The Alphabetical Diaries Experiment

In which I pull a Sheila Heti and alphabetize my diary

love the design of this book cover!

I’ve been reading Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, in which Heti has taken 10 years of diary entries, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, arranged the sentences in alphabetical order, and then edited them until they formed this book. Having been a habitual diary-writer from the age of 7, I felt like I had to try this myself, and so I chose the diary I kept from September to December of 2023: recent enough for me to know what I was talking about but distant enough for me to look at it more objectively.

What that process yields is very interesting—it’s intimate in the way only a diary can be, but at the same time it prevents that intimacy because there’s no chronology and order for the reader to make sense of things. What I found fascinating was to see the repetitions within what I had been writing, the “themes,” as it were (a more accurate word might be “obsessions”), the feelings and ideas that cropped up again and again, the habitual patterns of thought. Although everything is out of order, the mind is always trying to create some kind of narrative or meaning, and so the non-sequiturs seem to respond to one another and create something new. Life’s profundity is really so many small mundanities put together.

I hope you enjoy reading, and of course all credit for this idea goes to Sheila Heti!

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John Doyle, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria instructing their children in the alphabet (1843). Via JSTOR.

And I don’t have much time left, either. And I feel overwhelmed and stressed out about it because I don’t know where to start. And now these three weeks since our last meeting have come and gone. Anyway, I need to get out of this stasis, and then everything in my life will flow beautifully. Anyway, I still have the guy from Texas, and there are a couple of others I’m talking to as well. Anyway, we had the most lovely time at the museum. Anyway, we parted ways with an awkward side hug outside of Copley. Apparently in the forest they communicate with one another under the earth. Apparently throughout the week the concert organizers kept on emailing him. At least it’s done now, though.

Because I started the second volume of Keats’s letters, and I came across a footnote—“Various other letters are unreadable because of tears.”—that harrowed me. But I am sorry to see it, for I love writing with pen and paper. But just by doing this, even while she’s still present, is a good thing, I think. But rather say he was a fire that blazed so bright it was consumed by its own “self-substantial fuel.” But somehow in my heart of hearts I felt that it was not for me. But the hurricanes never seem to touch us here, only blizzards. But why do I dwell on it so much?

Can feel myself becoming clingy. Can’t accept any last minute dates. Cars keep coming and going, and the doorman keeps opening and shutting the car doors. Chronic stress is very bad for the body; the other day I got a very long, wispy, greyish eyebrow hair, and it really freaked me out. Classes had not yet started. Coming home was also a disaster. Connecting the sonification of black holes to the arachnodome, he asked if the whole cosmic web could be played like a harp.

Didn’t write, but I got sort of an emotional idea for a poem—sometimes you have to find the emotional center, otherwise it is hard to write. Do appreciate it when a man makes an effort to make a reservation so that everything goes smoothly. Don’t really have much to say, but I think that a sonnet is forthcoming. During the performance, our shoulders kept brushing “accidentally,” though we didn’t hold hands or anything.

Even Virginia Woolf had her struggles and started somewhat late. Everyone was very nice, and I went with this girl Rachel behind the curtain. Extremely gloomy, don’t really know what I did today.

Films that are happy to be films. Films that express life and cinema and the joy of creating. For example, Keats and Shakespeare are quite secular—compared to, say, Wordsworth and Donne—yet they might be said to have a sort of pagan spirituality—they go beyond God, etc., etc. to the realm of pure Imagination, pure Creation—they are one with the creative spirit itself, that moves in all things: and because it moves in all things, they are able to empathize, see from inside every specific “life” (both animate and inanimate, both human and other). For now, I can say that it is still early on, but by next week I have to grow in leaps and bounds and rid myself of every bad habit like plucking burrs out of a sweater. For the past few days I have been doing nothing but watching those stupid “What’s in my bag?” videos. Friendship sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

Going to try to dress up as a vampire for Halloween and hand out candy. Going to try to maintain a good mood today, since it’s so sunny and nice.

