Collected Agenda Scene Wiki

Joe

24 min read

Joe

Article

Joe is a recurring person in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between September 12, 2025 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Sitting in the basement of Night Club 101 at the AltCitizen show with Joe and Darby”; “Joe and Darby drove me back all the way from Washington DC to New York City”; “I can’t become religious because I can’t even deny myself the things I want, I’d told Joe”. It most often appears alongside New York City, Amelia, Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: September 12, 2025
  • Last seen: March 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

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

Perfect Little Life
September 12, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, September 7 Woke up to something amazing happening. More rain outside and also, a message from Emma. How are you? Emma asks. Like no time has passed at all, though of course, years have. There are other things to think about first. Octopus and shrimp salad and some cicen cheese at Tashkent Market. Interrogate one’s own sincerity. I am certain that Emma lives a very full and rich life now. I am not sure where in the world she is. I will know this soon. The first time I met Emma, her mom drove her to my house as a friend of a friend on her sixteenth birthday. I made signs to welcome my new acquaintance. Strung up HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA and WE HEART EMMA on poster board in neon sharpie above the wooden porch to greet her when she arrived. Nice to meet you Emma, I remember saying. The formality was awkward because I really wanted Emma to already be my friend. Later, I posted a photo of Emma and I hugging on the beach. Happy birthday Emma, I posted. Like plastering our pseudo-friendship online would make it real. After Emma and I became friends, and after Emma got her learner’s permit a few months after that, she would drive around Natick, Massachusetts with me hidden in the back of her trunk looking for parties that we’d find posted on YikYak. We would come home disappointed, usually, drinking a few warm beers in her parents’ basement or sitting with people we didn’t really know on the outer edges of my parents back yard. A few years had passed that way, and then another year hitchhiking around the Balkans after high school. Emma had convinced me to come bartend in Budapest and so I’d lost or maybe gained another life, here, drinking liquor and taking pills from strange cups in hostel hallways. Hitching rides from strange women across the Montenegro border. We’d bought loaves of bread and tomato sauce and bottles of wine to drink in the backseat and we'd driven for quite some time along coastlines and corn fields. They burned brush to prevent forest fires in this part of the world, and so often the sides of the highway would be almost totally ablaze. Emma and I were always half asleep, half drunk, half larping as destitute and disassociated and developing an early onset case of Peter Pan syndrome as mostly mine but kind of our cerebral ambitions paled in comparison to the magical ephemerality of our alcoholic, older, nomadic, wandering compatriots. My best friend Emma was more solid than I was. She had traveled for a while longer while I washed up in a hotel room in Albania and then, a flight back to Boston. Emma sold coffee in Morocco and then attended Georgetown. Emma calls mid afternoon. Are you still in New York? Emma asks me. She’s in the car in San Diego and she’s driving home from the beach with her boyfriend. Emma and her boyfriend are laughing. The perfect little life. Sitting on the edge of my bed in my New York studio apartment and I’m feeling kind of giddy because here I am, suddenly, with this perfect little window into the perfect little life. It’s exactly as I suspected. I talk quickly at Emma for about twenty minutes when I pick up the phone, mostly recounting the events of the spring and summer, but there are other things, too. Sorry, I say when I finish my story. Sorry sorry sorry. Emma sighs, though she remains cheerful. I always thought you’d marry young, Emma says. Are you ok? Emma asks. You should talk about yourself now, I tell Emma. And so Emma tells me that she is in San Diego with her boyfriend. They have been there since the spring now, and they have started to make some friends. They are driving home from the beach. They are stopping for food. Emma is in a city on the Pacific coast of California known for its beaches, parks and warm climate. Emma is on the edge of a deep harbor that is home to a large active naval fleet. I imagine that it is misty there sometimes and sunny at other times and the houses are bright colored beach bungalows and they are always filled up with a little bit of sand. All my dreams this summer have been about California, I tell Emma. There is an OctoberFest party in San Diego, Emma tells me. Come to San Diego, Emma urges me. Do you surf a lot?, I ask Emma. Where are you getting food? Is everything made of wood and is everyone barefoot all the time and do you buy blue dresses at second-hand shops and wear them as you wander down the coast? Do you feed seagulls scraps of fish as they fly over your perfect white wooden balcony and do you go to the carnival and get massages at open air studios on the pier and is everything kind of pastel and creaky and at what pace does time pass? So, I will go to San Diego. Not in October but sometime soon. Sometime in the spring. Emma and Arthur will drive me around in their perfect little car and I will sleep on their perfect little couch and I will drink Corona with lime and wear a bikini in March and everything will be kind of pastel and creaky and I imagine I won’t be too aware of time passing at all. I will be embraced and absorbed by a life that does not belong to me. Maybe it’ll be like Never Land. Maybe I’ll stay forever. Monday, September 8 In New York City, people feed birds scraps of food and then grab them by their bare hands, too. In Washington Square Park, the tourists from Prague are doing this today. Washington Square Park, which is peppered with falling leaves and fountain mist and Bad Luck Spots, which I will never make the mistake of