2024 Alphabetical Diary
I alphabetize my diary again, with apologies to Sheila Heti
In July I took a leaf from Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, in which Heti took 10 years of diary entries, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, arranged the sentences in alphabetical order, and then edited them until they formed a book, and tried the same experiment out on part of my 2023 diaries.
I enjoyed the experiment so much that I decided to do it again with the whole of my 2024 diary. As people have been posting their year-end lists and reflections, I thought this would be a good way for me to go back over the arc of the year and try to distill it somehow.
2024 has been kind of a difficult year for me—two difficult and devastating things happened in July and August, so, looking back, everything from the first half of the year feels like 3 years ago. However, there has also been a lot of positivity and joy in my life this year, not least because of starting this Substack back in February! Having this creative outlet has meant so much to me, and I feel like I’ve grown so much as a writer and thinker. I so appreciate all of you who’ve joined this journey with me and take the time to read. It means the world to me. <3
—
A beautiful January spell over everything, the softness and peacefulness of falling flakes. A dull platitude, a sudden attitude. A purply-twilight color has steeped the walls of my room. A sonnet is a corset for the imagination. Across the way, a woman was smoking in the sunlight, and I saw the smoke curl up in the sky so clearly and then dissipate, dissolve into the air, and become nothing, and I felt like our human lives are like that, so fragile, hardly anything. All evil has its basis in ignorance. An uneasy sleep in which he appeared, disappeared, and reappeared many times. And love vied with grief, like a melody played in two keys. And my point was that Jane returned to Rochester an independent woman, and he also went down a few notches and was chastised by life, and so when they actually married, they were a lot more equal, and it wasn’t the same old governess/master relation. And that gave me a feeling of safety and resolution most of all. And then he said, “There, you’ve just been abducted,” and it was so fun I made him do it all over again. Anyway, I wore my light pink cashmere sweater, my black flippy skirt, and black stockings, and a pink clip in my hair. As I walked down the street, I tried to bind myself to the facts of this world. Assume people have good intentions—doesn’t mean you have to give them second chances or erode your own boundaries, but try to be gracious, especially when someone has been good to you in the past and acted with integrity, hasn’t given you a reason to suspect them. At least we can commiserate about it—literally be together in our misery. At night I couldn’t bear it anymore. Away, Minotaur! Away, tears!
Because I was sick of clam chowder. Because it’s so “womanly.” Because of an accident or something there were two helicopters. Before I woke up I had a dream of mango cake. Before one conquers anything or anyone else, one must first conquer oneself. Behind a human smile may lie something really quite monstrous. Being rational and strategic doesn’t make a person cold—in fact, it’s so much more romantic to know that someone planned and thought about things in advance, thought through the consequences of their actions, considered my feelings. Blasting some noise which I suppose in certain quarters people elevate to the noble name of music. Boston had banned line drying as “unsightly.” But I tried to rouse myself, and I washed my hair. But it doesn’t make these intense up and down feelings go away. But now I see someone in the shadows going up on a ladder. Butterfly and margarinefly. By the end of the night I felt like my brain was Sisyphus’s boulder.
Canceled! Cleaning up is a dirty job. Companies these days don’t really understand the needs of their customers—especially these appliance-makers, who keep trying to make their appliances like smartphones, when what one needs in an oven is durability, dependability, and longevity, not a million electronic buttons and options and doo-dads. Consistent effort, that’s all one needs. Cried in the morning, thinking of with what love and affection and hope I said on the phone, sleepily, the week before, “it might be nice to be together forever and ever and ever and ever.”
Daddy died this morning.
Everyone is a foodie now. Everything else is just money, which is easy enough. Everything falls into the void. Everything I wanted in a man. Everything was so intimate and lovely.
Fall colors were starting to bloom, and we stopped at one point in order to see ducks gliding and splashing. Felt crushed by the illusion of romance so cruelly ripped away and took a break. Funeral today.
Gloomy day, weather getting colder and grayer all of a sudden. Going to bed again quite late.
