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Celsius

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Celsius

Article

Celsius is a recurring brand in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 11 times across 11 issues between June 06, 2024 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “I’m drinking Green Tea Peach Celsius at the gym”; “Drinking: 2 celsius on walk”; “Celsius for me. Green tea mango”. It most often appears alongside Los Angeles, KGB, New York.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 11
  • Issue count: 11
  • First seen: June 06, 2024
  • Last seen: March 06, 2026

Appears In

None.

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.

COLLECTED AGENDA #3
June 06, 2024 · Original source
I’m drinking Green Tea Peach Celsius at the gym and my days are starting to feel so much longer in a way that is so good. I’m getting so giddy thinking about how much a day can hold. I’m working on things that excite me and then I’m reading Toulouse-Lautrec: The Art of Cuisine in Washington Square Park and then I’m getting gelato in Little Italy and I’m getting the minestrone soup at De Gennaro in the rain and then I can sort of see the moon even through the light pollution and storm on my walk home and then I sleep early again.
Inline links: Toulouse-Lautrec: The Art of Cuisine, De Gennaro
COLLECTED AGENDA #4
June 24, 2024 · Original source
My day is quiet, and so after work I’m walking to dinner the roundabout way. All I want to do every morning and every dusk is walk for miles and miles and miles, which I hope is a sign of a state of contemplation and not of boredom. Drinking: 2 celsius on walk, 2 martinis at dinner. Eating: many things at AMA Raw Bar - don’t remember.
Inline links: AMA Raw Bar
Burn my diaries
January 23, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, January 19 Wet hair in the lobby at the gym. I am criticized only very slightly, and I am struck with nearly physical rage. I can’t walk anymore today. When I walk, I am compelled to think - then write - about myself. I have this huge body of work. I’ve written 364,133 unpublished words since my birthday in June, but they are all about myself, and the ugliest parts of myself at that. “You must be able to convert some of your journals into work you can use,” some of my friends say, but I don’t think anyone realizes just how bad they are. Any problem, the smallest problem, I can twist and chew and solve, often through written and rotating self deprecation and self congratulation that renders said problem irrelevant. I can do this over and over and over again, for hours daily, if I'm being honest. It’s not necessarily bad as a limited practice - churn out sludge so that it doesn’t live in your mind - but it becomes more and more excessive, nauseatingly so. I meet Madelyn at Shosh for dinner. The snowstorm has started. I texted David at the gym earlier: "big snowstorm coming." "Link me an article or you're full of shit," David said, but I wasn't, because it's here, and it's falling in big fat clumps. Shosh is lovely. It’s a new vegan wine bar in the West Village, which I would roll my eyes at as a concept, but Madelyn’s friends work there and I walk there in the blizzard - enter to a silver bar, an open kitchen, cream walls with a perfect archway cut into them that frames shades of glass wine bottles and assembled rows of thin wine glasses. We don’t get wine, but we do get gem salad, celeriac shawarma with fluffy bread, mushrooms, by which they mean every variety of mushroom you can imagine and a perfect green sauce to accompany. “Hummus is one of those things you think is all the same, but then you have good hummus…,” Madelyn’s friend who works there says, and he’s right, because the hummus here is determinately different. Better. Madelyn tells me she likes showing me good food, and I like this, too. Left to my own devices it’s all instant pistachio pudding and cold mashed potatoes eaten while standing up. This isn’t how one should live - slogging through the essential details of survival and routine like it’s something to get over with, not something to enjoy. At the very least, it’s something to be appreciated. I like meals like this. There’s the Casual Encounters reading later, the fundraiser for Los Angeles reading at that gallery in Tribeca, although all the galleries seem like they are suddenly in Tribeca these days. We’re there early. I can’t find the building, can’t get out of the snow. You do get out of the snow, eventually. You pick a few GoFundMe’s from the options laid out on the table, so many options on the table. You sit on the couch so you’re removed from the room, you have a birds eye view in that sense even though technically, you’re beneath, not above, it all. “You can see the social dynamics from here,” your friend says, kind of kidding, kind of not. You can see how the room clusters itself, at least. I stay for the readings, but not for long after. Walk home in the sleet and ice. It's a blizzard, but nothing is really sticking. Streets are mostly quiet - people in the windows of Lucia and Cipriani but otherwise it’s all empty. My reflection surprises me in the mirror when I get home. I only wear dresses, but today I’m wearing jeans. Mundanity, mundanity, mundanity. David says he wants to go to KGB, and at first I want to go too, but then I decide that I don’t. He leaves, walking into the storm as I’m coming out of it. I start to feel sick around eleven pm. I feel strange, falling asleep. Being sick really scares me. I hope it goes away. Monday, January 20 I expected to wake up sad this morning but I didn't. The snow didn't stick, but a thin layer of it did freeze. I'm sliding down the streets, and they aren't empty anymore. Bright, bright, icy light today. Coca Cola and muffin at the bodega for David. Celsius for me. Green tea mango and Cyanocobalamin. I need black coffee. Inauguration today. I walk and write for ninety minutes. I tried to join the David Lynch Meditation Live Stream at noon, but I got the time zones wrong and I was meant to join at three. It’s five now. Too late. Sitting in a steam room in a cloud of eucalyptus smog. The semester begins tomorrow, and other things, too. An end to my life of leisure, or more generously, an end to responsibility only as self directed. I feel like I was starting to figure it out. Non-fiction in the morning, fiction at night - my friend Grazie advised me of this schedule this summer. Being honest, though, I need more intensive direction. Natasha goes to take snow photos in Washington Square Park, but she says that Jill Stein is there and the park is so so so loud. The theme is: anti imperialism.. She sends me a photo of the birds in the snow. In an ironic twist, David is sick, but I am not. He orders sushi from Soho Sushi. He gives me five pieces from a california roll. I make cinnamon chai tea in the mug my dad got me from the ceramics shop near Mishaum. Every mug there is different. Mine has coarse leaves all over it, and a special rivet where your hand fits. “This apartment is pretty magical when it’s icy,” David admitted earlier, because it’s a greenhouse roof and so when you look up today it’s all like a snow globe. Icicles swirl in soft formations overhead, melting in morning light and then refreezing slightly differently as the sky turns hazy. I have my head under the cover. I’m reading other people’s diaries. Kafka, Anais Nin, I like the diaries I find online, too. I like the diaries I am sent. This isn’t my diary. I cannot stress that enough. My real diary is often quite ugly. This is one of the things I feel most guilty for. It’s strange, though. I wake up, I write in my secret diary, I walk for many miles, I write in my diary that I share online. It is good I will have less time, soon. Anya is staying with me tonight. David, in a friend's spare bedroom because I cannot, cannot, cannot get sick right now, too. It's so nice tonight. Anya and I have been friends since we were two weeks old. I used to tell people that as a child - "this is my best friend since I was two weeks old." Dimes in the snow. Clandestino in the snow. I really like sitting in the corner of a bar until the night reaches its bitter end. Not tonight, though. It's only ten. Tuesday, January 21 My first real responsibility in a month, and it's canceled - a whim of the weather. The snow has melted overnight and in its place is chalky salt stained pavement as far as you can see. It looks like marble. They turned Soho into marble in the night. I try to run outside, but it's too cold. Bitter cold, not pleasant cold. I'm coughing up the chalky air. It's the coldest day of the year. There's a man on the street and he's running towards the train, sloshing coffee all over his suit but he doesn't seem to even notice, certainly he doesn't care. The drops are freezing to the sleeves of his camel hair jacket before they reach the ground. He's covered in little coffee icicles. I doubt it will stain. I had nightmares last night. Everyone knew I was Actually Bad. I woke up saying "help me", but I used to wake up talking about rituals in rural places, so this is not a negative progression in the storyline of my possible possession. The chalky pavement has turned to ice in the afternoon. Walking under the Washington Square arch on the way to Tibet House and its icier than ever. The ground is all glazed over. It’s the latest installment of the Arden Wohl’s reading series at Tibet House; Inauguration Edition this time. Madelyn is wearing a pink sweatshirt when I get there. Madelyn is telling me about knowing your own mind. Alex Auder reads about cock sucking and brings up a friend to read with her who enjoys the act, because she doesn't "I feel demeaned when I suck dick. I feel demeaned when I teach yoga," she says. She reads a story about a life in servitude to someone famous who reminds her of Donald Trump. Tonight is a night where as soon as I have one glass of wine, I wish I didn’t. The haze sets in, and I want it to clear. Beckett arrives. The readings are mostly good, but I’m jittery. I sit in the lobby and I eat some grapes and cheese, replace the wine with water. “Over the years I noticed from my overlord that peasants were increasingly behaving like they were nobles,” Alex Auder is saying, when I return. “There are more cameras than there are people in the world,” Gideon Jacobs is reading, later. I can’t stop drifting in and out of the room. I’m worried about some things, about some people. I get like this sometimes, and I wish I could get it to stop. I go to the bathroom and I return again, to a reading about Courtney Love. “She used to do water ballet and she was getting into the grateful dead.” “She lied a lot and never listened directly but she was a sponge - she takes a word from an incidental periphery and works it into her trope in real time. She’s that fast.” “She said she was born on my birthday; July 1st, but she was born a week later; July 8th” This is my type of lie, I’m thinking. A lie to please. False enchantment. It’s a juvenile compulsion, you mostly outgrow it, and if it was Courtney Love partaking then perhaps it was charming, but my visceral reaction is one of repulsion. Lizzi Bougatsos reads about Gary Indiana. She sits on the floor and she clips her toenails. “We shall mark memory with reverence,” Arden