made me so many matchas and I never made her any. Malicious because she liked him and he liked me. Man was like, and poor susie made you all those matches. lol. Mornings she would just text me and ask me if I wanted one. Maybe I don’t even like matcha.

Moon is in Leo. Marigolds slowly opening across the room as I rewrite this. Maybe this is the good part. Man who wants me in Paris. Man who takes my picture. Man who wants me doing Ngöndro. Man who wants me niche. Man who wants me uptown. Mostly everyone needs a companion. Maybe most of them want me to be always near and just sit and smile pleasantly. Mostly all of them want me to make them food so that then they don’t eat it. Mostly all of them want to run towards freedom with the caveat being me watching from the doorway.

Maybe don’t come down if it’s such an imposition. Make all your time about your mission. Martyr me so you can carry on towards that grand story that I am simply too pretty to understand. Maybe some people benefit from my simplicity.

Melancholic to bring up this tale again. Man lives while girl waits. Miserable appendage. Might wait forever. Mortal urges are embarrassing. Matrimony is whoever caves first. Movies are nice but they’re too long. Malls are fun when the day won’t end. Massage improves sleep. My heart is the same heart as yours, you know. Muscles and ligaments. Mom and dad.

Maybe I feel stupid to want just like everyone else. Maybe I am too petulant to crawl for the obvious. Maybe I feel entitled to find something that goes beyond my humanness. Man seems to sneer at any promise. Modernity expects me to know better.

My question for you is the same as it was when I was 16, 17, 3, 11, 12, 21. My beating heart. My little void. My body which has a cavern built into it you know. Make me a mommy. Make more money. Make a miracle of the unmentionable. Make tremendous timeless work. Meditate. Make me into someone. Make me worthy of being someone’s someone. Magnetism. Modeling. Magical thinking. Maybe I reserve the truth for the one who is never to lie to me. Maybe what’s really stuck in there is kind of predictable, and uninteresting. Man waits for no one, obviously. Man’s whole thing is that he waits for no one.

Xo

Many of you know that i have a meditation practice. meditation is hard to write about, and delicate and specific. I see yoga as a side to meditation, a meatier and more expressive path to finding the secret inner space. of course it is not the same as sitting in a formal fixed position, but they are related to one another. cousins. not the same but similar.

yoga became a real practice for me through my good fortune of finding good teachers. a good teacher follows a calling to support you. and an activity becomes a practice when the method of doing it begins to inform who you are.

you cannot repay a good teacher’s kindness in a thousand lifetimes. the way my mind submits to the asanas, the way my body learns through breathing in these regal ancient postures, has given me a gift that I thought I would never find. you see, when I lock in and hold the pose I am completely beautiful. I am beautiful and safe.

i am nearing the apex of my career. I say that to relativize the speed at which I’m moving. I don’t have days where people don’t need things from me. I was on four flights this past week. I do things nobody I know really knows how to do. So many shiny moving things above my head, all of them threatening to fall and crash if I step out of line. Constant pushing and performance and I did cry on the phone with my accountant last week. have you ever cried in front of someone who does not love you, and wants you to stop?

Sometimes dinner is a block of tofu. i have around six agents. i don’t have much family. some of them send me to scary parties. the network runs deep. and i can’t stop to tell if I’m falling or flying.

If I didn’t have yoga, the goodness of it, the grace and safety it allows me to touch, I would be in a lot of danger. truly. I am protected in all ecosystems by a quiet core feeling that wraps me up like velvet. before I learned to love yoga I was kind of sick. now I am not very sick, and my world is more sick, but I feel okay, I am calm and steady.

below - a complete list of everywhere I have ever practiced yoga ✿

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i know you have been suffering since you were a teenager. you want love and money basically, and new shoes and a haircut, and vacation ,and to be understood. i think you are suffering so acutely because you have no idea who you are. i think a million people try to tell you who you are, and you absorb the fall out of that and then act kind of deranged. and I get it I get it we are inundated with lifeless comprehension. walk into the drugstore and its hard not to feel schizo. i think you feel like there is something you are deserving, that you are not getting. but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.

i have been misunderstood too. i have historically thought through things in a different way than people around me. taking lopsided paths that felt more personal. it wasn’t malicious, or even conscious. and nobody was exactly evil or wrong. but when someone sees something in someone that they don’t understand, they usually get angry.

people beat perspective out of girls real quick. there is a sentiment that you are better off with an empty head. you have an easier life, a prettier life, if you go with the flow. but then the consequence of that is that you are functionally boring, and hollow. and the aftermath to passively numbing out is that a little animal part of you searches far and wide for a feeling. your brown sugar iced lattes are tinged with primordial desperation. you make a pencil drawing of a flower. and everyone likes it but nobody is moved.

we can all look at the same view, and if we really look at it, if we are clear and honest about what we see, we can all see different things. and showing yourself is a very loving thing to do. because it lets other people see you, and love you. and in turn they might have the courage to show themselves more, too. and all that we see is promised to us. similarly everyone has their idea of you. they have decided who you are and why you are that way without you ever having to show yourself. maybe they like you and so you are happy. but if they don’t, and if you don’t have your own idea, of what you are to you, your own secure and calcified concept of who you are, then you will just be whatever they want you to be. you will just be what they say you are.

