Freshman Year, in iPhone Notes & 35mm

photos and words by Lucy Blumenfield

from fall 2019-march 2020

october 4th

I’m losing the part of myself that creates I’m losing my drive. It’s in me but I don’t know how to harness it

except document the now.

writing shitty words on a Microsoft document pretending that someday it will matter

life is fun and boring right now in a kind of perfect way that I’ll never be satisfied with and

nothing is full circle.

it feels like I’ve started a new life, been born into a new environment and I’m trying so hard not to think about anything before it

it was all for the moment but the moment is gone

okay

I’m going to do homework

october 5th 

the air is cold enough that I can feel it bite me, softly 

I live on a map, perfect and self-sustaining and so very unreal

I feel very much stuck inside myself in that I feel 

my eyes resting in my head and my eyes feel like my brain because they are how I perceive everything

if I didn’t know any better I would think my whole soul are my eyes 

I also feel stuck in myself in that

there are a thousand feelings inside of me they swirl and crescendo in my head like
some kind of synth effect—abstract but able to make you feel something subtle and very real 

it’s getting dark now and I need to be outside in it when it gets dark 

I need to see the transition happen

even the fact that the library blocks me from seeing the entirety of the sunset is not ideal 

like I’m being fooled when I look around and see the gray blue sky 

I’m grasping at transition, I’m grasping at change

I need to be able to hold it in my hands but instead it’s going behind my back,
instead the sun is setting behind the building and I can’t see it I can’t hold it 

october 9th

time is shifting. the days go by as fast as ever but now I make them; no standardized routine. I’m beginning to claim it for myself, slowly. 

there’s fall leaves on the ground in front of me and all I can think about how quickly fall will fade away. I relish this transition. I relish this transition. as perfect as crisp air, even though I have goosebumps. I want to be able to always sit outside like I am now. I’m afraid of being confined.

october 15th

I’m gathering.

Pretending I feel something when there’s nothing for me to feel.

A life too perfect it breaks apart.

Think maybe someday I’ll tell stories.

But they’ll be so hollow

Balloons of emotions and nothing inside

I get goosebumps because I feel something, but it’s only what’s carried in the music I listen to

Balloons filled with substance, gooey and bloody and sticky and sweet

I’m not complaining I don’t want to be filled with pain, I just want the wallowing inside of my stomach—my goosebumps—to have reason

november 7th

i have memories of alternate universes

i think of how i thought college would be (darker wood, pine trees, dark rooms with tall ceilings), a different smell

different than what this has become in its familiarity 

but it would never become what i thought it would be, the smells i thought it would have

it would morph into the familiar, it would get smaller, its elusivity would disappear and it would become tangible, and it wouldn’t have a smell

what’s new disappears and melts into something that is a part of you

you become it, and its walls begin to hug your skin

the memories you had of a place you never were shift into the memories you live

november 25th 

at first it starts with a sinking. or maybe an excitement. a touch of anxiety? a motivation. something bigger than this. on the precipice. and then it becomes something else. debilitating. can’t do anything. there’s no escape no going back—I am done for. 

right now, I am just before that point. there’s something there it’s giving me goosebumps. like I have something to say but really there’s nothing. a life without substance, and it comes in waves and it tries to catch everything until it recedes into that body of water once more. it finds nothing except the remains of the boys that hold me/once held me. but their shells are hollow, and so are the hands that hold them back. 

december 14th 

what is the difference between love and lust and sex and the desire to be held?

I think I know it, but I pretend I don’t.

A dependency on its way to disintegration

your thoughts are pretty, a kind of validation

january 5th

realizing how multidimensional and nuanced life is. every day it makes more clear, it becomes bigger. 

like when you think the world is 3D but it’s really fucking 3000D. two truths try ten truths. every second of life is a moment. and those moments add up. the quiet ones and the repeated ones blend together and they’re not as special. or the ones that never repeat. maybe you won’t remember it but it happened, and when it happened you thought haha that’s strange or isn’t that beautiful or look at this, look at the world right now.

february 11th 

fearshameloveaffectionparanoia

I can’t analyze everything how the fuck do I process how do I take all of this stuff and dump it out and sort through it?

when do I create? do I create as it’s happening as a means of processing? do I wait until I’ve got more of a hold on it?

so full so vulnerable

I am 

so confused

and that’s my problem, apparently

I have so many fucking questions about the world

so many fucking doubts

and it’s 2:41am 

that very real pain I felt in the vacuum room. 

I’m made up of questions and I have no answers.

I don’t write in states of rational thinking, I only write in that emotional freeforall state.

I don’t know why. it’s not like I’m going to go back in another mindset, look at this, and understand it all, put it together. 

there isn’t a fucking answer.

stop making me decide things.

march 10th 

head forward like I’m going somewhere 

make something great but I’m just a jumble 

feel the goosebumps like I’m not 

make it like it’s a big deal 

how does it affect you?

an exodus 

independence and yet you’re still listening to someone else?

plans fall apart 

but I’m still alive 

I’m not drowning 

somewhere in between pointed and personal and

a bubble barrier

it’s the not knowing that gets me

will it get worse or will we forget? 

a buzz or a weighted concern 

are you sincere or are you trying to sell me something? 

everyone trying to sell me something 

or in it for themselves 

a weighted blanket (you, the weight) 

all of us silent in that room for a stupid reason in a weird time 

crash down from a summer day in March