narrativevlogging 01

journal entry of october 25 2025:

i used to digitally journal so much. i grew a bit distrustful of this avenue- (a bit?!).

in any case, i want to still have this 3rd-point-pov reflex. this narrative hm intentionality of recursion.

a topic me and my therapist talked about last session is “fear/wish”. they had a more formal term from psychology, from some european language.

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to move a culture from polytheistic to monotheistic (edit: maybe other way too! i was just thinking unidirectionally rn), an epistemology-changer (/neutral tone) may have/use some type of sociologic-reasoning. ex. the abrahamic faiths. i was telling my bf about the story of muhammad instructing to carry the black stone (which is in the kaaba) [which is also an interesting place to rest and think about how despite the smashing of idols -also-invigorating- story, there is still ritual around a physical object]. the way i learned (and remember) is that the asteroid landed, and tribes all wanted to honor of carrying it to its final resting spot. muhammad was known (again as i was taught) as the Fair one, he handled contracts, interacting with many people (it’s emphasized i remember amongst muslim and jewish tribes, but im curious if there were polytheistic ones there too (see List of pre-Islamic Arabian deities from Wikipedia)). For this issue, he came up with the idea of putting a blanket under the rock and all carrying separate parts, to make it a shared behavioral act.

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ok back to me lol. Fear/wish… it came up in the context of that feeling when i both really want a hug and also don’t want to be touched at all, which unfairly, i can get mad about later for the need not being met. even though me myself am Confused and don’t know what i want and oscillate and feel stuck between -.

Fear-Wish. When she started talking about this, I thought of earlier this week. I was at Dr. Manolis Kellis PhD’s house for an academic Conversation (emphasis on the capital C). Addy (of ekkolapto) had extended an invitation. Kellis is a computational biology and computer science professor at MIT. His lab via his website says, “We seek to understand the mechanistic basis of human disease using a combination of computational and experimental techniques.” There’s a lot I could talk about there, which I have been processing with friends and peers, but imagine a nice brownstone South Boston type living room, with its older architecture, strange room shape, and a beautiful piano of Kellis’ own addition (perhaps for his children, who were darting in and out occasionally getting ready for school and bed). The audience was a cool mix- high professor/PhD/MD to researcher to other/student ratio. So, back on throughline, fear-wish concept made me think of when Dr. Andreas Mershin (former director of Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT 2004-2023), who from what I’ve learned from the ‘hackathon’ event and again at the social hour, works in machine olfaction [which if you want to talk more about id happily, it is a kinda cool idea for diagnosis exploration], said that ‘monkeys in front of a mirror will get caught between being afraid and desiring their reflection in the mirror’. He told us at the first event that we should stay curious, and that will help with fear.

I could go on a new spiel about mirror tests in animal cognition studies, and how those are akin to a consciousness milestone.

Do these (these posts/entries) need conclusion? Conclusion implies a viewer. Modern social media is in a new trend where ordinary videos will cut to something else entirely but some seconds in, not super quick so it almost is like oh you made it this far? here’s an attention-switch (ie reinforcement rewarding). and you’re kinda like oh thank god i watched this far what if id liked earlier on, before watching the rest (if the ending changes the tone or humor negatively).

In mathematical and logical proofs, Q.E.D. is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “quod erat demonstrandum,” which means “which was to be demonstrated”.