Collected Agenda Scene Wiki

Chinatown

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Chinatown

Article

Chinatown is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 11 times across 11 issues between October 02, 2024 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “The gallery is in the Chinatown Mall”; “surprisingly long and isolated for a Chinatown apartment”; “Chinatown fruit market coming alive so quickly”. It most often appears alongside KGB, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 11
  • Issue count: 11
  • First seen: October 02, 2024
  • 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.

Ways to be sincere.
October 02, 2024 · Original source
From 12 - 7pm (and for 4 days only) — OCD Chinatown opens Studio Dress by K8 Hardy. Studio dress describes itself as “a practical new wardrobe staple that doubles as an editioned artwork available to the masses.” The gallery is in the Chinatown Mall, where I saw a lot of interesting exhibitions last year, but haven’t frequented lately. Excited to check this one out.
Inline links: OCD Chinatown, Studio Dress, K8 Hardy
The End Of The Year
January 03, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Tuesday, December 30 I struggle with specificities of Resolution - there are things I care about in the new year, but these feel more like seasonal ideals, wrought in the empty clarity of colder months and then you hope, adapting gently and seamlessly as time passes. Health, reverence, the discipline to resist the slop of it all until you cease to desire things of excess and rot in the first place. I return to New York today. I start my New Year today, too. I feel too bogged down by too much to wait. I am trying to feel pure again. I write big letters in my planner - First Week Of The Year. I write in little letters below - I am trying to feel pure again. Back in the city means there's a party and I'm feeling really sick of talking about these things. I'm feeling like a scene as defined as "social circle" is a wonderful thing to have, but a scene as in "microcosm of politics and culture and the malaise and dreams of our times" is something that I shouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. David is telling me about everyone who's going to the party and he's listing off so many names and then he says oh wait it's actually just three people and he says oh they want us to bring beer and then he says do you want to split an uber with some other friends I didn’t know were in town and then I feel like I'm being absolutely ripped off and so I absolutely refuse to attend. Instead, another Party, I trail David to his friend's house. Mostly people I don't know, but I'm feeling pleasant. The boys are playing on a vintage video game console that someone got for free, and I find solitude in the hallway - surprisingly long and isolated for a Chinatown apartment. I pace up and down the hallway like it's a treadmill and I play on my phone. It's kind of dark. I would be an eerie sight walking up and down by myself here, but no one can see me. David tells me later that everyone could hear my thumping footsteps going an and and on. I didn't know this at the time, though. I walk two miles in the hallway. A really weird thing to do, but it's raining outside and the night feels quietly spooky in a way I want to embrace. Now and then someone on their way to the freezer to replenish the jäger crosses my path, but I avoid collision with ease. I'm listening to music that sounds particularly sweet. I want to bunch it all together. I make a list. Winter Dinner, I call it. It's a fittingly cheesy name. A playlist title should sound cheap. These are some songs in a playlist. If someone actually played this at a dinner it would probably be a little bit much. Playlists probably shouldn’t even exist. We should probably only listen to albums. The titles of sloppy curation shouldn’t make sense. Winter Dinner Elliott Smith - Rose Parade
Dream Logic
February 03, 2025 · Original source
Monday, January 27 Perhaps you theme your days. On Health, you say. L-theanine with my coffee. Not really, but I’ll plan for this down the line. Bar Oliver is all lit up in piercing morning sun. I walk outside early this morning. Chinatown fruit market coming alive so quickly. There was a cemetery outside the window where I slept last night. I kept on looking out and seeing icy branches overhead that framed the building like a second roof, the cemetery like a courtyard. It scared me once, I screamed once in my sleep, but I woke up other times too, and it wasn't too bad then. Mostly, the sky outside just looked all pale blue and clear, the same pale blue all night in my memory, although this doesn't make sense in a logical way, what with the night passing and the becoming dark and the me being asleep for it all. Dream Logic. A recollection of slippery silvery vines forming an outline of a roof over a gravestone. You wake up, and there is no roof, the trees were never shaped like that at all. Tahini chocolate cookie because Ruby told me sugar is actually ok. Whole milk cappuccino and I'm adding honey instead of Splenda. Enough is enough. I'm not going to crash out, but days are different now that my hours don't float on and on in pacing and typing that becomes like a trance. I felt like I was floating yesterday. Not today. That's probably ok. Tuesday, January 28 Tea with Madelyn Grace and then hot apple cider and Jameson whiskey at Cafe Reggio last night. David and his friends came by and acted abrasive. I was annoyed, but then I wasn’t. I walked the Williamsburg Bridge this morning - all the way from The West Village to Brooklyn. Delancey street was crazy at that hour, but everything after that was nice. I’d never done this before - walk the bridge, I mean - and it went on for so much longer than I expected. At first it was all windy and it made me scared, how once you got on the bridge you really couldn’t get off, how in the center the only exit was to finish the walk or perhaps to blow over, and I was the only one there, people were biking by so fast but no one else was walking, so then I started to run, and so then it got all warm, the water in the Hudson looked nice and wild and churning and distant from up here. The thing is, this winter was mostly a practice in what I’m recalling like a meditation now, with even the slight perspective - now that it’s late January, that is. Everything was present, so hyper present, and all I did was walk and think and walk and walk and walk and write down what I was thinking about and sometimes I yelled a lot, and I know it’s still the depth of winter, but this time starts to feel like it is passing. I freaked out last week, I thought about what if I couldn’t keep my days like that, but my days still hold all of this, only now, they hold more too. At the gym, I write about how it is ok to just do things like - go for a walk, go to work, lie by the window with David, go to the gym, write a story, and these days can be good and even better than the other ones, the ones that snap you into fierce exteriority. After the gym, Cassidy texts me. “Are you at KGB?,” and I’m not, but I think, well, I would go. Augustine says - “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Etc etc etc. I feel better when almost all my time is spent with people, and I think my mind is better like this, too. At KGB, I am dressed all in Pilates and Going-For-A-Jog type clothing. At KGB, Matthew is telling a girl about how Blade Runner the movie is based on a very antisemitic book. I've heard him tell this story before, and the gist varies each time, but there are a few lines that consistently resurface. I zone out after I hear the first line that I am sure I have heard before. When I zone back in, he's talking about religion more generally. "Really?," the girl he's with is saying. "Yes, YES," Matthew is saying “I looked up the history of the Blade Runner movie, and it said it was made around World War II," the girl is saying. “No, not at all," Matthew says “Oh,” the girl says “How did you like the rape scene?" Matthew asks “What rape scene?" the girl says “Oh that's good," Matthew says. There is new art on the wall of KGB. A rendition of Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl Earring, except in this case, the girl is a dog. “Do you like the new art?,” David asks. “Yes,” I say. “I don’t,” David says. I am picking at the wax on the candle, because everyone is talking and because I don’t have much to say. “Stop playing with fire,” the bartender tells me. “Act like you are at your mothers house.” Except - I mishear her. I think she says you aren’t at your mothers house, because she is right, I am not, but if I was; I would play with the flames as much as I liked. Wednesday, January 29 I would like to put away this phone, I think. Warmer, today. They’ve left the windows open at the coffee shop. I told you it was starting to feel like spring. I told you it would be all spring-like in the depth of winter, soon. Sunlight filtering, filtering, filtering, through the roof at home. The roof and the windows. It’s all one and the same. It’s a new moon tonight. Lunar New Year tonight. You put your head under the covers and filter out the sun. You like it because it is warm but also - the blue light of your phone can absorb your entire vision at any hour, here, in this makeshift tent. I am not of the Escape The Internet train of thought. It’s designed