more exhausted tonight than i was last night, and with a stomach ache this time. the sandwich i had tasted fishy which is concerning because i ordered beef. the days go by like wild horses over the hills. people roll in and out all day in and out in and out but tonight daddy and i are staying at my apartment while my mom spends the night with nunu because if we go one more night without sleep we may collapse. lunch dinner lunch dinner coffee lunch coffee dinner from the cafe to the restaurant to the cousins to the diner to the cafe to auntie’s to tayta’s to the restaurant. i’m going to explode there’s so much food involved in every social interaction we find ourselves in.
the city stars gleam up at me from the valley below. i’m on the balcony at my apartment and someone’s wheels are scratching the pavement as they park. daddy caresses his beard on the couch next to me, frowning and the screen, he is trying to solve something on the website. we’re making an enrollment website to liberate ourselves from the limited aesthetic options on teachable. read through another batch of applications today, answered some emails. this is my favorite time of the year not only because it’s leo season but because i get to go through people’s answers, and start to get to know potential students, guessing who’s going to enroll when they get accepted and who’s going to back out, learning what people are looking for, imagining how the material is going to affect them, trying to gauge the energetic profile of the cohort. it’s fun because i always guess everything wrong and everything and everyone turns out to be more magical than i would have expected.
you learn by alanis morrisette is stuck in my head, and the samsung logo is bouncing around the tv screen in front me. the box of cookies from last night still has some chocolate ones in it but my stomach still hurts and my tongue is craving that cookie crumble. no tongue, you’re causing trouble at this point. stomach is in pain and if you enjoy that cookie you’re gunna make stomach even more upset. don’t be selfish. i’m starting to feel nauseous as this struggle intensifies.
the year 117 was the year rome reached its peak as an empire, as big as it would ever be, when hadrian took over and decided not to expand anymore. 117 is also the number associated with the political party of the most powerful feudal family in the mountain of ehden.
goodnight <3
Reading this with a chocolate cookie in my mouth.
Was caught by that 117. Checked my Gibbon. He began his narrative of Rome’s decline with the start of the second century, when it was at its height, staying itself from expanding by foreign conquest—except for Britain, brought under Rome that first century of Christ.
We never know the arc of an empire, especially when we live in it, until the aftermath of its “height.” And that definition of its acme will surely be different from those who drove it there.