Have faith in this newness and sparkle of energy that has stirred up for you these past two months and be assured that it will carry you as on a cloud or a pair of fairy wings towards a beautiful future, if you also are willing to put in your share of the work. He follows an elaborate self-care regimen. He had grown to become the constant companion of my thought. He loved the Roman exhibits, lover of empire that he is, and I wanted to show him the Impressionists. He pulled out the cuticle oil I’d given him from his pocket and said he’d been carrying it around. He put his hand around my ankle and ran his hand over my foot. He reads deeper meaning into pop songs than they merit. He wanted to meet for coffee; somehow we ended up in a library, we were laughing with each other, he said we could try again; it was easy to forgive each other, it was easy to start over. How my heart breaks to think of it all! How sad it could all end like this! How they pile up like a snowdrift! How to march ahead without him? However, I think I lose a lot by thinking of the time in which I live here as separate from my real life.
I am not the Pasiphaë you are looking for. I am trying to be brave by standing by my needs and my feelings and expressing them, instead of abandoning myself. I am trying to feel hopeful, but mostly I feel tired. I could learn something from it, it doesn’t have to be forever, and I can take what I’ve learned from it and put it into other things. I don’t have a job and you don’t have a heart. I feel impelled to live in a way that is very joyful. I felt awkward since everyone was talking in little groups. I felt strange, cinematic, and alone. I felt that I was unable to use my social skills adequately. I go to bed late and have been ever since New Year’s Eve. I had to take an EXTREMELY deep breath in order to ignore her. I have a tendency to allow my feelings to dictate my actions too much, when reason tells me I should do otherwise. I have founded my love on something strong, solid, and real—not on the shifting sands of fancy. I love her cute squishy face very much. I need a chair that’s just a few wooden planks cobbled together. I need beauty and beauty needs me. I really shouldn’t be living on the edge like this. I really will do it this time, I won’t abandon myself along the side of the road. I still see people with face masks occasionally. I suppose it had to come to a head somehow, like a buried pimple. I told him that I was afraid that the cremation would hurt Daddy, and he reassured me that he wouldn’t feel a thing. I tried to calm myself down; I finished reading Howards End; I have been trying to distract myself, to take deep breaths, to not care as much, but the fact of the matter is that I do care. I was sitting downstairs with The Arcades Project restless with anticipation. I was so happy to see the snow on the ground when I woke up this morning. I will take strength from inside myself and embark on a path of transformation. I will try not to be disappointed by any one failure. I would rather have a man who’s a workaholic than a man who’s ignoring me because he’s busy doing stuff that’s totally stupid. I’m so sleepy that I’m starting to go a bit blurry round the edges. I’m trying to improve, I really am. In a dream these things don’t matter. In fact, it was hard to distinguish the Museum from the other houses around it, except for a little sign. In the evening we all went to the temple. It is a relief, actually, to start a book and then read a certain amount every single day and at last come to the end of it—instead of proceeding in bursts and skips, as I’m wont to do, or starting and never finishing at all. It is August; it is still summer, but the leaves—still green—fall down through the air, and I know that the page is starting to turn. Italian lady behind the counter was particularly funny. It’s a certain kind of propriety, or discomfort in expressing emotion, that I find very endearing. It’s like trying to scratch an itch when you have no nails. It’s people like that who are dragging down the entire human race. It’s sweet he thinks of him like that.
Just a blip, just a prototype for something far, far better. Just as it had been six months ago, the end of October. Just thinking of all the bugs made me shudder. Just traipsing through the woods.
Kind of a non-relationship. Kind of pistachio and cranberry slice. Kind of sensitive about how he said that tennis was hard for me.
Last year, looking up, admiring the moon, my face bathed in moonlight. Like a flower satisfied with its own beauty.
Meanwhile, I can put my energy into self-improvement. Men are more single-minded. Men are strange creatures, they take a kind of amused sexual interest in your pain. Monarch butterfly suddenly appeared and started flitting around us like his soul. Must have been a coincidence, maybe souls really are connected. My brain was starting to dissolve at the edges like wet paper. My mother cabbaging in the kitchen.
Near-death experience, discovered God, went to library, ate a cookie. Near the end Giuliana says, “There’s something terrible about reality, but I don’t know what it is.” Next time I’ll insist that we eat healthier. Nice to be at our old familiar spot once again and to see the children’s drawings of sharks on the walls and to have the same scallops and French fries and onion rings and tartare sauce and coleslaw. No, that’s not it exactly. Nobody was trying to criticize her, and yet she flew into a wild fit of passion and anger and left the house alone, chaos and destruction in her wake. Nothing is orderly, nothing is going to plan. Now I see it was a little bit of a harebrained scheme.