to addict you but then, well, having some fucking discipline. On my phone, I see people saying things like - “there is no ‘on your phone’, just another layer of constant consciousness”. And in real life I think things like - you should separate it if you can, you should know real life if you can but, to leave it all behind - impossible, because it will always be right there, and you could still do things like walk down the street and understand the street as purely physical but then, look around you, look at the other people, look at the surroundings they are absorbing and none of them are real, none of them are there, and so you can’t just stand on this street and get it, understand it, all offline. I don’t really want to get it anymore. My mornings could be real, they could be with just a little discipline and a touch of joie de vivre. They aren’t real, really, because I’m making makeshift Blue Light tents to filter out the sunlight, but then, I’m working on this. Blue, blue, blue sky today. Doomers previews, tonight. Biohacker meetup tonight. Bryan Johnson in Interview Magazine tonight. I like to do things like drink six teas with six Splenda each, and then I like to act very harsh with myself and others regarding the principles of a life well lived. Year of the snake. What do you think about that...? All this talk about discipline, and my afternoon is all drop off a few Depop packages and refresh, refresh, refresh the stats on a piece that I didn’t even write. There’s a hazy little run in the afternoon. There’s some bad news, or, news that is more irritating, really. Ruby spreads the word: "do not take my advice about eating lots of honey," she says. Ok. Ok, it's all protein now, then. David takes me to a strange party tonight. An interloper arrives, and he is chased out at sword point. It is insane how quickly the tides turn. You said the things that you didn’t mean, again. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but then, it never is. You wrote today, earlier, about how - things were good, better, but you didn't want to get too cocky because remember what you were capable of really not too long ago, it was only a few weeks back, but it felt so distant. And then, tonight, again... Thursday, January 30 And then it's ok. Well, it's not, but it can be. You’ve been taking for granted that it will be ok, if it has to be ok. That if you care about something so, so, so deeply then it cannot possibly be destroyed, but it could, you are capable of this. It feels foreign sometimes, this force, this capacity for destruction, like it can’t belong to you, but it does, it’s no one else’s. It becomes simple, then. You can’t just say I crossed my fingers, you can’t just say I take it back. And so, no more. I'm working the door at Tense tonight, which is my favorite - both TENSE, and working doors, that is. It’s a beautiful night, and this, after everything, is a relief. Christian Lorentzen reads emails with Gary Indiana. “I now believe you can tell if the writer is part of a writing program, by looking at their teeth,” Gary told Christian. "Why does everybody love Downton Abbey?" Gary asked Christian, in another email. "Well, what's not to love? The series construction is so glibly subscribed that you know what will happen before the writers do." In another, he lamented the logistical problems surrounding his writings on Cuba - the travel ban, his lover there, etc etc etc. It's a good format for a reading - the emails thing. Correspondences brought to life. Not quite a diary, but close, more intimate, often, because one isn't writing into the void of one's own neurosis in a correspondence. Madelyn writes me an email, after. I am working on my own correspondence back, still. Mania delays the process. It's good to have a long form conversation to return to. I hope this email finds you well. This email finds me almost incapacitated, but I won't be, soon. Beckett's reading is full of empathy and wit as always. He's lamenting the narcissism of our times in his introductory speech, and his own gut impulses and the stories that follow give him the proper wherewithal to do so. I see Sean Lynch and others outside. Sean writes something nice on the evening. I see Doomers the next day - the dream logic of my thoughts following this production requiring another letter altogether WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, February 4 From 7pm at Heaven Can't Wait — Cynosure presents the first of a two night fundraiser for Los Angeles, featuring Alex Arthur, Precious Human, Truman Flyer, and more.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QvaR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4e1cff43-2649-4fd5-b2c0-12597c68d64c_1179x639.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SwKw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb9eb097-5814-48e3-9eee-e66c559d15b5_1200x1600.jpeg, Bryan Johnson in, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EgQz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1cb85ea0-de00-4d10-b03e-ae375da5ddef_1179x642.jpeg, something nice on the evening, Heaven Can't Wait, Cynosure
February Dining.
February 10, 2025 · Original source
Wednesday, February 5 Deep familiarity is many different things at many different moments, I am told today. I kind of disagree. I think there is a core of things. Actually, I really disagree. I really think that there is a core of things. New album by Desire today. New dress on my doorstep. I wake up in an apartment that is briefly all mine. Where were you a year ago today, my friends were asking at dinner yesterday. It's a reasonably interesting thing to consider. I like it best when a year ago feels very distant. Me - I was at KGB Bar. A stranger took the photo. I look very morose. In my memory I was very nervous, and also, I was very pleased. On a walk, trying to write, trying to pour out the sludge, seeking clarity - "I do not feel like writing a whole fucking retrospective every time I try to journal," I write. I am sorry all my details seem crude today. Rules for solitude are - pace in circles, pace on the treadmill, do not be combative in conversation with strangers, do not eavesdrop, sometimes you will not like what you hear. They are talking about murder suicide at pilates, the girl at pilates owned an animal shelter and her star employee murder suicided himself and his girlfriend. You know that cute blonde blogger, she is saying. She was the girlfriend. The guy seemed nice. You never know. Rules for solitude are do not listen to these things, stop listening to these things, you’re going to freak out if you keep on listening to these things. Later, I'm only here to pick up a phone charger, but there's a whole wall of people reading poems about bitter cynicism in this conference room. I apologize for my bitter cynicism, the woman reading is saying, and I hate being in these buildings after dark, I hate the corporate flair to these things. Powerade Zero on the desks. I would like to go lurk in a Chinatown basement. I would like to write an Alt Lit Novel. I would like to be very, very rude. "Would you like to read a list of people who have been censored," a woman at this strange event asks me. "Have you seen a phone charger?" I ask the women. "Now is not the time to be nihilistic," Madelyn’s friend told her yesterday, and I’m not nihilistic, and I'm sorry, and I'm really sorry, and I really really really need to leave now. Thursday, February 6 Ice and snow over my glass house this morning. I heard the sharp rain in the night. I am not surprised it froze over. I am enjoying waking up with - nowhere to go, no one to see. I wouldn't enjoy it for long, but it’s not too bad for now. Walking through this empty apartment and the only sound is me, and then ice falling off the roof overhead. It’s not a big deal, really, and I'm acting a little delusional and insane about the weight of it all, but it's just that I have never done this before - woken up in a building with no one to greet me. And I have tucked my phone far away so that the solitude can feel more complete. And I have cleaned the apartment, top to bottom. I've wrapped an old scarf all around my face and then I've gone for a walk - no matter that the streets are frozen. I do like the ice. I'm sorry. I do. I hope it lasts. The night is swirling and nice. I forgot to take note. Friday, February 7 My parents are here, and I am glowing with the happiness of it. Start the day slowly. I’ve become a bit reckless. I’ll do the dishes. I’ll take out the trash. Intrinsically sloppy, and I wish I wasn’t. When left to my own devices, a descent into chaos is not entirely inevitable. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, February 10 From 7pm - 9pm at Virginia’s — Date Time thinks it’s not too late to find a valentine. The three girls behind a new Feed Me featured speed dating endeavor present their second event, featuring two 45 min rounds of mingling. - “Everyone meets everyone, so get ready to meet a lover, a friend, or perhaps an enemy.” $5 ticket required for entry (proceeds to Direct Relief in LA), and 1 drink minimum to date.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uWjI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd9c23aa1-399d-4139-beee-26b409d77757_909x608.jpeg, Virginia’s, Date Time, Feed Me featured
Santa Teresa
April 10, 2025 · Original source
The Suede Hello will be live on a Chinatown rooftop! DM thesuedehello for address.
