THIS DAY IN HISTORY

[Editor's note: What follows is a selection of writings by Abraham "Abe" Riesman. What they share in common (other than authorship) is that they were all written on the same day: August 24th. However, each was written in a different year. For the first time, Mr. Riesman has written documentation of his thoughts from seven consecutive years: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. The only exception is the 2003 entry, which was written on August 25th. Enh, and I guess the 2007 entry is fudging the date a bit, in that it was written on August 25th, but that was on Korean Standard Time—it was still August 24th in the USA at the time of writing. The entries come from different sources—written diaries, blogs, microblogs, et cetera. Some have titles, some do not. Nevertheless, they all are relatively frank representations of what was going through Mr. Riesman's mind on those particular days. All names have been redacted and replaced with "_____" demarcations, to protect the innocent. In instances where scribbles or drawings were used in the original written works, your Editor has placed bracketed descriptions of what was scrawled. Please also note the existence of an Editor's Note prefacing the 2006 entry. Enjoy?]


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8/25/03:
Why does this always happen? These two things I'm feeling right now?
(1) D-Plan -- why do I choose to beat myself up for not liking them? Why is there so much bitterness within me when I think of them and ____ and ____ and ____ and indie rock and rock criticism etc.? I just Fuhhhhhhhh [scribbles] fucking hate it all. Hate myself, hate them -- but why? Wmmmmwmwmwmmwmy?
(2) ____ -- so fuckin' awkward with her. I feel so immature now with her. Hate it hate it hate it. But I don't know how to stop. And on phone just now, I felt so pissed that she knew the oral surgery thing wouldn't work. Made me feel SO DUMMB useless faggot child girl need help mommy not a man. FUCK! So irritating when I feel like that. So I [scribbles] goddman did what I always do: for whatever reason, said I was glad about something I hated. Said "so glad you know these things." WHY??? Fuck™© ®
"Alter Ego" by Adrian Tomine -- hard to read
(C)~~```[light scribbles and marks]
went for big run yesterday.
WHAT should I be doing right now?




8/24/04:
subject: "fucknnga"
mood: anxious
music: gbv - everybody thinks i'm a raincloud

i guess i'm manifesting my anxiety at leaving all my friends and entering into a baffling new world by worrying excessively about not having seen enough movies this summer/in high school. which is a rather silly trouble, dontcha think? i mean, when i found out that the dvd of mean girls hadn't come out yet last night, i nearly had a panic attack. sure, i'm a little bit culturally illiterate for not having seen it, but it's not exactly like i've got ebola.

i feel sort of paralyzed now, not really knowing what to do with the time i have left. i haven't even started shopping yet for school.

whirlwind tour of the last few days:

friday--horrifyingly bizarre experience had while getting lost driving in the western suburbs, turning what should've been a half-hour errand to the store into a four-hour odyssey that took me to barrington, wheaton, the glenbard area, and hanover park, among other places, all the while listening to "blueberry boat" by the fiery furnaces, which drove me to madness (if you want full details of the story just ask me sometime); came home and had little going-away get-together with ____ and some others, and this ended with masculinely-veiled man-tears on my part and an act of cosmic significance whereby the last face-to-face conversation we had dealt with "get what you give" by new radicals, and as i drove away from his house, that song began to play on the radio. tough times, but beautiful also.

saturday--went to a piano recital, sat around, labored over not knowing who to hang out with in the evening, ended up seeing "dead man" at ____'s house, but not before spending a few hours hanging out at my dad's block party, in which i got a kiss from my HOT russian housewife neighbor, who was hella drunk, and i also met my italian exchange student neighbor, who just moved in. the fucker's awesome--his knowledge of america is dominated by the fact that he watches the simpsons an astonishing five times a day back in italy. very sarcastic and cynical. going to oprf this year.

sunday--helped set up a booth at the "taste of oak park," then went downtown for a harvard class of '08 meetup. some of the people were pretty cool, but there was this one girl who i had known from before and was starting to really irritate me. she was one of those people who totally abuses self-deprecation. you know, the kind who shows off their intelligence and then says "sorry i'm such a dork" when they're obviously not a dork, and who loves being the center of conversation but occasionally throws in "sorry i talk so much." anyway, i then went back to oak park to get driven to the b96 summer bash with ____, ____, and ____ from ______. it was a good time. i dunno, i'm still a bit out of the loop on hiphop, but it was enjoyable. the crowd was hella tame, except for when a riot broke out during jo jo's set. afterwards we came back to tha o.p. and hung out at some houses before i called it a night. both the b-bash and the harvard thing were good reminders to me that sometimes i feel really excluded with people, but that that's a usually silly thing to think and that i shouldn't just clam up and disappear.

monday--big, full day spent in ______, shooting ____'s music video with ____, ____, ____, and ____ himself. another good lesson, in that i felt really unnecessary and boring and irritating for much of the day, but by the end, it felt wonderful to have spent the time with all those good people, who, it turns out, didn't loathe me.

now i sit at home after a nightmare about forgetting a chemistry class and the holocaust, and i'm anxious about what to do today. damn. i have about a week and a half left.

i don't suppose this post was terribly poetic or entertaining, but i was really mainly going for a document to record these past few days.




