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Costa Rica

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Costa Rica

Article

Costa Rica is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between April 04, 2025 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Santa Teresa, Costa Rica”; “It’s been such a haze since arriving in Costa Rica”; “I’m lying on a small thin bed in Costa Rica”. It most often appears alongside New York, David, El Salvador.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 6
  • Issue count: 6
  • First seen: April 04, 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.

Live Diary.
April 04, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 27 Midnight in New York, I'm taking stock of my glass apartment in the sky. I brought back nine dresses from El Salvador - eight old ones, one black tennis dress from El Tunco. All to be washed. Open the window. There is spring breeze now, all of a sudden, really, but I've been growing accustomed to real heat. These things I used to hate - dense hot air, beating sun, a day that stretches on under direct natural light, no end, no plans.... I would suddenly like to return to this, actually, over frigid and clipped stories about foggy northern coastlines and other things in that vein. Over stories about New York, and other things in that vein. David has stayed in San Salvador, and then, Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. It would have been basically free for me to come and yes I have commitments here but not too many if we're being really honest. I would have become kind of a freak after three whole weeks in airbnbs that are calling themselves "hacker houses," though, is the main issue. And, I wanted to do laundry and stretch in the spring breeze, open the window, set an alarm. It would be so easy for me to untether the physical circumstances of my whole life, these days. It would be easy to have distance from New York, as the main thing, but distance from physicality more generally, too. I've done it before. Honestly, I'm not eighteen anymore, I don't think it makes sense for me to do it again. I will probably stop being so strange and vague once I have even one conversation with my friends back in New York. For now, it is very strange to be alone. Very strange to walk around even a small space, that even only temporarily, is belonging just to me. The past few weeks have been about eclipsing interiority with observation. Floating in realms that are foreign. Not El Salvador, even. The hacker house stuff more. The dialogue of it all, more. The other reason I am here, home, abandoned visions of a hologram of Santa Teresa and also I already really miss my boyfriend - well there was responsibility and laundry and the reading and the stories to finish but also, the lunar eclipse played a role for sure. Something about the Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The floods and the fights. Seek less direct attention from that vivid piercing beaming beating sky. Seek solid ground, I saw someone say online. So, I did. I'm back in stupid dumb New York. Window open. You can barely feel all that fresh air. Friday, March 28 I do go for a walk in the morning, and I do still love New York, I decide. I want to have very delicate arms and boundless energy. I want to have tremendous discipline in a way so as to elicit joie de vivre, and also paths of clarity. The brain fog is so bad today. In the middle of the night, the jet lag woke me up, and I hate sleeping alone in this apartment. I'm sorry, I know I’m being a child but I hate it, the emptiness, when I wake up from paralysis, there are often moments of brief delusion. Alone, glass house, I have to talk myself down. I’ve tried to bring myself to life, today - long walk, two protein bars, slice of papaya, sushi roll for dinner, diet coke and cigarette, make a Vlog, make a Call. David had sleep paralysis, too, last night, he tells me on the phone. This is weird, because usually, this is a plight that is just for me. In real life, there was a creepy elderly woman occupying the hacker house in El Salvador, too. “I started a magazine last year,” she told me, when I told her I was a writer. “Oh, cool, about what?,” I asked her. “I don’t remember,” she told me. Blank gaze. Empty eyes. She would sometimes walk through our room while I slept, and one time I woke up to her passing by, vacant glance, I was obviously shocked, she looked obviously pleased. “How are ya, Love?” she said. The word “love” here, carrying a lot of the weight in making the indecent violation of space a lot creepier. “It’s fun, isn’t it?,” she told David’s friend, while he was doing the dishes. “Turning the water on and off is fun, it’s all fun, isn’t it?” She had referred to herself as a refugee, in El Salvador. From where, I had asked her. From Canada, she had said. A real eccentric freak, and in David’s dream, he wakes up to her sneaking up behind him, looming over him, it’s all fun isn’t it. She says sinisterly: “do you know what I think?” Then, in his dream, he felt her weight bend the bed springs and begin to smother him. Lunar eclipse. New moon. I find this dream ominous enough that I begin