Inline links: thesuedehello
mutually assured destruction
May 06, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, April 27 Sitting up in the middle of the night and saying things I don't mean and, it's not that I'm talking in my sleep exactly. More so, I've been trying to figure out if this harshness comes from being evil or if maybe it's more of a vindictive thing instead. Being vindictive implies, at least, that you are seeking some sort of equilibrium. Wrong and be wronged. You aren't just a gratuitous little freak about it. Causality is irrelevant, and I'm nauseous at the gym, playing high vibration Youtube videos in my headphones, standing on an electric plate that can jostle my insides, lymph nodes, drain me like a detox, and yes, there needs to be one of those soon. Making calls and making complaints, and then I'm like, oh sorry, I didn't mean it, I was drunk. And then I'm saying that I feel crazy instead. I feel insane. You don't understand. I have lost complete touch with my judgment. Costa Rica, in the rain I was kicking around mud with my feet and drinking too much and his friends were like oh you think you're in a teen movie or something because I was saying kind of nasty things, too. It's way worse in New York. That is the definitive thing and, also the fact that there is nowhere else. Something can be confusing and still not impossible to regulate. Sorry to be all obfuscated about it. I can control my consciousness. It's my consciousness after all. I go to church in the evening, which feels unbelievably affected - would a girl that is evil redeem herself on her knees before God? - though, that isn't really the question. You believe in good and evil, yet you have found yourself entirely incapable of distinguishing the difference between the two. Yes, then, prognosis, logical conclusion, you have lost your mind. I eat a cookie for breakfast and then the leftovers of the quiche for dinner that I fugue state ordered for my boyfriend at six am, which was a disaster in and of itself. I decided to do something nice, and then the delivery guy couldn't figure out the buzzer and so I stumbled down in my socks and Brandy Melville, I wasn't even very polite about it when he handed me my bag. I pointed to the buzzer and said that's the buzzer and then I called my boyfriend over and over because I realized, also, I'd forgotten to bring down keys. It's the type of day where I spend almost no time eating, but I still feel kind of full in a bad way. Everything I did eat is so calorically dense that it creates some kind of cognizant dissonance. I shouldn't feel this bogged down from just some stupid scraps. I don't want to say terrible things, I said. And yet you constantly are saying terrible things, he said. I wish we didn't do these things, I said. That's like saying you wish spiders weren't real, he said. People are vicious and awful. Then, I do pilates from the pilates app that they sent me for free on Instagram. I'm enough of an influencer these days that brands will send me spam mail disguised as PR. Like 20% off coupon codes to their clothing line personalized just for me, but I still have to pay them 80% if I want the clothes. This means, basically, that I am not an influencer at all, but I have just made things like my email address and my diary psychosis way too public. The pilates studio said - "share if you can!" but I'm sorry, I can't, I'm not really talking about me, I'm talking about something else. First name, last name, coupon codes, face to the name, you're ruining all my plausible deniability. I started sobbing by the window, and he said don't worry, you're sweet. I started thinking he was dead, and he said don't worry, I'm ok. I'm blurring the timelines a bit. He told me I could meet him on the steps of a Chinatown apartment a little bit after sunset. Inside, his friend took calls and let the bathtub-in-the-kitchen Chinatown apartment become a kind of neutral territory. I sat in the guest room and held my breath. Say the same things over and over, and because you mean it, they eventually stick. Viewing everything in black and white. They've told me that's my problem. That and being too suggestible, and also out of control. I started being all dramatic about it and yeah there's been too much partying, but I come to learn I'm pretty much like this sober, too. Things were really really really pure and sweet, and I keep on thinking in ninety days, ninety days of being pure again, and everything bad can be problems that belonged to someone else. I am trying to become like a Monk about it. It's not so much that my impulse towards reaction is wrong, but rather that I act purely on impulse, and impulse alone never did anything other than make a situation that much worse. Spring and Redemption, I say, on my dumb fucking TikTok. Spring and redemption, my boyfriend says. Yeah, that's cute, this one is cute. Did you spell synchronicity wrong for engagement or to be insane? my boyfriend asked. Insane, I said. He stopped to think about it. So stupid, he said. You aren't that insane. Order diet pepsi bean and cheese burrito nicotine gum and we're lying in the sun. So much sun through the windows that we have to keep the blinds shut or the light goes too crazy, the air conditioning fires up but not much can be done in the face of UV like this. Lucky, luck,y lucky. I spent the week talking to myself. Lying on the floor and I'm trying to seek cognizance in repetition. The same word three times. First, you remember what it means. Second, you determine what you think is true. You don't take it for granted. If you don't take it for granted, then you won't lose your mind. Monday, April 28 Eiverything gets better overnight. No more crying in my sleep. 2:22am and I’m not yelling. I see things more with precision than as if through angels and mystics. