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Nihilism

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Nihilism

Article

Nihilism is a recurring concept in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 19, 2024 and September 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Nihilism is something I am trying to avoid for the main reason of - its been breeding cruelty more than healthy removal, lately”; “I wrote about nihilism and absurdism and Samuel Beckett”; “is it a form of nihilism to turn towards religion if you are really still not sure?“. It most often appears alongside Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Cassidy Grady, Chloe Wheeler.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: November 19, 2024
  • Last seen: September 26, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

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

Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
November 19, 2024 · Original source
WHAT I DID Chloe Pingeon's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Monday, November 10 It feels very important to parse through things very carefully today. I write down what I value: truth and beauty. mental and physical clarity. But then, there are other things, too. I don't experience life as this ethereal. Making big lists. Having big fun. Making big points. I write down: This is the thing I dislike about myself most; not experiencing things as this ethereal and wanting to make things like big points. I write down: when was the time you felt most transcendent? Remember: I'm not writing auto fiction. I'm writing my diary. It's weird - picking up the pieces of things. I feel disdain when I see people exercising bad habits. You cannot imagine my horror as I self destruct. Picture This: on the Upper West Side, things are quiet. The stone walls on the edge of the park are lined with trimmed hedges in the summer, but the branches are bare now, and so, you see, now, that the skeletons have always been jagged. The subway has been nicer lately, better to step inside when the warm air is a relief and nothing is steaming. I like the uptown F, the cars with the orange seats, the stations where there's no one there so you can hear the doors whoosh. Picture this: you go to The Central Park Zoo, you wear a Christmas dress, you go to Sarabeth's for lunch, pancakes, toast. After, you don't go window shopping but you do walk home. Not your home, it belongs to someone else, but it's familiar. You make tea by big French windows. The trees are bare already, remember, and so picture the precision with which you can watch the people on the street below. They don't look like little ants, you aren't that high up, they just look as they are - little people in and out. People looking for something. It’s like they are on a little treasure hunt. Imagine you would wish them the best. You wouldn't close the windows - not for a while, at least David told me I smelled like winter when I got home today. I didn't. I smelled like eucalyptus. You would too after a few minutes in that steam room in SoHo. I can’t stop spending money the instant that I make it. I can’t stop spending money like I have it. I have stopped purchasing stuff. I like to wear the same thing most days. I like to sort TheRealReal Black Blazers prices low to high and buy five at once, eight dollars each. When they arrive, they are still nice material and still from places like Armani or at least Theory and you spend little and you can sell them for more when it’s time to declutter. It’s been so wonderful to declutter lately. I’ve gotten rid of almost all of it - stuff, I mean. In the new place, there are no closets. I’ve gotten rid of all my storage space. I’ve gotten rid of all my streams of income. My Stuff is still in storage somewhere. Not in New York. I’ll sell it soon. You can have some but not all my earthly possessions if you want them. You can have the ones I’ve packed away. I like this idea – “Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence” Tuesday, November 11 My new favorite blog is this - Health Gossip. It’s an old school newsletter. The health advice is very Pure and True, but more than this, it is beautiful to consume. Health Gossip is my favorite thing on the Internet this week. Very rarely does something in digital form elicit a real sense of calm in me. Usually, things in digital form make me feel kind of manic and bad. I’m not sure why this project strikes me so profoundly. Today, I spend multiple hours reading Health Gossip. A writer texts me after last week's letter - “your writing is always “good” ie flashy/ineffable… but this one bummed me out.” I’m not sure if he’s referring to the happenings of the week, or to the passivity, lethargy, dare I say gluttony and sludge… with which I’ve been diluting my descriptions of it all. I don't ask him to clarify. Regardless, his assessment of the piece in some sense parallels my own, and an attempt to dredge out an opinion from an acquaintance I admire that might placate my own sense of shame does not feel like an endeavor of any significance. “it bummed me out to write… ”, I say. We’re at a large group dinner at Olive Garden Times Square tonight. The host picked this place with a genuine fervor, nothing