to become very concerned. You have to get out of there, I tell David. I'm leaving tomorrow anyways, he reminds me. Saturday, March 29 I spent the night last night reading at Tense and it was really lovely. Kansas Bowling reading and Valley Latini doing a hip hop show and Beckett Rosset on the Providence Hotel and me on half formed thoughts on the half complete piece I am writing on Techno Spirituality and El Salvador. I’m back in Real Life, and I don't regret it. I spent the morning by myself working on my edits. David is still traveling, and I am being more normal about it this time. In jet lagged fugue state, I burned the kettle down to a lump of molten plastic, not on purpose, obviously. I called my dad who's moral judgment I trust in full, so this clarifies a lot of things. I forgot how much I like running really really really fast. Whenever I am craving the extremes, I should access them through lots of sprints. The wind is crazy today. The wind has everyone whooping and hollering through the streets. I'm making TikToks again. I don't care. There are worse evils or, rather, you can leverage anything for evil if you really want and honestly, I am just trying to have lots of fun. Some of you are awfully pretentious for being addicted to things like Ketamine and Feeld. Not me. I don’t like drugs, and I have a soulmate. It is just as bad if not worse to be addicted to your phone as it is to anything else, but I’m regulating my time, and I’m microdosing my slop - or so I tell myself. Sunday, March 30 I order uber eats groceries at midnight, and then it's like celsius and chicken just washes up at my door. I don't like this. Chemicals, aspartame, the dissolution of the social fabric, really. How these things just materialize when you want to actualize some gross borderline animalistic whim. Craving. Diet Blackberry Pepsi. I would not like to live anywhere but New York City, or really anytime but now when I think it through on a very personal and very literal level. But there is something here that I increasingly am wary of as mere hallucination. There is much to consider. I am trying to be very energetic which, really, is the feeling that I increasingly cast as synonymous with Health. We went to Bacaro for dinner last night, then to Clockwork, later. “Do you know about how to get dinner for free,” some girl sitting next to my friend and me said. Then, she explained the concept of Club Promoters. Yeah I know, I said. I didn’t say it in a rude way. I just told her that I already knew, which I already did. My energy feels back in a way that feels very True today. Before I left for El Salvador, I was getting in the habit of killing time. Looking at an hour and wishing it over. I don’t want to quantify anything. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8Mb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e326f20-1685-4e59-8b0e-e29ce386a22e_950x406.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
Santa Teresa
April 10, 2025 · Original source
Friday, April 4 It's been such a haze since arriving in Costa Rica and at first I felt strange about it, like this isn't Good Behavior, treating a Big Trip kind of glibly, feeling a bit pouty and out of sorts and letting myself just be whisked away like it's nothing, when really it's never nothing, when really it's always touch and go and particularly something like this should make me feel ecstatic. Though, I kind of do feel ecstatic. I never really do become jaded. I quantify and calculate it all far too much to take anything for granted. You do kind of feel like you're floating, though. Cold beer to clutch between my knees on the sea plane that starts up all shaky and then scares me less even than a commercial plane because I can see into the cockpit and I can get the sense of how these pilots are navigating this thing. A cloud is just a cloud. I've been using too many words to inadequately explain myself. Send some bizarre texts upon landing that I hope will be encoded with… what, exactly? But, you’re in the jungle when you land. The sea plane slipped over the rainforest and then slipped out to sea, into the clouds. This part made me a bit nervous because there was nothing to spot except the horizon ahead. The scary part didn't last too long. Peninsula de Nicoya. Thick brambled forest by a single black tarmac. David sent me a video when he got here last week. The Jungle, he said, and now it’s like a hologram seeing it here myself. I really wasn’t going to come here. Two A.M. last night and the flights were so cheap that it felt like a glitch or something and then all I had to do was decide, ok, and then everything else was taken care of. There’s a driver at the gate for me. CHLOE, the sign says. That’s me, I say, and I point to the sign. I don’t know why I said it like that. It's a different vibe at the house here than in El Salvador. Surfer spiritualism over techno spiritualism. The aura here makes me feel significantly calmer. Because I am someone who accounts for danger at every turn (neurotic) I can remember being twelve or thirteen somewhere around here, handed a stick to ward off snakes at night, warned that don't you dare touch the frogs, the ants, they