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1:03am May 15, 2013
poorlifechoicesblog: Day one - 5/11/13 [Pictured: bedroom squalor, meds, water, my planner, my purse, The Pale King, a notebook and assortment of pens I bought for myself earlier this evening, and two different journals that I bought for each of my parents—tomorrow is Mother’s Day and my dad’s birthday as well.] Lately I have been documenting everything. I take pictures of friends in tiaras and I take pictures of my outfits and I take pictures of my city and I take pictures of empty vodka bottles and I take pictures of my meds. My memory loss is getting worse; there is a pervasive and nebulous sort of amnesia that has been a big part of my life for years but lately it’s been getting to the point where it’s starting to really scare me. I keep telling myself that this is something that fluxuates naturally and maybe it is, but I also know that I’m going to need to be much more intentional than most if I want to finally make and keep my own personal history discernible to myself. So I’ve decided to start a photo project. I’ll post one picture each day, one that says something important about what I’m doing or how I feel. I’m tagging it as #photo project 2k13 partially so that you can blacklist if you aren’t interested and mostly so that maybe then I can revisit it every time I feel like my own context is slipping away from me. The editorial discretion that’s sort of inherent to any kind of self-documentative “project” was definitely something that I struggled with a lot over the past few weeks while I was trying to come up with a way to use the concept of archiving or “gathering evidence” in a way that would maximize usefulness and minimize disingenuousness, distortion or complacency with self-destructive bullshit. And so while I definitely don’t think this idea (or even that tumblr as a medium) is perfect, I do think that it will be useful to me. This attempt at “MAKING MEMORIES” was inspired by Heidi Julavits, whose book The Vanishers I’m reading now and who said once in an interview: Maybe I’m obsessed with memory because I have such a terrible one. This is a new experience for me. I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective. I’ve subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker. But I go through life now reminding myself to remember something, and I do this while that something is happening. I’ll be experiencing a moment and I’ll say to myself, “Remember this!” Otherwise my whole life just blurs by. So I guess what I find so interesting about memory, and its role in a person’s identity, is how the attempt to achieve accuracy requires you to remove yourself from your life in an authorial manner. You’re the character and the creator. How can a partial fiction not result? (x)

poorlifechoicesblog:

Day one - 5/11/13

[Pictured: bedroom squalor, meds, water, my planner, my purse, The Pale King, a notebook and assortment of pens I bought for myself earlier this evening, and two different journals that I bought for each of my parents—tomorrow is Mother’s Day and my dad’s birthday as well.]

Lately I have been documenting everything. I take pictures of friends in tiaras and I take pictures of my outfits and I take pictures of my city and I take pictures of empty vodka bottles and I take pictures of my meds. My memory loss is getting worse; there is a pervasive and nebulous sort of amnesia that has been a big part of my life for years but lately it’s been getting to the point where it’s starting to really scare me. I keep telling myself that this is something that fluxuates naturally and maybe it is, but I also know that I’m going to need to be much more intentional than most if I want to finally make and keep my own personal history discernible to myself.

So I’ve decided to start a photo project. I’ll post one picture each day, one that says something important about what I’m doing or how I feel. I’m tagging it as #photo project 2k13 partially so that you can blacklist if you aren’t interested and mostly so that maybe then I can revisit it every time I feel like my own context is slipping away from me.

The editorial discretion that’s sort of inherent to any kind of self-documentative “project” was definitely something that I struggled with a lot over the past few weeks while I was trying to come up with a way to use the concept of archiving or “gathering evidence” in a way that would maximize usefulness and minimize disingenuousness, distortion or complacency with self-destructive bullshit. And so while I definitely don’t think this idea (or even that tumblr as a medium) is perfect, I do think that it will be useful to me. This attempt at “MAKING MEMORIES” was inspired by Heidi Julavits, whose book The Vanishers I’m reading now and who said once in an interview:

Maybe I’m obsessed with memory because I have such a terrible one. This is a new experience for me. I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective. I’ve subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker. But I go through life now reminding myself to remember something, and I do this while that something is happening. I’ll be experiencing a moment and I’ll say to myself, “Remember this!” Otherwise my whole life just blurs by. So I guess what I find so interesting about memory, and its role in a person’s identity, is how the attempt to achieve accuracy requires you to remove yourself from your life in an authorial manner. You’re the character and the creator. How can a partial fiction not result? (x)

Notes:
  1. withasmoothroundstone reblogged this from floozycaucus
  2. shattersthemoon said: I love reading your posts. But I would also like to say “long live cascade ice!” I find their bottles so satisfying.
  3. floozycaucus posted this