snidely ironic about it, and so I am more good humored in this venture than would be my usual inclination. It's less kitschy here then I l expected, anyways. Wall to wall carpeting, lots of families, lazy susan’s, the color schemes of muted Americana. I have a healthy appreciation for Times Square Charm. I have a healthy Relationship With Capitalism. I can't really eat the food here but isn't some of it just so fun to look at. I'm drifting in and out of focus at dinner - preoccupied by unrelated concerns of wavering integrity and petty betrayal, not important, not interesting. When I do tune in, a girl across the table is talking about Politics. “My grandma is spending her time so worried about school shooters because it's an obsession of the news,” she says. “It makes me angry and so sad for her. She shouldn't be spending her time thinking about this.” I get her sentiment a little bit. A sensationalist sense of doom that makes my skin crawl at some family dinners. Sometimes, there is frost on the grass just outside the window and when it catches my eye during these conversations - look at the dew, look at the mist, there are fawns in the field - then I just want to scream. But then, I worry sometimes that I am not very empathetic. I am envious, sometimes, of people who become utterly consumed by suffering that for the most part, they could simply look away from. Nihilism is something I am trying to avoid for the main reason of - its been breeding cruelty more than healthy removal, lately. Walking through Times Square after, David asks me if I am ok. I guess my eyes have glazed over. I realize this now, that it's been called to my attention. “Of course,” I say. “I worry that everything in my life is going to very suddenly fall apart,” I say. I am reassured. The night passes peacefully. Thursday, November 14 I take the Q to the end of the line today. It's something I've always wanted to do - take the train until the cars stop and I'm the last one left on board and a voice comes on and says please exit the train for cleaning, this is the last stop on this train, please exit the train so the train can be cleaned. I'm in Bay Ridge to shoot a music video today. To be an extra in a music video, that is. I'm exceptionally bad at acting. I'm bad enough that I am even bad as an extra. I'm not particularly bad at lying, but I am bad at having an expressive face. The neighborhood at the end of the Q is nice. I've been taken to other places in New York like this before. Places where you feel like you're by the seaside, where you're under the bridge, where the architecture is more brick, more limestone, more instances of art deco. The Hudson widens into the open ocean somewhere not too far from here and so of course the air feels different. It's strange, even if anticipated, to take the subway ninety minutes to a place where the air feels different, to walk down strange streets and into an unfamiliar gothic building, to open the door to a room where I have never been, and to find it filled with people I mostly already know. The past few years have given me many instances like this. This is something I am very grateful for. The music video is for DDM / Uncensored New York. It's a cool concept. It's cool to watch things come to life. The shoot is outside, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I'm still having fun. I'm thinking about things like how monks orient their consciousness and focus towards the cause of their suffering, and then I am trying to think only about the cold. I am not able to transcend myself, but even freezing, I don't wish I was elsewhere. In the afternoon, I sit in a warm car and I thaw my hands. I have miso soup, tea, and cheese sticks. There is still a chill in me even once inside, which is simultaneously unpleasant and cozy. I'd been wanting a day like this very badly. Friday, November 15 Beckett's Tense comes together with serendipity. There was a crisis with the headliners, Lucy Sante was sick. Beckett ran into Penny Arcade outside of Madame Matovu on 10th. Now, Penny is the headliner. The unsalvageable is always salvaged. The bar can serve real liquor tonight. There's a lot of people here and it's a different crowd than usual. Tense is back in Manhattan. Penny says she’s here because she wants to see what the new New York is doing. I give Beckett a hug at Sovereign House. I say hi to Chris and Adeline. Chris and Adeline are drawing big Tense bubble letters on the chalkboard. The seats are already mostly full. I climb to the top of a ladder and I sit up there. From up there, I have the best view in the house. Tense is not just a reading series, Tense is a show, and this distinction is important. There is a program, an order of events, a flow of new and old. The serendipity with Penny’s arrival lies in this - she seems to understand exactly what Beckett is doing, and while she didn’t write her piece specifically for TENSE (she describes it as “cultural criticism you can dance to”), it speaks with exaction to the spirit of things. Here are some things that Penny Arcade says: I’d rather put a stick in my eye than go somewhere where everyone is the same age. When I was young, if I went to a party and everyone was under thirty I thought... I'm at the wrong party.”