8/24/2005
"12:40 am / Bed"

I will leave here soon.
I do not know what awaits me at Harvard. There is nothing about which I am certain, save that there will be chaos and anxiety and a thrilling mess of choices. Certain of nothing.
Is that why this city was right for me?
Is that why Israel was so important?
"The Sweet Hereafter"
Sweet Jane. The seaport in July.
The seaport in July.
Over and over again.
I'll be your bird.
A broken phonebooth.
A home on ice.
My old man.

I'll take the rain
Famous Grouse
So happy in and of myself now
So sad in future
need therapy, need change






8/24/2006

[Editor's Note: Mr. Riesman is not referring to himself when he writes of self-mutilation in this entry. He is referring to a friend. He inflicted no bodily harm on himself whatsoever during the incident in question.]

in regards to last night's "desperate plea for someone to chat with" post, don't worry, things are quiet and fine now.

i doubt i'll explain what happened to most of you, because it was rather compromising for the people who were involved, but suffice it to say the following:

in all honesty, all sarcasm aside—if you are feeling so depressed that cutting your own skin or taking your own life seems like a good idea, DON'T GET ALL PURITAN-COWBOY-SELF-RELIANT AND SAY THAT MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS ARE ALL QUACKS AND SCAM ARTISTS.

if you're at the end of the rope, you have absolutely nothing to lose by talking to someone who knows ways to help ease your pain. and nine times out of ten, professionals are better at easing it than your twentysomething college friends.

basically, just please don't give in to that weird scientology-style strain in american culture that says there's never a reason to seek medical help in a mental health situation. that's a bullshit hypothesis, and you should ALWAYS remember that there's a difference between (a) regularly shooting the shit with an earth-mother therapist even when you're feeling good, and (b) getting concrete advice on whether you need to be briefly hospitalized, medicated, and/or given a break from your fears when you're showing physical signs of possibly ending your own life or at least severely altering it.

and for all of you cutters out there, remember—you may think you're "good at it" or "know what you're doing" or that you "have no intention of actually killing yourself"...but once you are holding a blade and digging it into your skin, you're putting yourself in a situation where AN ACCIDENT CAN KILL. you may not "intend" to kill yourself, but you run the risk of hitting a vein or getting infected or something else that could be fatal. it's not fucking worth it.

if any of these things are happening to you, DON'T BE A FUCKING COWBOY. talk to a friend, and let them help you get to a professional. it doesn't mean you're a phoney, or a sissy, or a sell-out to a system that's corrupt, or any of that bullshit.

OH. and also, all of you cosmopolitan types, don't you EVER pull the whole "oh, so-and-so is just going through a talking-about-suicide phase...everyone has those, these days. just give her some time, and she'll get over it and develop an eating disorder like all the other college girls" routine on me. don't you EVER FUCKING DO THAT.

i don't care what rich-bitch school you went to, or how many times you've snorted coke (because, as we all know, doing drugs immediately makes you an expert on how to "take them safely," and doesn't alter your judgment of what "safety" is at ALL, right?)...if you are my friend, i will fucking intervene if i find out that you have an eating disorder, a drug habit, a cutting habit, or thoughts of suicide.

i don't mean i'm gonna pull some dr. phil "tough love" bullshit. i'm gonna talk to you calmly and compassionately, because you're my friend. but don't expect me to stay out of it because "boys will be boys" or some other bullshit justification like that.

as you can tell, i'm angry.






8/24/2007 / 8/25/2007 (Korean time difference)
subject: "on stake-out"

haha so me and ____ are in a weird situation.

we had to "check out" from the ewha dorm at 10am. we thought this meant we'd have to literally lug everything out, since they'd told us we couldn't keep our bags in the building. but we seem to have found some kind of loophole.

we did the whole "checking out" process, what with getting our deposits back and returning our keys and having them do a checklist of all the items in the room to make sure we didn't steal anything... but then they just sort of left us on our own, in our rooms. they didn't change the passcode for our room's digital door-lock, so we can go in and out of our room. we can hang out here, just as long as we don't leave the building—we don't have key-cards.

so we're just sitting here, kind of like we're on some kind of stake-out, or like tony soprano in the penultimate episode of the sopranos. just sitting in the room. we watched the daily show and the colbert report, we watched "the lady bunch" on jezebel.com, we ate the last of his ready-to-microwave packaged meals as our lunch... and now we're just sitting here.