On Tuesday I thought that it was Wednesday, and then I was relieved to see that it was only Tuesday; then, today, Thursday, I thought that it was Wednesday, and then I panicked to see that it was already Thursday. On our way there he pointed out the building that his office is in. One makes up scenarios in one’s head, images of the ideal, the perfect love. One must learn to create niches in a house, places inside of places with their own peculiar purposes. One of my major comforts was being able to follow up on last week. One should stay away from people in whom nonsense takes a human form. One thing that surprised me was how sparse it was in the entry area. Only now are the memories beginning to really excavate themselves, and it explains the tears and agony, the hourly alternation between grief, rage, and love that I have experienced over the past few days. Or would I always be wanting more?
Partying every weekend, drinking at every meal, going on a side trip to Vegas for no reason when he was in San Francisco for a job interview. People should work for money and marry for love, but everyone wants to work for love and marry for money. People were trying to get their dogs to wash off in the water. Perhaps it had always been impossible, except under the aegis of highest optimism. Pretty much no scratches, a great hardwood rocking chair—and only $48!
Quickness and exactitude. Quiet Halloween.
Raspberry chocolate chip and sugar with light pink frosting and sprinkles. Really meant something much deeper, almost like a promise to me. Remember that nothing is absolute and that being joyful will always get you to where you want. Reminded me that I like taking baths, so I impulsively went and took a bath. Rhyme is first and foremost an aid to memory; rhyme chimes, it hangs in the brain.
She had a lot of charcuterie things laid out and was very sweet about getting me water and so on. She heard me indistinctly, and I had to reassure her that my nightmare had been about something else. She looked so sleepy and adorable and rosy-cheeked and lovely. She majored in math, and yet she paints and reads good books and loves Hegel. She said that the publishing industry loves a debut the way creeps love a virgin. She took up residence in her own imagination. She wears long glamorous dresses and jetsets all over the world with her boyfriend and eats at expensive restaurants where everything can be photographed beautifully. Shyness and propriety restrained me. Since Memorial Day it’s been feeling like summer. So I said let’s both say sorry and make up. So many smart people, I felt the drive to achieve something again. Someone compared an anxiously attached person to someone who has a house that is in utter disrepair, utterly neglected, cobwebs and dust everywhere, broken furniture, peeling wallpaper, etc., but instead of cleaning it up and making it beautiful, they look for other people’s houses to live in and keep banging on the door asking to be let in. Something very stupid happened today. Strangeness of sharing your side of things and hearing their version. Such an adventure getting the cake and balloons and coming home on time.
Texting is so stupid; people ought to write love letters instead, or suffer from one meeting to another in silence. That really ruffled my feathers, let me tell you. The answer I got was that America runs on capitalism, and to win a game you have to know what the game is. The apple doesn’t fall out of the coconut tree, or whatever they say. The day wasn’t strange, but I was strange. The depth of our conversation, the feeling of intellectual stimulation, of learning new things, the satisfaction I always get from it, was there from the very beginning. The lady giving the tour was a very short Victorian lady in dark Victorian garb, with a very Victorian chatelaine at her waist. The level of organization turned me on a little. The milk boiled over very nicely. The next question was “what are three traits that you like about yourself?” The realm of personal relations is not a realm of achievement. The view of the lake was so beautiful. The weirdest thing about having a conversation with someone through texting is that you can be in the middle of a really deep, meaningful conversation, and they can disappear at any moment, whereas in real life, if someone got up right in the middle of a conversation, it would be considered pretty rude. The whole way there we got into a very intense debate that basically rehashed the whole Brahms/Wagner thing about absolute vs. programmatic music. Then he said that words are what we use to communicate and language is what separates us from other animals. Then we went upstairs, saw the butler’s pantry and dumbwaiter, dining room, so many beautiful paintings, china, glassware—Oriental influence—and the study, which had a lovely old chess table, a beautiful red velvet chair for reading, lots of little nooks, antimacassars, not much