Diary of Enigma

I'd like to preface this by saying if you haven’t read Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman then you might not get this. If you have read Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman then you still might not get this.

27 October 2024 5:47pm 

In front of me sits a man with a cart full of laundry. Beside him are his sister and mother. He’s staring at the floor of the train. What's he thinking about? What is he thinking about? I’ll never know. His eyes look heavy. Heavy full of sorrow, sadness, struggle. Or maybe not. Maybe determination, love, and passion. He’s not talking to his sister or mom. He isn’t even looking at them. The daughter is talking to her mom though. She will not shut up. She can’t be saying anything important. But I’ll never know because I’m on noise cancellation listening to Rubén Blades. Maybe it’s the smooth rhythm of the Salsa that persuaded me to write about this Latino family. Or maybe because I’m late on my newsletter. Does this count as a creative piece? Finally, I needed one of those. I started writing about this family on Atlantic Avenue but they’ve been on this train since Eastern Parkway. For how long I don’t know. They're still on this train. We’re on our way to 72nd street. I took a break after “I’ll never know.” for a couple of stops. I did this because too many people got on the train and I was worried they would read my writing. The lady next to me is definitely reading this. Pay attention to your son. 

Some more people just got off. 

More people got on. 

I’ll come back. The train will clear out by 110th. It always does. The white lady and her son will definitely have gotten off by then. I’d put $20 on it. I know I said I was going to wait until I had more privacy, yet I am still writing. I don’t care who sees this. It’s art. It’s meant to be seen. I remember my friend and I used to play a game on our train rides home from work by placing bets on which passengers would get off by which stop. Out of the 10 times we played we got two people wrong. What does that say about us? That we’re psychic? Or that we’re from Harlem? What does that say about Manhattan? The more uptown you go…?

The mom and her son got off on 96th street. 

Back to the Latino family. As I was waiting for people to get off the train and give me the privacy that I deserve, I kept repeating to myself the three things that I would make sure to write down. 

1. One of the wheels on the cart was missing. That means that it’s an absolute pain in the ass to maneuver. Trust me, my mom knows. Steering a cart that’s overfilled with bags of laundry on New York streets is something else. And that’s with four fully-functioning wheels. And that’s when she takes it to the laundromat. The laundromat is three blocks away. Why were they on the train with a cart full of laundry? Why did they take the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan...to do laundry? What’s in the bags? I don’t think it’s dirty laundry anymore. 
2. That little girl will not shut up. If I were her mom I'd be pissed, but for some reason, she isn’t. The girl has to be at least 12 and still talks her mom off. Wait. The girl has to be at least 12 and still talks her mom off. Not many mothers can say that. Maybe that’s why her mom didn’t look like she wanted her daughter to shut up. Maybe she’s happy to still have a daughter who wants to talk to her mother. A daughter who still treats her mother like her mother. 
3. This family doesn’t look homeless. Who am I to talk about homelessness? All I am saying is that they don’t look like the stereotypical homeless person. That is not politically correct at all. Should I keep that in? Maybe I’ll edit it out. In editing I’m manipulating your perception of my writing, and in turn, me. Editing. Nah. I don’t like it. I’ll keep it in. Let me reword.

As a person who lives in this world and consumes what is produced to her, this family does not fit the politically incorrect stereotype of a homeless family. They had nice clothes on. They had name brand bags. God I’m just making myself sound worse. Who is to say that homeless people don’t own nice clothes and name brand bags? I don’t know their situation. What I do know is that the focal point of this scene appears to be carrying more than the two bags of laundry. He’s carrying the weight of the world. His eyes are just… so sad. This seems to be contrasted by his mouth. He has one of those mouths that turn up at sides that make it look like you're always smirking when you're not. Like the Joker. I like those mouths. I feel like they are always trying to smile but something is holding them back. 

The thing is, this man isn’t a man. He’s a 13 year old boy who was forced to grow up too fast. 