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be so transcendental about it. It’s really evil to try to mythologize something that is neither beautiful nor true. I stayed at Hudson Square until late last night. Black socks and black shoes and a tennis skirt that doesn’t match to be late to class today. The sun has rushed back and it’s iced tea no breakfast no lunch. David meets me at Cafe Reggio, where to our left, an awful woman is berating her husband to levels of borderline abuse, and to our right a lovely couple is talking about the difference between mere activity, and real fulfillment. You gain fulfillment from things like C-suite and making tv shows and real estate, the man is saying. Activity is something like going to Europe, he is telling his wife. These are the things that fulfill us, for others it might be different, the woman is saying. I am surprised to hear, that in referencing C-Suite, they are suggesting real fulfillment.. Materially, things are working themselves out. The rot has been first, material, and then secondly, spiritual. We go to Lupa for a lovely spring dinner. Sweet then sour then sweet. I am endlessly interested in reiterations, but that just makes things worse and worse. Homemade focaccia and olive oil and arugula salad and lobster corn ravioli and lamb chops and tartufo which is like a shell of hazelnut, ice cream, paper plane to drink and the restaurant is closing by the time we leave. Tuesday, April 29 You stop a night terror like this: creep down the ladder and say to your boyfriend, you need to turn off the projector right this second. The light was emitting vibes that were very off putting and I was concerned about scentless and odorless gas. My boyfriend makes me pasta and gives me a beer. You kind of briefly entered a state of psychosis, he tells me. I get super offended by that one. A bad dream doesn’t mean I need lithium or something, I say. I didn’t say you have schizophrenia, he says. I said you seemed to be under the impression that the projector light was toxic, poison, and evil, which is the very definition of a state of psychosis - the merging of reality with hallucination. No, I say, that’s the very definition of a bad dream. Anyways, I’ve been having sleep paralysis because I’ve been having insomnia. I’ve been much more normal about it. Run, coffee, iced tea, the world's worst sandwich back at Cafe Reggio in the afternoon. Do you have any favorite spots in New York, the tall man next to me is asking the short man across the table. “Well, it’s far from here,” the short man tells the tall man. "it's really far from here. it's called Coney Island." I pick out all the healthy bits of my dinner and eat just the bread instead. I’ve been feeling tempted to get really fucking skinny again. Being weird and off putting with my sandwich and then leaving my scraps with abandon. Feeling pretty sane today, I don't really want to get out of here anymore. Wednesday, April 30 Up all night just like last week, and I'm in class reading from my story like oh I'm probably not going to freak out but it's still a possibility. David turns older today. He's still asleep when I get home in the afternoon. Macarons and iced coffee on the table. We go to Vol de Nuit and I get promptly drunk on cider. It's bright and nice and I'm writing tipsy. This week won’t eb and flow in the way that I hate. Make yourself head empty and then see what happens. We go next door to Dear Stranger for dinner. Red snapper and jalapeno sauce and wedge salad and shrimp tostadas. Two martinis. David makes a scene in a scuffle with one of those guys on the streets who shill comedy shows on the way home. Then, I wake up and it feels like morning but it’s only just past midnight. I used to miss the things I have right now so much. I’d miss it through abstraction, really. All through hypotheticals because it had never really been mine in the first place. It shocks me when I see my life emerge unscathed from fits of self destruction. Playing fast and loose when it comes to the thing of redemption. I am trying not to be that way. First it is sour and then it is sweet. This is one of two directions that any progression of events can take. Obviously, I know the direction that I would like to pursue. Thursday, May 1 Everything has come alive again, though I'm not quite sure if it's solid yet. I almost step in a pool of blood on Rivington Street, and then we're talking about the uptick in dead bodies that people keep finding around town these days. I'm going to stop being so morbid. You can be thinking about one thing, and then you can decide to be thinking about something else. Yesterday evening felt sparkly and nice. David and I stayed at Vol de Nuit for a while, drinking cider, which makes me feel full but not that drunk, lots of sunshine and we bring in our own food. Peanut mayonnaise garlic sauce on french fries. I'm less disgusted by these things than I used to be. Yesterday's dinner felt nice but a little too drunk. I was drinking iced tea at two in the morning and then my boyfriend was throwing bottles across the room in a way that was funny, not crazy. I got an email asking me if I'd like to talk about Dimes Square for a German newspaper but I wouldn't like to do this and so I didn't respond. I got an email regarding Amtrak tickets. Things have been too whiplash lately. I got an email from my friend. I owe edits on some projects, and I like when big things happen quickly, though we are not quite there yet. The nature of how I am creatively always edges on narcissism - reflection and observation being more natural than imagination to me, I suppose. although the night terrors suggest some kind of imagination. People like to tell me that. I’m close to the mystics. On a literal level - clinical - the night terrors suggest nothing other than a flirting with psychosis, though my paranoia does not extend to fear over my mind. Nobody actually thinks I’m losing my mind Physically, a parasite cleanse can be dangerous because the heavy metals your parasites held will be dumped right back into your body. I do have paranoia surrounding being poisoned, though this is more a concern of the mind. April - I wrote 40,000 words in my secret diary that I do not share here. This is surely excessive. There are worse things. What I meant to say is: the narcissism has felt less like filtering observation and reflection through the self these days, and more like actually just kind of sloppy-like, thinking about Myself. The sun is nice, because it heats my greenhouse apartment so quickly - downstairs becomes for the daytime, and upstairs becomes so bright and burnt to a crisp that it has to only be for sleep. Sleeping in the day here is nice. It’s like somebody cast a spell on me. I am not someone to sleep in the day, but a greenhouse apartment is something like a potion this time of year. Friday, May 2 When I think about how to synthesize an idea into a quote or a meme, something pithy really, then the idea is immediately ruined. Even it was a good idea at the start. This makes me want to distance myself from the quote, meme, thing of posting more generally I suppose though, I’m still having fun. I’m so sure about things, now. I was feeling really really really unsure about things and I’m so sure now. I feel so bad for acting all ambivalent about it. I’m so certain. I have never been more certain and I have never been more sincere. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 6 From 7pm at Pete’s Candy Store — Mind Palace Poetry presents The Girls Room, with special guest host Sophie Appel. Featuring Sascha Cohen, Siena Foster-Soltis, Jude Lavelle, and Montana James Thomas.
Inline links: Pete’s Candy Store
From 8pm - 10pm at The Bench (Chinatown) — Doomers returns for 2 Nights Only. “In humanity’s last act… who plays God?