or even worse, you will think and act and write in a way that proves what you want to think you are. instead of thinking/acting/writing as a practice to uncover what you are really thinking deep down. as a way to be clear on new rooms of unlimited secret thoughts. even worse you will edit yourself into something palatable and calculated and unremarkable. and everyone might like you but you are forgetting that your body is a channel. you are parroting what you think is good for you to be, and you are betraying yourself. listen honey, your body is the holland tunnel. name everything that moves through the tunnel. let ferraris and elephants and shooting stars churn through it.

i was in nepal in october to recite the teachings of the buddha. a long time follower of mine was there waiting for me. her name was analise and she was perfect. so smart and brave and well read and funny. we were hanging out in all of our free time, because besides us it was mostly boys and crotchety people.

one of those days analise was talking to me and i said wow, you know you are very wise for your age. i really think that you are wise. i feel like i am talking to a mirror when i talk to you. and she said amelia, that’s because i am you.

i am you. i have followed you for years and read you and listened to you and watched you. and now we are in nepal and i am you.

i want to tell you what this feels like. it is a unique situation that is occurring, that not too many people who have experienced have been able to articulate. and no you are not the enemy. you have never been my enemy. there is nothing wrong with you. there is nothing wrong with me. we don’t need to change anything. we can just sink deeper and deeper into ourselves.

every day, people read me, and watch me, and think about me. they do this on days where i feel private and shy. they do this when I say dumb stuff. they do this even on days when i am not sure what i am saying. they do this because I refuse to be wrapped up with a little bow. I extremely refuse to write about dating advice, or shopping advice. it feels disproportionate to my voice and body. and I wonder what is over the horizon. I am impatient to see it. it is not like i am doing brain surgery. i am just precocious and slightly well read.

we both have the same enemy, which is doubt. I think it is from evolution, hoarding nuts like a squirrel in case the hunters don’t come back. but we are safe now. if no one likes you just buy kefir and dried mango on your way home.

i’ve had a few instances of men who in quasi intimate settings have kind of grabbed my wrist after a conversation of me going off about trains or nato or mongolia. they lock into me and say something like, don’t lose that thing you have. you have your own view, your own voice. don’t lose that thing you do. i think this is funny to say to someone. and they say it with a kind of gravity too, as though it is already in the process of being lost.

:*

merch

it is so easy to long to be something other than what you are. but do try to remember what you are. you are many things i'm sure but most literally you are in the body of a human girl who is very much tied to this earth. our tiedness is a lot of what gives us shape and dimension; it is the way we love others, what we place in their hands, it is the choices we make that stack into months and years, it is how we choose to spend our precious lives. what holds you to this earth is what you eat. this is an ancient biological agreement we've made with the trees. that we will eat and we will eat to complete cycles and we will live here. in this way eating is your birthright.

it can feel exhilarating to push those limits, i know this, but in my opinion it is not a very interesting use of your time here. i'm not sure exactly what your work is on earth but you and i both know that there is a lot to do. so i hope you will give yourself fuel to complete your missions and i hope you will take up space and i think that even if the path forward isn't so straight and simple you will build a beautiful life.

sotce

i found air india quite nice despite taking the shittiest flights possible. two layovers, nearly thirty hours of transit. i wanted to see if i could do it. seeing if i could do it would make me denser and more human, i thought. the flights were half full, of people who were going home. what is the end of a war besides going home? that is a quote from a book i haven’t read and cannot name. when turbulence hit over the ocean nobody cried out. everyone stayed hushed and seated. the quieter we got, the more the plane seemed to shake in the sky. i thought about praying at one point, but i didn’t know what i would ask for. i tend to never ask for anything, since i figure i will get what is coming.

i had picked the north of india because I had wanted those hills and that clean cold air. i had picked a hotel that looked like a place for evil women to hide out and detox after they make a lot of dirty money in the western cities. something like this. by the time i arrived i felt small and dirty and frightened. wished that someone could drag my bag down the unfinished road. cows standing still, illuminated by the street lights. big cow eyes watching me drag my bag.

inside the hotel, a stammer over language differences, a room change, a key difficulty, and then a deep and jilted sleep.

he glided past me in the morning. i was lounging in a chair shaped like an egg, shades on listening to lana. breakfast too good, too rich and heavy. dirty still as a result of not understanding the fancy shower. too many shops and alley ways and too many options outside, too many river rides and hikes and arts and crafts and yoga workshops and massages. something about this gliding of his felt personal. something so steady in it, so still and assured, like a ship breaking through ice. it was as though everyone in the breakfast patio looked towards him and took courage. something about his clothes too, the way they flowed. his tattoo above his eyebrow said “bullshit.” i knew it was only a matter of time.

he asked if i wanted tea.

“what?” i said, taking my headphones out, although i had fully heard him. i often need more time to understand, and buy it with my confusion.

“do you want tea?” he said.

“what does your tattoo mean?” i asked over the tea. “it means nothing.” he said, smiling. his teeth were broken. “everything is bullshit.”