told me, fall screeching from the trees and it feels like a bullet wound when they bite you. But, “there is nothing actually scary here,” David’s friend tells me. “The main thing you have to worry about are these.” He shows me a picture of a scorpion. He tells me that the sting hurts a little, but after that the main thing is it makes your body feel all electric. “People sting themselves on purpose to get high,” David’s friends tell me. “They make you high???” I ask. One of the only things that scares me more than getting hurt is getting high. “No, not really,” David’s friend says. When I got here it felt kind of like I’d been teleported. David was there with an ATV where the car dropped me off, up a dirt road, by some stables and then he said - this might scare you but no backseat driving and then we roared up a mountain, nighttime already, I was left in a room in the hills in the jungle alone while the others offroad up and down and up and down until everyone was here for dinner. You can see the stars in a way that is so special here. I’d been told about this part, but it’s better to see for yourself. You couldn’t make out what parts were ocean and what parts were horizon but you could see that the darkness was placid and lovely and it stretched out quite some ways. You could see where there were villages, because lights close to the ground edged up against the stars in the sky but lacking any visual markers to ground them, these villages appeared to be hovering, unmoored. “You’ll be able to see the ocean in the morning,” David told me. So, in the morning, I thought, I will be able to distinguish which parts are ocean, and which parts are sky. Saturday, April 5 In the morning, there is a gecko on the ceiling and a dog outside my door. Chat GPT got way better overnight, I am told. It’s harder for me to suss out the vibe here. They are bullish on AI, but they are hesitant about some of the other stuff. We’re not really doing much of the hacker house stuff anyways, this time, though. Back down the mountain, and we’re in a hotel, and there’s surfer girls with pretty hair in pretty dresses dancing barefoot in all the nightclubs here. The heat makes a run in the morning unbearable. Even the walk to the shop is heavy and thick but I don't mind this. The only thing I do every single morning is walk for an hour and write while I walk, but the heat makes this hard. It's ok, because I can float instead. Yerba mate and corona extra and white claw and paloma in a can and redbull green and coconut water all stacked side by side in the shop, but I leave empty handed. Before, we got cold brew mixed with orange juice and a cashew avocado tart at a cafe run by the girlfriend of one of David’s friends. Since I tried it out and basically just became an alcoholic bartending my way around Eastern Europe at eighteen, I have kind of found the whole nomad thing to be spiritually ugly. Like it's something for mid thirties men that look older from the partying who stop you in back alleys in Croatia and tell you things like the key to it all is to never buy a couch. And they would say it like you were supposed to really get it. And you did get it, you got what they meant by it at least, but the thought was just a bit half baked and unconvincing. Ok, so, I wouldn't buy a couch but then what? Then what would I do? What should I do? I didn't want to stay listless and skimming the surface forever. New York is kind of empty too when you aren't living at least a little bit gently, and so these are the different pieces I am trying to parse out. I would stay here for a while with a project. David drops a chip on the beach lined with hermit crabs and he creates this huge commotion. Anarchy, really. All the little crabs begin to rip each other to shreds. "I hope the big one comes in and destroys them all," David says, regarding the hermit crab pile-on situation. There's not really any metaphor here, he’s just being vaguely sadistic. It does happen as you would expect. One big hermit crab sees its opportunity, identifies his leg up in this whole situation or perhaps, they aren't the brightest creatures, perhaps it just wants to try its lot at the prize like all the others and is surprised to find itself emerge victorious. He makes a clean break with the chip down the beach. The crabs kind of look like spiders from my vantage point. A mass of little tendrils for legs chasing after someone six times their size. They all have the death drive, because when they do catch up, it's not good news for any animal involved. An underdog swoops in and gets the chip. I don't know, I lose sight of it all. You have a target on your back when carrying the bounty though. If I was a hermit crab, I wouldn’t risk it. I put my head underwater in the ocean to get myself sorted. I walk back through a little bit of jungle and then past the fishermen in Malpaís while David turns around the ATV. Soles of my shoes are all sticky on the pavement. Herd of goats in the road. The heat makes all my thoughts become all slippery and smooth. If I spent a month here, I could learn how to become all tan and bendy and strong. Sometimes, I become slippery and smooth. I could spend the first part of my month learning how to notice when my mind becomes like this, and I could spend the second part learning how to make the feeling last. I would stay here for a while with a project… WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, April 10 From 6pm - 8pm at Blade Study — Clare Koury presents the opening of solo exhibition Scaling Laws For An Open EnTrainment Structure. With this installation, Clare Koury is addressing the part of the color spectrum that eyes don’t see.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yrdc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78d590ff-7675-437a-bec3-6777487c94e1_916x372.png, Blade Study, Clare Koury, Scaling Laws For An Open EnTrainment Structure