stepping on again. The park is still green but becoming less so. I’ve been praying for the cold, and now it is almost here. It is September 8th. It is Day One of being Cerebral and Ascetic and I am feeling very horrified that I ever thought it might be good to opt for any other alternative path. I am feeling regretful for my experimentations in self-abandonment and trying-on-new-personalities though, I suppose, this is where God comes in. And it was a God filled day yesterday, which is something I still hope to be somewhat watchful with and let things happen to me rather than intellectualize it all. The greatest thing is to Love and Know and Be Loved And Known, strangers kept on telling me yesterday. I already knew this, but I wrote it down anyway. Write it down and filter it through new contexts. Begin the day. It is Monday now. It is September 8th. I run into Emilia at Caffe Reggio, where I always sit and where she always finds me. You seem kind of volatile, she tells me. You should write about God if you are sick of writing about yourself. You should write about art. You should not write about politics. You should come to Slovenia. I was sitting in a church last night and someone was laughing outside. The laughter was reverberating inside. The laughter was distorting sound waves off the walls and causing interference with the incense and the air and with the silence. Because it was, otherwise, silent. Felt very frozen. Felt like fall. Felt like it was all beautiful even here in stupid NYC. Felt like I slowly noticed myself, shaking. What's your favorite book, a stranger asked me at the bar, later. V by Thomas Pynchon I said, because that's the book I read last and my mind was moving kind of slowly. What's your favorite film, the stranger asked. Diva by Jean-Jacques Beineix because that is the film I watched and liked last or also; Manhattan and Match Point, I said. What's your favorite book, I asked the stranger. The stranger smiled. I always say The Bible when people ask me that. Tuesday, September 9 In the criss-crossed wood-roofed apartment, the lights start to flicker around eight pm which is a good reminder, then, that one is never supposed to linger in the sort of place like this. One is supposed to live in a city like this so that one might pace around and wait for omens. It is Fashion Week which means even less to me this year than Art Week did the week before. It is energies and after parties and humiliation rituals when I'm wearing my cotton non-synthetic workout wear all around Soho at a time like this and; all of this of course, means nothing at all and so this week is just like any other. This summer passed kind of dusty and endless and I do not feel sorry for myself anymore because first of all there is no need for that it is just one life all at once and second of all, Accidie is the only truly mortal sin and so one must proceed with caution. I sat with Amelia in bars with sparkling water in June for a while because I just could not go home. I sat with other sorts of substances for a while after that and I took it too far. Day One (trying again) of being Ascetic and Cerebral tonight. September 9. 999. People on the Internet say that means something and I'm good at taking people at their word. Sitting in the basement of Night Club 101 at the AltCitizen show with Joe and Darby and a cup of Suju waiting for the after party to start. The basement of Night Club 101 feels kind of like a high school music room classroom particularly now, particularly empty. Joe and Darby and I are talking about the gap between self possession and self awareness and a Kinsey Scale sort of method of categorizing people this way. Self possessed people often lacking self awareness and vice versa. The lowest form of discourse being discourse on discourse. Smart people talking about ideas average people talking about events stupid people talking about other people; though, I sort of disagree with this concept. Other people are the root of all loftier things like "Ideas", I am saying. It's like The Backrooms down here, Darby is saying. It's like a kind of weird vibe but we don't want to leave. We're near the bathrooms and so others keep drifting by but they don't want to stay. Fabulous outfits. Rockstar Girlfriends. Los Angeles apparel unitard and big black boots lining up for the restroom or to buy socks that say I CAN DO ANYTHING ON DRUGS. Patchwork style neon dress and small gray loafers, silver ballet flats leather pants light green linen v neck top. Lots of girls with long and flowy and jet black hair here. Lace black dresses that look like spiderwebs paired with emerald necklaces. Lots of guys in jeans with long and curly hair or long and greasy hair and they all are carrying guitars. I'm perched in the bleachers in the basement with my one kind of SEC-school-style-tattoo and an A-line dress watching everyone kind of wistfully. So, there were a few different lives and now there is something else. Maybe in the next one, I will pick a life like the club kids. Micro-bangs and rock music. Fall asleep in Bushwick or in the back of a bus. Buy a bus and drive across the country with a lust for Music above all. Drive past things like diners in Wyoming or sacred hot springs in New Mexico or the haunted Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire or Motel 6s and 8s somewhere along the way. Drive to California wearing True Religion low rise jeans and shredded tees. Drive all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Can't stop thinking about the Pacific Ocean. Drive to San Diego. Wash up on Emma and Arthur's door. I would do fewer things each day in this life, but maybe each of them would matter more. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, September 12 From 7:30pm - 9:00pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — It’s your last week to see ARDOR - a very special play following a group of nine artists and friends on an annual retreat to their aging patrons Vermont farmhouse. Nothing and everything has changed and will change.
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, ARDOR
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
Humanoid-Robots
March 06, 2026 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.

Graph View

Backlinks