“do you want to go to yoga with me?” i asked. “it starts in twenty minutes.”

we lurched there on his bike. he drove like crazy. i held onto the backseat. i refused to touch him.

“you drive like crazy.” i said into the dust.

“what?” he said, fully turning around. i turned his bullshit face back to the road.

the teacher waited for others to come but they didn’t. then he twisted us into unfathomable shapes.

something about the prayer that the body naturally holds. when you hit the ancient tried and true shape and it feels like a poem.

“i’m leaving for nepal tomorrow,” i told him after yoga, at dinner. “i’m meeting my cult group there.”

“how are you going?” he asked.

“driver,” i said.

“my visa is almost up. i’ll come with you.” he said. “i’ll keep you safe.”

i might need you at the border, i thought. i might need you in general, to garnish my misery. and yes being alone with a driver is no bueno for me. or at least that was the world i had chosen. because i am always in my dream logic, it seems. veering away from normalcy, nodding into the most bifurcated and extreme roles. sleeping into danger. when did everything get so serious?

“i want you to try this app,” i said, sliding my phone towards him. i want to know if we are worth each other’s time. these busy precious lives. your time and mine. coming, going. future glimmering on the horizon if we even make it there. octopi live for just three years, you know. they explode their eggs and then they die.

maybe that is the best way to meet though. when the point at which our paths cross is nowhere.

“what is this?” he said, typing in his name and birthday. this app is called mirror.

“it’s something girls like,” i told him. something girls like, he repeated.

i considered the data. born in the tiger year, scorpio sun with a heavy moon. libra rising chameleon. a six path like mine. an eleven life like mine. so he must be lost here. here without reason, swallowed by the nicety of it all. nothing to do with his special time but kill it somewhere pretty. he might have money that he doesn’t understand. obviously we were never different. i let this shape around our reality, and felt our time tilt into a pinhole.

the joke was that we had no destination. that night we ran barefoot around our respective rooms. i went through his things. he threw t-shirts at me.

“take them.” he said. “i don’t want them. i don’t care.”

he told me he was sick in the head. mine too, my eleven head said. he had been a refugee, and then he had started a company. i held his head and took the sick out of it.

it was too exact to feel sexual. too precise for us to fuss. it has taken me a while to understand the ways that i can be close to a man. how i can trust him and believe in him and that doesn’t mean that we are promised.

two eleven six sick cancer moons who decided on each other and crossed the border. they barely spoke the same language. sixes indulging in six rare hours. tatted on his feet, too.

in border patrol i told him that others were waiting for me. academic others, from my group, who have looked after me since the end of my childhood. who would carry my bags and whisk me into their structure.

“where will you go?” i asked him.

“don’t worry about me. i’m an adult.” he said.

“don’t worry about me baby. you owe nothing.”

that was strange. because usually they tell me how much i owe them. how they do everything for me. and how helpless and weak i am without them. how i was born with a debt to pay.

so i was chewing on that, him saying that, and then he was gone. just like that, and he was gone. i want to say that he vanished. i looked out for him in the lobby, in the parking lot, ushered into my group activities.

he was gone.

i had to remind myself that i had wanted it like that.

• completely fiction & based on the flow of “ellis island and other stories” by mark helprin

  

let’s just be amazing for a second. every time i see a raindrop on the window I can feel you. when i see someone sleeping on the bus i feel you too. me i have neptune on my so and so. every astrologer reminds me of this. neptune very murky misty dreamy, they say, makes you an invisible girl. nobody can get you out of that mist. you neptune on his **** until he projects on you!

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he got her from the airport like he always did. any time she went somewhere he would take her there, as far as he could go with her, to the last door of the train or whatever. she liked how unyielding he was. how he followed everything, even to the end.

when he found her in the arrivals he kissed her. she kissed him back but it was always hard for her, to kiss in public.

from there they went through the metro, on the train, to the streets, towards the airbnb. he carried everything. he watched her face from every angle. he was doing all the watching and walking and mapping and talking. so that she could exist so deeply.

the edges of the buildings were sharp. she thought she might bleed if she touched them.

he took her through the lobby and the elevator and into the room. where there was a big white bed looking like a cloud. she took off all her clothes and got in it.

this was how they were the best. when he was feeling every leaf turn, noting every bend and sway and shake and she was completely unthinking, unflinching and biting like a dolphin.

when she woke he had washed her clothes and he had a chicken sandwich from the konbini that was wrapped in a parcel of wax. and then he had been sitting there waiting for her to wake up, to give her the sandwich, waiting and watching her sleep with his headphones in.

she put the whole sandwich in her mouth.

when she was ready they left for the part of the town that sold used books.

he kissed her shoulder on the metro. he kissed it so often. that she would feel cruelty flicker when he didn’t.

after three bookstores it was getting late outside. and he was getting jumpy, or nervous. he wanted to sit in the dark and smoke. i don’t know how to look at books, he said. i only know how to read them.

one more, she said, feeling her way to it. just this last one.

this last one was lit up like a church. it had that reverence and hush, like it was a quiet place. it smelled of metal bookshelves and office binders and paper piles.

