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Brandy Melville

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Brandy Melville

Article

Brandy Melville is a recurring brand in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between February 14, 2025 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “On film, I wear a dress from Brandy Melville”; “stumbled down in my socks and Brandy Melville”; “long black Brandy Melville dress”. It most often appears alongside New York City, Night Club 101, Prada.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 6
  • Issue count: 6
  • First seen: February 14, 2025
  • Last seen: March 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Meditations
February 14, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, February 10 I woke up in a storm today. Stormed around the apartment a bit, all mad about who knows what, stormed to the gym for self actualization, skipped all the fashion week stuff last night, the show I was so excited for, the after parties too. I was sick, after all, though I didn’t realize it then. You only realize it now, sunroof windows, all this energy, the contrast visible now that you’re flooded with Being Well. “It’s funny how you live off the provisions David and the world throw at you,” Lara texts me. “Having a hard time articulating a reason/framework to start taking care of yourself more sometimes that isn’t cheesy,” Lara says. “It will be good for your writing because you’ll get more information from the environment and have more energy,” Lara determines. “I actually do care about health, vanity skin etc, I just have cognitive dissonance," I say. And I do. I ordered collagen, after all. This is not so bad. None of it is so bad, really. I am thinking of joining David in Paris. It's a bit of an act of fleeing, though, and it's no good to leave out of some desire for escapism. I am treading very cautiously this morning. A matcha with almond milk and the oatmeal with apples and cinnamon and raisins. The bright sun is melting all the bright snow. They are talking about Aristotle's Ethos Pathos Logos in class today. The only one that matters to me is the Ethos of it all. I believe everything I’m told if I trust the authority of the person telling it to me. I’m all swallowed up in the undiscerning masses. It would be nice to leave New York, yes, but it will be nice to stay here, too. It'll be nice to come back to life right where I've been sleeping. In the evening, my friends arrive. They sit at my kitchen table, and they tell me crazy stories about staying up late and everything that happened in between. I was lonely for a moment, or really, I was just struck by the the being alone of it while he is still away, but then my friends arrived, and the stories were all sparkling and shocking. I know secrets again, now. It's more fun when I have things to hold. Wrapping my hair twice in towels by the open window before bed. It's too cold to keep the window open, but the space heater was drying everything out. Lara left some cocktail shrimp in the fridge, and I drop the tails into the empty Sephora box on the floor. I'll still take out the trash, I am not more disgusting than average. Tuesday, February 11 Coconut oil, beef bone broth, muscovado sugar on a silver spoon for breakfast. There is reason to think this kind of thing will make me become better. I would be very easily indoctrinated into a cult based on the certain determining factors, I forget the exact formula of each trait but I know my balance of each fits the bill; agreeability, desire to belong, etc. I have to stay vigilant. Left to my own devices and I’m half asleep and I’m making potions. I wrote a story in the night. Hologram Girls, I called it. Stupid title but I think this one, yes particularly this one, I imagine I could turn this into a book with just some discipline and a little joie de vivre. Natasha comes over just as I am starting to lose my mind. Just as the snow is starting, too. Snow in the evening, and Natasha is taking photos of me on film. Usually, I wouldn’t like this. Me, at home, on film. Madelyn would have something to say about Lacan and the image of it all. I would have something to say about; I’ve been addicted to deciphering the angles of my face in my mind until they become shapes and forms and pieces beyond recognition. Vanity is so obviously self indulgent, so blatant in its gluttony that it avoids interpretation, becomes silly to give voice to, turns omnipresent. Out Of Your Mind And Into Your Body. You will walk on the treadmill and you will write this sentence until it becomes true. I don’t function well in my own company. That’s the truth of it. Even the most basic things. On film, I wear a dress from Brandy Melville, black tights, barefoot or, the Prada boots my mother found for me cheap at a vintage store in Vermont. The snow hasn’t started yet. I like taking photos at home, and I trust Natasha with the camera. I can’t see my own reflection. It’s fading to blue hour in the greenhouse windows. We will see how this turns out. At drinks, later, with old friends, their Colleague came, and he's talking about how if you are not early you are late. He works in Revenue Recovery, he explains. Like if someone ordered a burger and fries but they forgot to pay for the fries, he would recover that, but for bigger things. For things like a scalpel when they’re doing surgery. “If they lose the scalpel?” I ask. “If they lose the revenue,” he says. I’ve felt very defensive lately. I’ve felt an annoying need to emphasize things like I know what Deloitte is, but barely. I’ve felt an intolerable need to explain things like where a Reading ends and a Party begins. This is the greatest bar in the world, I am told. You can tell, because my vodka soda is actually full of clarified juice. I say something insufferable about how I prefer hotel lobby bars and martinis. We could all go to DCP (Double Chicken Please), someone suggests. Because this, in truth, this DCP is actually the greatest bar in New York. Outside, it’s snowing now. Inside, there are big red orbs on the ceiling and the bartenders keep swinging them around in big sweeping circles. I thought they did it on the hour, I thought they did this like a clock, but the time keeps passing and the orbs keep being set in motion, seemingly at random. There is talk of vulgarity in comedy at our table. There is talk of a probiotic soda brands marketing scandal and the colleague hates influencer marketing, he thinks its immoral, and I’m asking things like the dumbest questions in the whole world like oh but do you think that any marketing really is moral though, and oh but do you think that brands are people, though, and oh my god you can hear your own echos sometimes and you can just want to scream. Outside, the snow is making the street and