27 October 2024 11:14pm 

Ideally, I would like you to read this at the same pace that I wrote it. I want you to read my first entry at 5 pm and this one 6 hours later. If you do that you’ll get a better understanding of how time affects opinions. You’ll understand that I am coming back to this piece as a completely new person. Or maybe not. Or maybe yes. I don’t know. Do whatever you want. Actually, yes. Do what I said earlier. Promise me that you will. Unfortunately you're reading this about 29 seconds after you finished my first entry. It’s okay to continue. You’re lucky I'm writing this within the same day. I would like to note however that although you might not be a different person than what you were 44 seconds ago, I am. Take that into consideration when reading these words. Since 5:47pm, I’ve cried, had a perspective-altering conversation, and analyzed my first Dostoevsky book. It is beautiful how one can grow so fast in such little time. It has been 6 hours and I’ve done so much.

In the shower I was wondering what more I could write about. I probably thought of 23 different topics. Unfortunately my fingers don’t type as fast as my thoughts pass. Writing slows down my thinking. I think that’s why I love it so much.

It       slows     down    my  thinking.

It forces me to think at the same pace in which I type. It is now where I am grateful for typing at 59 words per minute. It enables me to think about every single word I choose and ensures that each of them are intentionally placed. Although, that might just be the curator in me. Or is that what makes me a good curator (?). 

Sometimes, I find myself thinking at the pace I write. When I’m on the train, I think as slow as I write in order to get to the root of my thought. I enjoy dwelling on my thoughts to get the most out of my ideas. To maximize my own thoughts. That’s actually pretty cool. I’m aware that every single one of my thoughts come from something. And that something is me. By taking the time to think about my thoughts and analyze them, I am able to understand them, and in turn, understand myself. I think that is why I’m so confident in myself, because I have spent the majority of my life understanding it. 

While brushing my hair after my shower I promised myself (the overuse of the word "myself is annoying me too, I'm sorry) that I wouldn’t make this too personal. That word is completely subjective, but I won’t get into that for your own sake. The reason I made that promise is because everything I post on here is public. But more importantly, the high school intern admissions team at the Met has access to my blog. Yeah. I gave it to them. Do you think they’ll read it? If they do, do you think they’ll read this one or the one with their name in it? God, that one has two inappropriate words. They’ll hate me. Just kidding. They won’t. They can’t. Cursing in my writing only makes it more natural. Raw. I’ll keep saying that word and that’s how you’ll know I like it and its definition. Raw. It’s a pretty solid word. Are you even reading this? I know Sydaili is. She always reads my work. But, is anyone else? I know they are but, I think I would have lost most people’s attention by now. Not because my writing isn’t strong or entertaining but because it’s long. I don’t think people in this generation have the endurance that they used to. And that makes me sad. People aren’t willing to read past 50 pages of their book because they don’t get hooked. Why? That’s not fair to the rest of the book. It simply isn’t. What if the author ends up making a life changing point on page 51? You would never know because the book didn’t follow your rule. I hope people don’t ever apply that to my writing. As you can tell (or maybe you can’t because you aren’t as critical of my writing as I am) my writing so far (within this piece) has progressively improved. I am writing much better now than I was 6 hours ago. Why? My favorite teacher said that students’ writing drastically improves when they’re writing something they’re passionate about. God now you’re going to think that I wasn’t passionate about that family. I was. But that was before I cried and before I had a perspective-altering conversation and before I had written my first analysis on Dostoevsky. 

28 October 2024 Monday 8:25 am 

If you haven't caught on already, this piece is my own rendition of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman. If you haven’t read it, don’t worry. All you need to know is that my writing is following the same structure as the one he used in that book. However, all ideas are mine and mine only. What I find most interesting about Gogol’s writing, specifically the one used in Diary of a Madman, is that you will never truly know which of his ideas are genuine or not. He speaks a lot about his experiences, but a lot of those experiences are more magical realism than realism. That isn’t to say that he didn’t actually talk to a speaking dog, but there is a high possibility that he didn’t become the king of Spain. It’s all in his head. Now you might be thinking, what percentage of this is all in mine? Do you think that I would make things up? Did I write this whole thing in one sitting and add false dates just to make it fit Gogol’s structure? Did that family really exist? You’ll never know. And that’s the beauty of enigma. 