Inline links: The Bench, Doomers
From 8pm - 10am at The Bench (Chinatown) — One last chance to see Doomers
Inline links: The Bench, Doomers
Big Huge World
October 06, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, September 22 On the Upper West Side, there are stone townhouses and quiet streets and nice branzino and diet coke with lemon and they bring us baskets of red pesto and baguette and memories both good and bad become holographic quite quickly. New York is not all rotten. There are the last days of summer to take care of. Last days of gluttony. Last days of Reading Series. In a cab downtown to meet Lily with a stomach ache, Lily tells me that she is at a bar meeting boys. I meet her on the street. She’s wearing a white dress and she looks sparkling. There are others, on the steps, out here, and we all do the whole charade of all pretending like we have all never met. Lily met a boy at the bar who wants to take her on a road trip with his dogs, she tells me. You’re too young for me, but it’ll be fun while it lasts, the boy tells Lily. He sends each individual word as a separate message and then shares a video of two pitbulls sparing on a field of plastic turf. Lily lays her phone flat in her hand and we loom over it in the orange September sort of night. The video plays on an infinite loop. The dogs unhinge their massive jaws and aim to swallow a basketball whole. You’ll go upstate and get mauled to death by this guy’s pitbulls, I tell Lily. I’m not going upstate, Lily tells me. We walk further downtown, trace the usual path to a magazine launch in a night club that I thought would be more crowded. We sit in the backroom, and you can hear the readings better here than if you claw your way to the front like everyone else, but we probably appear to be kind of checked out. I’m going to save you, Lily tells me. We walk to Funny Bar where Sam is smoking outside. Am I safe to go inside, I ask Sam. He nods and flicks his hand towards the door. His friends are all from The Internet, and they introduce themselves by alias. Standing by the bar and Sam is saying that Los Angeles is it now. I stand a little halfway outside the conversation circle with my shirt pulled pretty tight around me and contribute a few half hearted sentiments about how Los Angeles can’t be it. The cars, the sprawl, the niceties, the plastic surgery. It’s got to be Austin, Sam’s friend is saying. It’s the same stale conversation topic as usual. How New York is over. Culture is over. Sam is listing a few mid to low tier Los Angeles based Internet personalities around which a new and transgressive art scene could revolve. I am dead sober, and therefore relieved to notice that I do not float out of my body and watch myself say something annoying and off-beat, like I inevitably would if I were drunk. None of those people have a mass fanbase of beautiful women, I point out to Sam. In Los Angeles, you’d find fifteen e-girls and they’d have to take Ubers. Sam agrees that this could potentially be a problem. If it’s uninteresting here, then it’s uninteresting everywhere, but I understand why everyone is seeking renewal. Like The Internet isn’t alive and everyone isn’t talking about the same things everywhere. Like Sam and his crew could wash up on Hollywood Boulevard and say the same things five years later, to a five years younger crop of wonderful young girls, fresh eyed and eager, they’d spawn out of nowhere, they would never have heard all of the things that have already been said before. Tuesday, September 23 Watching the gray light filter through the windows of a studio where everything is tan or cream or pale blue or gold. Watching a waiter at a cafe down the street bring over black coffee, cannoli, and strawberries in a chalice. Start the day with solitude. I have never lived like this before. A smooth and slick kind of woman across from me is talking about her sister who broke up with her boyfriend after meeting a Danish stone carver who believes in hard work and apprenticeship and not necessarily general education. The sister became repulsed by her boyfriend after spending time with the stone carver because she felt her boyfriend had too pragmatic a view on life. The sister left her passport at her ex’s place for one whole week and needs an ego death. She needs a concrete understanding of the next couple years. She wants to continue to go to school for forever, though this part, the whole family agrees is fine. The girl across from me is practically dripping gel from her slicked back bright red bun. She’s cloaked in business casual and a bad attitude. She’s drinking a cappuccino and she’s off to pilates. I am wondering if I would find her smug and didactic demeanor less off putting if she were more beautiful. She is wearing a stripped shirt and she gestures a J-Crew sleeve towards me and my own striped shirt as she leaves. It’s like a movie, she says. My shirt is softer and thinner and I want to coil the sleeves up and climb inside. It’s like mimes, I respond. Mimes? she asks. I do not mime. I hope she knows what that word means. It is not so much a thing of feeling out of place. I have worlds of characters and oddities at my fingertips. I like characters and oddities, which, along with a desire driven by ennui and terror to remain right at the very center of things, is why I am still here. I tend to like when people are abrasive, because it means they are fixated on just one thing. I watch the woman leave and I know for certain that I do not like her but it is not a thought that troubles me too much. It is a thought that passes like a cloud. Wednesday, September 24 Later, the air conditioning is off, and I’m pacing through empty health food aisles, drawing signs of the moon in class; waxing crescent moon, Libra moon, PLS GO FETCH ME THE MOON. Later, someone is talking about bio weapons at another party downtown. The genomes, the rapture, the clarity, the apocalyptic ideation. Please do not stress me out right now, the man on stage at the party is saying. I do not like that question. A different question. Could someone in the audience please ask one precise and better question? I see Iris and her blond hair bobbing up and down across the traffic stop as I stand outside the ice cream shop taking stock of my day and my night. Iris is carrying bright-blue-epson-salt and she is walking back towards a glass apartment in the sky. Do you want to sit, Iris asks? Inside? The rotating apartment in the sky. One rotation used to be mine. I can survive going inside. No, outside. We sit on the benches at the edge of the street as the ice cream shop closes, and I tell Iris all about how much things have improved. I have not been home all day, I tell Iris. I throw up my hands. Performative exhaustion. The whole ordeal is pleasant. Iris is very buoyant today. You should write aphorisms, Iris tells me. Passivity responds to harshness. Lethargy responds to good metabolic function. Have you noticed how all the energy here has come whirling-back-to-life? Iris starts telling me about the state of things. She has figured out where she stands when it comes to her positioning in the state of things. She has surmised who will be left behind. I nod. I clarify my own positions and I mean it. So we agree, Iris says. Good! I tell Iris about how I was at a French Cafe in Chinatown drinking matcha with almond milk which surprised my friends because they would have presumed that someone becoming Catholic would take coffee and drink it with whole milk, preferably raw. I tell Iris about how a lot has changed but I am still not so sure. I tell Iris about how culture isn’t dead but a lot of people have just decided not to be a part of it. I don’t say all of this out loud. I am still not so sure. Every apartment I go to is full of relics. Every party I go to is the same. Thursday, September 25 Sitting at Bar Oliver with Celia and it’s all red leather booths, light jazz music, non alcoholic beer which can be good for estrogen levels in women and black coffee and my eyes keep following the ceiling fans in circles. The rain has come and washed everything clean. I can have anything I want. I hang my purse on the metal arm of the tableside lamp. Incandescent bulbs. Write a note on the top of my planner. I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT BUT I CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING I WANT. Chinatown in the rain is cinematic and less like the land of leggings and small dogs that is increasingly stretching its grimy tendrils out and expanding all over downtown Manhattan. Celia turns her laptop around to show me a photograph of a light wood living room, checkered yellow table cloth, soft and warm armchair. This looks like your parents house, Celia says. Where did you find that, I ask. I found it on Tumblr, Celia says. We go for a walk along the East River, where the rain and the heat have turned everything kind of the same shade of fairytale gray. Celia tells me stories as we walk. Sylvia was an heiress and her dad was an inventor. Camilla was a tragic figure. Lucy was a ghost. I can imagine there were a lot of inventors coming out of that part of the world, I tell Celia. Why do you imagine that?, Celia asks me. Because there’s little to do but the temperament of the area is less mundane and passive than in neighboring states, I explain. The opioid crisis never hit, Celia agrees. There was no heroin, and so people invented things. We walk past the Governors Island Ferry and a kind of dilapidated and green Casa Cipriani. This is where the art fair was, Celia says. I have brain fog, I say. I go home, cheerful and ill. I go to an album release party where the singer is shaking with tears streaming down his face as the songs play, and then very cheerful and calm as he greets his wife and friends. I go to a Right Wing magazine launch and then to a celebration for a zine about ETHICS. I listen to the same song until I can’t bear it anymore. Take the M to the end of the line. Take photos of the tennis courts here, because they’re glistening in the rain and night. I show the bartender at Gotscheer Hall my passport from Switzerland and he beams. You should work here, he says. I beam back. I should work here, I say. Gotscheer Hall is huge and cavernous and covered with murals of fairytales. It’s like a whole huge world here. The world of Gotscheer Hall, and then the world of the fairytales that line its walls. It’s a Whole Huge World, I say. I say this over and over again. I took the train to the end of the M line, and then I remembered that it’s a whole huge world. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, October 6 From 4:40pm at Film Forum — Bresson’s Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1972) screens. - “Third filming (following Visconti’s) of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, transposed to ’70s Paris.” Worth seeing before it closes.