Inline links: Health Gossip, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BqEq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d9f96c9-96e5-4a0b-9813-061226dc9197_3024x3775.jpeg, DDM, Uncensored New York, Beckett's, Tense, Lucy Sante, Penny Arcade, Madame Matovu, Chris, Adeline
generative and godly secrets
May 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, May 18 On the first day of My New Life, I walk to the film shop, pour old windowsill tea down the drain, come to consciousness in the Infrared Sauna at Spa88. In the Russian Spa Cafe, you drink carrot juice in a bikini because Rebecca taught you what Fiber is yesterday, and now you are sure to get your fill. There is lox and seaweed and brown bread. There is a Caesar salad later, at Fairfax in The West Village, and they don't actually harvest your personality at the door. I journal a lot, I told my friend. I journaled the whole train ride in my mind, she said. I journal in Google Docs, I said. I don't know why I decided to say it like that. Like manic transcription of thought until it becomes more vibe than writing at all is some sort of one-up over mental assessment and determination. I have not been trying to one-up at all. I've been trying to be so honest about it, and I guess the concern remains that the truth will all surface and the roots will turn topsy turvy and inside out and then you’ll see that untangled, it was all kind of just midwit and ugly. I wrote about nihilism and absurdism and Samuel Beckett, but the piece turned out so simpleton that it makes me kind of queasy to return to. I wrote about the magazine release party on the roof where I felt kind of wobbly in this halter top dress tied way too tight. Then we walked to Casetta and I had wine and fish floating in tin and oil and then I lay here for a while when I got home. I lay very very still and when I twitched then rose again, there were packages at the door, a taxi cab and a friend on foot and his airtrain en route heading towards the apartment. I was standing in socks and hovering in the building's communal mudroom when he got home. Things are nice. I was talking not too quietly about all of it in the Spa 88 Wall Street Russian Baths Hot Tub. The most liminal space in New York with smooth warm aqua water and yellow kind of burnt light and chipped paint no windows. Dorito bags with Hebrew packaging usually stacked in the restaurant, today abandoned half eaten on the table by me. I could tell the fat guys in speedos were lingering sweaty just to listen, but I was doing no sort of performance for them. On the train, the girl on the phone kept glancing around to make sure others were listening. I felt sad for her. At the Spa88, I said my story all matter of fact in the hot tub and my Aunt said well, you really have your hands full and the fat guys looked away kind of bashful, and it was only then that I realized they were listening. You can disassociate away the concept of public space, too. Spilled coffee and voice echoing in this pool room with no windows so it becomes like time isn’t passing at all. I wasn’t talking to myself, but communication reverberates, and I was drifting all unaware of perception. Then I was in the cold plunge, in the infrared sauna which really does something nice to the fascia (the part that matters when it comes to things like Wim Hof and Heating Up and Cooling Down.) After the infrared, I began to gain awareness of my surroundings and movements and recollections of the sound of my own voice and things like the coffee my stray limbs sent flying off the shelf at Mille Feuille this morning and then I was there saying OMG Sorry and floating napkins towards the ground but also kind of just standing and blinking like some kind of dud. You wake up alone but there are people on the way. People already late. Keys and company and you are texting with an intensity that borders vitriol. The vitriol is what he’ll point out later. Before that, he is at the door and you are so happy to greet and be greeted. There is spilled coffee and Equinox Gym and Spa88 and Iced Tea, Sparkling Ice Soda, Cool Mint Zyns. I woke up and I waited around and I trapezed over to Equinox Gym and when I got upset later because told me he did not care about my story; it was then that he clarified he did not so much mean he did not care but more so that the story was full of vitriol. And so perhaps he was just feeling full of love and life. You can't get all rageful over something like that. I'm sorry I forget sometimes that you are not resilient, he said. My blood didn't boil. I went for a walk. You forget that all of this exists all the time, Natasha and I were saying by the Hudson River. In my glass apartment in the sky, I was alone for a while but now I am not. There is an Arabian rug and a Marble table that I hope someone will take off my hands for free. There is a CurrentBody LED mask and cocoa nibs and nothing in the fridge but the butter that I replaced with the wrong brand. I feel uncomfortable when I speak like this - about these little things that compose a life. Like I'm painting a picture in the details of routine, but there has been no routine. There have been a few false starts, and then now, a real one. I am conjuring an image of a morning with an empty fridge and an Arabian rug and the kind of person who reaches for different serums at different hours. If anything, we’ve been dealing more in potion than serums. But every potion certainly has its godforsaken limit, and so now - there is something else. 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_!RaEX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7945ab16-c051-4062-8d64-a0fd574c3968_1106x420.png, 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
Apocalyptic Ideation