Recently I had the opportunity to teach from Titus Kaphar’s Shifting the Gaze. If you read the caption of the Instagram post that I made about it weeks ago then you’d understand why this piece means so much to me. Chances are you didn’t read that caption nor did you like the post because the picture was of art and not me. If you think that way, then boy do I feel bad for you, but I thank you because you’ve given me the opportunity to explain my love for this piece once more.

In 2017, Titus Kaphar led a Ted Talk called Can Art Amend History?. One night, in 2017, my dad showed me that Ted Talk. I loved it. There was something about the freedom behind painting so carelessly (though, each stroke was far from careless) that grabbed my attention and curiosity in a way that nothing had before. The next day I asked my teacher to play the Ted Talk for the class. We had to skip a majority of the video because there wasn’t enough  time. Regardless, I had forced my fourth grade class to sit through this remarkable video. I can guarantee you that not one of my former classmates can tell you that this actually happened. Frankly, I bet you they would say this never happened. I think you know why. 

Years passed, and I started to work at the Brooklyn Museum. 

About a month ago I decided to walk through the newly renovated fifth floor. Overwhelmed by excitement and satisfaction with their ability to curate a room with such ‘Europeanness’, truly made me tear up. I turned the corner into the purple room. There I saw it. With my own eyes. Titus Kaphar’s painting from the Ted Talk from 2017. I was there standing in front of a piece I didn’t think was even located within the state. I immediately FaceTimed my dad. Thinking back on it, I was definitely not wearing my AirPods. Everyone in the room heard our conversation. They heard the excitement from both ends of the phone. They all heard it. 

Wow this girl really called her dad to show him a painting. 

                                                                                    She couldn’t wait. 

                                                                                                              What a weirdo. 

That was the happiest I had been in a long time. Soon after, I had the opportunity to teach from any artwork on the fifth floor. I raised my hand and was set on teaching Shifting the Gaze. This meant I had to make a lesson plan by Friday. 

It was Friday.

I sat down with my two closest friends. 

Opened my laptop to see what information my boss linked on the doc.

Words.

Words.

All I saw were words. 

Where is his voice? 

Nope. 

I closed the tab and opened up YouTube. “Titus Kaphar Ted talk”. I pressed play. One minute passed. Then another one. It was on the third where the lump in my throat grew. I couldn’t believe how much his ideas overlapped with mine. I began to realize that there was a high possibility that his ideas were the foundation of the ones that I so passionately stand by. Had this unconsciously happened? I couldn’t believe how what he was saying were the exact reasons why I want to pursue curation. To tell a story. Change the narrative through European masterpieces. Shift the gaze. That lump is back again. Maybe it’s Frank Sinatra's voice in my ear. Songs from the 50s that romanticize New York always move me. However, I don’t think it’s the song that is making my vision blurry. It’s the fact that in watching that video on my laptop on shitty school WiFi, I was able to realize that even 4th grade me understood. She understood what she wanted to do and why she wanted to do it. She tried and tried to verbalize it through presentations and passion for learning projects but no one ever understood. And neither did she. Not until that day did I rewatched that video. After the Ted talk finished I closed google and opened messages. 

“I just rewatched the Titus Kaphar ted talk and it was so emotional and inspiring to watch it again now understanding what I want to pursue. I didn’t realize how much his values aligned with mine and maybe even was where I got them from. Just wanted to let you know- thank you for showing me that video years ago. I love you”

great, now I can check off “write about Kaphar”

Same day 8:56 pm 

I am guessing that you have most likely completely ignored my requests and are reading this five seconds after you read the word Kaphar. I applaud you. You’re exercising your free will. This wordy music is distracting me. Allow me to make the switch to some instrumental.