is saying. Beckett is telling me that it’s cool to be at a reading that’s an older crowd, and it is, it’s wine and cheese, there’s no disco party to follow. Beckett introduces me to his acquaintance from Paris. They are talking about Godot and prison sentences. Samuel Beckett gave his Nobel Prize money to a jail org, or was it prisone.org One time, there was a prison break after a performance of Godot. Madelyn is making tape formations on her phone with the other Lacanians. Lacan as separated from psychoanalysis. Lacan as applicable to real life. I’m just gleaning sentences. These ideas aren’t mine. Cigarette outside and then a burger at the orthodox Jewish establishment nearby. We forgot they can only do vegan cheese on burgers here. A lychee martini instead. They’re playing pop music so loud Wednesday, January 23 I hear my neighbors door shut as I’m poised to leave this morning. Decide, instead, to hover in the kitchen. We don't really like each other, my neighbor and I. Nothing was ever said, but there’s an underlying hostility. I have friends over too late, too often. The walls are thin. I'm glad to be waking up at the same time as the rest of the world, though. Sometimes - up all night, becoming manic around five am, this can be nice, but it's usually not. Normal hours. Normal cycles of day and night. The ice has come and smoothed everything over. Too cold to listen to music on my walk to school. I'm peeling off layers in an office, at the gym, the hallway of our apartment is becoming salty and dusted with the chalky snowstorm residue that first coated the surface of everything, and that now is starting to settle. Nothing is volatile. Such placidity, suddenly, but I’m not bored. All the calm in the world. Thank god. It really was about time. And so, you eat two chalky protein pop tarts on the bench at the gym. There are two girls with thick french accents in the locker room parallel to you. "He's a fucking retard, he only calls me at three am and it's only because he wants to sleep with my friends," says one of the girls. She's wearing a sherpa jacket. KHRISJOY, it says, in big red dripping letters. Spray paint imitation. You look it up - $2145 online. It's so ugly, but you're vaguely impressed. Of course you are. You're wearing a Versace sports bra that you bought for a music festival in high school. Absurd. The people watching here is good. The girl is still talking. She's so furious. "And he would be calling to sleep with me, but he knows he can't, fucking retard," she is saying. This version of the narration makes more sense - her rage rooted in something adjacent to jealousy. You gather your things. You gather your tote bags. It's too cold for so many bags. Your hands get numb out there. You're in a humid basement now, but you can't stay here forever. There's an artists talk tonight, but do you have it in you to attend? Cheese and sausage for dinner at home. I forgot about the dishes and I left the sink running for an hour. I’ve never known how to dress for the weather, but that doesn’t mean I mind the extremes. Today - my mother’s gloves, a borrowed Urbit hat from David, a beanie really, it looks insane but it’s too freezing for me to mind. More isn’t always more. More is often so, intolerably, annoying. I don’t want to wear a coat. My books arrive today. Mostly for school, plus one Ruby recommended. I’ll read them all - I’m glad that I have reason to. Salvador - Joan Didion The Company She Keeps - Mary McCarthy The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin Confessions - Saint Augustine The Situation and the Story - Vivian Gornic A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf A Silent Woman - Janet Malcom Are You My Mother - Alison Bechdel The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson The Atrocity Exhibition - J. G. Ballard WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, January 23 From 6pm - 8pm at 61 Lispenard — Canada NY and Eighth House present Rest and Reprieve: A Window into Creative Solitude. Eighth House is “an interdisciplinary residency for artists and curators located in Central Vermont.” The exhibition serves as a benefit for this very special residency.
Inline links: fundraiser for Los Angeles, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1LMK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6ba9ea7-5431-438d-968d-03f0204b83b3_1179x624.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TlLq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75d232d2-5720-42ad-a6bc-aafacf53eb67_560x562.jpeg, Tibet House, Alex Auder, Gideon Jacobs, Lizzi Bougatsos, Arden, KHRISJOY, Salvador -, The Company She Keeps, The Fire Next Time, Confessions, The Situation and the Story, A Room of One’s Own, A Silent Woman, Are You My Mother, The Argonauts, The Atrocity Exhibition, Canada NY, Eighth House, Rest and Reprieve: A Window into Creative Solitude.
My Glass House
February 25, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, February 16 The rain continues turning everything muted and gray, but I am bursting with energy, and I am bursting with the feeling like myself again. Early afternoon - the morning gentle sleet turns to a downpour. David bought a basil plant and he put it by my flowers. Do you notice what is by the flowers, he asks. There are firehook crackers with dill and double cream for lunch. Then, a few more of the same with sliced turkey for dinner. You could be a rock climber, if you wanted. You could be an artist in a really useless and abrasive sense, too. You could spend all your time making art and it could all just pertain to yourself. Only make the most incoherent shit imaginable, and then write some really fire press releases and float on by with that, with obfuscation and with stylish sentiments that conceal your vacancy and lack of meaning. I read an interview that snaps me out of it so quickly. The author is talking about how monks are maybe missing something. If you’re meditating all the time, then you’ve kind of lost a grip on reality. It’s enlightened, maybe, but you lose something if you go so deep into interiority that you turn off exterior reflection altogether. If spiritual leaders have lost the plot, then so too, certainly, have I. I’m going monk mode but it’s just Playing On My Phone. I’m going monk mode but it’s just Publishing My Diaries.1 I walk to Le Dive in the evening. I talk for many hours with my brilliant friend who has much clarity in what she is actually saying when she writes. We talk about how to withhold or not withhold pieces of yourself, and she asks me something about how I reveal so much of myself without worrying about things like people who hate you, or worse, people who stalk you. It’s easy to reveal a lot of your thoughts on things like ice on the window when you have no convictions, I think. I do have some convictions, but I won’t reveal myself here. “It’s a scary wind outside,” David says when I get home. “And we’re in this scary apartment in the sky.” “It’s not too scary,” I say. Monday, February 17 In my dreams last night, they take me to Spring Street Dermatology and they give me a chemical peel, microneedling, they shake me up with electrical currents and I leave feeling burned and new. In real life, the wind is whistling even more in the morning. Bright sun, howling wind. David is starting to think about going to bed for the night just as I am waking up for the morning. David spreads orange marmalade and double cream on toast. “What a wonderful thing,” David says. At the party at Jeans, I get a lychee martini, a cosmopolitan, a vodka soda... it's kind of gross sloshing around a nightclub on a monday night, but after I decided to stop doing things like this, I decided again, to stop hindering all my own fun. They’ve packed us like sardines in this basement tonight, and so I don’t linger long. There is a song, a show, and it’s a good lineup of performers and I’m sorry that I didn’t really pay attention, but I was quite busy and I was sloshing around. I was talking about publishing with a famous Twitter Anon friend of a friend who I ran into at the bar, I was looking for service, I was looking for wifi, I was sitting by coat check because I hate standing at these things, I become extremely untethered standing at these, so I was sitting in the hallway, and I was missing the show. Tuesday, February 18 Asleep by eleven, awake by six, this is all very new for me. There is such hazy blue gray sky lighting up the room through the panes of my glass roof. There is David on the terrace with a cigarette. I have a busy day today, and thank god for that. I've been waiting for momentum, and now it is here. Erin tells me about dinner with the most beautiful girl you know. She lives only off of sponge cake, and she was nicer this time. I’m going to read an Irish gothic novella,” I tell David. “Wait one second,” David says. “I just want to reassure you about the plane crashes.” The reassurance is something all about the role of the dice. The gothic novella is all about the moon and untempered desire. I wasn’t too worried about the plane crashes, really, but it is nice nonetheless to be reminded of Rationalism and Randomness. The gothic novella is supposed to be interesting because it was reinterpreted into a Lesbian Dorm Room Drama in a 2014 Web Series. The gothic novel is interesting to me, because it reads like a fairytale. I like the insularity. I, too, have been possessed by demons in my sleep. I am going to write out my Food Diary now, because I am trying to take stock of these things: celsius, apple, peanut gomacro bar, almond gomacro bar, salmon sushi roll, some bites of David's steak with the crust piece of the baguette and then mint tea and then the dandelion tea too, before I go to sleep. You can talk yourself in circles, but of course the only solution is to consistently live well and to consistently live in a way that you can stand behind. Such a life does not require all this talk talk talk on the topic. Carmilla by Sheridan La Fenu. Illustration from The Dark Blue by D. H. Friston, 1872 Wednesday, February 19 I do not want to write you an essay about what happened. I want instead, to write you a story about the parts I made up. After class and then after lunch, and then after a few other things, because there were a few other things, it is not like I did nothing, but the momentum didn’t really last. After just these few things, there is the space heater and the protein bar and the playing on my godforsaken phone and the rereading of all the fairytales, Carmella, The Wind Boy, I have all these hazy spring stories on my mind. I like the photographs Natasha took of me. In these photographs, I am in my room, and I feel like myself. I think I look like myself, too, and this has never happened before, not really at least, never in a photograph, or at least not since I was very young. It is only seven in the evening. It's not too late to run outside in crystal dusk. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, February 25 From 6pm - 8pm at Hauser & Wirth 18th Street: ‘Dieter Roth. Islandscapes’ opens. I like the looks of this - “Featuring a selection of graphic works, monoprints, multiples and unique pieces spanning from the early 1960s to 1975, ‘Islandscapes’ focuses on Dieter Roth’s printmaking, which accompanied every phase of his life and practice.”