all of them were photos, of one girl.

some of the pictures were hentai style. some had her boobs looking as big as balloons. but most of them she just looked pretty in. posed wearing school clothes, a nurse’s outfit, a party dress against a backdrop. laughing by the water fountain with her friends.

what do they like about this one? she asked him, pointing to the water fountain. he said, maybe they like when she’s happy.

fifty thousand photos of her for sale in there. pictures too of the baby hairs on her neck. a close up on the soft part of her arm. her eyelids. her fingers and toes. and one picture just of her pubic hair. the size to fit in a wallet. the back of it said life size.

every costume, and photo shoot in the world. for a girl with a secret past, and secret future.

as she fell asleep on him that night she had a feeling like she was falling, falling.

and even an attempt to omit it speaks to it.

note to self: everything has already been said.

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this is the longest i have ever gone without talking to you, since we’ve met. Of course people have come and gone and so on, but I have Just been here. So there is a constant heartbeat and feeling that i have been in touch with. Maybe that is funny, or maybe that is sad. Maybe it’s pretty in the way that things are beautiful now: like a kind of distended photocopy, a distorted memory that is winking with its own kind of wisdom. That i have just been here. For three years i have been posting to u every day. Thinking about u and what to post to u every day. Maybe ten days between a post max, if i have been sick or in some great distress. And sometimes it gets a bit weird, u know. I am only human. But this time it has been weeks with no contact. With no explanation or preparation on my end. Maybe three weeks but definitely at least two. The farthest i have ever gone on my own, without you. 

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in november i stayed in finland for two weeks in an old school house. during that time i wrote a novel that came out of me really fast. i knew what the story was going to be, and that i was going to write it, but writing it felt as though i just had to listen to the woods, and they would usher me into completion. I enjoy having a relationship with nature, and going where it tells me to. And at that time in that schoolhouse, I was able to hear nature deeply. i think because it was remote, and because I had allowed myself the space for it. Because i was in a tree house, surrounded by trees, heated by trees, writing on trees with trees.

These particular trees were very ancient and alive. I would like to facilitate an experience for others to have there. It will be midsummer, so the sun will not set. The days will blend into each other. The forest will swarm with flowers and bees. There is a lake to swim in, and a sauna. There is a loose schedule of activities that I’ve designed to support you in whatever your mission is. It features bodily alignment, and grounding in nature, and walks and swims, and creative writing, and herbalism, and sleeping on mats, and eating nourishing meals.

this will be private, and personal, and a way for a group of us to connect in a deep and unusual way. I incur a bit of a risk in having a real life experience. it would be easier to sequester myself to the internet. But this is getting boring. And I am sad that we weren’t alive for Woodstock.

The yoga instructor is my friend. The cook is my friend, and the hosts are my friends. The schoolhouse is cozy, and humble, and simple. It will be clean and comfortable. The nature will be beautiful. I am not necessarily trying to start a cult. I am more erring on the side of hanging out.

there will be two sessions, both in June, of about seven or eight people.

This is the kind of thing i wanted when i was little. to find the others, and a space for us.

Together we have had many visions. The application will close as soon as we have found the right people. So if you have some free time this summer, do considering joining me:

summer camp application

I am in Bali right now. It is nice in the way you’d imagine. I am learning many things. I went off to do that because I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. It is very hot here. I am next to the pool reading this over. On the other side of the wall a child is crying violently. A lot of the animals cry like that too. The little critters and birdies and geckos. They make noise that is tragic and shuttering like they are shaking an old cage.

Ayurveda is a traditional system of medicine from India. It takes the balance of our bodily systems into account. It views them clinically, and as a whole. This framework helps me take a real look at myself— my body, my feelings, my relationships, my path— from the cool distance and authority of scientific reasoning.

When I feel something real, I am so inside of it, that I am swimming. Swimming in the sensation of it. So I cannot always make sense of it, when I am in it. I wonder often. Is it better to be inside of it, or outside? Because outside is more controlled. Inside is more passionate. This is why the ancestors have left us with systems, and traditions. So that we are not alone in how we take a look at ourselves. Because we have a long lineage of methods to reference and apply.

In Ayurveda there is the physical body, which relies on food and water and air. Then outside of it, beyond what our eyeballs can see, there is the pranic body, the mind body, the intellectual body, and finally, furthest out, the bliss body.

But I won’t take you farther than the Prana body today. Prana is the life that flows through us. It comes from the sun. It autocorrects to “Prada” on my iPad. It is the energy that fills our physical body, making us breathe air and think and exist. When Prana is gone from us we are dead.

I am considering feelings, because I have them. In New York it was cold and gray. I would get dressed and act right but I felt like I wasn’t real. Real feelings are the currents that propel me towards my natal promise. When I feel something I know how to follow it. I think I would follow a feeling anywhere.

When I am happy or sad or fearful or excited, I feel like I am dying.

Tshirts ♡

I am inundated with sensations like these. As we all are. And I find a story, which I decide on amongst the colors and the lights, a story about who I am and what it all means, and I follow it.

The deeper it goes, the darker it gets.