all its lights become dizzy-like. They pulled the shades down behind me in the window in the restaurant due to the draft, and I wished they hadn’t, but I like it better coming out into this quiet night covered in snow like a quiet surprise. Yellow cab fringed with ice. This will always be lovely. I’ve felt a little more lyrical in my writing lately, and there is nothing wrong with this at times, only at times. Except, the repetition I think, feigns a kind of spirituality I don’t actually have when I am doing things like being on my phone and eating protein heavy processed snacks. Later, returning home, reading more of Augustine’s Confessions to penetrate these skin deep musings. I put the space heater on the floor and I do feel sad now, overwhelmingly so, when I think about how terrible things could come to pass so quickly and how I could just be caught off guard, somewhere on a long walk, somewhere being vain. I sleep downstairs tonight, because I do feel very small, and because there are no shades upstairs to cover all that glass. Lying under all that night sky, you begin to think that it might suck you right in. Wednesday, February 12 After I walk outside this morning, where the thin branches of the trees are still coated in these thin smooth layers of snow even in this early morning sun, and after I go to The Standard for the latte with almond milk, after Libra for the small cookie with tahini and chocolate chips, after class and then the walk home and then the dropping off of laundry and the grocery store and the run in the cold sun, after all of this; David returns from Paris bringing a hairbrush and perfume from Officine Universelle Buly. We are going to go out, but then there's ginger beer and vodka on the kitchen table and the caesar salad pizza from La Vera and then, it's nicer to just stay here. Thursday, February 13 I’m back to listening to the interviews today. I’m not sure what these will become, but there’s a lot of wisdom in other people's words, and a lot of hesitation in my own voice when recorded. There is some existential dread these days, but David says it’s all just math I don’t understand at all, and the apocalypse is not imminent. I disagree sometimes, but I am trying to worry more about things like the State Of My Soul. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, February 14 If I was looking for a last minute dinner reservation tonight, here is where I would go… Knickerbocker Bar and Grill is my favorite restaurant in New York and I’ve lauded it many times before. Classic, old school, not too many frills but still feels tasteful and nice, great t-bone, liquor on the grand piano, jazz on the weekends, etc etc etc. I like this description best - Beckett Rosset on his father dining here: “My father went here for lunch for god knows how many years. He probably consumed hundreds of gin martinis and rum and cokes there. When he died, after the memorial at Cooper Union, the family and close friends, a good thirty or forty people, went there. The owner comped everything. I thought it would not survive covid but clearly it has. Glad to know a new generation has taken to it.”
Inline links: Officine Universelle Buly, Knickerbocker Bar and Grill
mutually assured destruction
May 06, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, April 27 Sitting up in the middle of the night and saying things I don't mean and, it's not that I'm talking in my sleep exactly. More so, I've been trying to figure out if this harshness comes from being evil or if maybe it's more of a vindictive thing instead. Being vindictive implies, at least, that you are seeking some sort of equilibrium. Wrong and be wronged. You aren't just a gratuitous little freak about it. Causality is irrelevant, and I'm nauseous at the gym, playing high vibration Youtube videos in my headphones, standing on an electric plate that can jostle my insides, lymph nodes, drain me like a detox, and yes, there needs to be one of those soon. Making calls and making complaints, and then I'm like, oh sorry, I didn't mean it, I was drunk. And then I'm saying that I feel crazy instead. I feel insane. You don't understand. I have lost complete touch with my judgment. Costa Rica, in the rain I was kicking around mud with my feet and drinking too much and his friends were like oh you think you're in a teen movie or something because I was saying kind of nasty things, too. It's way worse in New York. That is the definitive thing and, also the fact that there is nowhere else. Something can be confusing and still not impossible to regulate. Sorry to be all obfuscated about it. I can control my consciousness. It's my consciousness after all. I go to church in the evening, which feels unbelievably affected - would a girl that is evil redeem herself on her knees before God? - though, that isn't really the question. You believe in good and evil, yet you have found yourself entirely incapable of distinguishing the difference between the two. Yes, then, prognosis, logical conclusion, you have lost your mind. I eat a cookie for breakfast and then the leftovers of the quiche for dinner that I fugue state ordered for my boyfriend at six am, which was a disaster in and of itself. I decided to do something nice, and then the delivery guy couldn't figure out the buzzer and so I stumbled down in my socks and Brandy Melville, I wasn't even very polite about it when he handed me my bag. I pointed to the buzzer and said that's the buzzer and then I called my boyfriend over and over because I realized, also, I'd forgotten to bring down keys. It's the type of day where I spend almost no time eating, but I still feel kind of full in a bad way. Everything I did eat is so calorically dense that it creates some kind of cognizant dissonance. I shouldn't feel this bogged down from just some stupid scraps. I don't want to say terrible things, I said. And yet you constantly are saying terrible things, he said. I wish we didn't do these things, I said. That's like saying you wish spiders weren't real, he said. People are vicious and awful. Then, I do pilates from the pilates app that they sent me for free on Instagram. I'm enough of an influencer these days that brands will send me spam mail disguised as PR. Like 20% off coupon codes to their clothing line personalized just for me, but I still have to pay them 80% if I want the clothes. This means, basically, that I am not an influencer at all, but I have just made things like my email address and my diary psychosis way too public. The pilates studio said - "share if you can!" but I'm sorry, I can't, I'm not really talking about me, I'm talking about something else. First name, last name, coupon codes, face to the name, you're ruining all my plausible deniability. I started sobbing by the window, and he said don't worry, you're sweet. I started