Inline links: 1, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WqgA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F222d6d61-af1b-420c-815d-f55ad052cdc1_1600x1098.jpeg, Natasha, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!s_qb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1cf40838-57f9-4c68-a834-ad4a65ecf108_1600x834.png, Hauser & Wirth
Live Diary.
April 04, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 27 Midnight in New York, I'm taking stock of my glass apartment in the sky. I brought back nine dresses from El Salvador - eight old ones, one black tennis dress from El Tunco. All to be washed. Open the window. There is spring breeze now, all of a sudden, really, but I've been growing accustomed to real heat. These things I used to hate - dense hot air, beating sun, a day that stretches on under direct natural light, no end, no plans.... I would suddenly like to return to this, actually, over frigid and clipped stories about foggy northern coastlines and other things in that vein. Over stories about New York, and other things in that vein. David has stayed in San Salvador, and then, Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. It would have been basically free for me to come and yes I have commitments here but not too many if we're being really honest. I would have become kind of a freak after three whole weeks in airbnbs that are calling themselves "hacker houses," though, is the main issue. And, I wanted to do laundry and stretch in the spring breeze, open the window, set an alarm. It would be so easy for me to untether the physical circumstances of my whole life, these days. It would be easy to have distance from New York, as the main thing, but distance from physicality more generally, too. I've done it before. Honestly, I'm not eighteen anymore, I don't think it makes sense for me to do it again. I will probably stop being so strange and vague once I have even one conversation with my friends back in New York. For now, it is very strange to be alone. Very strange to walk around even a small space, that even only temporarily, is belonging just to me. The past few weeks have been about eclipsing interiority with observation. Floating in realms that are foreign. Not El Salvador, even. The hacker house stuff more. The dialogue of it all, more. The other reason I am here, home, abandoned visions of a hologram of Santa Teresa and also I already really miss my boyfriend - well there was responsibility and laundry and the reading and the stories to finish but also, the lunar eclipse played a role for sure. Something about the Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The floods and the fights. Seek less direct attention from that vivid piercing beaming beating sky. Seek solid ground, I saw someone say online. So, I did. I'm back in stupid dumb New York. Window open. You can barely feel all that fresh air. Friday, March 28 I do go for a walk in the morning, and I do still love New York, I decide. I want to have very delicate arms and boundless energy. I want to have tremendous discipline in a way so as to elicit joie de vivre, and also paths of clarity. The brain fog is so bad today. In the middle of the night, the jet lag woke me up, and I hate sleeping alone in this apartment. I'm sorry, I know I’m being a child but I hate it, the emptiness, when I wake up from paralysis, there are often moments of brief delusion. Alone, glass house, I have to talk myself down. I’ve tried to bring myself to life, today - long walk, two protein bars, slice of papaya, sushi roll for dinner, diet coke and cigarette, make a Vlog, make a Call. David had sleep paralysis, too, last night, he tells me on the phone. This is weird, because usually, this is a plight that is just for me. In real life, there was a creepy elderly woman occupying the hacker house in El Salvador, too. “I started a magazine last year,” she told me, when I told her I was a writer. “Oh, cool, about what?,” I asked her. “I don’t remember,” she told me. Blank gaze. Empty eyes. She would sometimes walk through our room while I slept, and one time I woke up to her passing by, vacant glance, I was obviously shocked, she looked obviously pleased. “How are ya, Love?” she said. The word “love” here, carrying a lot of the weight in making the indecent violation of space a lot creepier. “It’s fun, isn’t it?,” she told David’s friend, while he was doing the dishes. “Turning the water on and off is fun, it’s all fun, isn’t it?” She had referred to herself as a refugee, in El Salvador. From where, I had asked her. From Canada, she had said. A real eccentric freak, and in David’s dream, he wakes up to her sneaking up behind him, looming over him, it’s all fun isn’t it. She says sinisterly: “do you know what I think?” Then, in his dream, he felt her weight bend the bed springs and begin to smother him. Lunar eclipse. New moon. I find this dream ominous enough that I begin to become very concerned. You have to get out of there, I tell David. I'm leaving tomorrow anyways, he reminds me. Saturday, March 29 I spent the night last night reading at Tense and it was really lovely. Kansas Bowling reading and Valley Latini doing a hip hop show and Beckett Rosset on the Providence Hotel and me on half formed thoughts on the half complete piece I am writing on Techno Spirituality and El Salvador. I’m back in Real Life, and I don't regret it. I spent the morning by myself working on my edits. David is still traveling, and I am being more normal about it this time. In jet lagged fugue state, I burned the kettle down to a lump of molten plastic, not on purpose, obviously. I called my dad who's moral judgment I trust in full, so this clarifies a lot of things. I forgot how much I like running really really really fast. Whenever I am craving the extremes, I should access them through lots of sprints. The wind is crazy today. The wind has everyone whooping and hollering through the streets. I'm making TikToks again. I don't care. There are worse evils or, rather, you can leverage anything for evil if you really want and honestly, I am just trying to have lots of fun. Some of you are awfully pretentious for being addicted to things like Ketamine and Feeld. Not me. I don’t like drugs, and I have a soulmate. It is just as bad if not worse to be addicted to your phone as it is to anything else, but I’m regulating my time, and I’m microdosing my slop - or so I tell myself. Sunday, March 30 I order uber eats groceries at midnight, and then it's like celsius and chicken just washes up at my door. I don't like this. Chemicals, aspartame, the dissolution of the social fabric, really. How these things just materialize when you want to actualize some gross borderline animalistic whim. Craving. Diet Blackberry Pepsi. I would not like to live anywhere but New York City, or really anytime but now when I think it through on a very personal and very literal level. But there is something here that I increasingly am wary of as mere hallucination. There is much to consider. I am trying to be very energetic which, really, is the feeling that I increasingly cast as synonymous with Health. We went to Bacaro for dinner last night, then to Clockwork, later. “Do you know about how to get dinner for free,” some girl sitting next to my friend and me said. Then, she explained the concept of Club Promoters. Yeah I know, I said. I didn’t say it in a rude way. I just told her that I already knew, which I already did. My energy feels back in a way that feels very True today. Before I left for El Salvador, I was getting in the habit of killing time. Looking at an hour and wishing it over. I don’t want to quantify anything. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8Mb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e326f20-1685-4e59-8b0e-e29ce386a22e_950x406.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
generative and godly secrets
May 27, 2025 · Original source
Monday, May 19 I will take the rest of my youth as it is. He turns on the air conditioner for me and leaves to drink Non Alcoholic Beers while I stay put and read the Diaries of Girls Online. I walk ten miles and I do not really believe his friends who say there are worms at the Russian Spa. This is how rumors spread, I tell him. You are Married To The Truth, I tell myself. In the morning, there is light through my greenhouse roof and to start; I am the only one awake. It feels like this; I had one of the best weeks ever last week, where everything came rushing back into being as it should be and I was certain it would stay like this forever. Then there was sudden chaos on the phone, chaos on the train, serenity at Spa88 and then I was calling my mom muttering sentiments I knew she would find vaguely offensive, stomping around the financial district saying bad words like a child intent on proving herself lovable even if insufferable. He said it wasn't that I was so uninteresting, more that my story was bizarre, not really a story at all, full of vitriol. Everyone was running along the Hudson River and I had two or three diet cokes with dinner and I was up not all night but close. It goes like this: in the morning there is energy and a package thief filling a suitcase up with my boxes of celsius and fiber powder and whitening strips and dental floss. I crouch above him on the stairway and I scream HEY. He screams back HEY and so I let him have it. I turn on my heels and I run up the stairs. My favorite things are leaving the house in the morning and not coming back till late night, cool mint zyns, blackberry dr. pepper, turkey cold cuts with truffle mustard eaten in a kind of self-punishing way. I lie on the roof in my boyfriend's Adidas track shorts and a black tank top that I stole from the gymnastics locker room in highschool. The thing about New York is there is immense competition to be skinny, beautiful, successful, rich all in circumstances that are entirely unconducive to all these things, my friend is telling me on the phone. Circumstances like the package thief and your metabolism doesn’t even get a boost from the sun and also there are hard drugs and alcohol. I don’t feel above all of that, but I do feel distant from it now and so I suppose, with some plausible humility, this adds up to kind of the same thing. I