September 26, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, September 15 Joe and Darby drove me back all the way from Washington DC to New York City yesterday. Me, nauseous sort of hungover laid flat in the back seat, shoes pressed up against the already smudged glass window and the September sun reflecting off the highway and the hood of the car and the tar black pavement turning everything so warm inside. A long warm drive where time passed somewhere between not at all and all at once. Too lethargic to really notice. We turned on a tape. The Shirley Jackson story based on all those girls wearing distinct raincoats that were disappearing into the woods around Bennington, Vermont in the 40s and 50s. In the story, nineteen year old Louisa Tether runs away from her beautiful old white wood Massachusetts home and nice-enough family on account of mostly a sense of ambient contempt and a desire for a whole new life. As it turns out, one can get a whole new life without too much trouble. All it takes is swapping out your nice blue jacket for your old rain jacket and retreating to a town that is not too-big but still-big-enough. Three years later, Louisa Tether is Lois Taylor. In the story, Lois Taylor tries very hard to act in accordance to the stories she is telling herself. This, Lois Taylor learns quickly, is what it takes to be a good liar or maybe just a new person, the two are kind of the same in this case. I doze in and out of sleep, but the sound of the audio-book is nice and I am curious what will happen when Louisa decides to come home. “Louisa Please Come Home”, the story is called. It ends with a chance encounter, a change in whims after three years, and the realization, too, that it is just too late. By that point, it is just too late. A three-years-older Louisa washes up at her three-years-older family home and her three-years-older parents and sister look into her just slightly aged face and irrevocably changed eyes. It’s just been too many years of playing pretend. You shouldn’t pretend to be our Louisa, Louisa’s parents say. You have a family who loves you, and you should go home to them. We hope that someday, our Louisa comes home, like you should go home to your parents. Our Louisa was younger than you, Lousia’s father explains. In my own small and strange apartment things are still a bit cluttered but at least nothing is sterile. I made a call and I imagined a big white Massachusetts home. A stone patio in the back and still-green trees and hobby horses in the front. Windows that I could stare in and a door that I could still walk through because I have never run away. An old car and quiet roads and little red berries that crunch underfoot this time of year. Three years is quite some time. This part of the story made me uneasy. The emphasis on how much older all these should-be happy and youthful people look after only three long years. New York City is still so steaming hot. I weigh my options, and decide to stay for a while. Tuesday, September 16 In my life where I am staying for a while, Celia sends me mantras in the night. Today is a good day to become harder to kill and easier to love, Celia says. I have already seen this mantra on Health Gossip, but I appreciate it all the same. I wake up in a room that is small now, and so it is easy to take quick stock of things. The light and the white bedspread and a little gold swan and gold watch and gold cross and black Orca stone of Protection clustered on the edge of the table. Celia is joking I presume, but most things do come down to energy and integrity. Volatility is what emerges when there is energy without integrity. So; I am working on things. In the morning, there are mantras from Celia and there is sludge and dirty water seeping through my ceilings from the bathroom of my always-yelling-upstairs-neighbors. This is not so much a thing of patterns and symbols everywhere for those with eyes to see, and more an indicator that people who are very loud often also live kind of disgusting lives. One kicks into gear. Call the people one should call. Say thank you very much and the anonymity of these things still feels strange. I am very easy to kill like most people are and I don’t really believe in quantifying or even speaking on things like easy to love. There is lymphatic drainage and athletic resistance and pyrogenics and snake oil face tape and blue multi peptide serums and red light therapy and real sort of detox incoming because yes, there needs to be one of those soon. I sat at Dr. Clarke’s with snake venom filled saki and martini and free champagne til late enough last night to say goodbye to friends who come and go in and out in this city and then I wandered home through the remnants of the never-ending-San-Gennaro fair, where teens were scrambling on the ferris wheel and a nice seeming man was shilling free fried oreos. I sat at The Odeon which is really just the perfect restaurant til almost sunset tonight, perched at the bar alone for a while waiting for Celia to arrive, old school vibe, pink and green glowing clock, men walking in straight from the plane carrying luggage. I ran into an architect and an editor and there was talk about throwing a party. Celia arrived full of stories about design and plans that made me full of energy and a night and life that could stretch endlessly if I could find it in me to not flee shortly after dinner. Are we going to an after party, Celia asked me. I presume I’m un-invited because of an incident where I was acting hard to love and easy to kill, I told Celia. That’s ok, Celia told me. We went to a reading instead, where the lamps were stained glass and the stories were about people who are too bored to cook but still need to eat. We went to a party then, too, which is always how these things go and then I wandered home through quiet streets of the Financial District and up a ways and it was too late for anyone to still be out shilling anything or too quiet for me to stop if they were, regardless. The windows were left open at my new and strange apartment and I counted the turtles in the clean water in the pond outside and back inside the water had stopped dripping through the floors of my horrible neighbor’s disgusting and loud apartment. Dirty