Perfect. My cat is sleeping next to me. My DS&DURGA candle is lit. The heater is on. The music is slow and wordless. Do I still have your attention? I hope so. I understand that this is the longest piece that I have ever written in my student and personal career. I hope I still have your attention. Let me throw you a curveball to keep you awake. 

My cat sometimes twitches in his sleep. Not the one sleeping next to me currently, but the boy one, Basil.

I love basil. 

But Basil twitches in his sleep. I tend to think that he has nightmares. But what could they be about? What would a cat’s nightmares entail? Since Basil is on the heavy side, I would expect him to be dreaming about some sort of food. We recently learned that he likes arugula and sourdough bread. Maybe his nightmares personify his favorite foods. What if they turn into monsters and chase him through the house and because of his obesity, he cannot outrun them and gets caught and eaten alive by the foods that he so aggressively eats. Analyze that. Analyze my cat’s hypothetical nightmares. However you analyze it is how you understand yourself and your life. 

Did you really just analyze my cat’s nightmare? What are you doing? Cats don't have nightmares. They don't even think. They feel. 

Today I wanted to talk about intentionality. In my Russian Literature class, one of my classmates questioned Dostoevsky’s babbling. He was wondering why he included his thought process in his writing when it clearly contrasted his final thought. At some point during his question I thought he was talking about me. And then by some unimaginable force, I was brought back down to Earth and was reminded that he has never read my writing nor does the world revolve around me. Though sometimes that is difficult to believe. Why did he include his thought process if it contrasted his final idea? Great question sir, and for you, I have an answer. By including your thought process within your writing (words that you put together for others (sometimes) to read) you are laying out your brain. The only thing I can really connect that to is painting. But more specifically, the brushstrokes. The same way that brushstrokes are necessary steps taken in order to finish the painting, so are your thoughts. In many paintings these brushstrokes are still visible as they are in Dostoevsky’s writing. Each stroke is there to remind you that the painting took time and dedication and is simply a culmination of thousands of other brushstrokes just like it. The brushstrokes and the final piece are dependent on each other, just like Dostoevsky’s thoughts and final ideas. They depend on each other, and fail to exist without each other. He just wanted to make sure that you knew that. Because you do it. You all do. You think and you think until you formulate an idea. But most of you make sure your brushstrokes aren’t visible. Because you have priorities. Get an A. What teacher wants to see something as sloppy as this? Which is fine, I would never submit something like this. But at the same time it isn’t raw. It might be polished, but it's not raw. The rawness of one’s work allows you to see how their brain works. Or at least how they want you to think their brain works. You’ll never know. And that annoys you, right? It annoys you that you will never know the true version of anyone because what we produce isn’t always who we are. 

I make it my goal to produce myself, however. Everything I do is me. Everything I do is me. 

I think I've done it. I sound like Gogol, don’t I? You don’t get what I'm saying. One of you does though, you always do. 

I am not trying to confuse you. 

I am not trying to write like Gogol. 

It just so happens that I write like Gogol and Gogol wrote like me. 

Same day, same night, same writing session, 9:24 PM 

My friend keeps asking me when I am going to post again. I am not saying her name because I find beauty in enigma, remember? She keeps asking.

“Are you working on something?” yeah, she’d probably ask something like that.

She doesn’t even sound like that. There is also a high possibility that she never even said that. Who am I kidding?

No.

Yes.

I am. I am. 

Why does she want me to write? It's because she is a writer too. She understands how necessary writing is to a writer. How they must create in order to live. How they must identify and verbalize their subconscious thoughts. Isn't that terrible? How have we thought so much that the only thing left to think about are things that we aren’t supposed to identify? How do you even identify your subconscious? That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. But we do it. We do it because we can. We do it because we will. And there is a beauty in that. I admire writers. I admire them in the same way I admire artists. I know that I talk about similar themes a lot, and I know that I must sound redundant by now, but I understand that through thought, and only through thought, is where one can really and truly get a well rounded understanding of anything. And that is how writers and artists think. It is how they are wired. And maybe you think like this too. If you do, I hate to break it to you, but you're a writer. You are an artist. Yes, YOU. You are an artist, love. You think and therefore you create. 