Inline links: Film Forum, Four Nights Of A Dreamer
Fever Dreams
November 05, 2025 · Original source
A good nights sleep Monday, October 27 I opened the window to let in the eerie and whistling wind after the reading last night and then I stayed up late, fallen leaves and pollen drifting past my headboard. Called Celia to talk about the same things all over again. Called Celia to request that she confirm my fears and delusions and certainties for the million billionth time. I’m getting a really creepy feeling, Celia said. Like a horror movie, Celia said. In my earliest memories, I recall walking around with this very deep self-assuredness. I would wake up everyday feeling so certain and blessed for the absolute pureness of my heart. So when he said he understood me as perfect, it was like oh someone finally understands me the way that I understand myself, Celia said It is important to always have pure intentions, I told Celia. I like when people share my aesthetic sensibilities and are unfazed about the things I worry hedge towards evil, I told Celia I’m starting to feel so creeped out, Celia told me. Tuesday, October 28 Nothing was so creepy. I was not scared of anything anymore. I could still hear the wind through my open window and in the daylight it was nice. The nicest, really. The nicest thing in the world. I slept through the afternoon half aware of this nice and floating wind and then I donned a black skirt, black top, black Ganni boots and I drifted through orange-hour Washington Square Park and a light fall rain towards the lobby of The Marlton Hotel. Where there was a fire and Celia perched by it, waiting for me. Nothing ever happens. I used to be so arrogant, I told Celia, at The Marlton. Arrogance is a good sort of thing to hold onto, sometimes. Celia told me. Celia said something about our friends being cancelled online, something about moral hierarchies, she was done feeling sorry for herself and love thy god with all thy heart and all thy might and acedia is the only truly mortal sin. The Marlton Hotel and God and Self Indulgence. French fries with garlic aioli and dirty martinis and tuna tartar and writers workshop without too much writing. I was sitting there kicking my feet around and feeling like I might die if I couldn’t break-the-pattern-today-so-the-loop-does-not-repeat-tomorrow. Do you remember what life used to feel like? Do you wish to live forever? Do you wish to never suffer? Do you wish to never suffer, forever? I’m sorry to be cryptic about it. Wednesday, October 29 In my fever dream, I was back on the Amtrak heading towards Florida, Massachusetts and everyone around me was screaming. We were traveling to record something regarding Esoteric Health. It was still October, and I knew the omens we were seeking to be somewhat evil. Everyone was furious at me, and this only bothered me because I did not know why. Woke up in New York City yelling, somewhere between a memory and a fugue state. A recurring dream I used to have where I was driving with my parents over the George Washington Bridge in a winter storm and an old woman was lurching at the vehicle, tugging at the door handles, talking about how it was almost too late. A train ride last winter where everyone was screaming at me because my ex-boyfriend was being abrasive and I was kind of in on the bit. A small faux-thatched-roof apartment in Greenwich Village where no one is angry because no one is here. I paid my dues in apologies and reparations in October, and now God has rewarded me with a real life fever and unpleasant news. A lot of things I loved became shrouded in delusion and vicious self-involvement. A lot of clarity and purity of heart became hard to access because my morning was shrouded in a fever. Kind of wanting to scream. Kind of wanting to take my Brown Prada Boots and Black Fry Boots and Grandmas Suede Ballet Flats to the cobbler. My Blue Pearl Necklace to the jeweler. My Sue Wang Dress and Red Vintage Slip to the tailor. Kind of have been like a bull in a china shop with all my beautiful things, and now there is so much to fix. Kind of feeling indignant. I should really focus on believing in something. I believe in hotel lobbies, superficially. I believe in other things, too, but I am trying to have a bit more discretion about it. Thursday, October 30 Here is what has happened: I am sitting at The Marlton hotel now where everything is cast in a kind of olive glow and the fire place is roaring and I ordered a cheese board with camembert, comté, manchego, six grapes, two halfs figs, spoon of truffle honey and spoon of jam by myself. Ordered chamomile tea and sat with Rebecca and Dory in the sunroom with my fever, earlier. Now, I am sitting by the fire with my fever by myself. I am not ready to go home. I am not really ready to think or write about the sort of things that have happened. A small beautiful blond child and her brother a bit older just walked in both wearing sweet striped shirts. Their father just finished the marathon. Their mother is all smiles, pulling apples from her canvas bag and polishing them on the hotel napkins before placing the fruit in the beautiful children’s outstretched hand. I am green with envy. I am so overjoyed to be looking in on their Beautiful Life. An insufferable duo on a first date next to me is talking about how much they hate parades and how their work is industry agnostic. Their flirting is so nauseating. Bad voice physiognomy. They are flirting with each other in the most insufferable and sexless way and you can tell, so clearly, that they met on The Internet. I am starting to consider forgoing The Internet. There is a soulless kind of song and dance these people are doing. He is listing out his favorite types of Pasta Shapes and numbering his rankings on his stubby fingers. She is talking about food poisoning. Neither of them are religious. I am trying to stomach my distaste. If you have ugly thoughts they will seep through your skin and stomach and long black sleeves of your long black Brandy Melville dress and they will seep up through your mind and out of your pours and intermingle with the rancid scent of your fever that will become a deeper sort of illness and start to rot and fester in you forever. Your bitter and ugly thoughts will start to turn your face all ugly and ruined. I am trying to wish them grace and good will. I am trying to sip my tea and choke down fruit truffle honey and crackers. Twist my hair into two very tight braids. I want to find myself a little less repulsed. I want to look at these strangers’ pale forms and imagine them replaced by orbs of light. I want to look inside their rich inner worlds. I want to look into strangers’ eyes and not be afraid of staring or back holes. I want to wish them well. I want to hope they find a beautiful life. I want to hope they buy a beautiful life. Friday, October 31 Here is what has happened. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Once; I lived in a glass apartment in the sky. I am not sure how things can oscillate in extremes, to that degree, with that level of hot and cold and up and down and everything cruel, like it became. I used to lie on the floor to feel close to things. Lie on the floor and dream about it. The past has been orbiting in ways that make me queasy along with the illness in the air, today and yesterday, since the eve of Halloween, really. At the Halloween Party in Chinatown I wore a black hat and milled about amongst red flowers, plum tart, candles and courtyards. Went bolting up the stairs to catch a car. Went walking under the Washington Square Park archway where the air was very crisp and I was very feverish. The park was overwhelming me with street performers and noise and light and stimulation. And then in the shadows and the grass and tucked away beyond the benches there are figures in sweatshirts and denim and long sweeping hair and interlaced hands and fallen leaves and everything sweet all around the edges. I was sitting at the edge of the park in June with my fingers interlaced and the beating sun fading into dusk and the summer stretching kind of hazy and breathless ahead. It is strange to try to remember anything. Strange all the stories I am hearing in the wind and the autumn and the fever dreams and another passing season. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 5 From 7pm at Night Club 101 — 99 Minutes or Less returns with Maison du Bonheur (2017, 62 minutes). 99 Minutes or Less is a new free film screening showing films that are (you guessed it) 99 minutes or less. This evening’s screening is guest programmed by Elissa Suh of Movie Pudding. After party to follow with sounds by Dj Kyle and Paradise by Replica