thinking he was dead, and he said don't worry, I'm ok. I'm blurring the timelines a bit. He told me I could meet him on the steps of a Chinatown apartment a little bit after sunset. Inside, his friend took calls and let the bathtub-in-the-kitchen Chinatown apartment become a kind of neutral territory. I sat in the guest room and held my breath. Say the same things over and over, and because you mean it, they eventually stick. Viewing everything in black and white. They've told me that's my problem. That and being too suggestible, and also out of control. I started being all dramatic about it and yeah there's been too much partying, but I come to learn I'm pretty much like this sober, too. Things were really really really pure and sweet, and I keep on thinking in ninety days, ninety days of being pure again, and everything bad can be problems that belonged to someone else. I am trying to become like a Monk about it. It's not so much that my impulse towards reaction is wrong, but rather that I act purely on impulse, and impulse alone never did anything other than make a situation that much worse. Spring and Redemption, I say, on my dumb fucking TikTok. Spring and redemption, my boyfriend says. Yeah, that's cute, this one is cute. Did you spell synchronicity wrong for engagement or to be insane? my boyfriend asked. Insane, I said. He stopped to think about it. So stupid, he said. You aren't that insane. Order diet pepsi bean and cheese burrito nicotine gum and we're lying in the sun. So much sun through the windows that we have to keep the blinds shut or the light goes too crazy, the air conditioning fires up but not much can be done in the face of UV like this. Lucky, luck,y lucky. I spent the week talking to myself. Lying on the floor and I'm trying to seek cognizance in repetition. The same word three times. First, you remember what it means. Second, you determine what you think is true. You don't take it for granted. If you don't take it for granted, then you won't lose your mind. Monday, April 28 Eiverything gets better overnight. No more crying in my sleep. 2:22am and I’m not yelling. I see things more with precision than as if through angels and mystics. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be so transcendental about it. It’s really evil to try to mythologize something that is neither beautiful nor true. I stayed at Hudson Square until late last night. Black socks and black shoes and a tennis skirt that doesn’t match to be late to class today. The sun has rushed back and it’s iced tea no breakfast no lunch. David meets me at Cafe Reggio, where to our left, an awful woman is berating her husband to levels of borderline abuse, and to our right a lovely couple is talking about the difference between mere activity, and real fulfillment. You gain fulfillment from things like C-suite and making tv shows and real estate, the man is saying. Activity is something like going to Europe, he is telling his wife. These are the things that fulfill us, for others it might be different, the woman is saying. I am surprised to hear, that in referencing C-Suite, they are suggesting real fulfillment.. Materially, things are working themselves out. The rot has been first, material, and then secondly, spiritual. We go to Lupa for a lovely spring dinner. Sweet then sour then sweet. I am endlessly interested in reiterations, but that just makes things worse and worse. Homemade focaccia and olive oil and arugula salad and lobster corn ravioli and lamb chops and tartufo which is like a shell of hazelnut, ice cream, paper plane to drink and the restaurant is closing by the time we leave. Tuesday, April 29 You stop a night terror like this: creep down the ladder and say to your boyfriend, you need to turn off the projector right this second. The light was emitting vibes that were very off putting and I was concerned about scentless and odorless gas. My boyfriend makes me pasta and gives me a beer. You kind of briefly entered a state of psychosis, he tells me. I get super offended by that one. A bad dream doesn’t mean I need lithium or something, I say. I didn’t say you have schizophrenia, he says. I said you seemed to be under the impression that the projector light was toxic, poison, and evil, which is the very definition of a state of psychosis - the merging of reality with hallucination. No, I say, that’s the very definition of a bad dream. Anyways, I’ve been having sleep paralysis because I’ve been having insomnia. I’ve been much more normal about it. Run, coffee, iced tea, the world's worst sandwich back at Cafe Reggio in the afternoon. Do you have any favorite spots in New York, the tall man next to me is asking the short man across the table. “Well, it’s far from here,” the short man tells the tall man. "it's really far from here. it's called Coney Island." I pick out all the healthy bits of my dinner and eat just the bread instead. I’ve been feeling tempted to get really fucking skinny again. Being weird and off putting with my sandwich and then leaving my scraps with abandon. Feeling pretty sane today, I don't really want to get out of here anymore. Wednesday, April 30 Up all night just like last week, and I'm in class reading from my story like oh I'm probably not going to freak out but it's still a possibility. David turns older today. He's still asleep when I get home in the afternoon. Macarons and iced coffee on the table. We go to Vol de Nuit and I get promptly drunk on cider. It's bright and nice and I'm writing tipsy. This week won’t eb and flow in the way that I hate. Make yourself head empty and then see what happens. We go next door to Dear Stranger for dinner. Red snapper and jalapeno sauce and wedge salad and shrimp tostadas. Two martinis. David makes a scene in a scuffle with one of those guys on the streets who shill comedy shows on the way home. Then, I wake up and it feels like morning but it’s only just past midnight. I used to miss the things I have right now so much. I’d miss it through abstraction, really. All through hypotheticals because it had never really been mine in the first place. It shocks me when I see my life emerge unscathed from fits of self destruction. Playing fast and loose when it comes to the thing of redemption. I am trying not to be that way. First it is sour and then it is sweet. This is one of two directions that any progression of events can take. Obviously, I know the direction that I would like to pursue. Thursday, May 1 Everything has come alive again, though I'm not quite sure if it's solid yet. I almost step in a pool of blood on Rivington Street, and then we're talking about the uptick in dead bodies that people keep finding around town these days. I'm going to stop being so morbid. You can be thinking about one thing, and then you can decide to be thinking about something else. Yesterday