You are an artist.

False October 29th

Everytime I read this piece I hate my first passage more and more. I tried to talk about this family on the train through metaphors and stuff, but it just doesn't sound right. I have been debating whether to take it out or not since I wrote it. But if I took it out, you wouldn’t see the progression. My flawed writing shows you my growth. It shows you that I grew. And that is why I am going to keep it in. Because it sucks and I hate it and I can't believe that I still have the ability to write so terribly. So read it. Say you hate it, it's fine. Honestly I don’t want you to associate it with me. But know that I made the conscious decision to keep it in. It's embarrassing but it tells a story. A story of me. A story of a writer. 

Real October 29th 2024 

I didn’t realize until now (last night) how much space in my brain this peace has taken up. Over the course of three days, this piece is the only thing that I have thought about in my free time. I have so many ideas, but which ones are cool enough for me to show you? Be honest, have these topics encouraged you to think? I wanted the ones that I chose to be good. Not to be random thoughts that pass through me. Unfortunately, if that was my goal, I have definitely failed. Everything that I am writing are all just thoughts that pass through my head. I decided to share them with you for some reason. 

Today is the last day of this project. As soon as I came up with the concept of replicating the structure of Diary of a Madman, I knew I had to limit myself to three days of thought. Any more time that exceeds that would just be too much. I know that I will probably regret this on October 30th. I'll regret it because I know that I will have some profound idea that I won't be able to share with you. I won’t be able to share it with you because even if I did decide to write about it, it would just be another addition to my “things to write” list. And there are five other things that I plan to write about before any possible groundbreaking writing topic. And that is why I have spent so much time trying to decide what I include here. The best of the best. I have sat with myself trying to push out some incredibly philosophical idea to write about for three days now. Although it might not seem like anything that I have written thus far is revolutionary, I wouldn’t go as far as saying it's not philosophical. As I never seem to stop mentioning, everything I write can be understood in practically any way possible, and I encourage you to sit with yourself and your brain in the same way I sit with myself and my brain and take my words and dwell on them. You never know what could happen. What you could discover. 

I don’t know if you can tell but I am not happy right now. Something happened between my last entry and this one that entirely (negatively) affected my mood. I'm feeling this deep burden within me because something that had to do with me is going to affect someone else’s feelings. Again. This isn’t the first time where the prioritization of college has completely ruined my social life. Let me reword because that is completely dramatic. This isn't the first time in which an opportunity that will benefit me in my college journey arose that replaced something that produced joy within me. In fact, most of the time the college-related opportunity does the exact opposite of what the social event could have done and fills me with deep disappointment. This isn't the first time where an opportunity like this has affected more people than just me. And it's with the same person. I'm afraid that they won’t like me anymore. I'm afraid that they are getting sick of my opportunities because it affects our friendship. I'm afraid that they have found someone else who doesn’t have these millions of college-related commitments that can hang out with them all the time. I’m afraid she isn't even reading this because I lost her in the first 300 words. If you’re reading this now then I have already told you the bad news. That I have to cancel on you again. I’m sorry. Is it all worth it? This stress? For college? 

There are too many people who don’t even have their lists yet. They don’t know what they want to major in. They haven’t started studying for the SAT. I understand that not everyone has parents like mine. But sometimes I wonder how they're feeling. Serene? Blissful? Able to celebrate Halloween?

I don’t know. 

If there was a scale of disappointment because of college, this situation would fall in the lowest category. I can assure you that I am going to feel much worse than I am right now due to another one of these "opportunities". 

I hope it doesn't get worse. 

But I know it will. 

I hope it all pays off. 

But that's really all I can do. 

Hope. 

October 29th 11:47pm 

It’s 11:47. I don’t have much time left. I have spent all day trying to think about a profound way to end this piece. Something as powerful as my brain. I never figured it out. So I’ll leave it like this. With the hem still fraying. Do you know what you call frayed, unfinished hemming? 

A raw hem.