Inline links: Night Club 101, 99 Minutes or Less, Maison du Bonheur, Elissa Suh, Movie Pudding, Dj Kyle, Paradise by Replica
Things that Happened Once I Gave Up Vice
November 12, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, November 3 And so everything kind of begins to hover as November sweeps in. The in between weeks. One can leave the city and then one can return. I call Amelia and ask if she’d like to go on another vacation for the aim of seeking things that are transgressive and weird, but the heat and the restlessness and the Miami sun of late-may is long gone, we never did visit the falconry like we planned, everyone would probably prefer to just stay put. Boil bone broth, go to a film, seek employment, write at the gym, braid and unbraid my hair three to four times before I decide to give it a rest. Do you really hate staying put that much?, Amelia asks. I go to the West Village Bitcoin Bar past ten pm in response. Still feverish from the last few days, but the wind outside is nice and the walk along Washington Square Park is quiet, tracing the streets along the park’s West edges past the brownstones and the Washington Square Hotel and the Marlton Hotel and then Pubkey Bar. It is not so much a thing of hating to stay put, but more of feng shui, four small walls, wind and water through my open window and I think most people dislike solitude of a certain kind, which can easily be mistaken for stillness. Pubkey Bar is always lit up kind of like an arcade. They sold some sign about crypto for one million dollars here, once. They sold the president’s autograph. They made me pickletinis and diet coke and seed-oil-free nachos and I used to be kind of manic here, drunk and yelling in the wind and on the street. It is such a desperately quiet night tonight. My friends are seated in the back rooms talking softly about the most valuable parts of a whole whale, their most favorite things about the people close to them, the best sound to elicit tears, the best cherry liqueur, the best ideas for how a person should be. It all comes at me kind of underwater, anyways. It’s all felt kind of shadowy as this year writes over the year before. Tuesday, November 4 And so all the energy came swirling back in an instant. They are playing sweet music like some of the My Fair Lady and the Mad Men soundtrack and J’ai 18 Ans and Zou Bisou Bisou at the hotel lobby with the roaring fireplace and the Cecily Brown mural and the young couples wearing cream slacks and red sweaters and holding newspapers and crinkled baskets of pastries. I have loved winter in New York the most of anything these past few years, and I’d been worried this one would not hold quite the same magic. Walk through the park while it is still early. Wear mostly skirts and tights and thin strapped tops and ballet flats, all black. Order ginger turmeric tea and almond milk cappuccino and write stories by the fire. Disavow hedonism. Disavow becoming the sort of person who does the certain types of things. There’s an order to these things. I tell Amelia; it is good to be mostly quiet. It is good to go to mostly the same places a million times over if the places one chooses are good. Wednesday, November 5 Did you notice everyone became very pleased that you were becoming exactly who you were meant to be when they first put you on Adderall?“ Ellie asked me at the party last night. The night was very warm and the party was very quiet and I was pleased with myself for my relative self possession that evening, which was the goal of the fall and the winter and the days that stretched out kind of breathless. Secret-keepers and Promise-Keepers and finding equilibrium between Self-Possession and Self-Awareness. These were the vaguely worded goals of the winter. No I didn’t really find that, I told Ellie. But I never got the chance to live out my potential on stimulants because I took it too far right away. Ellie nodded with sincere interest. My friends these days were very sincere. And the party was strange because the seating was in bleachers instead of tables and the music was jazz and my friends were very well dressed, decked in corsets and ballet flats and beaded belts and hair with ribbons and holding sparkling drinks with lime and aperol and smiling very broadly. I noticed that time had been passing all along sometime in early November. and so the following fervor came spurred by the sense that something might finally happen. The air got barely perceptively colder and ghosts washed up in dreams or in my courtyard or in signs and symbols like the strange numbers I’d been seeing on the sidewalk. It had been five months to the day since the start of summer and the lurching of my life in unexpected and nefarious though perhaps ultimately necessary ways, which I suppose just goes to show that some sort of momentum was required for time to do anything aside from idly tick on. I remembered that it is just one or two or three promises I make myself and others, though it becomes one million promises if you break one promise a million times. Thursday, November 6 I did nothing in the day yesterday besides watch the clouds make shadows out of various shades of light and dusk across my walls and then I pulled on a small black dress and black Ganni crumbling boots and walked through the quiet night towards Chinatown. The air was too stale and tight inside the sports bar where my friends were all smiles and drinking water and vodka and asking me about fun and faith and so then I walked further downtown to the new wine bar on Henry Street. Here, everyone was very drunk and cast in red light and our table was set in a hallway that resembled a kindergarten classroom and an eclectic group of acquaintances I knew from the Internet or Birthday Parties or Religious Magazines were sharing bottles of wine. To sleep very little means a dream state in the gray morning, which is nice because November Ninth marks the first real distance from the summer for me. The cycles repeated. The cycles grinded to a halt. I woke up to gray morning light through my still open window with a spiral bound notebook and an idea for transcription on the blank page: THINGS THAT HAPPENED ONCE I GAVE UP VICE. Friday, November 7 Listening to Chopin Nocturne op.9 no.2 while the sound of rain mixes with the sound of the turtle pond out the window and I swim in all the visions of where I’ve heard this song before. Like twirling around on brown wood floors during summer storms in the dining room at the house by the ocean while my parents cook fish stews in the kitchen and the floors turn yellow linoleum when you approach the stove and the pouring rain outside streams through the windows and all over the counters. The memory of twirling around and the smell of rain is always the most vivid of all. Like I’m always hurdling towards something or lying very still in all my recollections of things. Obsessed with motion. Arrested by motion! So the main thing now is momentum, I suppose. My Computer keeps on queuing up Chopin the The Nutcracker and Philip Glass Mishima based on past listening habits, but these two scores are both a bit too much to bear right now and so I’m hitting Skip Skip Skip. Not too much has happened since I gave up vice yesterday. Just; Rebecca told me that I look well rested, and the story about El Salvador and network states and techno-spirituality is off to print so I will soon be able to hold it in my hands and then relinquish any narrativization of past events and, it would be nice for energy drinks and nicotine to be coursing through my veins right now but there is something more beautiful and languid in self-induced timeout over microplastics and mind altering substances. Moonless night. Moon hidden behind the rainstorm. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 12 From 6:30pm at Night Club 101 — Free reading series Reading 101 launches, ft Swati Sudarsan, Adrienne Raphel, Jessica Lynne, Aurora Huiza, and James Barickman. Music by Solex Yoghurt.
