kaliedophilia

Contrary to my last post, yesterday was really decadent.

I finally got around to going to the museum, a goal I had been stewing for months but always procrastinating on. Part of the impetus for this going out was motivated by the fact that I was to see Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie that night. Embedded within this museum visit was wanting to go to this sandwich place for their vegan croissants. They were overpriced, and not at all flaky or even buttery. Between this, half a brownie, and a basil and mushroom sandwich, I kind of ate too much. When I got to the museum, they were doing a Rome exhibit, so I went to see that. I've been reading The Making of the Middle Sea and going through antiquity chronologically, so it felt kind of like spoilers, but at the same time, there was a certain excitement I got out of seeing what the people in my book would be doing many generations later. They had really shitty synth music playing in the segment of the exhibition dedicated to banquets and luxury, and I kept making jokes along the lines of "DO NOT PASS IVLIVS OF VPPER GALLIA THE AVX CORD" every time I heard a different segment of the music, and I giggled a lot with my girlfriend and we generally had quite a lot of fun.

Anyway, after that, we got ramen and then idled around for a bit trying to find something to do. A middle aged lady complemented me on my cardigan and asked where to get it. I feel like people in my city are very asocial and prefer not to talk to strangers, but I've found myself kind of wanting to be in a space where this isn't the case. Which is strange, because I've been really hostile to the idea of being around other people, or talking to others. I feel like everywhere I go, I feel like an alien. I felt like a total animal at my brother's party even though I was having this really passionate and enthusiastic conversation, because there's a weird line that's always invisible between me and other people.

I think being called smart did it. It always makes it feel like someone is a teacher trying to coerce me into "fulfilling my potential" and doing things I don't want to do. I am 24, nobody wants anything more than to enjoy my company. There is nothing deeper to it. It's a friendly complement because someone liked talking to me, and not a real reflection of the person I am or whatever.

I got to practice my chinese with these two girls and forgot the word 桌子 and this is really embarassing to me when I pointed and went 这个，嗯. I'm not really ready for outputting, I don't know why I seek it out so much.

I was in Chinatown last night and for a brief moment I felt like I was in Shanghai again. I think the old lady talking about this restauraunt menu in a very Wu inflected Mandarin did it for me.

An unverifiable suspicion that agriculture was practiced in the Green Sahara, and that agricultural knowledge was transferred to Egypt from agarians-turned-pastoralists fleeing the drying. I do not really feel convinced that Egyptians adapted to agriculture as fast as they are depicted to have in the timeline simply because of the fertility of the Nile.

It feels very understated to claim that antique near easterners had palace economies. It feels like palace economies lend themselves to the whole difussion model. It's really hard to appreciate what Herodotous means by "we got civilization from Egyptians" without understanding what an Egyptian palace economy looked like, or without seeing how Ebla's palace economy cropped up. It's all starting to paint a picture in my mind of diffusion, spread, distribution, interaction.

I don't really believe any of it was inevitably meant to end up like that. I think the intergenerational trauma of the drying of Sahara lead to a cultural fixation of preservation of resources among pastoralists migrating into Egypt, which may be true even if they did not practice agriculture, and that this specific fixation lead to the concentration of wealth that occured in Naqada.

It was a nice day, so I took a walk inbetween writing and now, and I've forgotten what I was going to say.

albwm of the day: https://taihafhebdrigolyn.bandcamp.com/album/ein-albwm-cyntaf-ni