[REDACTED] is awful
April 15, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, April 5 My boyfriend is in Costa Rica posting photos of Mel Gibson's house down the hill and playing me recordings of Mel Gibson verbally abusing his wife. I'm lying on a small thin bed in Costa Rica and I'm mostly tuning this out, along with mostly tuning out the other things - horses and howler monkeys outside. Quieter, the buzz of insects and even, distantly, the roaring waves. These are the types of things I should really tune in. Everything just clicked these past few weeks. I know how to be now, but I don't know how to vocalize it yet. We took the ATV over the mountain to the chocolate shop this afternoon. We bought iberico ham and we ate it in the forest along with melted chocolate in ceramic cups, vegan pear cake, espresso, cocoa husks. SUPER DAVID, the sign on the convenience store said. Tsunami evacuation route, all the signs on the side of the road said. I am getting better at sitting on the back of the ATV. I haven't tried the driving part, because I don't know how to drive stick shift and because they told me there is some correlation between the two. I am getting better at being very focused, and sometimes, at being very removed. There is a crash outside, and my boyfriend opens the door to tell me it was just because he fell out of the hammock. I tell him I am going to go for a walk. There's a beach close by, and if I pace this stretch of road a few times over I can catch the sunset at all its different stages. I can catch myself surprised each time I round the bend and I see how the colors have just barely shifted. There is going to be a lot more routine once I am back in New York. I have a lot of plans, and there will be a lot more staying put. My fingernails are filthy from the dust. I have decided that, going forward, I am going to be significantly more removed from all the things I used to seek. Sunday, April 6 Watermelon slushie for breakfast and I woke up all feverish which means the sea plane isn't an option anymore so we'll be lingering here for at least a little longer. Dinner was nice last night - left the hotel in hazy dusk and we hit a storm surf side almost as soon as we were on the road. "It's pouring," said the friends we were meeting for dinner, and I said oh really it's not raining for us and then shortly after we were barreling through the downfall. David drives too fast but I haven't been being too difficult about it. There is very little in today, then. Shivering down the secret path at sunset and there's something kind of nice about being very ill in very intense heat. My boyfriend is unenthused by the sunset. “We'll watch the sunset here tomorrow," he says. He makes up a rhyme about me to compensate for his lack of appreciation in the magic of the view. REDACTED is awful. REDACTED is stupid. REDACTED is going to choke on ceviche and get put in an unmarked grave. With full sincerity, I find the rhyme kind of sweet. It's sweet like its opposite day, and like he's grinning ear to ear and so I know that he actually really hopes that none of that stuff actually happens to me. I haven't been reading anything that's not for school because the heat has made me not just languid but also feverish and with all that - hyper impressionable. I've been absorbing anything I consume and taking on the tone like it's my own. I read some novella that I don't even like and then I write a nasty little short story about what I imagine it is like to be my friend. I don't know why the story is so nasty, because I think I am a pretty good friend. A better friend than I am a daughter or certainly a sister or even a girlfriend and, it's either all this useless contemplation or it's taking off-brand medication to quell the fever and now I can go to the party. I go to the type of party where it's on the beach and the tourists are making a congo line and my boyfriend and I are eating things like ceviche and fish skewers and Coco Loco and I say please give me the BAD rum when the waitress asks which one i want (bad, medium, and great are the options, price differences to match and i am totally out of money). The rain has come way too early this year. Something about Climate Change. Something about Climate Change is accelerating once in 1000 year weather cycles here to once in one year. I sit under a straw hut at this conga line party in the acid rain storm and I carve out the inside of my coconut drink with a