One of the few ways I know of... to care for something... is personal taste. One of the ways I know to care for something is to write about it. Constantly. Even if you hate it. The case of the Handsmaid's Tale was at first I found it almost unreadable in it's narrative leaps. I don't know what kept me going but it turned out to be the sleeper hit of the Dystopian Writing class. Maybe the voice became so vivid in scenes that taken from a Victorian novel. The Colonel (?) talking about why women deign to dress differently every day: To trick the man into thinking I am a different woman.

With a smile I'm opening this window into personal taste. Either, "I can relate" or "that is acceptable" and somewhere in between. To trick the brain into thinking I am a different person. Externally it sounds dishonest. Disingenuous. How do you map honesty onto maturity?

What should I write about? Is this like a sounding board or something? Do I talk about what has been on my mind? I'm part perfectionist, part slacker. I've been tucking my shirt in. This is how bored I am. I think: Today I'm going to make a concerted effort to sit square in my chair. I am going to try and have a day where I work for a while on my job and I work for a while on what I want to do (be it writing and reading) I think because I don't talk to my co-workers about these issues that I'm skirting the things that are really on my mind. I think maybe the trumpet can help me systematise my breathing. There was an article in the newspaper about the different kinds of intelligence and one of them was body smart, a short hand way of saying that you are aware of your body. One time I told Joli that because I try to change myself, my environment continually changes. But I'm still responding to the same stimulus. The only time I leave the city is to visit my relatives in Singapore. The traditional shopaholic who gains satisfaction from a manbag, another synthetic smell, another article of clothing. I'm telling myself I'm different because my thing is books. I guess I needed a "thing". Now I'm slowing coming round to the opinion that books are no substitute for clothing. There is no excuse for looking bad. Because after a certain age, one starts to dress oneself. I rode on the bus today and for several minutes I observed who did or did not have their shirts tucked in, who walked in the noon day sun and perhaps even though they didn't see me sitting by the window in one of the 5 buses with identical routes, their appreciation of me grew.