evening felt sparkly and nice. David and I stayed at Vol de Nuit for a while, drinking cider, which makes me feel full but not that drunk, lots of sunshine and we bring in our own food. Peanut mayonnaise garlic sauce on french fries. I'm less disgusted by these things than I used to be. Yesterday's dinner felt nice but a little too drunk. I was drinking iced tea at two in the morning and then my boyfriend was throwing bottles across the room in a way that was funny, not crazy. I got an email asking me if I'd like to talk about Dimes Square for a German newspaper but I wouldn't like to do this and so I didn't respond. I got an email regarding Amtrak tickets. Things have been too whiplash lately. I got an email from my friend. I owe edits on some projects, and I like when big things happen quickly, though we are not quite there yet. The nature of how I am creatively always edges on narcissism - reflection and observation being more natural than imagination to me, I suppose. although the night terrors suggest some kind of imagination. People like to tell me that. I’m close to the mystics. On a literal level - clinical - the night terrors suggest nothing other than a flirting with psychosis, though my paranoia does not extend to fear over my mind. Nobody actually thinks I’m losing my mind Physically, a parasite cleanse can be dangerous because the heavy metals your parasites held will be dumped right back into your body. I do have paranoia surrounding being poisoned, though this is more a concern of the mind. April - I wrote 40,000 words in my secret diary that I do not share here. This is surely excessive. There are worse things. What I meant to say is: the narcissism has felt less like filtering observation and reflection through the self these days, and more like actually just kind of sloppy-like, thinking about Myself. The sun is nice, because it heats my greenhouse apartment so quickly - downstairs becomes for the daytime, and upstairs becomes so bright and burnt to a crisp that it has to only be for sleep. Sleeping in the day here is nice. It’s like somebody cast a spell on me. I am not someone to sleep in the day, but a greenhouse apartment is something like a potion this time of year. Friday, May 2 When I think about how to synthesize an idea into a quote or a meme, something pithy really, then the idea is immediately ruined. Even it was a good idea at the start. This makes me want to distance myself from the quote, meme, thing of posting more generally I suppose though, I’m still having fun. I’m so sure about things, now. I was feeling really really really unsure about things and I’m so sure now. I feel so bad for acting all ambivalent about it. I’m so certain. I have never been more certain and I have never been more sincere. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 6 From 7pm at Pete’s Candy Store — Mind Palace Poetry presents The Girls Room, with special guest host Sophie Appel. Featuring Sascha Cohen, Siena Foster-Soltis, Jude Lavelle, and Montana James Thomas.
Inline links: Pete’s Candy Store
Fever Dreams
November 05, 2025 · Original source
A good nights sleep Monday, October 27 I opened the window to let in the eerie and whistling wind after the reading last night and then I stayed up late, fallen leaves and pollen drifting past my headboard. Called Celia to talk about the same things all over again. Called Celia to request that she confirm my fears and delusions and certainties for the million billionth time. I’m getting a really creepy feeling, Celia said. Like a horror movie, Celia said. In my earliest memories, I recall walking around with this very deep self-assuredness. I would wake up everyday feeling so certain and blessed for the absolute pureness of my heart. So when he said he understood me as perfect, it was like oh someone finally understands me the way that I understand myself, Celia said It is important to always have pure intentions, I told Celia. I like when people share my aesthetic sensibilities and are unfazed about the things I worry hedge towards evil, I told Celia I’m starting to feel so creeped out, Celia told me. Tuesday, October 28 Nothing was so creepy. I was not scared of anything anymore. I could still hear the wind through my open window and in the daylight it was nice. The nicest, really. The nicest thing in the world. I slept through the afternoon half aware of this nice and floating wind and then I donned a black skirt, black top, black Ganni boots and I drifted through orange-hour Washington Square Park and a light fall rain towards the lobby of The Marlton Hotel. Where there was a fire and Celia perched by it, waiting for me. Nothing ever happens. I used to be so arrogant, I told Celia, at The Marlton. Arrogance is a good sort of thing to hold onto, sometimes. Celia told me. Celia said something about our friends being cancelled online, something about moral hierarchies, she was done feeling sorry for herself and love thy god with all thy heart and all thy might and acedia is the only truly mortal sin. The Marlton Hotel and God and Self Indulgence. French fries with garlic aioli and dirty martinis and tuna tartar and writers workshop without too much writing. I was sitting there kicking my feet around and feeling like I might die if I couldn’t break-the-pattern-today-so-the-loop-does-not-repeat-tomorrow. Do you remember what life used to feel like? Do you wish to live forever? Do you wish to never suffer? Do you wish to never suffer, forever? I’m sorry to be cryptic about it. Wednesday, October 29 In my fever dream, I was back on the Amtrak heading towards Florida, Massachusetts and everyone around me was screaming. We were traveling to record something regarding Esoteric Health. It was still October, and I knew the omens we were seeking to be somewhat evil. Everyone was furious at me, and this only bothered me because I did not know why. Woke up in New York City yelling, somewhere between a memory and a fugue state. A recurring dream I used to have where I was driving with my parents over the George Washington Bridge in a winter storm and an old woman was lurching at the vehicle, tugging at the door handles, talking about how it was almost too late. A train ride last winter where everyone was screaming at me because my ex-boyfriend was being abrasive and I was kind of in on the bit. A small faux-thatched-roof apartment in Greenwich Village where no one is angry because no one is here. I paid my dues in apologies and reparations in October, and now God has rewarded me with a real life fever and unpleasant news. A lot of things I loved became shrouded in delusion and vicious self-involvement. A lot of clarity and purity of heart became hard to access because my morning was shrouded in a fever. Kind of wanting to scream. Kind of wanting to take my Brown Prada Boots and Black Fry