regrets forgetful_experimentor seems like it's hard to get hurt without them. but I think they might be a necessary learning tool. 020130 ... silentbob loves you i should have bought chocolate milk 020415 ... Norm Never trust someone who says they have no regrets... 061014 ... nom rain-filled buckets 061014 ... nom teacups pots and pans 061014 ... PeeT I always wonder about those who say they have no regrets. I regret things I did twenty minutes ago. 120315 ... Ouroboros has difficult digestion almost every time i eat now, i am then filled with regrets 120316 ... auburn I wonder about them too. *also regretting things within minutes* 120316 ... unhinged i was trying to let go and move forward and then you told me i was lazy, stupid, irresponsible, and melodramatic in the span of a few days. that doesn't sound like love to me. if I moved back now im afraid it would just be another one to add to the list 120316 ... tender square there is a brick in my stomach, and it's name is half an order of olive garden fettuccine alfredo. i guess this is what happens when your body gets used to eating better than you had been (why did i suggest this for dinner? ugh). 210924 ... tender square (jesus christ, it's like i don't know the difference between it's and its anymore!) 210924 ... epitome of incomprehensibility To be serious, I am of one mind about regretting these things: -Hitting my brother and parents -Hitting Shannon -Hitting Sybil But two minds about this: -Finishing the current novel Mind #2: Back up a minute. I think you're overextending the guilt thing here. Writing a novel has nothing to do with hitting people. Mind #1: I'm writing a novel where the main character hits people. Mind #2: Wasn't that your plan since 2012 at least? When you abandoned the previous book idea as "things you don't know enough about to write about"? Mind #1: That's sort of the problem. I find it very hard to write about the temper part. Janet says to talk about how the narrator FEELS when she's angry. Physically? Tense, trembly, but nervousness does that too. Or strong. I felt strong when I was angry. Mind #2: Maybe that was the problem, that you didn't feel strong enough otherwise? Mind #1: Tempting, but no. I was strong enough without that. Sure, I could spin things to make myself look more sympathetic. That's the problem. Remember when my creative-writing classmates defended Carol's actions? Mind #2: She didn't know *why* her grandmother would get angry at her so-called joke about killing all the Muslims. That was the point, right? To have Carol partly guilty, in that it was an asshole thing to say regardless. Mind #1: But M. and P. both laughed. Mind #2: So? The second group didn't laugh at all at that line. And laughing doesn't mean going, "Oh, poor innocent Carol." Mind #1: If we're going to talk about the Tamra-family sublot, what's with me killing an imaginary music composer in a real place and then having nightmares about it? Mind #2: Overextension of guilt. I told you. Plus, as to the verbal torture Carol subjects her family to, it'd be hard to describe what I said and have other people really feel the impact. Because when I told David about horrifying my parents by making jokes about 9/11, he shrugged and said it was partly their fault for reacting like that. Mind #1: Was it? Mind #2: I don't know. But it'd be hard to make people FEEL Carol creating havoc if she just bothered her parents about things that weren't personal to them. So I had her make fun of Mac's biological father, who died in a plane crash - not 9/11, an accident, but there's resonance. Vibrations on the same plane, soda speak. And then Tamra thinks Carol's mocking the fact that her music-composer cousin died in...oh, I can't pronounce it. Mind #1: You do voiced velar fricatives just fine. You're just afraid you'll have nightmares again. But Tamra's not the sort to. Remember how her biggest fear was the concept of eternity? After her miscarriage? While her husband was away fighting? It wasn't the material things that bothered her the most, or not that she'd let herself admit. Mind #2: What do I know about any that? And why have we switched places? Mind #1: Sssh. Do what Janet talked about in the intercultural writing workshop. Draw on your own experience. YOU were plenty afraid of eternity. Still are, sometimes. And it seems logical to ME to transpose that to a woman who's new to the whole being-a-Christian thing and who's already depressed about other things. And then have her, age 80, look back on this existential crisis with some amusement. "Suicide? Well, I didn't want to die because I was afraid of living forever." Mind #2: It's all kinds of appropriation. Plus, when did I grow up Jewish? Lia will think I'm stealing from her. Mind #1: That's ridiculous. She doesn't. Ask her. She just thinks you're weird, as usual. Mind #2: My mother already got upset that I'm making the mother character too mean and too much like her. Ghost of living boyfriend: Her fault for being mean. Mind #2: But...but...she wasn't... Mind #1: Sometimes. As we all are. Remember, We Have Always Been Canceled. Always already, as the philosophers say. The philosopher: You should definitely feel guilty about the voiced velar fricatives. /xox/ Me, drawn together: pronounced khokh? I regret writing that. 210924 ... raze i wish i'd seen you one last time when i had the chance. just to have one more memory of us. but i guess you never know what the last time looks like until it's already gone. 231003 what's it to you? who go blather from