wish I was a gentle person. I feel lazy today, but this is not the same thing. Tuesday, May 20 Last night, we went to Lucky's for dinner and I had something with tequila and Saint Germaine straight up and he had more non-alcoholic beer. Then, they brought us mountains of shoestring onion rings and a big wedge salad and it was good for a while, until I started to feel sick. I went to the bathroom to play on my phone while the scent of grease dissipated. The drinks were crisp and they brought the shaker right to our table. Lucky's was like a steakhouse, but with a smaller interior than your average We went to Matthew's house after, to sit in his barren family room while he hacked up a lung. I rolled up my Zara blazer that I stole from Paul's Casablanca lost and found after someone stole my blazer first and also back when I was an alcoholic. I curled up under my blazer on Matthew's tiny couch while Matthew and my boyfriend talked in code and made rankings of all their friends. Matthew's apartment was pretty empty except for a whiteboard with a list of girls he likes and a Chinese new year banner and a huge pile of hats that said I'M IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. “Jesus, she is combative. you're right, she's so combative,” Matthew told my boyfriend, talking about me. "It's possible that Canne after dark was something that happened in the daytime," he said. "she'll get mad if I ask her why she won't play anagrams," he said. "The activation triggers a chain of events leading to increased dopamine release," he said. Sometimes, when I am with my boyfriend's friends I feel like I am in a video game, or maybe in an orphanage. You don't want to be someone who is contorting your face and yelling. It is morning now. I don't really know what happened there. Being at these parties more sober is strange, because there is nothing else but me and yet I still don't really understand. I am listening to sweet and gentle music, and I feel a total surrender. S - i do feel bad i was not so gentle and kind about this. i get myself trip wired and lose it. but it is always better to be gentle and kind and i understand new york can kill the soul and there is something beautiful in a peaceful house alone and that is why you left which is innocent and pure and it's not fair to be rageful to you for that. Wednesday, May 21 There were two cigarettes and two glasses of wine at Voile de Nuit. This becomes some sort of Diary of Consumption. I met Ellie at a tall house on a wooded street in the West Village where she works on things pertaining to design and then we spent the hours in the courtyard of Voile de Nuit, which I adore because it’s reminiscent of Summer and Reality. I behaved badly the last time I was here. My boyfriend comes by to drop off fries. We run into friends at Caffe Reggio and it's raining by the time we reach home. My boyfriend says: Spreading secrets is entropic Keeping your mouth shut is static Spreading misinformation is generative and godly I do think he is mostly kidding. It's Simone Weil who says about rage - “To be able to hurt others with impunity—for instance to pass our anger on to an inferior who is obliged to be silent—is to spare ourselves from an expenditure of energy, an expenditure which the other person will have to make.” And I wonder which character I am in this story and it's not always the good one. I was thinking about all of that in the novel. That and the self surveillance of it all. Unfortunately, my thought experiments are ruining my life and also, the novel is ending up being All About Me LOL, too. The play tonight (Revolution at Flea Theatre ) is nice, because I walk through the rain to get there and smoke cigarettes outside The Odeon after, and because its depiction is of genuine weirdos, not like Quirked Up, not like the girls my friend texts me about after the party, “have you met them? so spacey!” not like, becoming strange because of course there is some desire to conjure up some personality and if you’re pretty then it’s fine and even appealing to be off-putting. The play is like grocery store clerk alcoholic, gun in the purse grocery store clerk alcoholic, therapy speak coping mechanisms like count up then down then up and it’s employed in the play as the coping mechanism not as an ironic tactic. Drinking beers on a birthday in the back alley and the play is disaffected from glamor in a way that I’m realizing not many things are. Like even most depictions of poverty in a lot of media, at least media coming out of New York at least certainly media surrounding youth culture and a narrative surrounding a party, goes like; we have nothing but we’re slippery adjacent to everything as a result of our charm and good looks and happenstance. The play is like, leftover charcuterie from her husband’s weird mega church and splurging at the liquor store and old cocaine shoved into a bowling ball but there’s an innocence and almost childlike wonderment to the way they tackle the expired drug situation, and the play is not about drugs. There’s a genuine kind of earnest stiltedness to the conversation that lends itself to sincerity. Thursday, May 22 May is quivering right before me; I'm not letting it lapse like April did but there are still smokescreens, silkscreens, my fingers are sleeping right through it. The Club, last night. The Play then The Club. It was smokey and sweet. My lungs felt coated in something sour by the end. The smoking patio was wet with dew and I was kind of floating, not in a bad way. Not hungover, it's something way more visceral but still hazy. I could feel it all start to slip, and so I held onto myself quite tightly. My boyfriend's screen time is 102 hours a day across devices. My face is encased in sheaths of plastic that keep you young, but they're not the temu kind that's weird and freaky. The light I use is Science Backed. I'm thinking of getting into vintage workout wear. I'm thinking of getting into Vlogging. I'm thinking of getting into filling out paid surveys online for luxury perfume sellers that require you to swear your spending habits are High and you like perfume from MiuMiu and you Hate Balenciaga and what perfume means to me is; I think sometimes scents can bring up... nostalgia? I say. Do you own a Prada dress? they ask. We leave the party early - I'm sick and he buys me chicken caesar salad pizza. Aren't you glad we left early so we could dance a little at home, he says. In the living room, the windows are all a little frosted from the rain. There are lights in the neighbors windows across the courtyard but it's thursday night, the rain has stopped. You couldn't have expected everyone to just stay home, really. I notice the people in the windows if he is spinning me across the room. Exhibitionism. I catch myself in the peripheries. The windows. The back of my mind. And I never shut the blinds but that is just no Executive Function or Detail Orientation. I am not some sort of voyeur. Friday, May 23 10:45am, and they are playing some kind of staticy electric classical mashup of music from the Fedex truck outside. "Even as a grad student, I felt they were looking down on chaos," one young man at the Yemeni coffee shop is telling another. Buying: coffee and chicken quiche but none of that is for me. Buying: peanut butter perfect bar and celsius and my boyfriend's screen time is up to 316 hours since midnight since he's doing things indiscernible to me but which he clarifies are Not Fraudulent. I am trying not to write so much in the google doc diaries. It is like I have learned these diaries as a trick, and now I am addicted to it. Now, I can’t do anything else. I must release all thoughts, but to release one thought I must go through, again and again, everything else. And so I go through it all, again and again and again. The thought, and then everything else. We were going to talk more about Spirituality today, but the tripwire keeps happening - stuck on: Vanity and Careerism. I make subheadings to keep myself in check. VANITY. CAREERISM. CAREERISM: Here is where I am: I have the substack for now which is nice this is something that I suppose in some ways is a defining thing I have done but it does not feel like so much it does not feel like it culminates to anything just proof of existence, yes, but everyone has some sort of proof of existence and it is nice to write the story behind something. The story itself cannot just be the story of writing about yourself. And for a minute I was very very very sad and so that plotline became dependable, but that is no sort of thing to rely on. And this is why it cannot all just be the writing of the self. It hasn’t been. [redacted] felt like something different, investigation, beginning middle end, it was not just here I am, it was like a puzzle it was like being very precise with it and it was the biggest thing I have done so far and I sat with it for such a long time. And perhaps I am being dramatic because there are other projects I could start in the meantime but I can’t sit down and make myself think oh what would be an interesting and pithy thing to talk about for somewhere glossy, I cannot do it. I think about doing it and my stomach rises into my throat with how little I care. And so it has to be a story that bursts out of me. There was one, and I can tell there is almost something else too but it’s like David said yes, it’s difficult while you are in the waiting room. Since beginning writing this, my fever got higher, and we are hanging the Bacchus masks around the apartment plus yellow golden softlight and, now I feel more peaceful about it. I wasn’t having so much humility. Nevermind. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 27 From 6pm (show at 7pm) at Baby’s All Right — Baby’s Presents a benefit concert for the Immigrant Defense Project with Palehound, The Ophelias, and Grumpy. Dj set by WeTakeManhattan. - “All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting the IDP’s 20+ year mission of fighting for the rights of immigrants targeted for imprisonment and mass deportation via advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.” | GA (18+) $38.86, Ticket and Bonus Donation $49.69
