Hierarchical Regression Is a Masculine Act

The Most Tender Place Is Under My Chin

I wish I could say interesting things have happened these last few weeks, but strangely enough, I’ve been left alone. I gave myself razor burn a few times — too fastidious about my patchy stubble, too focused on trying to sharpen something that’s still coming in. I started using EndNote again, annotating each article as if it were a clergyman’s copy of the Bible. There’s something comforting about it. I sat in lectures watching numbers float across the screen, thought about the world, and then decided to stop thinking, just for a while. They’re right when they say doomscrolling is a precursor to most preventable psychological spirals.

As a kid, I never thought of myself as empathetic. I wouldn’t have spared the green loopers chewing through my garden, and I wouldn’t have flinched if someone told me other people had it worse. I was snappy. Suspicious. Restless in a way I didn’t yet understand. Now I sit on the other side of that — quieter, softer, sometimes irate in a way that feels indistinguishable from grief. I don’t know how people move through the world with such certainty. I don’t know how my parents can idolise someone who — honest to god — wouldn’t like any of us at all. I’ve listened to my dad question the existence of global warming. I’ve watched my mum send me phoney research articles, even while studying at university herself. I think about these things too much — because a heartless kid grew up into a sensitive, exhausted adult. And some days, it’s hard to tell where the anger ends and the hopelessness begins.

South of the Mind, Somewhere Near Augusta

The days are getting colder, and for once I’m grateful that my room gets hotboxed by sunlight in the early morning. I’ll never wake freezing again. But with the temperature shifts, my dreams have started changing — transmitting. I’ve been having more weather-induced fever dreams lately. One of them caught me so thoroughly that I woke at 4am, messaged my boy briefly, and immediately went back to sleep, determined to continue the story. It was that kind of dream.

I had gone down south to one of the more forested parts of the state — Margaret River, maybe Augusta — and was staying in a large shared cabin on the edge of a marshland and a great lake.

 My brothers were there. My dad. Everyone else in the dream felt like an amalgamation of people I’ve known. At the end of the hall was a long-abandoned ballroom, lights flickering, ceiling warped with water damage. An old woman sat there with her grandson. They invited me to dinner. I declined. They invited me out to the cinema to watch Dracula. I said yes. I never got to see the theatre, but I knew I would get there eventually.

Through the cabin windows I could see my brothers paddling across the lake in a small boat. It was foggy, but the air felt calm. I don’t know why the dream stayed with me — only that it did. I woke with that particular kind of ache that follows a good story, one that hasn’t quite finished telling itself. It made me want to be on a holiday. Or just outside. I updated my mid-year vacation itinerary to consider a few days away, somewhere down south. But it’s one of those places that’s only reachable by car. Unfortunate how that works. So I left it.

I'm Thinking About How It Could've Been

Eventually, a letter arrived — tucked inside a large orange envelope, the first piece of mail I’ve ever received from Florida. I opened it carefully, like it was something living. As I read, I kept thinking about chance. About how we just happen to exist here, in these bodies, at this time. And how, in another version of things, he and I might’ve met on a beach somewhere. Maybe on holiday. Maybe passing through. And letters would have been the only way to speak. No Discord. No blue ticks. Just ink, delay, and devotion.

It feels that way sometimes when I talk to him — not inevitable, but displaced. Like we were always going to say these things, just not necessarily here. The conversation had to exist. This is simply where it ended up.

I think this about a lot of people. That some souls appear more than once. That we meet them again, in different bodies, years apart, states apart, sometimes speaking another language. And I’ve gotten good at recognising the pattern — the slight tilt of the head, the dry humour, the particular kind of softness that feels like memory.

And I think I know what archetype I am — or at least, what I keep becoming. It’s not a popular one. I’ve been misunderstood more times than I can count. People like me tend to end up written off or rewritten entirely. But I keep showing up. Not quiet, but observant. Not passive, but patient. A little too perceptive for my own good. I used to think I could shift out of it, become something easier, something cleaner. But I’ve stopped trying. There’s a kind of tenacity in it, I think. A rhythm that keeps reasserting itself, whether or not anyone’s ready to listen.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s something I’m meant to understand that hasn’t revealed itself yet. Like a line of dialogue cut from a scene I keep re-entering. Like a truth that sits just beneath the surface of my awareness, waiting. I think I’ll recognise it when it comes. I hope I do.

The Mirror Is A Door Is A Hallway Is A Window

Don’t get me wrong, I feel a lot happier looking at myself now. But looking more me is a different sensation entirely. To feel bound by my body, even when it’s a happy one, adds a new surface of awareness — I can feel my bones, the stiffness of my spine, the weight of my voice in my throat. When I relax into the sofa, I find myself thinking about how grateful I am that such a thing is possible. It is a privilege to relax, physically. I never had that before. Not even as a child. Weird how all that works.

Sometimes I’m thinking less about how I feel in my own body and more about how people are seeing me. Is there something in me that people can love? Sometimes I feel like I don’t look much like anything at all. Sometimes I feel like the real me is essentially my brain, and any comment made by my appearance is null and void. I don’t understand how people base attraction entirely on looks — I’ve known people who are jaw-dropping, sculptural, modelesque — and I could never draw them. There was nothing to them. A muse is more than a reflection on the retina. It’s a message. A tether. A kind of ancient recognition.

I wish I was a muse, in a way. But I think I’m something similar and different. Maybe a magician. Maybe a messenger. Something between Apollo and Hermes. I think I’m meant to keep a muse as company — to inspire aestheticism where I can, to translate the unspeakable. A muse in an ideological sense. I think I just want to be noticed in a way that feels meaningful. I don’t know what that looks like for me. I think I just want to see him, and hold him, and feel his heart beating against my palm. Nothing special.

I wish it were easier for me to exercise, but it’s never felt like a favourable activity. I like walking when I’m overwhelmed, and lifting when I feel otherwise emasculated, but beyond that, I find more pleasure in cooking, or reading, or stretching. I feel odd at the gym. Terrible thing to admit, considering how much I pay for a membership, but I always feel a little out of place. Like everyone else belongs to some kind of 'normal', and I’m just sitting there — bug-eyed and awkward, big shoulders, little tummy, round and boyish face. According to my brother, I don’t look fifteen anymore. But I don’t look twenty either. I perceive myself as a different thing entirely. I don’t know what that thing is. It’s something with five o’clock shadow and long eyelashes. Maybe a satyr, in another life.

Finally, About The Basil

It didn’t even stand a chance. The caterpillars descended like tiny locusts and ate it to nothing. Lime green, jittery, gorging themselves like they’d never tasted softness before. I stood there and watched it happen. I didn’t intervene. It felt rude to interrupt them. They were doing what they came here to do.

There’s still parsley. The red basil is bruised but breathing. The rocket has lost its mind. But the Italian basil — the real one — is done. All that’s left is the memory of it. And a stalk.