Some of these feelings are so deep and dark that when they arise, I hop away from them on instinct. I decide I should not be feeling them before I have even felt. I try to keep myself neat and ordinary. Reflect the same internal experience I see others carrying.

When something arises powerfully within you, it colors your entire world. A striking feeling can emerge unexpectedly, from a surface level interaction or a simple motion. This intensity points to our deepest attachments. To something that pains us primordially, woven into the mundane. Something that you won’t let go of, or can’t let go of. Something that could challenge your story and the reality that makes you choose to live.

It is hard for me to write about her because I feel like I will get in trouble.

The feelings I have around her are tangled with my fear of getting in trouble. My wish to avoid it, my urge to challenge it, my instinct to flee from it.

No matter who she is, who she is to me and who she is to herself and who she really is, or who I really am, we are shaped by a reality where for me, speaking out of turn, or defying what she believes is right, means facing some sort of wrath.

People often punish the runt of the litter. Which is not to say that I am weak or fragile. But I am agreeable by default. I agree and forgive people who would not agree or forgive me.

Which is not her fault either.

That she was born powerful and I was born… truthful? I want to say “truthful” but that might be a lie. I was born to speak at least.

She was my best friend for two months. I knew it wouldn’t last, because I was too avoidant of feeling in trouble to feel comfortable, or to act like myself. I spent most of my time with her nodding and reflecting. What upsets me is that I did it because everyone wanted me to. It made a pretty picture for everyone if the two of us were best friends. But to be best friends I had to do as she said. It felt like a betrayal of my own realness. Which was what I couldn’t let go of in the end.

I don’t look back. But now I face something similar again. Because I am on this yoga retreat. I am moving my body in planes that open new rooms in my mind, open the windows to them, let the air into them. And suddenly I get emails from my agents, about a deal that is unfolding. A deal that would send me right back to the New York ways.

I feel like Malibu Barbie sitting on the yoga mat with my heart begging me for this thing. I cannot explain it. I am not supposed to want it. And before that, I was sitting in my apartment with my heart begging for the softness, and the closeness, and the distant spaces between choices.

My life would be easier if she and I were still friends. Others would be more generous to me, if I had been more generous to her.

My life had just already demanded more generosity than I was happy with. I did not want to give any more. I reject the ethos that your good energy reflects the world’s energy or something. That there is some scale of fairness. That god will be angry at you if you don’t pretend to be other than what you are. That you aren’t allowed to be mean. Or selfish. That you don’t deserve happiness, or at least you don’t deserve your wishes, and your instincts, if you do not behave in a certain way.

Am I being vague?

This month we are looking at real feelings. Please tell me, in messages and comments, what feels real to you? What moves you so deeply and irrevocably that you cannot reason with it?

Ultimately I think it is beautiful to listen to your deepest current. To go where you can, and then follow. We were born to feel the way we do, and to let it unfold accordingly.

At least, we are born for that as much as we want to be.

Sotce

But knowing the end, let’s be sure that we are where we are. Here, in the beautiful living of it. 

Beneath all of the solid things– the identities we are born into, the ones we take on, the choices we make to guard them, or leave them behind– undercutting all of this, are the patterns. Think of the patterns like the ripples after a large explosion, the aftershock that reverberates through time. This is what the scientists study. The wrinkles in wood, or in jade. The rhythms of your period. The cycle of health, and what it reveals about you. The turbulence and buoyancy and decay. 

I feel so softly towards her that it is hard for me to write about it. 

I went to her house late last night, because I couldn’t bear to think of her alone there, the way she is. Maybe it cuts like it does because she will be me too. She is in her last years. She looked so beautiful standing there, so regal and delicate in her nightgown, her hair pinned up in translucent coils. She tried to give me one of her hair pins. I didn’t know how to use it. It didn’t fit into my living. I left it with her. 

She led me upstairs to her room. She wanted me to take down a painting she had made, depicting the Kosovo War. A cluster of refugees stood around the tree of life, their faces turning expectantly to the viewer. 

“Look at all of them,” She said, breathing life into the canvas again. Her colors were so rich that they seemed almost childish. “They were just like you and me, regular people in regular clothes.”

There were boys wearing sweatshirts and baseball caps, and women wearing lipstick and earrings. Them being ordinary made them look real. 

She wanted me to take the painting down, so that she could take a picture of it for her friend. 

There was a small cup sitting next to her bed, a yogurt container. She eats the good kind, with the red letters, from Bulgaria. And she eats the big containers with the vanilla cow on it too. She told me matter-of-factly that when she has to throw up at night, she can’t always get out of her big bed. So she keeps the empty yogurt cup on the nightstand for when she needs to. 

I heard once that when you break up with someone, you experience the process of separating as the person you are, and the person you are with. 

In the same way, you will die as you lived. If you want to know what death will be like, then look to how you are living. 

Not that she is exactly dying yet. But she sees the grand opening unfolding towards her, the threshold, and she waits for it as she always has. Except now much of her life has paled in comparison to the end. She waits for it as she always has. Very prettily and quietly. Sweet and unassuming and weak and careful. What a thing to wait so patiently for. 