Boots and Grandmas Suede Ballet Flats to the cobbler. My Blue Pearl Necklace to the jeweler. My Sue Wang Dress and Red Vintage Slip to the tailor. Kind of have been like a bull in a china shop with all my beautiful things, and now there is so much to fix. Kind of feeling indignant. I should really focus on believing in something. I believe in hotel lobbies, superficially. I believe in other things, too, but I am trying to have a bit more discretion about it. Thursday, October 30 Here is what has happened: I am sitting at The Marlton hotel now where everything is cast in a kind of olive glow and the fire place is roaring and I ordered a cheese board with camembert, comté, manchego, six grapes, two halfs figs, spoon of truffle honey and spoon of jam by myself. Ordered chamomile tea and sat with Rebecca and Dory in the sunroom with my fever, earlier. Now, I am sitting by the fire with my fever by myself. I am not ready to go home. I am not really ready to think or write about the sort of things that have happened. A small beautiful blond child and her brother a bit older just walked in both wearing sweet striped shirts. Their father just finished the marathon. Their mother is all smiles, pulling apples from her canvas bag and polishing them on the hotel napkins before placing the fruit in the beautiful children’s outstretched hand. I am green with envy. I am so overjoyed to be looking in on their Beautiful Life. An insufferable duo on a first date next to me is talking about how much they hate parades and how their work is industry agnostic. Their flirting is so nauseating. Bad voice physiognomy. They are flirting with each other in the most insufferable and sexless way and you can tell, so clearly, that they met on The Internet. I am starting to consider forgoing The Internet. There is a soulless kind of song and dance these people are doing. He is listing out his favorite types of Pasta Shapes and numbering his rankings on his stubby fingers. She is talking about food poisoning. Neither of them are religious. I am trying to stomach my distaste. If you have ugly thoughts they will seep through your skin and stomach and long black sleeves of your long black Brandy Melville dress and they will seep up through your mind and out of your pours and intermingle with the rancid scent of your fever that will become a deeper sort of illness and start to rot and fester in you forever. Your bitter and ugly thoughts will start to turn your face all ugly and ruined. I am trying to wish them grace and good will. I am trying to sip my tea and choke down fruit truffle honey and crackers. Twist my hair into two very tight braids. I want to find myself a little less repulsed. I want to look at these strangers’ pale forms and imagine them replaced by orbs of light. I want to look inside their rich inner worlds. I want to look into strangers’ eyes and not be afraid of staring or back holes. I want to wish them well. I want to hope they find a beautiful life. I want to hope they buy a beautiful life. Friday, October 31 Here is what has happened. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Once; I lived in a glass apartment in the sky. I am not sure how things can oscillate in extremes, to that degree, with that level of hot and cold and up and down and everything cruel, like it became. I used to lie on the floor to feel close to things. Lie on the floor and dream about it. The past has been orbiting in ways that make me queasy along with the illness in the air, today and yesterday, since the eve of Halloween, really. At the Halloween Party in Chinatown I wore a black hat and milled about amongst red flowers, plum tart, candles and courtyards. Went bolting up the stairs to catch a car. Went walking under the Washington Square Park archway where the air was very crisp and I was very feverish. The park was overwhelming me with street performers and noise and light and stimulation. And then in the shadows and the grass and tucked away beyond the benches there are figures in sweatshirts and denim and long sweeping hair and interlaced hands and fallen leaves and everything sweet all around the edges. I was sitting at the edge of the park in June with my fingers interlaced and the beating sun fading into dusk and the summer stretching kind of hazy and breathless ahead. It is strange to try to remember anything. Strange all the stories I am hearing in the wind and the autumn and the fever dreams and another passing season. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 5 From 7pm at Night Club 101 — 99 Minutes or Less returns with Maison du Bonheur (2017, 62 minutes). 99 Minutes or Less is a new free film screening showing films that are (you guessed it) 99 minutes or less. This evening’s screening is guest programmed by Elissa Suh of Movie Pudding. After party to follow with sounds by Dj Kyle and Paradise by Replica
Inline links: Night Club 101, 99 Minutes or Less, Maison du Bonheur, Elissa Suh, Movie Pudding, Dj Kyle, Paradise by Replica
Hotel Lobby Gossip
December 09, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, December 1 Everyone is sick and dropping like flies but not me. I’m at a rooftop hot tub in Williamsburg tracing my hands through the water and watching the sun come up as I stare blankly ahead. I’m driving back to New York City squinting into the skeleton trees and the blue hour dusk that fills the space between them on the side of the road off the Mohawk Trail. Do you shop at Uniglo, my family members are asking? I am muttering something about Brandy Melville in response and then I am feeling vaguely nauseous. I am break the pattern today or the loop repeats tomorrow. I am imagining everything magical all the time. I am washing up on the Upper West Side where the streets are wide and quiet and sweet and winter rain has frozen everything shining. I am washing up in the Marlton Hotel Lobby, where I am telling Celia about my dream. In my dream, a composite of every person I’ve ever met was calling me on my phone, I tell Celia. They kept on asking me to turn the call to Facetime instead. They kept on saying it was time to see each other’s faces. They were warm and not scary and I was crying and pleading a lot, though I don’t know what for. Was it everyone you ever met, or just everyone you’ve ever cared for? Celia asks me. Same thing, I say. That is unequivocally untrue, Celia tells me. Tuesday, December 2 In The Marlton Hotel lobby, I order black coffee, avocado, smoked salmon and sourdough toast with the perfect type of butter. The butter with salt water mixed in, and then a tall bottle of sparkling water on the side, too. Eavesdropping at The Marlton Hotel, where the bar room is decked in Christmas cheer and the fire, per usual, is roaring. The conversations on either side of me are increasingly hallucinogenic. Two chirpy and pretty