light but very cozy—and then up again (so many stairs—about four or five flights) to the bedroom of the lady of the house, which was my favorite room, with the white bedspread and faux bamboo furniture (actually made of maple wood), lots of paintings and drawings of angels, cherubs, beautiful young women, the rose-patterned carpet matched the rose-patterned upholstery very well, two full length mirrors, one with a stool in front of it as a sort of vanity set, one with two candleholders on either side, a dress form with a beautiful dark green and pink floral-patterned dressing gown I think—then there was a bathroom connected, with a pair of curling irons by the sink and a glass jar labeled for LISTERINE—and then up again past more bedrooms they now use as offices and up again to the very top floor to the little servants’ bedrooms, which had no furniture. There should be a stronger word than wrong for the opposite of right. There were a few flurries right before we left. There were a bunch of vague shapeless sweaters in ugly colors and one or two dresses that were passable. There were all these dark purple menacing clouds in the sky with tints of red at their edges, and the bare tangled dark branches of the trees stood out against them in a very Gothic fashion—very spookily November. They were in a small group of poker players. This element of social judgment reinforced moral constraints. Thursday, I was able to write a little bit. Time passes by so quickly; things change so quickly, and you can’t hold on. To lose a loved one is to lose a world. To prove the power of the nonverbal I whispered to him in the driveway that I had something to communicate to him and then kissed him. Took a nap in the middle of the day and wasted a good four hours, and yet I am ahead of schedule. Tossed me up in the air about three times—terrifying in the moment, but once I got over the shock I wanted him to do it all over again. Transcendent and beautiful. Two people thrown together like a roll of the dice.
Un Flic not as good as Le Samouraï. Under trees all strung magically with lights. Unfortunately I find myself in the same predicament as Edith Wharton. Until the end of April and for the whole month of May, I won’t initiate anything. Usually we women feel ashamed, disgusted, or guilty about this thing that nature has made such a part of us, such a regular fixture of our lives.
Very light and happy, everything just melted away.
Wait at least until everything is smoothed out with the parents. Watching Il Deserto Rosso. We are the half of the human race that lives in shadow. WE COULD’VE BEEN SORB APPLES TOGETHER!! We drove past a pond with a few swans in it—the swans and the water and the dark trees and the snow starting to settle on the brown-green grass made such a sweet scene—and another pond with lots of geese. We had an assembly line and proved Henry Ford right: we were very efficient, each at our own disparate and monotonous tasks. We hold a secret pain in some dark cupboard of our souls that they will never see or understand. We rated each one—the first, a pistachio raspberry thing, got the lowest, and then there was a pear tart that was quite good, and to top it off a chocolate “halva bomb.” We started talking about politics, and he asked me what my platform would be were I to run for president, and I said lots of glitter and cupcakes for everyone. We were at a resort somewhere (on our honeymoon?), there was a big window, blue ocean, white curtains blowing, honey-colored wooden furniture. Well, I am going to make my house beautiful. What a rush! What terror and excitement! When one thinks of the millions of small tasks that one is prevailed upon to carry out. Whenever we saw other cars on the road, he’d say they were another pair of lovebirds. Whether or not the “turn tables,” as they say. Which was not really what I wanted to hear, either. Who knew that having a cannoli monopoly could make a business so powerful. Why all of a sudden tonight? Why can’t one do as one likes and sail away upon gossamer wings into the land of dreams? Would I be satisfied?
X shape, chiasmus. X, Y, and Z were necessary to foster a beautiful relationship.
Yesterday was the day before the full moon. You can keep going back to it over and over again in memory.
Zooming out, it seems insignificant now. Zucchini, sweet potatoes, spring onions, jalapeños, leeks.
If you enjoyed reading, please like this post and share with a friend! And I’d love to hear from you in the comments: How was your 2024? Do you also keep a diary?
Ramya,
So beautiful! Like a kaleidoscope of emotions, expressions. Please welcome 2025 where you will flourish like a vine.
Ramya, your writing is so divine and oh so unique. In love with how you view the world and how you express it- you are pure art.
“Why can’t one do as one likes and sail away upon gossamer wings into the land of dreams? Would I be satisfied?” - this line has me dreaming…