Old age is beyond many of us for now. We don’t know its weight, its textures. There are patterns that still have not revealed themselves , but it is still something to consider. The way that you will remain yourself through all of it. How life does not strip you of who you are, but rather unfolds you into it. How it is a series of journeys and how you are the person you become as you take them. 

There is a central experience of our being that articulates itself outwards, that forms itself through the details of our days. This drawing is a map of how we try to live. And this is where I want to meet you today and always. Not in understanding, because I don’t think we are meant to understand, but by opening room for perception, articulating the depths of our experience through how it manifests in every moment. 

I try to live that way. It’s funny to have this platform when I know so many people without one that are better at that kind of living than I am. The kind of living that is seeing everything with my eyes clear and open, and keeping them open, feeling the subtle waves for what they are. My practice is not deceiving myself. Seeing everything, without looking away. 

As usual I have not solved the great cosmogenic myth. But as is my way, I suppose, I have treaded lightly around it. 

I feel that when I can write about something beautifully, when I can decorate a God in pictures and sweet imaginative visions, that I am loving it. And maybe in loving it, I am loving myself.

And loving you. 

And understanding in the way that I am meant to.

At the bottom of this texts, you’ll find my responses to thirty-ish questions about “being.” I don’t know if I’ve actually answered any of them, because the dialogue is ongoing. Because unfortunately for me I am a participant in all of this being as much as anyone else. 

But I felt I had gotten us somewhere by the end of it. 

One question I cannot answer:

Does the circle end? 

-sotce

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I am a very private person and sometimes i feel guilty for not sharing more of myself with my friends. I like to think that what i have been through doesn't define me, but sometimes it feels like all i am and i wonder if it is possible for someone

to know me without knowing of these problems i carry with me. I want to think that my …

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A super is the one who maintains the building. He is my super, because he works for the building and my body lives in the building. My body’s hand signed an agreement to live in the building. My super’s role is to cash my checks every month and to respond to my queries about the trash, and the mouse. I try to harden our roles in my mind.

Because these roles create boundaries, that set limits, and keep us safe. When you make contact with the walls of someone, you gain information about where the person begins and where they end. For you. And then you can understand how to move within them.

Without a place in the world, a person is jelly-like and amorphous. A person becomes like a cat sunning with its belly up. And it is so lovely to be this way, when the situation allows for it. But it rarely does. Because when you have your belly up, it is very easy for you to get hurt.

In a cosmic way, he is so much more than my super. For example, he could be a father. And he is definitely a son. And in another place and time, he could be my father, and my son. He is living a precious life, as I am, a human life, navigating the depths and intricacies of that. In this way I am as interested in his experience as I am in my own. Because he is me. We both have so much to learn, and to feel. And so it is hard for me to hold back from traversing the space between my fixed perception of him, and his experience. It goes against my primordial wishes rather.

But I hold back, because there are other fish in the sea. I’m supposed to contain my heart for those who are set up to receive it. Namely my family, my boyfriend, and my paid subscribers. But even in those relationships the journey from me to them is like a deep dark tunnel.

Why is it easier to receive someone who you are not supposed to?

I notice my super’s pfp as we negotiate the rent increase. He tries to pull a fast one on me, actually, but I forgive him immediately. I know that his role is to be my super, and that is just the sort of thing that a super does. He is not my friend or family member. He is not supposed to be kind to me. I have to believe in him, that his way is right for him.

My role as a tenant is to link him to the rent guidelines board’s regulations, and then his role as a super is to rescind the rent increase. This is our dance. This is what our roles allow for us to experience together.

His profile picture on gmail is a clipart of a fedora, with a red feather tucked behind its brim. For some reason this vibrates with tenderness in me. I take that feeling seriously. The social context of the fedora is like a laugh into the wind. It is goofy. It tips itself and says milady. It has association with jazz and with newspaper enjoying. I wish for everyone to enjoy many things.

His choice to represent himself with this image feels like a vibrant bid for connection. A white flag. Standing for something. This is how I hope you see me.

My profile picture on gmail is a clipart of Hello Kitty sitting on a cloud. This choice is much more layered and convoluted. Almost generic, and even manipulatively infantilizing. Behind this picture I could be a stripper, or a child. But I hide behind it with gleaming eyes. Because Hello Kitty has no mouth, and I’m a grown woman.

I even have to remind myself of this, that I’m a grown woman. I don’t instinctually feel that way. Although it is what I am, and shall forevermore be. Limits are safety. I can do everything by myself.

I wonder if my super feels kindly towards my Hello Kitty since it is so far from where he stands that he may not see it clearly. I wonder if he sees it at all.

If the picture was more generic, of a car or a planet or a logo, I do not think I would search for answers inside of it. My father isn’t someone who would wear a fedora, but I could imagine him wearing one, if his life had gone differently.

I used to have a different super. He was chubby and soft, with one long tooth that hung from his mouth like a fang. We only spoke occasionally, and always about the mouse. I had one, and I called him, and he sent someone to get it. And then I had another, and I called him, and he sent someone to get it, but the second time he was not happy about doing it. He told me that he didn’t want to keep sending someone. I told him that I didn’t want to have mice, because I pay a lot of money. And he agreed, but my voice was trembling.