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rmSM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8f3b744-fe77-4a40-b032-304d78f13ff1_428x548.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zRlU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5106c642-5b7c-4f8f-a799-c60b10039a5d_488x486.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QlxV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9c5eb95-81d2-4503-852b-4bdc513730dd_698x434.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0g1m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3da24e28-0d39-4802-abf2-53116dd83b00_308x392.png, Baby’s All Right, Palehound, The Ophelias, Grumpy, WeTakeManhattan
Friday, May 23 10:45am, and they are playing some kind of staticy electric classical mashup of music from the Fedex truck outside. "Even as a grad student, I felt they were looking down on chaos," one young man at the Yemeni coffee shop is telling another. Buying: coffee and chicken quiche but none of that is for me. Buying: peanut butter perfect bar and celsius and my boyfriend's screen time is up to 316 hours since midnight since he's doing things indiscernible to me but which he clarifies are Not Fraudulent. I am trying not to write so much in the google doc diaries. It is like I have learned these diaries as a trick, and now I am addicted to it. Now, I can’t do anything else. I must release all thoughts, but to release one thought I must go through, again and again, everything else. And so I go through it all, again and again and again. The thought, and then everything else. We were going to talk more about Spirituality today, but the tripwire keeps happening - stuck on: Vanity and Careerism. I make subheadings to keep myself in check. VANITY. CAREERISM. CAREERISM: Here is where I am: I have the substack for now which is nice this is something that I suppose in some ways is a defining thing I have done but it does not feel like so much it does not feel like it culminates to anything just proof of existence, yes, but everyone has some sort of proof of existence and it is nice to write the story behind something. The story itself cannot just be the story of writing about yourself. And for a minute I was very very very sad and so that plotline became dependable, but that is no sort of thing to rely on. And this is why it cannot all just be the writing of the self. It hasn’t been. [redacted] felt like something different, investigation, beginning middle end, it was not just here I am, it was like a puzzle it was like being very precise with it and it was the biggest thing I have done so far and I sat with it for such a long time. And perhaps I am being dramatic because there are other projects I could start in the meantime but I can’t sit down and make myself think oh what would be an interesting and pithy thing to talk about for somewhere glossy, I cannot do it. I think about doing it and my stomach rises into my throat with how little I care. And so it has to be a story that bursts out of me. There was one, and I can tell there is almost something else too but it’s like David said yes, it’s difficult while you are in the waiting room. Since beginning writing this, my fever got higher, and we are hanging the Bacchus masks around the apartment plus yellow golden softlight and, now I feel more peaceful about it. I wasn’t having so much humility. Nevermind. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 27 From 6pm (show at 7pm) at Baby’s All Right — Baby’s Presents a benefit concert for the Immigrant Defense Project with Palehound, The Ophelias, and Grumpy. Dj set by WeTakeManhattan. - “All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting the IDP’s 20+ year mission of fighting for the rights of immigrants targeted for imprisonment and mass deportation via advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.” | GA (18+) $38.86, Ticket and Bonus Donation $49.69
Inline links: Baby’s All Right, Palehound, The Ophelias, Grumpy, WeTakeManhattan
Aura-Abysmal
September 17, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, September 13 8:01am Driving over the Williamsburg Bridge where the skyline of New York City (the place where the Energies have been swirling back to life but all kinds of evil ones) is now tinged kind of light blue. The gallery last night was orange and swirling with smoke which made me gag. I couldn't really hear the readings. Something about grilled chicken. Do you think we got second hand high, my friend asked me. Do you think anything artistically interesting happens anymore? We found other friends, then, which is a good thing about New York City; insofar as it always feels quite small. We meandered further downtown for a while which was nice despite everywhere feeling a bit like a crime scene and sleep deprivation due to current events in my personal life and also on a more global and national scale. 8:27am There's a cemetery that is green green green in Middle Village and the graves are all topped with angels. There are bumper stickers that say TEACH SOMEONE HOW TO PRAY THE ROSARY on a gray car and MAKE NAZI’S AFRAID AGAIN on a blue car. 8:39am Listening to La Bás by Huysmans on tape in the car. "He could not stay in one place long and kept on inventing reasons to leave the house," the recording says. 11:29am It is sunny in Delaware and the billboards in New Jersey are amazing. Staring at my kind of puffy reflection in a streaked mirror at a rest stop feeling kind of weightless to be outside Manhattan which is kind of how it always goes these days. I do the things I need to do, but I’m not sure if that makes them right. I try to be precise and honest. I have not been acting very Selfless, but there are other things to consider besides Nobility and Sacrifice. Purchase: uncrustables and celsius. Interrogate the mundane because there is only so much one can glean from The Bigger Picture. A dress from Zara is kind of Washington-DC-Chic. This, or a side-zip sale-rack dress from DVF. I pumped my veins full of microplastics and bought an ill-fitting wardrobe. I drank iodine until my thyroid exploded. I got a tick-born illness and now steak tartar triggers anaphylactic shock. It is good that nothing bad has ever happened. 1:00pm Washington DC is Butterworth’s bone marrow for lunch and then the bookstore nearby to purchase a new copy of Paradise Lost and then The National Gallery where I like the Italian Renaissance section best because all the images are very well preserved and reverent. The most special works to me are Frau Angelico’s Adoration of the Magi and David with the Head of Goliath ceremonial shield because it’s satisying to imagine someone going into battle with something so bejewled and decedant despite the cermemonial nature of the shield that renders this idea irrelevant and a painting that I note as just Big Baby which is wonderful because the angel wings depicted are transparent like the light is just starting to rise. There is Cupid With The Wheel of Time and Bachuus floor tiles. Bachuus being; God of wine revelry and fertility. I grew up in a home peppered with masks of Bacchus and, in my old apartment we adorned the walls in masks of Bachuus, too. I tell my friends how I bought one ceramic Bachuus mask in April and then other masks kept on arriving in the mail after that. It was a colorful kind of Venetian mask to start, and then the ones that came after were darker and smaller. Like something out of a horror movie, my friends say. And this is kind of true yes, except like all reverent images or omens one can seek either good or evil or one can also choose to accept that; the most simple explanation is always the true one. And things used to be so much more interesting because everyone was much more reverent, I am thinking. Except then we walk over to the French area where the art is less reverent but more like a fairy tale. Hubert Robert’s The Ponte Salario and Francois Boucher’s Allegory of Painting and Fragonard’s Blindman’s Bluff, which makes me feel full of light Jean Honoré Fragonard’s Blindman's Buff (1775-85) - Photo via The National Gallery WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, September 17 From 7pm at EARTH — I Feel Like Seth Price in 2012 commences with BEFORE AND AFTER WRITING book launch and reading and record launch.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nfdI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F733585c5-650f-432a-99da-25b0daa4b84a_856x938.png, EARTH, I Feel Like Seth Price in 2012
The social experiment is now over
December 22, 2025 · Original source
One life all at once Friday, December 19 The West Side Highway is cold and clear and empty driving home, like everyone is already gone and this night will be the last dredges of things as they were. The taxi driver is playing soft rock and the barges on the Hudson look like little houses from a distance. New York in December is like a fairytale, because most everyone leaves for real life and then you are reminded, in the lost week of the year, that none of this was ever exactly real life. There’s a red sports car doing donuts in the empty lot of Pier 76. There are three American flags blowing in the wind. Every December feels almost inconceivably distant from the one before. It’s been this way for a few years, at least, now. Mostly, this makes me feel self satisfied, and sometimes, this makes me feel sick. The wind has been crazy the past few days. It’s like a wind tunnel, specifically, driving through midtown. The river is churning. The wind is making everyone insane. I wake up to yellow overhead lights left on overnight, and they look particularly warm cast against the winter sun that filters through my windows. No curtains. In my dream, I was sitting in a Starbucks somewhere foreign, waiting on a bench next to two girls whom I did not know. The coffees were taking a while, and so the baristas kept on offering up shared bread. Something to compensate. The loaves of bread were huge and warm. The barista was throwing them overhand over the counter. The bread was soaring through the air and then landing on the floor. The other girls around me were scooping up the loaves and devouring them with their hands. They were breaking the bread in half and then tearing off a morsel for me. That landed on the floor, I was saying. Everyone shrugging. Looks of disgust. I always dream in mundanities. Wearing athleisure and