spoon which makes everyone, particularly my boyfriend very annoyed. A river full of hermit crabs forms in the sand under my feet, and I prop my beat up sneakers on my boyfriend's lap which makes everyone, particularly him, even more annoyed. Anyways, I'd been trying to be more gentle about it. I will try even harder tomorrow. Monday, April 7 Me Being More Gentle About It: Little spiders climb up and down my arms as I sit in the yoga tent and go to school on my Computer. The men are back at the horses stables this morning, brushing the animals off and dust goes flying, red flower petals keep blowing down from the trees and creating a sort of storm of pollen in the dusty air. Something great happened last night. At first, I was worried about it, but things turned out fine and so in retrospect, it was something great. Driving back from dinner on the ATV, there had been a storm on the beach and so we’d been stuck there for a while, getting a little drenched even huddled under the tent and finally we were driving back, open air, wet road, bright moon and suddenly there was a little black colt standing lost in the middle of the street. I got off the ATV, moonshine shimmering off all the puddles, the animal was not concerned, it was just standing in the street looking up at me and then we walked together, across the wet pavement and into wet dirt, down the dark dirt road and then I left it by the stable - we couldn't find the gate but it wasn’t looking to wander more. Today, the horse is fine, and I knew that it would be. I think it was some kind of omen, maybe. A reminder to consult with the stars, and particularly, lately, to check on the tides. I'll be back in New York tomorrow - having strange flashbacks to being a gallery girl intern and waking up all bright eyed and opportunistic with the sun. When I think about that, I get all excited to be back in the city. I could be a Permafreelance assistant for a prestige publication and make $9.77 an hour this summer if I wanted. Permafreelance is their word, not mine. It means you work full time but you don't get benefits or vacation. You can’t, with any self respect, be nearly twenty five years old and still reveling in an exploitative half job lugging garment bags around New York but if you could, then you probably still would. I could spend the summer reading The Greats and I could spend the fall reading everything Semiotext(e) has ever published. I could start a strange project called [REDACTED] that is sure to be a hit. Yeah, it's time to go back to New York though. David and I watched the sunset for real tonight. I found the Secret Beach. Yeah, it is pretty magic, David said. Tuesday, April 8 I had too many yuca fries before the beef stew dinner last night and so I wasn’t too hungry, went to bed early, didn't sleep a wink and now it's dawn. We eat dinner at Ritual most nights in Malpais. Ritual is the cafe that David’s friend's girlfriend owns. It is full of wonderful things like a tart made of avocados and cashews and coconut oil, or espresso mixed with orange juice, or, last night was stew from the meat we grilled over the weekend, and last night the restaurant was closed, just accessible for us, I went to bed too early. Fog at sunrise today. I pack up and I tiptoe out of the hotel. David finds me by the horses in the morning dew making scratch marks on paper. I tell him that I don't take any of it for granted, and I mean it when I say it. I get in a taxi, and then I am by myself again. At the airport, I am too tired to even be on edge. I text Sylvie and Rebecca about the project idea that is sure to be a hit. Do you want to be a part of [new hit project] I say. Yes, they both say. At the airport, I kind of want to go slump over in a booth, and so I go and sit inside an awful place called GastroPub and I order one of those awful salads with the canned black olives and the dried mushrooms and cranberries and shaved almonds and some generic seed oil filled dressing, you know the type. I order a black coffee, too. The seed oil dressing on the side comes dangerously close to sloshing all over my coffee. I pick the chicken out of my salad with some care and eat only that, while the rest of the whole soggy heap of food kind of collapses in on itself. I spend twenty one dollars. Then, I spend nineteen dollars on some coffee and electrolytes and macaroons from Starbucks. I make sure to time my macaron consumption to end at twelve noon exactly, and then I set a timer for 36 Hours. A Monk Fast. This is the sort of thing that can be done when one is at the airport feeling bogged down. Obviously, I am not actually going to join a cult. It's mostly just aesthetic fixation. Style over substance. The real issue intellectually is if you can't truly distinguish yourself from something like the plastic tray on the plane in front of you. I haven't even really tried too hard to find a God. I'm sorry. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, April 15 From 8pm - late at (RSVP for location) — Terms Eccles is throwing another tax day party!! - “talking broadly about money and art and downtown and midtown, all at once. the only thing that will make tax day worth celebrating.”