water, clean water, everything dripping out all over the floor and the pavement and then someone cut the supply and so; the cycles repeated nine million times. The cycles repeated and then they grinded to a halt. Wednesday, September 17 There was the idea of thinking about oneself until one invented an entirely new self. There was the idea of finding the place between past and future which of course logically concludes with present but, definitionally becomes hard to sort out. Something like wading through mud which these rooms often seem to be full of these days. I am reading a story about the Organ Donor Registry and why one should remove oneself at my party on Saturday. You will know you are ready to have a child when you are tired of taking care of yourself, Veronica says, in the story, and she said it to someone else in real life, because this part of the story is true, though it is not a true story. One can think about nostalgia and how to fill a day and right from wrong and if one is sincere or not and how to tell based on things like your own sense of your own soul and the cadence of your voice and often based on things you can kind of just see in the faces of yourself and others. I realized a long time ago that I live a life that people are interested in reading about, K said on the Internet. How to fill a day? I could have been far more voyeuristic about all of it. Instead, I talk about how to fill a day. I could have been far more interesting. If I am going to think about something besides myself it should be something fun like art not physics, Amelia says. I am going to think about: buy a Sony camera and make some flat-lay videos and join Raena Health to figure out the root of things and become very strong from all the climbing and write the story about Gnosticism or what happens when people seek meaning in signs and symbols when it’s all just randomness and is it a form of nihilism to turn towards religion if you are really still not sure? I am skeptical when people are very certain about things, Iris says. You’ve been learning to withhold your opinions but I hope it’s not just because you have none, Celia says. At the party - another party - everyone is very well dressed in things like linen, and I fit right in by coincidence because I am wearing a blue linen shirt. Are you bored yet because I am, Rose says. I am endlessly entertained, I tell Rose. But there were other problems too. Thursday, September 18 You don’t need anything but this, the waiter tells me at 9 Orchard. It is 2pm and hot. He brings me a Tequila espresso martini listed simply on the menu under; Day Drinking. He brings me a salad that is chock full of thin gray hairs so he removes it from the bill. Saoirse joins me. We are here to write in the Blue Room, but both our laptops are dead on arrival which is evidence, really, that neither of us were really here to write at all. We are here to hang, Saoirse keeps on saying. It is productive, really, because there were many things that had to be said at some point, and if a task necessitated completion at some point, well, now is as good a time as any. The bar at Nine Orchard is full of business people and weekday leisure. Wearing sunglasses. Drinking diet coke. I’ve been trying to be less gluttonous about it. Everyone is hoping to take advantage of the last dredges of sun, and so Saoirse gives me a hotel tour and then suggests we go outside. New ownership at the hotels around here. New blazing hot fires in the blue rooms at the hotels where the shades are pulled shut against the still blazing hot autumn resistant summer heat. We do cartwheels in the ballroom. We aren’t asked to leave. Before there was Dimes Square, there was The Metrograph, a German walking tour guide is saying, back on the street. No way that is real, I am saying to Saoirse. I see them all the time, Saoirse is saying to me. We walk to Le Dive. The hours tick onwards and so today is the last day of it. Last days of gluttony. My second-to-last-day in my-gluttenous-life. Saoirse is showing me a free library web application. Saoirse is showing me a free web application to read The Bible a little bit each day and then all at once in one year. Saoirse wants to sit outside. Saorise wants to drink wine. Saoirse wants to remind me how much better my life is now and I want to say; I’m not sure if I agree, I can’t drink sulfates, I am kinder now certainly, I am happy in this moment, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry. I am so sorry for how I used to be and how I’ve been. I walk home as the sun fades. Plans for self improvement. Plans to revel in solitude (the thing I hate most). Plans to stay for a while. I don’t want to, really. I have been talking about how the apartment is clean but I still won’t let anyone else come inside. I imagine a winter where I was the happiest I’d ever been. You will be that happy again, Saoirse says. It’s ok if I’m not, I say. I imagine it is just one life all at once. I imagine what I think about when I pray. I imagine somewhere else. A place full of wind and desert and proverbial change that wouldn’t come. So, there is nowhere else but here. I decide to stay again. I decide this every day. Friday, September 19 An Aristotelian tragedy requires the tragic figure to be a hero, which is why it is particularly disappointing to suffer while you are feeling irredeemable. Apocalyptic ideation is when you’re thinking about how good you’d be at the apocalypse. Relentless optimism is when you’re challenging your friends just to see if they challenge you back. I wear a black dress to go ballroom dancing. I eat meatballs and gem salad and drink sparkling water at home. What are you doing today, Iris asks. Throwing a party, I respond. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, September 26 From 7pm at EARTH — Patrick McGraw, JT LeRoy and Meg Superstar Princess open for Laura Albert.
Inline links: Health Gossip, EARTH, Laura Albert

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