He passed away in September.

I don’t like how things change.

It is thrilling to behave openly. When I restrict myself to one identity, the possibilities become more limited, and linear, and practical. It is easier to say no because it is obvious where the no lies. It is easier to judge, when someone acts outside of the bounds of what they are and what I am.

What I am: a grown woman. A tenant. An influencer. A body. A soul.

Oh there I go again… Please forgive me.

I don’t mean to contradict the contract between you and I. Where you follow, and watch, and comment, and I talk, and perform, within the constructs of the roles we have agreed upon. We have a soul contract, you know. We have a lot of time. I do something and you do something. But sometimes the mind just softens and keeps going, going, going, until it’s gone, far past where it should go…

I must be sure of what I am for you. Because I cannot be everything. I think it is better if we can decide to be a few things, and try to embody them fully.

When you commit to what you want to be, the universe aligns around it passively.

Being is an active state. For the rest of the month I will explore this here and here. What I am willing to be. What I am, in turn, to you. What you are willing to be. What you are willing to be to me. Let’s turn on the lights in here.

please send your questions and reflections on being in the chat, or comment them, or you can write to me, but i might not read the emails. see, there’s a boundary right there. a limit, a law, i just get so many these days…

♡

Why do I get a good life? Is it better to enjoy what has been given to me or push it away?

Enjoy. The world needs you to be happy. See it as the ripening of your own karma. Enjoy yourself, but relax in this enjoyment, knowing that there is no need to attach. Be diligent and know that you are practising with good intentions, that you are considering others, and making choices that benefit others. Do it all with that true clear intention that other people in your life should be happy, that pure vision, that pure heart. In saying that, know that all of the ornaments of the world can vanish in but an instant. When you leave this earth, you can’t take any of this with you, so enjoy your good fortune, try not to attach and use the merits of your past karma to truly benefit others.

How do I love and appreciate myself?

I don’t think you have to. The concept of self-love is a very western one. I think I prefer self-recognition, noticing yourself the way you notice a painting - all the details and colours, the cosmic masterpiece that is your mind. You can’t really encapsulate you and there’s no need to strive for some sort of fixed self-image because you are different every single day and every second right? So I wouldn’t worry about that so much.

How do I find it in myself to be kind to others when I am very sad?

I would say to not limit yourself to your experience. Everyone is suffering the same amount as you are, or even more, depending on the day. We are all part of the same collective consciousness and the same experience. So there is really no difference between you and me or anyone. We just can’t recognise it because we’re so in our own perspectives. But I think you can access the wish for other people’s happiness simply within your natural resting mind, in your most genuine essence. You don’t need to fake this, and you should follow your own impulses and desire, but I think you’ll find a lot of benefit from seeing other people’s joy. Joy is infectious, and something that we can share. It’s in our human nature. Think about how it feels when you see a happy baby, it crosses the boundaries of you or me. It’s like nourishing a tree and then the fruit and the fruit falls and you eat it everything you give comes back.

How to become content with the present moment?

Well it doesn’t matter if you are or you aren't, because this is all that there is and ever will be. You are nowhere besides here now. This is your life and if you really sink into it, feel the chair under your butt, your feet on the ground, the avocado in your hand, your eyes on this screen, the breath moving through your nostrils… you can be overcome with experience. There’s so much stimulation and mystery in this life. The vibrancy of being alive in this fragile human form is almost overwhelming. It can be scary how precarious and perfect every single waking moment is. But you just need to breathe and stay with yourself, stay with your body. Don’t abandon it out of fear of the future or fear of the past, it’s always fear that leads you away from all that is here now. Everything you need, every gift in the world exist in this present moment, it’s all right here and I can’t think of something more sad than depriving yourself of that.

When will I be happy and okay with myself?

When you stop being critical and judgemental and you allow yourself to be exactly what you are. When you let yourself come home.

When is it my turn?

That’s completely up to you. You make yourself into whatever you want to be, and if you want it, it’s for you. Let go of your attachments and fear and sit with the silence of your heart, and listen without any expectation. Don’t try to plan, just listen and follow that instinct. Follow it like your ancestors did. I think you will find that all of this is set up for you to meet God in the most perfect way. I hope that answers your question. It was a big one.

Thank you for everything. As always, you can~

ask me questions at talktome@sotce.com

read my diary at sotce.net

learn with me on Patreon

everything else at sotce.com

~sigh~ ~♡~

Sotce, tell me if I should major in philosophy or biology please.

Biology tries to explain the outside and philosophy tries to explain the inside. Reach for both girl boss!

Sotce, I’m a senior in college, and I didn’t pick the right major and i am very incompetent. I have no other choice but to get really good at it and find a well paying job in the US (I’m an international student, my family depends on me doing this). Unfortunately, I have no passion for it. How do I make myself like it? I've always been very competent and responsible, this is by far my hardest challenge.

It matters less what you do and more how you do it. I think you are very capable of launching yourself into a steady position that will help your family, even if it’s not what you picture in your head. From there, just by being yourself and working hard and following your interests, you will meet yourself in a place that feels more fulfilling and oriented towards your own nature. You will meet your purpose just by being yourself. 