“Half-dark” indeed—I should say entirely dark, I feel like somebody just stumbling around. He kept going on about his divorce and how his wife had taken the $2 million house and the kids. He kept telling me how pretty I was. He put his finger under my chin and drew me close to him under the fairy lights. He told me that if I wouldn’t give him my number, at least he could give me his. He told me to get a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and to read a little bit of it everyday. He touched my neck. He was too hasty, I was an ungrateful little wench. He was turning into a red-blooded American. However, I have no subject. However, it is my religion. How wonderful that there are so many poets to read! How young I was then!

I always had to censor myself. I always get cookies and then think I should get more, but I don’t want to step off the edge into the abyss of my cookie addiction. I am getting very old now—indeed, quite elderly. I am glad to have this space and glad I did this, for here I feel as though I can really think as myself and be myself; I have a pleasant little acre in my mind in which to wander. I am looking for something that is beautiful, that is simple, that sounds entirely right all the way through. I don’t feel sad exactly, I feel numb. I don’t want to think about him anymore or about men in general. I don’t want to watch TV or read a book, I want to be loved. I feel I must try to come into a greater sympathetic identification with the objects and the people of the world around me. I feel it is something true to myself, which is good. I feel the air enter my lungs—large, bountiful gulps that gush through my very soul and exhale pollutants! I felt I was mostly driveling on there, never saying anything of consequence, and I thought it was not because of the censorship but because of some weight that has been sitting on my brain these past few years, but I don’t think that’s it—I think it must have been the censorship—some kind of barrier inside me, that served as an obstacle to free speech; whatever the rights, liberties, &c. of this country may be, in one’s own house, one always lives in quite another country, which is subject to the peculiar customs and traditions and laws of that land, laid down by one’s King or Queen (usually Queen—the King, at least here, simply has consort status and is not regnant). I’m not into guys with high-pitched voices. I need a man to be decisive, to provide order and direction. In this wide world—if not downright treacherous, then often unknown, scary, and full of perplexity—one can always be glad of the comforts of good health, one’s family, a few good friends, a few good books, and a warm meal. It has become a bad habit of mine to go to bed around 2. It has been a wet and gloomy summer, descending into an even wetter and gloomier autumn. I think it was misguided from the beginning, and yet somehow there is another part of me that feels our souls are inextricably linked and that we were bound for each other in some strange way. I want to dedicate myself to hard work, I want to keep my promises to others and most of all to myself. I want truth, I want greater universality, I want beauty and coherence, and I want something that feels personal, pulled up from great depths of myself. 

Alighiero Boetti, Ammazzare il tempo (1983)

Just really well-planned and well-executed.

Kepler says, “The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not by the ear); a music which… thereby sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time.” Kissed me in the car, got a line for a poem.

Laziness has seeped into me again. Let me be as positive as I can, as open-minded and open-hearted as I can, let me always expect good things in my future, God give me the strength to keep that faith and optimism always, and then my life will flow beautifully. Looked in the mirror just now with my other glasses on and thought, “Dear me, I really am making a spectacles of myself.” 

Mariana said something about finance bros doing cocaine, and there was a little debate. More than ever I feel that I am cut off from people. My eczema has been flaring up in the most deplorable way. My mind is gnawed away in giggles, chatter, noise, and nonsense. My mother has just now made me a small quantity of tea—disappointing! for I demand vats and vats of the stuff—I could swim in it— drink and drink and drown myself in it—and so find myself in blessed Eterni-tea— My second day wearing the corset. My thoughts have been consumed with superficial things as of late, such as my figure, or the beauty of Vivien Leigh.

Nearly close to tears or on the verge of giving up. Nevertheless, I will count of course the lines and the time that I spent on it, so that my effort isn’t wasted. No man is ever worth agonizing over. Now in the silence of the night I feel I can truly express myself. Now there is an ebb in my attachment.

