reading The Sacred and The Profane is going to kill me

and other random things

No it hurts so bad when The Sacred is taken out of things. “Taken“ is too light a word. Ripped out of? Extracted? Extorted? EXTORTED ! !

It hurts me so bad.

I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I don’t care. I don


I debated just sending the above text. I imagined an email notification popping up, someone clicking it open, then just seeing that. Email is serious. It’s so serious that I don’t always check my own. I go days without. This bit me so bad this month that now I have to change. I once met a man who said, You Can’t Stop Being Something Unless You First Become It Fully.

And I didn’t know about that. What he said. I just didn’t. I still don’t.

I didn’t know about him either. He was a native american boy selling crystals on the venice boardwalk with his dad and he gave me one for free then started texting me that I was a goddess. That is the only crystal I have ever kept. It is white coral aragonite. I wonder if he knows how much I think of him, and how my memories of his texts calling me a goddess show up on a green digital screen. A Nokia tracfone. It looked like this:

I just found this image online. That is the exact carpet I had growing up. Unreal. I laughed at the concept of me being so nostalgic that I buy it. But no, I’d want the phone I really had back then. With the stickers curling at the sides and all the keys rubbed out to where you couldn’t read the symbols anymore. I texted so much. Even on that thing. Imagine the words “You are a goddess“ on that little green screen. That is what appears in my head when I think of that boy and what he said and his crystals and his dad.

God I’m so SAD. No I’m not. I’m reading this TERRIBLE book, and by terrible, I mean it in the way a French Person would say it. The books is called The Sacred And The Profane by Mircea Eliade. It’s going to make me kill myself. It’s going to make me die. Not even. When I say I Am Going To Die, I mean that thing that we do every single day. The Sacred And The Profane. I just love it so much it hurts. And I got this old, old, old copy. First edition. I loved the cover and I couldn’t go without. And I have this thing about print media. Once, when I was in Vienna, I bought this old old old book for 300 euros. That was one of the most vivid moments of my life. It had water damage and I still wanted it.

The cover of my old old copy of The Sacred And The Profane is a drawing of a fiery red angel figure:

I got this picture from the internet. My copy looks exactly like this, sort of yellowing, the spine crinkling in the same spot. Someone hole-punched my copy though. By the bottom. Here I’ll show you.

This picture is from my house. But for you, this picture is from the internet.

Wait, wow. So what they punched out of my book was the price. Which, according to that eBay photo, was originally $1.45. I think I paid $20, which felt like a steal.

One more thing:

Check out this “This Book Belongs To” stamp that says RACHEL KATHLEEN WOLFORD! 8/18/88 ! ! That’s a lot of 8s. Broken up by a 1. That qualifies as an angel number. I fear this means I am at the beginning of another cycle.

Here is the first time, in the entire book, where both Rachel Kathleen Wolford and I had highlighted the exact same thing. She is blue pen and I am purple crayon:

See why this book is going to kill me? Primordial. That word was haunting me before I ever even picked up this book. Primordial. Now, Let go of the sound of that word, and that sentence becomes one of the most accurate things you’ll read all day.

I could name this entry A Love Letter To Print Media because it is. But that’s so… that’s something I don’t know that I would click because I’m so tired of the anti-digital discourse. Who cares. Either do it or don’t. It’s really easy to buy a book and fall in love with it. So just do it. Have a party. Host a house show in your backyard. I’ve been addicted to the internet since I was 9 years old and I still found time to do all of that. I’m decorating a whole NYE party for my friend next week. I got these two giant ears that I have painted gold. I would tell you what they are for but it sounds stupid every time I say it out loud. They’re going to be hung on a wall with a prompt. That’s all I’m going to say.

I won’t name this entry A Love Letter To Print Media because I want to name this entry “I don’t care“, which is how it all started. I just started typing. A true love letter isn’t advertised. It’s folded up in a wooden box and the person wants you to read it later, alone. Or maybe now. Now? Maybe now. They’ll say No at first and then ask you to read it in front of them a few minutes later. They say : Nevermind, Wait,Yes. I love when people do that. They had to prepare, brace themselves. They cared so much. Okay, I changed the title again.

In all these years, I’ve never figured out my email sign-off.

”Best” is as close as I can get to how I feel. Best. I wish you the Best but I am not begging for it. Best , to you, as I am not mad. Best. A shiny-sticker of a word. Best. Best. Kind of baby language. Best.

If I was being very honest, I would sign off every email like this:

May your dealings be fruitful and bright,
Gabi

Reading it now, it’s not so bad. I’m allowed to cast harmless gestures. I’m allowed to speak like a medieval cosplayer. [Tao Lin voice] If I want to invite a feral pig inside my house, that’s my choice. It’s my life.

The best thing I could ever be is a town. Isn’t that what we all are? Mitochondria whizzing around in a series of tubes. My God .