Nobody stumbles out of college into their dream job. Hardly anybody at our age knows what they are here to do. Right now you are fulfilling your duty out of a sense of honor and loyalty and that is something to be proud of, that is something to tap into when you feel weak or unsure. Trust in how beautiful that intention is, trust that it will lead you somewhere special

Sotce, how do I make big decisions when choosing one means the door slams shut on the other? I’m considering an exchange year/semester in NYC or Jerusalem. Very very different and I cannot know which will be best for my growth. 

I want you to separate from this slamming door visual, I don't think it really represents your situation. I think these doors will remain open to you, maybe in slightly different ways, but I think you can always choose to spend time in New York or Jerusalem. So don’t choose based on the loss of a choice, because this is a big assumption to make, choose based on what you want right now, when you are happy and full of life and energized, what frightens you a little and elicits a feeling of expansion in your chest.

Sotce, I’m about to fail a chemistry exam because I didn’t prepare for it well enough. I haven’t been this unprepared for something since being in college. I know it’s my fault, but I just can’t make myself work for it anymore. I feel like a lazy pos. Do you have any words that would make me feel slightly better about this? 

Just feel bad about it, that’s what’s calling you. People are so determined to feel good that they fight against their feelings. Good is the same as bad and right now the bad is more true for you or at least something to spend time in and investigate. The least resistance seems like it’s signing into yourself and then coming out saying whoops and moving on. Allowing yourself to be an imperfect being, guiding yourself back to your path in spite of that. Like yeah I messed this up, I see what I did wrong. I’m sorry for all that. Everything will work out won’t it, you’ll pass the class, life will move you along, but I think this present discomfort has something to teach you.

Sotce, I've been having a dilemma lately. I really want to study abroad (more the abroad part over study but I’m working on my degree and student loans and scholarships are necessary for my adventure) but i can’t decide where to go. There’s so many countries! I’ve been thinking and thinking and really can't decide. I've never been out of the US and want to see mountains and scavenge in the forest but also meet friends and maybe even be crazy and go to a club. Where do i go?

Mountains, forests, friends, parties. I think you will be surprised how much of the world can offer this to you. I think if you put these into a list and closed your eyes pointed on the map landed there you would cross off everything on your list. The decision will drive you crazy but it doesn’t change what you will find. I suggest meeting yourself on a clear day and deciding to decide– that’s the real decision, to decide that you are deciding and not abandoning the decision even if you wake up not feeling right. From there, walking to a graveyard or somewhere private and special, then flipping a coin in front of an angel statue or old man statue or perfect tree or whatever speaks to hold you and deciding that the coin flip will be your answer.

I am excited for the places you’ll go.

Sotce, I haven't attended class in a month now. I desperately need to go in, but because it has been so long, it feels impossible. I'm so stressed.

Life can be too much to handle. And it happens whether we are active participants or not, it all just keeps happening and happening. I sense that this whole month you’ve been thinking about what you’re not doing. It’s swallowing you and covering you. What if you actually allowed yourself to rest? For whatever amount of time you have you can sit in the space in between, between what happened and what’s happening and what’s going to happen just return to yourself and breathe. Every second you can spend there is like a spa or retreat or vacation. Try to relinquish what you’re holding, focus on that space and hold that only and see how light it is and move forward from that. You just have to do the next thing.

Sotce, I'm attracted to my college professor, he's old, I feel impure and it makes me sad, idk what to do with this feeling... help me Sotce.

The emotion of attraction is lovely and potent and our bodies are designed to reproduce, our bodies don’t understand why we haven’t had four children already. He is not a clown or an ogre, he is a professor, that is a timeless romantic trope. 

In attraction there is a certain lull I find so interesting, a certain frequency of pleasure that is worth being honest about. I wonder if you can look right at that sensation and apply it to other things that mean more to you or feel more aligned. 

I have someone I have thought about every day for almost four years. I try not to get ridiculous about it. Often we are called to spend our life doing the things we love the most.

Sotce, could you pull a card for me? I just got into a study abroad program in Australia for five months. I know absolutely no one ( the program is only 15 people) and am very excited but also very nervous. How should I approach this new era of change?

Just breathe through it. As simple as that sounds. Feel the ground beneath your feet, lean into things you can rely on, drinking, sleeping, sitting, eating, walking, standing, thinking. Be really inside of yourself and bring yourself with you. When you feel lonely and it’s dark outside you can give yourself a big hug, you can approach the void or you can read a book in your bed. Life is a good teacher and a good friend, don’t be afraid. The worst thing could be the best and so on.

Sotce, do you have any advice for succeeding in school to earn a degree I don't wholeheartedly care for?

Honestly? If you aren’t happy when you think of earning your degree, you should probably shift into something that makes you happy to think about instead of trying to convince yourself you’re alright where you are. Is this possible for you? If you only have a few months left I guess try to get the most out of it, but why would you stay somewhere that makes you unhappy?

Sotce, I want to write my masters thesis on you.

I’ll frame it on the wall and look at it until I die.