24.04.2024 // slowly becoming one with this desk. the wires bother me a lot so i've sought advice from a friend on how to organise them better. hopefully, they'll stop looking like such dump. a colleague also donated her french press to the office, which means that i don't have to spend $10 on coffee everyday because frankly, that is utterly absurd and I had, in fact, stopped drinking coffee for a while. but can't do without that caffeine; it keeps me functioning.

23.04.2024 // some affect theory and writing on a fairly warm day. i'm taking it slow this week, mostly because i feel lazy and kind of...blah.

affect always escapes any attempt to explain or understand it because it lies outside of language or cognition. perhaps that explains why affect seems so vague and abstract. im trying to figure out if affect theory will be useful for my research but I won't pursue it if it continues to be beyond my grasp.

20.04.2024-21.04.2024 // it is strange how time functions. each day feels so long and then i look back and realise that months have passed. research work is picking up steam but I've been adamant about carving out social time for myself. perhaps, i'm not being as productive as i could be. but i cannot let my research/work consume me; un/non-productive time is as productive.

a snapshot of my days – studying during the day and chill time post-dinner.

16.04.2024 // a long day of cultural research workshop where I got to share some of the challenges I'm struggling with during this beginning phase of my research as I begin working on my literature review and methodology. it was also so fascinating to hear about other research projects that are at various stages of development.

concluded the day with Howl, Sophie & Calcifer.

13.04.2024 // slept through the day and was plagued by heartbreaking dreams. so I took myself out on yet another date, this time with T. Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones. I am thoroughly enjoying the narrative voice so far. Also decided to confront my brain and journal a bit.

12.04.2024 // took the day off to clean my room, do laundry and other chores. afterwards — lunch date with Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, then a BBQ, then cloistered myself away at our refuge.

"...the question of the archive is not, we repeat, a question of the past. This is not the question of a concept dealing with the past which might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what this will have meant, we will only know in the times to come."

— Derrida, J., & Prenowitz, E. (1995). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), 9-63.

bought this gem secondhand and can’t get over how stunning it is 🪐 reblog is okay, don’t repost/use

09.04.2024 // motivating myself to read Derrida and to write daily reflections in my researcher's journal.

it has been raining quite a bit and the weather is becoming cold, but there have been some pockets of sunshine.

07.04.2024 // trying my best to work on my literature review while my brain is trying its best to hold onto reality.

i'm simultaneously excited and frustrated by how easily i tend to get distracted. today i began by reading about the impossibility of a total archive, which led me to reading about our compulsive and obsessive need to document and record everything (this studyblr is a good example), and i ended up going down a rabbit hole of literature on the intersections between death and technology.

🎧 calm before the storm

Hey :) what did you think of welcome to the hyunam-dong bookshop? I saw it on one of your posts on my feed & was curious to hear your thoughts!!

honestly I've mixed feelings about it. on one hand, i loved the slice of life, slow-paced narrative. each of the characters are resisting and questioning capitalist notions of labour and productivity in their own way, while struggling with burnout. also loved the descriptions of the bookstore; I felt like I was a part of it. in that way, it was a very cosy read. but on the other hand, it felt incomplete...? the narrative doesn't really go anywhere and I'm usually okay with that because life is like that, right? sometimes you just exist without any movement or growth, or it all occurs imperceptibly. but I just wish there had been something in terms of the story arriving somewhere. maybe that's because when I read the book, I wanted to arrive somewhere instead of merely existing.

tl:dr welcome to the hyunam-dong bookshop is a slow and cosy read with little to no conflict. however, the narrative doesn't really go anywhere.

"...death is one of the most radical attempts to destroy life and to abolish all debts in relation to it. The act of dying, inasmuch as it entails the dislocation of the physical body, never attacks totally, nor equally successfully, all the properties of the deceased (in either the figurative or the literal sense). There will always remain traces of the deceased, elements that testify that a life did exist, that deeds were enacted, and struggles engaged in or evaded."

— Mbembe, A. (2002). The Power of the Archive and its Limits. In C. Hamilton, V. Harris, J. Taylor, M. Pickover, G. Reid, & R. Saleh (Eds.) Refiguring the Archive (pp.19-27). Springer Netherlands.

06.04.2024. // Easter break; finally saw the ocean. back to the grind now.

27.03.2024 // first meeting with my advisory committee, getting some focussed reading done, attending a completion seminar, and preparing a paper for a workshop.

[no playlist today; I didn't want my brain to wander off into dreamlands]

25.03.2024 // every day asks for a new palette.

late evenings at office, submission of first essay, some venting and discovering new buildings on campus. I have also found the cheapest coffee place on campus, which is still not sustainable for my daily cup of coffee. jfc this city is expensive.

24.03.2024 // caffeine-fuelled work on my first paper for my degree. i enjoy this rush, but it is also a struggle to focus and stop myself from going down into academic rabbitholes. thanks to the coursework, i also finally have some sort of idea on how to start with my scoping review (hopefully!).

🎧 anne carson on the train on Spotify

23.03.2024 // a new personal journal that I've been religiously journalling in. it has been a source of great comfort. I'm also getting into the habit of collecting and saving knick-knacks like receipts, vouchers, film pamphlets from the theatre, coasters, etc.

i've also been watching a great deal of movies, thanks to discount mondays at the nearby theatre and a weekly movie club at my accommodation. the theatre also runs a double feature every tuesday at quite a cheap price. the schedule for the entire year has been released and i've already decided which ones im going to watch (most of them are Miyazaki). im also trying to sketch/draw on procreate every day, and a friend and I have agreed to be accountability buddies. but of course, with deadlines and work, daily art has been inconsistent.

🎧 Video Game Atmospheric on Spotify