girls to the right, and two middle-aged Jewish ladies to the left This is how I feel with a lot of my relationships, one of the girls says. The first was not a provider, but I thought that I could fix that. The second was a psycho libertarian who got me health insurance as his sick way of trying to lock it down The last man I dated told me I was full of shit, her friend responds. I said something in earnest, and he said that I was full of shit. I could never see past that. Me saying something in sincerity, and him saying I was full of shit. On the other side, the middle-aged Jewish women are talking about pizza night. It’s pizza night and then it’s pepper night. They have no plans this week. These are the only plans they have made. I’m getting dinner with a man who thought his whole family was dead, but then they weren’t, one of the women tells the other. He is so amazing. He taught me about exercise. I get the zoomies, says her friend. We don’t work, and so we have to exercise. I hate people who don’t. Exercise? Exercise. When were things the best with him? The first girl is asking her friend. I think, before we met, the friend responds. Who was that coocoo-for-coco puffs lady that you got friendly with, the middle aged woman asks her friend. She is wearing a red amulet. We will call her Celine. Oh, she was crazy. and the sister was out of her mind. she was very beautiful You introduced her to me one week and we loved her. And then the next week you said; She Cannot. Come. Back. Here. We pick up interesting people. Everyone’s interesting It is so weird when we think about relationships as two full selves coming together, one girl is telling the other. They liked coats! Whole family of coat owners, Celine is telling her friend. I mean the father was GAY. The whole family was gay. My first kiss was gay. Well… his brothers were gay. All his brothers were gay…” Celine’s friend says. So he HAD to be! They’re all gay! As long as they’re happy…. Amongst the girls to the right, the conversation has turned to heaven and earth. Death and other realms. They are talking about Neurolink and how they were at a neurolink conference and they met a man who died for twenty minutes because he slipped and fell and chipped a tooth and affixated in his own blood. Do you want to hear what happened when he died?, one girl asks another Yes, the other responds. He was floating in light. He was disembodied. He could hear sounds but they weren’t sounds he could describe in human terms. There was a God-like presence, and God asked the man if he would like to stay. The man started to feel a pull towards earth. It was like when you wake up from a dream. God said you have a choice. God said everyone has a choice. The man made the decision to go back to Earth. The man woke up in the hospital bed. Her friend responds: I spoke with a psychiatry professor at Harvard who briefly died as part of a death-study, but he couldn’t tell me about it because he signed an NDA. He said he can’t say very much, but it’s going to be ok. Girl 1: So what do you think about that? Girl 2: I mean I definitely don’t believe in heaven or hell Girl 1: The reason I never killed myself is because I want to see what happens Girl 2: I mean I definetly do believe that consciousness is eternal… Wednesday, December 3 What do I care about now? Write and read. Wait with pulsing anticipation but not too much anticipation, mostly just a sense that some things are at their tail end and others at their precipices. Something in Saturn, maybe, but I am trying not to play with fire in this way. After I played Kali Uchis off the tinny computer speakers and I read books by healers who possessed demons and I drank sparkling water and cleaned everything top to bottom and flirted with danger a bit, Celia came over to sit on my floor. I think I’m having a bit of a panic attack, Celia texted me. Would you like to come sit on the floor of my apartment, I texted Celia. She arrived in a gray sweater and a blue wool scarf and bearing a suitcase that belonged to me. Do you like the window open? I asked Celia. I am feeling a bit cold, Celia told me. I am feeling very excited and ambitious, I told Celia. I have always had boundless energy and this is the only thing I know to be true. There are magazines on the way to the apartment and I am realizing how nice it is when things are very clean. I am going to go to The Marlton hotel now, Celia told me. Thursday, December 4 Writing, like a list, the things I have that I can quantify, now. A blog
Life-in-a-lab
February 25, 2026 · Original source
Tuesday Life-in-a-lab In my dream, the house was a lab. I woke up to light not just streaming no, but flooding, absolutely pouring through the long glass windows in front of me. I knew that once the light cleared, I would be staring into the heart of this lab. I knew it was a problem that I was anticipating waking up in a lab, because I knew that I should have been anticipating a morning waking up at home. Instead, I was finding myself totally nonplused about waking up in a lab. The important thing, I knew, as I woke up with a sense of increasing urgency, was to conjure up an image of a home, not a lab. You have been in a lab for so long that you have forgotten about home, a very confident voice inside my head was saying. A picture of my childhood bedroom appeared in a few frames. Different versions. Big white bed and blue wooden floors and presently frosty fields behind the house. Little twin bed yellow walls, carpeted floors, and hot summer cornfields outside. I couldn’t get it straight. If I was in a lab, then I needed to remember. You need to remember a place that actually exists, the lab-attendants were saying in my dream. Saying in my head. Glass apartment in the sky. Room at The Marlton Hotel. I’ve been eating vegetables and collecting things like dried flowers and books on Esoteric Health and buying wash-and-fold laundry service and being swept away to places like nice restaurants with no menus and nice-apartments-with-no-owners. I woke up in Connecticut. Can’t wake up in a lab if you never go to sleep. In the morning, I woke up at close to noon. I shared photos on The Internet of a very aesthetically-cohesive and un-lab-like home. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and collect myself as best I could. The house was beautiful, and I was unsure as to why I was watching things unfold from as if I was somewhere else. I made lists of things that were special, being places like this most of all. I made lists of things that compose self respect, and then I made lists of things that compose a life that is bright and white and full of light. The country is quiet and sometimes difficult for me, though I sleep through the night now and this changes everything. Downstairs, the dogs and Celia and the other were sitting under high lofted ceilings. There was a magical and silvery presence that mediation gives to a person. I asked about coffee and they told me there was coffee in the pot and I could heat it up in a silver bowl on the stove. The stove was green and handmade and you turned it on by flicking little metal burner switches. The bowl was nice and very small. I poured the coffee in the bowl and I waited for everything to begin to boil. I added vital proteins collagen and also oat milk creamer and also lots of white sugar because the esoteric health advice of the age says this is fine. There were homemade mini muffins from The Smith Bakery down the street on the counter (blueberry, morning harvest, strawberry corn, and chocolate chip) and so I cut each muffin in half, and then I had one-half-of-each. Two mini muffins total. I put two of the halves in the toaster, and I had two of the halves cold. Everyone started telling me about gnosticism and buddhism and catholicism. They recommended to me a friend who writes about God and married into a famous band. They recommended I come to meditate in places like New York, too. You look ready, Celia said, as I packed up my north face back-pack and changed out of split-sweatpants and banaa-republic-black-top. I’m not, I snapped, in response. Do you actually want to meditate more, Celia asked. I don’t say I want to do things I don’t actually want to do, I replied. I could not stop with all this harshness. Wednesday Grand Central Station Back in New York City and I am totally covered in dog hair. Shoes untied in Grand Central Station but there is nowhere for me to stop and tie them without risking some sort of stampede or at least massive inconvenience and so onward we go. A man just walked towards me rapidly and I flinched and then felt kind of bad. Then, he shouted; young lady can I ask you a question and so now I do not feel bad. My instincts were correct, and now I do not feel bad at all. Ok, fine, whatever. I used to love arriving back in New York and hearing all the music and the lights and I would twirl through this place nonpulsed. Then, I would twirl home. I used to get drunk-before-christmas at the midtown Cipriani and then giggle when people called my ex-boyfriend and I bad-people-for-cutting on the trains toward Albany, but I’m not allowed to move like that anymore. I used to sink into sixty-dollar taxi-cabs because I found the subway over-stimulating. My Prada purse used to be lined with shiny leather, but I got fidgety somewhere tropical and I ripped it all off so now we’re working with something more flattened and matte. Teenage girls used to fling themselves at the side of the train platforms, and conductors used to lose their whole crew in Boston and train heists used to happen. I used to consider everything to be pretty taken-care-of. I think I never used to notice when sometimes, problems would arise. On the train ride back to New York, tonight, the tracks were icy and slick and it was already kind of blue hour dusk. When I said goodbye, I told Celia I love you I love you I love you a million times over because I felt slightly neurotic about a weekend full of being slightly late and slightly harsh. I am smart enough to know that the only thing complaining makes you better at is complaining, so I decided to stop. In Grand Central Station, they are playing live music, and I watch a man propose, though no one else around the soon-to-be newlyweds reacted. No photos or energy. Sad. I am wearing beat up Ganni knee high boots and Brandy Melville long sleeved dress, and Zara blazer that I stole from Paul’s Baby Grande back when I was in the practice of going lots of places and stealing lots of things. I miss my Max Mara coat that I left at “tech week” and I miss “drinking” and I am suddenly desperate to be out the door. I imagine that when the subway doors fly open and I burst out free and all-in-one piece, I will see the Washington Square Park arch, and it will be glowing silver in mid-winter light. I imagine that the city will feel warm with soon-to-be-spring-humidity. I imagine that since groundhog day has come and gone the tides will change soon, and I imagine I will relinquish my Groundhog Day (1993) fantasies of nothing-ever-happens at some point down the line, when it all becomes a bit too much to take. Tomorrow, I will be taking my shoes to the tailor and then the next day, I will have a totally fresh new crop of things to wear. I imagine that soon, I will have a fresh new crop of things to consider. Thursday Whore Dialectics Greenwich Village’s bitcoin bar sports a libertarian clientele and taxidermy and a podcast studio and beef-tallow-fries. Tonight, it sports a projector screen from my old apartment that looks sad and small propped on stage, and a big audience in metal chairs, and a birthday party in the front room, and plenty of opportunities to make myself feel useful as I tinker with film equipment and fire off texts regarding “promotional material.” I am sitting at Pubkey Bar drinking a diet coke while I wait for the screening of “Whore Dialects” to begin. When I ordered my diet coke at the bar, a strange man made a strange joke about NA beer, and I felt immediately irritated and restrained by my self imposed limits. I am listening to a group of young men discuss the career path of “Internet Pervert” as one of the only viable post-AI jobs. Monetize your self destruction, they are saying. Male prostitution. Buying plushies is to women as buying porn is to men. There’s a strange pseudo-intellectual glare to it all and I am enjoying listening in. They are talking about Brian Kaplan, but they keep on mispronouncing his name. They are talking about scientists, rationalists, and flexible proposals. When they talk about Internet Perverts, there are stars in their eyes, less because of the sex, it seems, and more because the internet perverts are able to get some money and get some attention. The male influencer. That seems to be what they are starry eyed about. They are thrilled to be in the same extended universe as someone who might be able to garner some vague attention. This is a bar that usually makes me feel kind of hazy. This is a bar where I used to make scenes. Enough reminiscing, because I am here to watch a film that is all about auto-documentarians, which is in sharp contrast to the maladjusted forms of auto-diary or auto-fiction. In the film, a beautiful girl is in the back of a car with the wind in her face and she is drinking an Erewhon smoothie and talking about how Hollywood is dead and the monasteries are empty and you can’t be a nun or get a phd because you question what truth is, and these institutions just won’t let you get at it. After that, the film cuts to a scene where the girl is in a white dress being play-drowned in the ocean by a right-wing provocateur. The film