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Q9U2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5cd9b963-4230-4508-8b2a-e1eb27f1bdce_1600x882.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j6Cp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb33657e9-0216-4c78-a2b9-25d2e1c66ed3_1600x1200.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5KHr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08e93783-43a6-4b3f-90ab-827d6d614ce1_1200x1600.jpeg, Terms Eccles
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
California-At-Home
January 27, 2026 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, January 12 I’m in my room and I’m feeling normal. Outside, the streets are winter-warm. Foggy and sweet. Different from El Salvador, which was humid-sweet. Tropics sweet. El Salvador was learning to understand things and also learning to let the wind blow in interesting directions and also learning to stand on my own two feet. On the flight home, I mapped out every day as a container. At JFK, I decided to treat the city like Vacation. Big Bar every Monday. Museums of Illusions. FDR themed social club. Procure activities on Partiful or Instagram or Yelp or through Word of Mouth. I call Amelia to announce my return and my vacation-forever plans. Is this vacation for the sake of transgression or fun? Amelia asks me. New York is over, Matthew was saying, in El Salvador. New York is over, and Los Angeles is it. I suppose we’ll see, I was saying in response. I suppose we’ll see but for now I’ll take all the energy-whirling-back. The flight home was quiet and late. I sat in the very back row of the plane with lots of water and ambient dread. I dreamt of a rocky landing where Avianca (Boeing 787) (Flight 267) touches ground and then immediately takes back off. I dreamt of being robbed. I dreamt of turning around. Dreamt of being scammed. Dreamt of busy days and busy nights in N.Y.C Back home, tonight, and it’s dinner at Lanterna di Vittoria with my friend whom I like because he offers me generosity kind of liminally. He presents a dangling sort of kindness that I did not have to accept or deny. I could accept his kindness later. I could pluck it from thin air, long after he has walked away. Maybe he is just generally cautious like that, or perhaps he intuits my inherent distaste towards drawing definitive conclusions. He is extremely helpful, but I never say thank you for the advice even though I am thankful. I never acknowledge I agree and I think it is better this way. I’m particularly grateful for the ease of it. He’s happy to know he’s right and also to feel useful without any of the misery that accompanies reliance. The grid is blinking in and out today, and so we are all feeling anxious about nuclear war. You too?? my friend says, when I bring up the topic of nuclear war at dinner. Everyone is becoming so much stupider. Small grid means big problems. I am feeling uneasy, sitting in my apartment tonight, knowing all the best minds in the world are coming up short. Later, cotton candy skies turning dark as we’re walking home. The city is freezing over, and hell along with it. Since I cleared my mind head-empty, I have become so much better at being perfect. Since I became religious, I have become so much faster at driving. Since I started telling all my friends that I want no-trouble, none-of-the-time, everything has started to really spiral out of control. I want to be good, I keep on telling Olivia. We go to the gym together every-other-day. She is the only girl with hair that is longer than mine. You are goodest, Olivia tells me. She says it with a smile, and she is very much not-devious so I believe that she believes this to be true. How many millions of dollars do you think were lost when the grid went down? I ask my friend, walking home in the icy city that I just can’t quit. Trillions, he tells me. What do you mean millions? Jesus Christ. Do you know how the GRID works? He gives me a book. Elephants and economy. Something like that. I already have it. I am smug when I tell him so. They already gave me this book in El Salvador. This book is already mine. The grid has already never-existed. Nothing ever happens. New silk eye mask arrived by mail which means: big sleep incoming. Big sleep in mummy mode. Clean room. Room of a girl who respects herself. Every day is something new. This part has always been obvious. Tuesday, January 13 The air is clear in my apartment, but somehow tinged a little bit blue this morning. Somehow kind of record-stretch hazy, which I suppose is what happens when I am tired and outside, it’s foggy. My friend texted while I slept: I am taking on your mannerisms. Texting back now: I don’t really have mannerisms. I could write a story this morning, but instead, I will write mantras in my mind. It’s good to be quiet It’s important to seize control over myself God gives the world to girls who don’t get in their own way. Black velvet hanger left off kilter. Last night, I purchased a blue dress that reminded me of dreams I already forgot. A blue dress to wear in a glass house in a place like Topanga. Bright blue dress to wear while making spring green soup. Purchased the dress with visions of next summer spinning through my mind. Visions of wearing a blue dress and standing barefoot on the wood floor of my parents’ house and making spring green soup. Sitting on the edge of my bed in dark green lulu lemon leggings and black tank top this morning. Cool minty Zyn in mouth, and Celsius in hand. The apartment is a mess, and it has been for a while. Trees are barren and kind of sweet outside my