Of course, beauty is never superficial—at least to me, true beauty always has a higher, spiritual aspect to it, a kind of celestial shimmer. Oh well, I won’t beat myself up. One may be said to live in a democracy, a “free country,” etc., etc., and be coequal with one’s fellow citizens (at least on the surface)—but at home one is always subject to monarchy, if not outright tyranny and despotism, with all the cruel and unusual punishment that can be said to follow. One of his fund’s portfolio companies was bought for $3.1 billion. Only when one enters a state of other Being and “bes with” the other can one properly conceive of it. On the other hand, I also find that I am moving towards greater structure. Or maybe I could figure out some better hiding place for it. Or maybe I’ll stay up.

People with off-beat interests like bugs or mushrooms or homing pigeons who are confident in themselves or simply can’t help being themselves, to the point where it just bubbles out of them, are fascinating to me, and I love them. Perhaps I should get one of those deep-tissue massages. Poor Catherine! Poor little pincushion Keats! Perhaps it was this background of the surface of the sea.

Quite ready to greet the New Year energetically and with gusto.

A Human Alphabet, The Three Delevines, William FitzGerald (1897)

Really, the audacity is astonishing. Red velvet with cream cheese frosting. Regarding exercise, I think I can do it in the evening. Reminded ONCE AGAIN to only drink water in public. Reread Elizabeth Bishops’s “At the Fishhouses” again, with a different kind of attention and care. Re-watched Secretary, which was very unnecessary. Rose and grapefruit soap.

Shakespeare has richness, as well as structure. Scholars was only a few minutes’ walk from there. Sitting across from him face to face, I felt nervous all of a sudden. Somehow around 7 or 8 I got sucked into this world of true crime podcasts. Something passes over my soul like a shadow, or like a hand closing a pair of eyes after death. Sometimes I seem to be shooting myself in so many contrary directions. Sometimes you learn from talking to just one person what it would have taken you 100 books to learn otherwise. So much time has passed so quickly.

That is a realistic goal and I can reach it. The first meeting went well, and then the second meeting was okay, too. The imagination is like a bower deep inside the self, and one must on purpose “take a walk” there. The instinct is not coming to me as an inspiration. The Internet ruins every good thing. The purpose of clothing is to adorn the body, not to hide it. There is a burthen on my mind, I feel awfly narvus. There needs to be a richness: in sound, in image, in sense. “This toil of verse”—how it vexes me! These are my own “lost years,” I suppose—the years in which I quit the world, drew the curtain, and hid backstage. Threads of water the same color of the sky are coming down, though a little bit of sun still lingers behind the trees. Three girls came out of the woods like Diana’s huntresses. To be honest, I’m usually uncertain enough about a man at the end of a first date to agree to a second, just to gather more information. Tomorrow I will do better.

Unfortunately I will have to get it hemmed, and I can’t have things dragging on the floor. Until I came back to write this, I forgot that I even applied to MIT and got deferred. Upholding my own values and integrity, while keeping my peace of mind and tempering my emotions as much as possible. Used up all of my late nights and all-nighters in my teenage years and college years and now have none left.

Very sleepy tonight and not at all in a mood to write.

Alphabetrics by Virginia Smith, Greenville, SC, 1974, via Letterform Archive

We compared the sizes of our hands, his giants, mine “not even the rain.” We continued to talk about music, and he said that the harmonica was not an easy instrument to learn. We were in time for the guillotining of Marie Antoinette. “What, pray, is your mother tongue?”—“Why, my dear sir, I am a perfect native speaker of Gibberish.” When you write me next, please write in tears, blood, snot, sweat, semen, so that I may keep a little Substance of you by my side, and not merely the inky Shadow. Wore my pink DVF dress and felt nice that we had one last resurgence of summer weather.

Xmas present for me.

Yesterday I felt I could not write anything at all, my Muse had flown, to reside, perhaps, in some better head, but today she has rediscovered her fondness for me, and is content to furl up her wings and stay for a little while on some branch of my brain. You never feel comfortable seeking out that kind of help from people who are close to you.

Zero compunction. Zoning out as always.

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Dear Readers, thank you so much if you’ve managed to make it to the bottom of the page! Please let me know your thoughts on how this experiment turned out in the comments, and as always like and subscribe to Soul-Making if you enjoyed!