the diary of antoine roquentin

My dad and my grandma. February 1975.

I started my geography class today. I really like the teacher, he seems like he is very knowledgeable and won’t let anyone get away with not studying. As much as in theory I don’t enjoy doing busy work, I’m really glad that this class has a heavy workload to offset the easy assignments I’m doing in my math class.

Not sure why, but this week has been all about Amadou & Mariam, this duo from Mali. Their song “Sénégal fast food” has been on repeat all week. I guess I am excited about going to Africa, and this is my way of expressing it. Also, this geography class has been really eye-opening in terms of the direction the global economy is taking.

I need to save my response to the chapter until I’m actually finished with it, that it seems like the world is moving towards a class system of the rich, the struggling to be rich, and the permanently disenfranchised poor. It sure rings true in Africa. I was researching Zambia and Zimbabwe, the two countries that border Victoria Falls. Since the 1970s, their GDP has decreased markedly. In Zimbabwe, it’s obviously because of land redistribution, but in both cases HIV/AIDS just decimates their workforce. How do you train people for jobs if the average life expectancy is 37? (the lowest in the world, by the way).

I’ve gone through my entire phone’s contacts and I can’t really think of anyone to take as a guest. The catch is they would have to pay international airfare to get to Victoria Falls, which is about a grand. I even left a voicemail for my dad. He didn’t call me back. So I guess I’m going to Africa. Alone.

I think this ranks way up there on the list of bad ideas, but as Sam and I say, we fucking love bad ideas. I’m not going to be totally alone, the tour company will have guides and drivers and things like that, but still. I’m going to call my dad tomorrow, and if he says no, then I’m just going to go by myself.

In the morning and through the afternoon I had this inescapable feeling that all of my hopes and dreams were fake. Because really, I don’t know what I want to do after December. I can’t really afford the exorbitant rents where I want to live, but I refuse to give up my considerable freedom here to end up living in my mom’s basement on the East Coast. Actually, if it was just her, that would be okay, but my East Coast grandma lives there too. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, but I would have to be in the closet if I was there. Which fucking sucks.

Which brings us back to the précis: if I don’t get a student loan, I’m moving into a studio and staying in Sacramento, at least for the near future.

I have to write some letters to colleges and get a teacher to write me a letter of recommendation. I’m going to be the oldest person ever to take the SAT. They don’t require it if you’ve been in college for more than a year, but they recommend it. I’m mostly just curious to see how my score will change from high school. I remember I got stellar language scores and terrible math scores. I think I’ve improved in both areas.

The web site I built for Josh is up and running, the douche that owns the domain name just has to switch the DNS servers over to mine to get it working. I would link to it, but I think I’m going to make a rule to never link to any of my freelance projects because it’s really easy to sleuth backwards and find my blog.

I haven’t been taking very many pictures lately, I’m really annoyed that my phone doesn’t have a full keyboard. I’m thinking of selling it and getting a T-Mobile G1 (the first Android phone, I’m sure you all remember my pro-Android rants of antiquity). As of last week, all the source code was released, so it is the first fully open phone. If you were greater than or equal to my tech knowledge, you might point to the Neo 1973, which theoretically was the first open phone. Problem with that was that a consumer version never shipped. Like, ever.

The whole story of the Neo 1973 really seemed to underscore the fractured nature of the open-source community when the timeline page for when they were releasing was a wiki page. It just kept getting edited backwards and backwards. October, then November, then December. Those are months I just made up, I can’t even remember back when the company was seriously considering a production run. It must have been at least six months ago.

I didn’t get to go to Lipstick tonight, I had so much homework and my external hard drive enclosure showed up. I brought my work computer home to swap out memory and hard drives, which was successful. Work computer now has 1.5 GB of RAM and runs way smoother. The hard drive I scavenged from it I put in the enclosure, however, won’t spin up or anything. It’s unclear whether it was demagnetized (very unlikely, I was very careful with it and it isn’t half as sensitive to static discharges as memory), or I actually have to use the non-included 5 volt adapter with the enclosure, which effectively renders it pointless and non-portable.

I REFUSE to carry one more power brick. EVER.

I have a bad back.

And I used to carry around like four different chargers. Those were dark days.

I got a ton of my work done, and it’s not even 2 a.m. yet. Even though I feel a little like Tracy Flick, I have nearly all my math homework done and about 50% of the geography chapter read. And, of course, my spiffy upgraded work computer.

This geography class is going to be a ton of work, and I am excited. Once December 19th rolls around, it’ll be time to fully plan my escape.

Oh… I knew I was forgetting something. My grandma has decided (as we all suspected) to not undergo any treatment for her cancer. So, six months, tops.

There’s been a big change in her behavior. She seems resigned to die. She looks scared and weak. And nobody is here but me. Even Orrin (her boyfriend) is keeping his distance. It’s like everyone smells the stench of death in the air.

I’ve felt like I need to get something off my chest all night, but I’m limited in non-melodramatic ways to express what I’m feeling. After all, I don’t think she is a good person, and for most of my life she’s been nothing but manipulative, petty, and cruel. However, without her, I don’t think I would be graduating right now. Who knows.

This is going to be my last few months with my grandma, yet I still can’t think of anything to talk to her about. All I can do is awkwardly make breakfast each day before I head to work/school every day and once and a while make a vague comment about the weather. However, she’s shut down all channels of meaningful communication through family feud after family feud. This will probably be the most peaceful Thanksgiving ever, since she’s driven away everyone else in the family. They will probably come out of the woodwork when they hear she’s dying.

It must he her defense mechanism. It’s truly tragic that my dad doesn’t love her as much as she ostensibly loves him. Or maybe she only loves him to make Kathy (my aunt) jealous. Who knows. I don’t put anything past her. Which is really sad, because that’s how I’ll remember her. Conniving, vengeful, manipulative. But now she just seems terribly afraid of death. I wonder if she regrets burning all her bridges. Or if she even acknowledges it to herself. But however I feel about her, she doesn’t deserve to die.

I have a ton of photos of her from her youth that I scanned in before I left my dad’s house. She looks so happy, her whole life is ahead of her. She looks happiest in photos with my dad’s dad.

February 8, 1942.

I hope she finds some peace.