mixing potions this morning, like matrixyl and Argireline and Evian water full of bubbles and microplastics and wind through the open window blowing all the dust around. I watched all the energy come roaring back for each and every false start these past few months, but it’s been a pause in the ebb and flow, now. I like when things are fascinating. Three books from the party are lying on my glass table in the center of my floor. The Champ is Here and Season of the Rat and a book called Alligator, all bought from some place called CASH 4 GOLD. Because the glass table is so big, and the room is so small, the table creates a disproportionate presence. I wonder what will change, once the glass table is gone. Bundled up and then drifted outside to procure a celsius at the bodega and now I am home, again. Listening to Kali Uchis play off my tinny computer speakers from my playlist that reminds me of hot dry desert air and CRYSTALS. Making plans that fifty-percent chance I will then cancel. Trying to finish my Florida, Massachusetts story but the tone requires a kind of gothic and spooky vibe that I am entirely unable to access right now. Everything at Los Angeles Apparel is five dollars, and so I spend the afternoon being gluttonous online. Purchasing a white tube top and a black fine jersey long sleeve and two a-line skirts and some shimmering silver earrings. Purchasing a red circle scarf for Iris, too, because she left her brand new red circle scarf in the basement at my brand new job, and I said I would find it for her but couldn’t. Unsure if I will tell her I have found the scarf, or admit to procuring a new one online. I think I will just hand it over and say nothing. Celia calls, and I tell her about cleaning my windows and live blogging my day. Careful, Celia says. It’s a good idea to talk about things like architecture, or strange observations. It is probably not a good idea to start live blogging your days. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO It’s the most program-less week of the year, and so I’m taking a week off the event call. Watch The Shop Around The Corner and make Sabayon
Inline links: The Shop Around The Corner, Sabayon
How To Break Paralysis
January 14, 2026 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, January 5 Start the year at Cassandra’s apartment, and then a few days pass kind of breathless and stranded in this way. Her bedroom looks over St Vincent’s Ferrer, and it is light filled and sweet. Cards and paper star cut outs hung on red ribbon stream down the edges of the cream walls. A seashell necklace, Mary Magdalene portrait, books of Adorno and Mary Gaitskill. The bible. When my friends leave for the day, I do not. Rush of opening doors and boots on wood and winter air, and then they are gone. Cassandra’s apartment is very clean. It strikes me, somewhat uneasily, that everything I touch appears slightly less precise when I’m the one returning it to its proper place. Face oil left off kilter and kind of dripping. A little bit bad at treading gently in this place where I am a guest and everything is delicate and gorgeous. Wearing my friend’s Adidas pajamas and drinking water and taking Advil in thick blue translucent pill form. Writing down the things I no longer care to reflect on. A lot can happen in a year, I tell Cassandra, but then again, a lot can happen in one day or one hour or one minute, even, so best to be kind of chill about it. We go to Heidelberg for herring and brown bread and hot raspberries in ice cream and apple strudel at night. We go to CVS for baby food and tooth brushes and nicotine gum. The evenings uptown are more sparkling and quiet. Back at the apartment, and I can’t stop talking about all the things I want to do or places I want to move. California, Switzerland, El Salvador. Uptown, to a four bedroom apartment with my four best friends. Lying on Cassandra’s couch wearing a blue sweater under a gray blanket and drinking flower power kombucha this morning. Cassandra gets ready for work and offers general hospitality. Eat any fruits and vegetables you want, Cassandra tells me. She lists them like a game. Ad libs. She was teaching me how to type cast a person as “Lego” or “Dust Bowl” or “Victorian Orphan,” last night. Blueberries, shallots, pickles, seeded mustard from the Amish farm stand. I tell Cassandra that she’ll come home to find I have devoured all of her arugula with my bare hands. Later, I wear Cassandra’s blue sweater and black ballet flats and take my own belongings clutched in my arms in a cab downtown. Am I crazy, or did you take my black ballet flats, Cassandra texts, that evening. We discuss an exchange. Tomorrow’s plans. My polyester black gown bartered for Cassandra’s blue sweater and black ballet flats. We’ll meet at mass, lunch, The Frick, The Met, the play, the party. The light is blue gray in my apartment, and all the windows steam over when the hot water is on. All the windows steam over because my apartment is very small, and because the bathroom has no doors. A New Year should feel psychedelic, not sluggish, one of my friends said, a few days back. Psychedelic??? I said. What about crisp and clear???? After my dream where there is No Air Left, I come to consciousness with concerns about redemption. Something about bad habits and something omnipresent left unsaid. Sun and light and real sort of detox incoming and yes this has all happened or is happening or needs to happen soon. Sirens outside the foggy window. Gentle winter sunrise. Watching Darling (1965) on my computer as it gets light outside. The Schlesinger film where Julie Christie whirls about all thrilled to find it’s not too late, even though, of course, it is. Back on my phone, I’m checking prediction markets and trackers and fortune tellers and all the things I’m trying to avoid for religious and also paranoid reasons. My fears are all confirmed. Reading the stars. That voice in your head telling you everything will work out fine is wrong, they say. Sound of shattering glass crystallizing outside my open window this morning. I can sense, therefore, more than see, bright morning light starting to seep through. Thank God. It was a few days of gluttony last week. Last days of bohemia, but it was different from the bohemia of before. Different from the times that we were all manic from the wind and cold and early January where everything or nothing happens all at once. Everything used to be reeling. I miss Butterfly Club. Ex-best friends are forever. I’ve been talking about being ascetic for reasons of necessity, and also because simulated intensity can only do so much when it comes to keeping a life pure. Morning, now, and I don’t remember my dreams but I jolted awake ready to chase the same thoughts in circles. Washington Square Park is bright and feeling like spring today, because the snow is melting and the trees and lights are coming down. Pine piles looking a little lonely under the park archway. Something a bit melancholy about it. Dead and gone. Nothing to overthink. Cassandra comes downtown for mass and black ballet flat retrieval, and then she goes uptown to clean her apartment and do good things so she can be a good person. Your apartment is already so clean, I want to tell Cassandra. Cassandra is telling me about the only girl in the world who are funny. I went to tell Cassandra about someone who said me and one other girl and one specific nun are only girls who are funny, but the conversation moves on before I can assert my piece. And I think I’m mostly funny when I’m being mimetic, anyway. Better at knowing funny than at being funny myself. Cassandra is telling me about childlike wonder. Washed my face with La Rouche Possay cleanser and Japanese milk toner and did Big 6 Lymphatic drainage which is supposed to do things like give you the whites of your eyes back and also cleanse your insides through and through, this morning. Procured a Celsius and cool minty zyn from the fridge. Procured green juice and cliff bar and sat in Prada boots, for a while, on the edge of my bed. I do feel confident things will work out in the end, Cassandra texts me. Only if no spiritual blockage with vice or isolation, I text her in response. What if we had seven more hours of daylight, my friend said tonight, but I like it when it is four pm and I’ve completed my day of obligations and the fading daylight matches a sense of completion. I wore a tan skirt with no tights because they all keep running and a black long sleeve tee and sneakers to do venue tours and other obligations. I thought you were coming from the gym when I saw you wearing shorts, my friend said, after I ran into him on the street. I’m not wearing shorts, but I am wearing sneakers because I keep on procuring mysterious injuries, I said in response. It was a strange December and then a good January, incoming. Good, because it is quiet. Good, because I think I sense things picking up. Can I see a menu, I asked the bartender, at a dive bar, later that night. There is no menu, because this is a dive bar, the bartender told me. Can I get something warm, I asked. The bartender fired up the kettle. Imagine seeking out attention to get only the negative aspects of fame like stalkers and rage, my friends were saying, at the dive bar. Imagine selling out your friends to cloy for low hanging fruit. Imagine turning twenty-six. Imagine playing pool. Imagine moving to Los Angeles, California, or San Salvador, El Salvador, or Geneva, or even Austin I would move anywhere, I was saying to my friends. I would move across the country or even the world and become very sweet or even very bored. My friends were talking about people for whom spectacle is just real life. You assume that everyone is excited to go back to real life, and then you realize that they have no real life. So these are the people that you’re supposed to avoid. And then after that, everyone was talking about religion again. Which is sort of crystallizing to be the topic these days, or even this year. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, January 14 A few good downtown art openings tonight (6pm - 9pm) — At 56 Henry; works by Yifan Jiang and Sareh Imani. At Entrance; Seth Cameron’s first New York exhibition in six years. At Post Times; Elberto Muller solo show.