Inline links: Night Club 101, Reading 101
Winter (03)
November 19, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, November 11 The first winter when I started to understand how things work here, I was crazy with momentum. Crazy like I was floating in air or maybe even made of it. It all started because it was too cold to walk slowly outside, and once we started picking up the pace - a quick clip in the night and the snow and it was a particularly windy winter - then everything else started to spiral a bit out of control. I wore velvet dresses to magazine offices for Christmas parties that winter and I was generally very uninhibited. I floated very warm and drunk off hot wine through a basement in Chinatown full of books and Arabian rugs for many nights in a row. In one night alone, I lost my voice and my phone and my sense of time passing all along. Sairose helped me wash up in the back of some night club, in a purple-lit party designed to simulate the void, at home and in love and in Los Angeles for a respite from the cold and all the can’t-stop-motion that came with it. Anyways, I slept on a floor under white arched ceilings pressed against a radiator for a few months after that. And I was certain I was not ready to be old yet and I’m still not, really, but there were other things too. 8am (present) - The first real day of winter, and so everything freezes over and then quiets in the soft start of snow outside. It’s fish and soup season, an old man at Caffe Reggio is saying. It reminds me of The Godfather (1972) in here, the old man is laughing. Stained glass lamps and the replicas of the Carvaggio paintings and white tiled ceilings and, since I gave up vice the goal has become to be a bit more quiet and clean about everything. Amelia wears Dries Van Noten jeans and a Calvin Klein black sweater and prada boots to meet me in the morning snow and read the things I wrote on paper. In the mornings, this time of year, it is good to brew things like bone broth, hot apple cider from the amish market, sardines in tomato sauce, your throat in black seed oil, your face in red light, and your thoughts in memories that resurface and ideas that reconstruct away from the architectures of unhappiness. Your aphorisms don’t make a ton of sense, Amelia tells me. I’m not writing aphorisms, I’m writing optimizations, I tell Amelia. At the bar last night, we ordered Fernets and diet coke and asked our guests if they considered themselves well adjusted and if they had tips to share pertaining to Esoteric Health. Do you know about Ray Peat, our guests asked. Do you know about royal jelly and methalyn blue and red light chicken lamps? Do you know about making good decisions for the benefit of yourself and the people around you? Kind of dizzy from two fernets on an empty stomach, Celia made a joke about her life and how it overlapped with mine. Don’t ever make any comparison to your life as it pertains to mine, I snapped. The bar was loud and so no one heard the vitriol but her. Is this what you want more than anything in the world?, Celia asked. To be able to say and do whatever you want without consequence? Howling wind outside, and we’ve been working on temperance. I wanted a lot of things, but I mostly wanted that. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 19 From 7:00 - 8:30pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Cabin Pressure opened yesterday, and there’s another performance tonight! A new play by Adi Eshman, directed by Jennesy Herrera. - “Set in a cabin at a ski resort, What begins as a light-hearted getaway spirals into a cocaine-and-beer-fueled disaster, with the groom’s sober brother-in-law as the unwilling witness to the chaos.” | tickets here (additional performances Nov 20, 21, 22)
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Adi Eshman, Jennesy Herrera, here
Humanoid-Robots
March 06, 2026 · Original source
In the summer, when the air was sickly sweet and I was feeling ill but knew the day would be ok to pass in the sort of languid-and-waiting-for-it-to-end kind of way, we took a CitiBike over towards Thai Diner. We biked along the Hudson River, first. In Riverside Park, I stopped alongside the dinosaur playground and the firefighter memorial and I touched the shiny metal heads of all these structures left behind. My companions were irritated yet understanding of this divergence. We biked to the George Washington Square Bridge after that, and Jennifer jumped in the dirty water, and Riley vomited off the pier. Back downtown, the air was humid and heavy and the wait outside Thai Diner was long, which made everyone feel kind of claustrophobic if not necessarily physically worse. Not traditional not traditional not traditional, Ian kept on saying. Kicking rocks around Chinatown. He liked this place nonetheless. Thai Diner is cartoonishly bright and the greenhouse heats quickly and it is not the sort of place to visit during summer storms. When the rain started, Ian and I walked to the chocolate factory. At the chocolate factory, he bought me sweets painted like portraits and water colors and little mini worlds. Best chocolates in the world, he kept on saying. I unwrapped the chocolates like little parcels, and we both found them to be quite a delight. Thai Diner is kind of Michelin-star style. Really good food. Mango and coconut sticky rice. Curries and fried cod. Every bite delights, but all I can really remember is we were all too sick or maybe just too hot to eat. I ordered hot toddy because it’s good to drink warm things when warm, and it’s good to drink strong things when hands are shaking at the cedar wood counter of a nice restaurant, and friends are dripping Hudson River water all over the floor. Ian ordered a smoothie that was green and piled high with coconut-flakes. Get me out of here, he kept on saying. I love this place, he said. I feel so goddamn bad. Get me a cab right now. We went home after that, and the greenhouse roof at home made the whole place boil and so I fell asleep easily, even midday. I think I fell asleep for the rest of the year, or at least the afternoon.

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