eventually, i have to get the gumption to lug my bags out and get a cab to the hotel, then go back to the general ewha area for _______. but that's not until 7:30. enh, i should give myself some leeway time before that. so i'll probably leave here by 4 or so.

last night was anticlimactic. it was supposed to be ____'s big blow-out final night, but there weren't that many friends of ours still in the country. what few who did show up had to leave by midnight, mostly, because the seoul subway stops running around 12:30. by midnight, it was just me, ____, and two koreans we know, sitting in this bar and trying to finish off the alcohol we had left. i had lost in many of the drinking games from the previous rounds with more people, so i was the only drunk one. it was frustrating. being the only drunk person in a setting where nothing is happening is hellllllla boring.

anyway, we gave up and went home. that's pretty much the whole story.

i talked to ____ yesterday about the language class issue. we agreed that the korean department really needs to get its shit together—it shouldn't be teaching one semester of korean on a summer program and then not allowing them to take the second semester until 6 months later, thus forcing them to jump ahead into second year if they want to keep it continuous.

i've been thinking (which is always a bad thing, and shouldn't be trusted when i'm thinking about one of these issues), and i'm getting closer and closer to just letting go of this language, and of the idea that i can overcome my language envy this year. it'll have to wait. i honestly won't get over it by taking korean, because i have no desire to take korean, and it would just make me more exhausted with the idea of learning a language. however, if i do give up, all is not lost—i learned an important lesson this summer.

i can do it.

no, i didn't come anywhere near fluency, but that's because the program was only 5 weeks long and we only had 20 days of language class within that time. but i aced the class and squeezed an enormous amount out of what little i was given. if i were in another intensive language environment again, i could handle it. i learned that i could handle it. i could learn. of course, this was only a taste. but i did it. it was a small chunk, but i did that chunk without freaking out. i overcame the curse of russian class, in that respect. hell, if i take korean 120a, i might end up with another russian-class-style freakout. which would be a bit of a regression.

the point is that when i do pick the language i want to learn, the language whose culture interests me enough to give me the passion necessary for really learning a language... when that time comes (and it may well be soon), i'll have this experience in my memory banks, telling me it's possible. that i took a first step and didn't fumble.

anyway, this is all mish-mash. this is all somewhat important, but just part of this trip and my mindset about it.

i don't really know what to do tomorrow. i had an interview scheduled, but the person just canceled. maybe tomorrow is the day for that bukhansan hike? nah, the weather's supposed to be shitty tomorrow. ugh, i should figure out SOMETHING to do. i don't want to be a shut-in at the new hotel.

maybe i'll start making that checklist of things i need to obtain and ask about while i'm at KMLA. and i guess i'll do that language homework that my teacher has been sending—i owe it to her, since she's putting forth the effort, even if i don't continue with the language.

i've said it many times before, and i'll say it many times again, but i just want to go home at this point. oh! and i don't know what i'm gonna do—the colbert report and the daily show are both on vacation until i get home! they were my lifeline to america!

Posted by Abraham "Abe" Riesman at 1:51 PM 0 comments
Labels: departures, drinking, hiking, homesickness, language, language envy, packing, russian reversal, the future, tv






8/24/2008
"6:11pm / 2 train"

Harlem/Morningside was a waste, but who cares.
Listening to old New York music. Complained to the ____ and ____ guys about the ____. Because fuck this ____. I don't care right now.
Fuck it.
But like Isaac said, as life gets longer, awful feels softer, and it feels pretty soft to me. I really could be so, so much worse. But then again, I really don't know what I'm doing. I can't remember what my dreams were, anymore.
All I really wanted was to either be a star actor, or to be Leonard.
And now I've abandoned both, for the time being, at least. What's a boy to do? I suppose it's off to ____ after a week's break. But to what end? Or perhaps ____ will arrive. Lord only knows.
I hope I get back and I just get my ____ and get to go home. Fuck it. I'll jog and eat and read, maybe.
What's a boy to do?




8/24/2009
-Dammit, I typed "she" in reference to a male celebrity within an email to a publicist. MONDAYS, AM I RIGHT??
-hey, am i the only one who remembers being comforted by the first season of "smallville" in the wake of 9/11? #adolescence
-for 15-year-old abe, it was just what the doctor ordered. unlike the ill-advised relationship i jumped into out of fear right after 9/11.
-and now that girl has been married for like two years!! is that some kind of milestone, when an ex is happily married?
-@_______ Hey, it changed everything.
-hoooooooly shit. huge icon/artist is potentially gonna do the show. can't tell you any more than that, twitter!
-@_______No! I was referring to _____. Plus, read the following tweets-- you're not married, are you?