Inline links: 56 Henry, Yifan Jiang, Sareh Imani, Entrance;, Seth Cameron’s, Post Times, Elberto Muller
California-At-Home
January 27, 2026 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, January 12 I’m in my room and I’m feeling normal. Outside, the streets are winter-warm. Foggy and sweet. Different from El Salvador, which was humid-sweet. Tropics sweet. El Salvador was learning to understand things and also learning to let the wind blow in interesting directions and also learning to stand on my own two feet. On the flight home, I mapped out every day as a container. At JFK, I decided to treat the city like Vacation. Big Bar every Monday. Museums of Illusions. FDR themed social club. Procure activities on Partiful or Instagram or Yelp or through Word of Mouth. I call Amelia to announce my return and my vacation-forever plans. Is this vacation for the sake of transgression or fun? Amelia asks me. New York is over, Matthew was saying, in El Salvador. New York is over, and Los Angeles is it. I suppose we’ll see, I was saying in response. I suppose we’ll see but for now I’ll take all the energy-whirling-back. The flight home was quiet and late. I sat in the very back row of the plane with lots of water and ambient dread. I dreamt of a rocky landing where Avianca (Boeing 787) (Flight 267) touches ground and then immediately takes back off. I dreamt of being robbed. I dreamt of turning around. Dreamt of being scammed. Dreamt of busy days and busy nights in N.Y.C Back home, tonight, and it’s dinner at Lanterna di Vittoria with my friend whom I like because he offers me generosity kind of liminally. He presents a dangling sort of kindness that I did not have to accept or deny. I could accept his kindness later. I could pluck it from thin air, long after he has walked away. Maybe he is just generally cautious like that, or perhaps he intuits my inherent distaste towards drawing definitive conclusions. He is extremely helpful, but I never say thank you for the advice even though I am thankful. I never acknowledge I agree and I think it is better this way. I’m particularly grateful for the ease of it. He’s happy to know he’s right and also to feel useful without any of the misery that accompanies reliance. The grid is blinking in and out today, and so we are all feeling anxious about nuclear war. You too?? my friend says, when I bring up the topic of nuclear war at dinner. Everyone is becoming so much stupider. Small grid means big problems. I am feeling uneasy, sitting in my apartment tonight, knowing all the best minds in the world are coming up short. Later, cotton candy skies turning dark as we’re walking home. The city is freezing over, and hell along with it. Since I cleared my mind head-empty, I have become so much better at being perfect. Since I became religious, I have become so much faster at driving. Since I started telling all my friends that I want no-trouble, none-of-the-time, everything has started to really spiral out of control. I want to be good, I keep on telling Olivia. We go to the gym together every-other-day. She is the only girl with hair that is longer than mine. You are goodest, Olivia tells me. She says it with a smile, and she is very much not-devious so I believe that she believes this to be true. How many millions of dollars do you think were lost when the grid went down? I ask my friend, walking home in the icy city that I just can’t quit. Trillions, he tells me. What do you mean millions? Jesus Christ. Do you know how the GRID works? He gives me a book. Elephants and economy. Something like that. I already have it. I am smug when I tell him so. They already gave me this book in El Salvador. This book is already mine. The grid has already never-existed. Nothing ever happens. New silk eye mask arrived by mail which means: big sleep incoming. Big sleep in mummy mode. Clean room. Room of a girl who respects herself. Every day is something new. This part has always been obvious. Tuesday, January 13 The air is clear in my apartment, but somehow tinged a little bit blue this morning. Somehow kind of record-stretch hazy, which I suppose is what happens when I am tired and outside, it’s foggy. My friend texted while I slept: I am taking on your mannerisms. Texting back now: I don’t really have mannerisms. I could write a story this morning, but instead, I will write mantras in my mind. It’s good to be quiet It’s important to seize control over myself God gives the world to girls who don’t get in their own way. Black velvet hanger left off kilter. Last night, I purchased a blue dress that reminded me of dreams I already forgot. A blue dress to wear in a glass house in a place like Topanga. Bright blue dress to wear while making spring green soup. Purchased the dress with visions of next summer spinning through my mind. Visions of wearing a blue dress and standing barefoot on the wood floor of my parents’ house and making spring green soup. Sitting on the edge of my bed in dark green lulu lemon leggings and black tank top this morning. Cool minty Zyn in mouth, and Celsius in hand. The apartment is a mess, and it has been for a while. Trees are barren and kind of sweet outside my window. I hate this apartment. I want my old apartment back. I want to get everything I’ve ever wanted. I want to get sober and mean it. I want two hours of dedicated time-writing-fiction per day, and two hours of dedicated time walking outdoors writing notes. I want to let no more hours drift. I was not happy to come back to New York, but I do like the parts of the city that just are-what-they-are. Green turtle pond and freezing hands. Big buildings and tour groups. Windy streets. Bustling with people. When I’m at pilates I don’t feel like I need to move to LA, I tell Saorise, in the studio. The toned and old gay man that owns Pilates People runs warm. He cracked the window to let in the frigid winter fog. All the girls are upset about this. The light is silver and bright like a beam. It is a foggy day. We have LA at home, Saiorse says. We have life-like-California, but it’s real-life and it’s right-here. We can stay right here. We can invent different schools of movement. We can even go to Sugarfish Girls mass-exodus a friend group or even a whole entire life because of totally superficial reasons that are totally fake, Saoirse is saying, at Sugarfish. We acquire Saki. I pull my hair into a tight ponytail and I revel in my perfect day. I document my material reality meticulously. I have been training myself to become totally head empty. I have been training myself to gently accept gluttony, and also to be less subject to my whims. Sugar Fish has the sort of generic-upscale interior that reminds you of nothing, and thus reminds you of personal recollections of positive experiences in similar generic upscale interior restaurants. This is how they keep you coming back, I say. Girls couldn’t find a backbone if it hit them over the head, Saiorse says. Girls want to drown their enemies in buckets like kittens. Girls want to pray for you and ask to kiss you and pretend to be your friends. I am starting to feel some animosity, I tell Saorsie. Our meal is light but comes out in many courses. Saiorse is happy to hear about my budding proclivity for negativity. I’ve been telling you these things for years and knowing that it wasn’t yet time for you to listen, Sairse responds. You can pick something really good, or you can pick something that you really really want. Saiorse plays with her salmon sashimi and she doesn’t like soy sauce. Saoirse doesn’t ask me to tell her which one I pick: really good versus really wanted, that is. Do you remember Michael the explorer, Saoirse asks me. I have known Saoirse for a million billion years. We share a million billion strange friends. It’s nice to pour over these things. Internet friends. Federal agent friends. Friend who snuck over the Canadian border a few years ago and then washed up outside a fire pit in The Hamptons. Her explorer friend who we took to Round Swamp market for blueberry muffins after he got back from some place like Antarctica or maybe North Korea. He was not very risk-adverse. He was so worried about you, Saoirse says. Did you know that at the time? He said you seemed so nice. Walking home in the crisp and cold afternoon feeling so nice. Walking through the farmers market. Curling up in bed half asleep half dressed half under covers. Half lonely and half at peace because I love when my apartment is so cold. Cassandra texts that she is going to the museum. Why, I ask? It is our duty to seek out all the latent beauty in the world. Cassandra responds. At night, In Brooklyn, I can listen to Jeff Buckley Forget Her on repeat and think about what I actually want. Purification. Indulging my addictions. Freedom from vice. Sweet music and soft cover of winter fog and little green glass wind chimes hanging from the trees. I like wearing natural fibers and clothing I move easily in and having a uniform and following an obsession to its logical conclusion. I like knowing immediately and totally what it is that I could or could not love. Little dried leaves shivering across the pavement. They look like little rats except for the part where they are very beautiful. I run into one friend smoking on the street in a velvet black jacket when I arrive at the reading. I like your suit, I say. It’s my only suit, he responds. I don’t want to drink but I do want a cigarette and I only like cigarettes when I’m drinking. There’s a glowing strawberry on the wall, and there are a lot of people I have never seen before or at least do not see often. Like the cool theater kids’ basement in college, the girl next to me is saying. Soft snow flurries outside, which serves as a nice reminder that it is still winter. Reading out loud about Florida, Massachusetts and feeling reclusive. Wednesday, January 14 Sweet Wednesday morning, but I’m going to treat it like a Monday. Still listening to Jeff Bukley Forget Her, which makes me want to be somewhere else. Somewhere very cold or very foggy or even, very sunny. Perhaps I should stop hedging and just commit to something. Last night, a boy was ordering a drink and talking about how he was so glad no one was doing dry January this year. He asked his friend what he was drinking. Soda water and cranberry, the friend said. Oh, he said. You’re doing dry January? I’ve been dry for six months, his friend said. I felt so jealous of his friend. So, I know what has to give. Need to take pleasure in denying myself the things I want, etc etc etc. Listening to Forget Her over and over and over again, and turning my head all the way upside down so I can get a look at the snow behind me, but the snow has mostly stopped. Just silver skies all the way, now. Silver skies all the way up and all the way down. Jeff Buckley died at thirty-years-old. Someone who destroyed himself early but at least he had something to show for it. The desire to toss out everything I own becomes pervasive in the snow. The desire to get rid of all these things I wish were not mine. Gathering up all these clothes and throwing them in a big white trash bag. Thinking about the big smile on my face when my mother gave me a blue and shiny dress and then thinking about throwing it in a donation bin which pipelines to landfills, obviously. Hours