crew sent the provocateur to stay with the girl, and it was kind of the perfect setup, a voiceover explains. The provocateur describes how when he arrived, the girl was in a state of almost total abjection. Like how kids who are sexually assaulted don’t shower to make themselves totally disgusting and unappealing, he explains. I find the provocateur slightly less interesting as a character than both the girl, and the disgraced art-advisor (another prominent character in the film) but I like when he argues about politics and then reconciles on a personal level with those around him in places like California. I like the scenes about the professionally fraught yet personally friendly relationship between the art advisor and his not terribly successful clients, ie the clients are disappointed but still use the advisor’s pool for summer swims. The client still dreams of having an eighteen person studio because this means tremendous success, and because this is just how men dream. When the provocateur is described but not depicted as losing control, it is explained that the jig is kind of up, because it’s no triumph of power to reign over somebody who is not even in control of themselves. I only watch the film once and I am not taking notes, really, during the public screening at the Bitcoin Bar, but I like it because it is auto-documentary not auto-fiction or auto-diary and as such, it is very precise. The film says, for someone like me in the conditions like the ones I occupy, here is what life is like. This is more matter of fact and less indulgent than saying; here is what life is like for me. At a party last month that was also all about art whores, the filmmakers wrote a few lines about a few of my friends. The women present were on average quite a bit younger than the men and looked fresh. Perhaps because of their age, or perhaps because of the care they put into their bodies and minds, but the vibe among the women was optimistic and exuberant. I thought this was nice. Nice, too, to catch purity in unexpected places while staying totally true. Friday Upper West Side Later, I am uptown and I am thinking about how I can become more self-disciplined so I can become more interesting. I am watching Pierre Le Fou at Lillian’s apartment on the Upper West Side and all the girls are dressed like characters in the film. Lilian keeps leaning out the window with a long skinny cigarette and I am drinking a glass of Sancerre because I just can’t quit. In this film, a very small man is holding a gun to a very beautiful girl’s head while she cuts her hair. The beautiful girl has a brunette bob, and she is wearing a red dress. The film is full of primary colors and very bright paint. When a man is stabbed, he bleeds red paint. Before a man explodes himself in dynamite at the end of the film, he paints himself blue. I like the film because the colors of the gore are all bright and fake like paint, and the colors of the scenery are all pastel and muted and lovely like real life. Summer in The Riviera. Beautiful people living a simple and crime-filled life. I have not watched very many films this year because I’ve been busy writing thirty-thousand-words-about-myself-per-week. In the last film I watched, a Japanese cat was exploded by a grenade, and when gore and guts spilled everywhere, I flinched and clenched my eyes shut. Do you want to leave, my friend asked, and what I wanted was to be resilient, but what I said was I don’t really care. Now, a girl in the film is sitting on a boat with a man, and she is talking about how the two have only known each other for a few million seconds. She’s such a stupid girl, Lillian says. I would say something like that, I respond. One-million-billion-seconds and one-million-billion-words. I am feeling bubbly when I am not feeling sick or shy. I am feeling like it’s time to be more light about it. When I look to my left, I see beautiful stained glass lamps and a defense surveillance tech-branded throw blanket. When I look to my right, I see an open window and all my friends leaning too far outside smoking skinny vogues. On the Internet, people are talking about how things are only interesting if they are true. Determinative reasoning then says, one should make what is true more interesting. Everything just became crystal clear. By which I mean, everything is operating on material terms now. DIRECTORY The full event calendar is now going to live on The Aleph - an exciting new platform by Noah Kumin of The Mars Review of Books. The Aleph is a marketplace and membership club for the arts, with an emphasis on supporting in-person events, production, and funding for artists. Programming featured will be intentional and curated, and include more opportunities for early-access and invitation-only events. If you would like to submit an event for consideration, please email me at chloegpingeon@gmail.com. Apply to join The Aleph here I will still be featuring select events on the blog, along with more eclectic or personal recommendations, news, and guest features. To start: David Rimanelli is perhaps my favorite person to follow on Instagram, as well as one of my favorite critics. Tonight, from 6:30pm at Tibet House, he will be reading, along with Kiely Sweatt and Sean Fabi. Tickets here.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1h49!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd95f9aef-d112-4dd9-a0fb-1610ba693067_1536x2048.jpeg, The Aleph, chloegpingeon@gmail.com, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!m6hb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5452bedc-f504-4cc0-a6f3-349820bdb9a3_1156x1138.png, David Rimanelli, here
Humanoid-Robots
March 06, 2026 · Original source
Appendix: Things Brandy Melville depop boatneck long sleeve dress, Zalt electrolyte zyn, Davolls tee-shirt, Angelmoon, Imperfaite, Prada boots, Monroe suede penny loafers, Frye leather riding boot Places Thai Diner, Vince’s Cobbler, The Manhattan Club, The Marlton Hotel, Tartinery, Caffe Reggio, Dr. Clark, Swan Room Read GirlInsides, The Masque of the Read Death, Fatherland (Victoria Shorr, 2026) Watch Pi (1988), The Biggest Sabotage in History (weird documentary youtube), A Place in the Sun (1951) Listen Gregarian Chants (via Health Gossip), Tango In The Night (1987), Drasticism (2026).
Inline links: Brandy Melville depop boatneck long sleeve dress, Zalt electrolyte zyn, Davolls tee-shirt, Angelmoon, Imperfaite, Prada boots, Monroe suede penny loafers, Frye leather riding boot, Thai Diner, Vince’s Cobbler, The Manhattan Club, The Marlton Hotel, Tartinery, Caffe Reggio, Dr. Clark, Swan Room, GirlInsides, The Masque of the Read Death, Fatherland, Pi, The Biggest Sabotage in History, A Place in the Sun, Gregarian Chants, Health Gossip, Tango In The Night, Drasticism

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