can pass, percolating in guilt over what to do with this blue dress among other items. There are many more wasteful things than throwing out a dress. Buying and drinking alcohol for example. Buying and eating protein bars just to feel full by which I mean full of trash. Scrolling on my phone. Being cruel. The snow is both coming down and melting outside. Smells like ski racing. Nothing I am getting rid of is special. If the people whom I don’t want to see show up at a party, then I will leave. My friends are in the basement of the party when I arrive. Another friend’s new bar. The wood has been stained dark brown and the place is starting to look formal and nice. My friends are vacuuming and putting away books. We all look like little elves putting the books away, Quinn says. Many interesting books. Esoterics of Health and something about Aliens, for example. Thursday, January 15 Rinse and repeat. Blueish silver light in my apartment, where the sun barely penetrates, but at least nothing is artificial. Outside, everything is melting, melting, melting. White and chipped paint on the fire escape, and I can see the drops of water growing from the metal edges and then… drop! Leafless trees shimmering like they’re coated in gum drops. Each silver water droplet crystallized as its own little form, and then together, they are turning the whole tree silver. Since they turned down the central heating and then I turned off my air conditioner, a few days ago, everything has begun to feel quite quiet. Should we do a dress exchange? I ask Cassandra. Should I bring you your bible and a book called The Elephant in the Brain and also your blue cashmere sweater in exchange for my polyester Aritzia slip? Yes! says Cassandra. The West Village is wet and cold and the church is white and the doors are blue. The dining room of The Marlton Hotel is full of red velvet booths and gold lined mirrors and star shaped yellow lights. The mirrors and the lights make me feel a little bit like I am in a room full of sun, but I am not in a room full of sun. I am in a windowless hotel lobby full of mirrors. Cassandra takes out her Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls at table over are taking out their Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls everywhere are just the same. Olivia has her Rapunzel hair bundled up in her scarf like a baboushka. Cassandra is wearing a beautiful red scarf tied around her neck and wearing beautiful gold jewelry. The girls at the table over are talking about how we were created to have gentle souls. Why would anybody make it their mission in life to seek out… chaos? Cassandra interjects. To seek to degrade others, Olivia says. Cassandra teaches me a new word: Odoriferous. Cassandra tells me about her friend who lives in Northern California off the grid, farming salmon or maybe saving them, researching them, I can’t remember. A girl stumbles into the dining room to greet her friends at the table over. I can feel how cold you are, her friends say. I can’t wait to see the ocean again, Cassandra says. It feels really weird going so long without seeing the ocean. I guess I won’t see the ocean again for a while. Thinking about feeling manic. Thinking about every other timeline. Thinking about pouring big glass of water and black coffee with five splenda because I am still glutenous. Getting right to the cusp of something means that in at least a few other timelines, you probably figured it out. Nice to assume you’re capable of that, at least. Nice to know that in another timeline, my diaries are probably anonymous and I can be less vague. Nice to know that in another timeline I can probably lie. I can probably say what I actually mean. Spraying perfume over green sweater and imagining myself as someone who moves more slowly. Ordered a glass of wine because I love relapsing on an empty stomach. Telling Olivia about when my life was hot and cold and up and down and crazy all the time, because for the first time, I am realizing that she did not know me then. It’s hard to describe to someone who wasn’t there. Feeling a little bit nauseous and like I wish I hadn’t spoken. We could be living in the Midwest driving golf carts, Olivia says. Indiana is just corn and soy but not even produced for human production just animal feed or corn syrup, she says. I have a fondness for cornfields, Cassandra says. We could belong to country clubs, Olivia said. I wonder what that is like. Friday, January 16 In my dreams, I am surrounded by water on all sides, Somewhere in El Salvador. Somewhere in Costa Rica. Somewhere with all my friends-from-the-internet, and they do not like my new boyfriend. It’s ok, because I don’t like my new boyfriend too much either. I am scheming with my internet-friends. We are scheming ways to get rid of new boyfriend. Everyone is happy about my plots to get him gone, and no one seems to clock that I am the one who invited him in the first place. We are deep sea fishing. I am hanging by my arms from the edge of the boat and my feet are running through the water while a girl I know to be my best friend fires up the boat faster and faster and faster. I am a little scared. I am having so much fun. Salt water. Earth water. Angel water. I wake up. One light left on, back in New York. Yellow glowing floor lamp, so at least there’s nothing shining overhead. Last night, I was walking through the winter snow sliding on ice and filled with energy and adoration and also two illicit drinks. Listening to music and wind and stopping for gum and diet coke and then washing up in a restaurant that was bustling and warm and dimly lit. Telling my friends not to wait outside. For a while, I wanted to show others the places that had always been mine. It had never been like that before. It had always been more of a self protective sort of thing. Back to letting myself be dragged to kind of nice places to which I have no attachment, now. Talking about myself like I am playing SIMS at dinner. Ordering one diet coke and one piece of fish. Dinner passing kind of assembly line cool. Chill and smooth. In the snow and the ice, everything is seamless and then I’m in a car home so that I do not slip. Things could be quiet and end early but I still just can’t stay put. I become more full of energy, later on. I have become very sick of interiority. I went to a small Italian cafe to pass the later night because when I don’t, I always wish I did. It was a snowy and beautiful night. The cafe was made for families and locals and tour groups and dark and lovely. My new friends were talking about things like art-of-business, so it felt kind of far from myself but I could bear it for some hours. A beautiful life. Trying to be more tender and less neurotic. This does not have to mean everything. A person can just be cautious and nice-for-now. Walked home in the snow. Woke up warm. Still can’t stay away from places that have always been mine. Yellow light emanates from the yellow lamp. Nothing fluorescent. A million things to write over a million times. A million things to consider. A million topics on which the thing to do now is to wait and see. Waiting and seeing. Text about finding a DJ for a party in San Francisco. Email about a party at The Mount Washington Hotel. All these very random things that feel so close to being in reach. Kind of want to go. Kind of want to languish in old and beautiful rooms at the Mount Washington Hotel and in the majestic magic pool and imagine that money flows like water by which I mean spend money like it is water. Opening the window, now. Letting it be morning, now. Have to be clear, now. Sober minded and clear. Time passes like water, too, so that is something else to be wary of. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, January 27 From 8pm at The River — Theme Trivia returns with Medieval Trivia.
Inline links: The River, Theme Trivia
Humanoid-Robots
March 06, 2026 · Original source
Before the once-in one-hundred-years snow-storm, the air was soft and warm and not even that still, and so no one could believe what was about to come. I spent all day thinking about winter cleaning, but I did not spring into action until late. Then, I pulled on a black Gil Rodriguez dress, and I walked to buy Celsius, get on the train, drift over to downtown for a book launch, whilst feeling tired yet optimistic. Sam was sitting behind the bar next to a huge bison head and a lot of Olympic memorabilia, and he told me that Ellie was there and New-York-University girls were there and not Saiorse, yet, who is terminally late. Downstairs, the lounge was open and dark and I mixed myself a drink full of Campari syrup and ginger and gin. I went upstairs and I sat at the bar and Sam made me a Roy Rogers which is a Shirley Temple but for boys. Saiorse arrived in a gray dress and boots, and she made me a glass of melon juice. Lily arrived, and she told Sam that she only drinks diet coke. After that, we walked over through the still warm enough night to a penthouse party full of people who make robots. This, or a dive-bar. This, or Soho House. This or homeward bound. Choose your own adventure. Humanoid robots are designed to do physical things that humans do like serve food at restaurants, and to potentially also have superior intellect and perhaps become agentic-not-mimetic, Saiorse explained. She explained something of a sort of space-race to get this show-on-the-road. Cold War. I was thinking more in hypotheticals. I hadn’t really been invited. I have not had existential dread since summer, when I moved out of a glass apartment where I was always staring up at terminally blinking skies. I only ever said I was a nihilist when I didn’t know what that word meant. At the party, there were trays and trays of sushi and a spiral staircase and men carrying around platters of dumplings. Everyone from the Stanford class of twenty-two is here, Sam said. A lot of people flew in for this party, he explained. Saiorse and I maneuvered our way to the bar, and then towards a long counter top that appeared to be a buffet, but was totally untouched. Lily and Saoirse and I began to eat everything on display. Grabbing plates of salmon and being greedy. A girl standing in the center of the room was saying she felt dizzy. Does anyone else feel dizzy, she was asking. Yes, I decided. Yes indeed I do, and so I went to the bathroom but the door was just one big plywood sheath with no lock, and the music that was fired up throughout the whole huge vast apartment was pumping out from two small speakers that were located here. Blaring Ye so loudly from out of the bathroom ceiling and from under the sink. It felt kind of like a strange and architectural dream. Not like a bad dream, but like I had to go. The girl in the center of the room had reminded me that I was feeling dizzy. She disappeared by the time I came back to the party, and I tried to tell my friends about the strange and blaring bathroom music but they were absorbed in things that seemed hyper and happy and totally present. Nobody seemed too future-oriented despite the product at hand, but they never do at these sorts of things. The books on display all had colorful spines and recognizable titles. I did say goodbye, and outside, the snow had still not started.

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