window. I hate this apartment. I want my old apartment back. I want to get everything I’ve ever wanted. I want to get sober and mean it. I want two hours of dedicated time-writing-fiction per day, and two hours of dedicated time walking outdoors writing notes. I want to let no more hours drift. I was not happy to come back to New York, but I do like the parts of the city that just are-what-they-are. Green turtle pond and freezing hands. Big buildings and tour groups. Windy streets. Bustling with people. When I’m at pilates I don’t feel like I need to move to LA, I tell Saorise, in the studio. The toned and old gay man that owns Pilates People runs warm. He cracked the window to let in the frigid winter fog. All the girls are upset about this. The light is silver and bright like a beam. It is a foggy day. We have LA at home, Saiorse says. We have life-like-California, but it’s real-life and it’s right-here. We can stay right here. We can invent different schools of movement. We can even go to Sugarfish Girls mass-exodus a friend group or even a whole entire life because of totally superficial reasons that are totally fake, Saoirse is saying, at Sugarfish. We acquire Saki. I pull my hair into a tight ponytail and I revel in my perfect day. I document my material reality meticulously. I have been training myself to become totally head empty. I have been training myself to gently accept gluttony, and also to be less subject to my whims. Sugar Fish has the sort of generic-upscale interior that reminds you of nothing, and thus reminds you of personal recollections of positive experiences in similar generic upscale interior restaurants. This is how they keep you coming back, I say. Girls couldn’t find a backbone if it hit them over the head, Saiorse says. Girls want to drown their enemies in buckets like kittens. Girls want to pray for you and ask to kiss you and pretend to be your friends. I am starting to feel some animosity, I tell Saorsie. Our meal is light but comes out in many courses. Saiorse is happy to hear about my budding proclivity for negativity. I’ve been telling you these things for years and knowing that it wasn’t yet time for you to listen, Sairse responds. You can pick something really good, or you can pick something that you really really want. Saiorse plays with her salmon sashimi and she doesn’t like soy sauce. Saoirse doesn’t ask me to tell her which one I pick: really good versus really wanted, that is. Do you remember Michael the explorer, Saoirse asks me. I have known Saoirse for a million billion years. We share a million billion strange friends. It’s nice to pour over these things. Internet friends. Federal agent friends. Friend who snuck over the Canadian border a few years ago and then washed up outside a fire pit in The Hamptons. Her explorer friend who we took to Round Swamp market for blueberry muffins after he got back from some place like Antarctica or maybe North Korea. He was not very risk-adverse. He was so worried about you, Saoirse says. Did you know that at the time? He said you seemed so nice. Walking home in the crisp and cold afternoon feeling so nice. Walking through the farmers market. Curling up in bed half asleep half dressed half under covers. Half lonely and half at peace because I love when my apartment is so cold. Cassandra texts that she is going to the museum. Why, I ask? It is our duty to seek out all the latent beauty in the world. Cassandra responds. At night, In Brooklyn, I can listen to Jeff Buckley Forget Her on repeat and think about what I actually want. Purification. Indulging my addictions. Freedom from vice. Sweet music and soft cover of winter fog and little green glass wind chimes hanging from the trees. I like wearing natural fibers and clothing I move easily in and having a uniform and following an obsession to its logical conclusion. I like knowing immediately and totally what it is that I could or could not love. Little dried leaves shivering across the pavement. They look like little rats except for the part where they are very beautiful. I run into one friend smoking on the street in a velvet black jacket when I arrive at the reading. I like your suit, I say. It’s my only suit, he responds. I don’t want to drink but I do want a cigarette and I only like cigarettes when I’m drinking. There’s a glowing strawberry on the wall, and there are a lot of people I have never seen before or at least do not see often. Like the cool theater kids’ basement in college, the girl next to me is saying. Soft snow flurries outside, which serves as a nice reminder that it is still winter. Reading out loud about Florida, Massachusetts and feeling reclusive. Wednesday, January 14 Sweet Wednesday morning, but I’m going to treat it like a Monday. Still listening to Jeff Bukley Forget Her, which makes me want to be somewhere else. Somewhere very cold or very foggy or even, very sunny. Perhaps I should stop hedging and just commit to something. Last night, a boy was ordering a drink and talking about how he was so glad no one was doing dry January this year. He asked his friend what he was drinking. Soda water and cranberry, the friend said. Oh, he said. You’re doing dry January? I’ve been dry for six months, his friend said. I felt so jealous of his friend. So, I know what has to give. Need to take pleasure in denying myself the things I want, etc etc etc. Listening to Forget Her over and over and over again, and turning my head all the way upside down so I can get a look at the snow behind me, but the snow has mostly stopped. Just silver skies all the way, now. Silver skies all the way up and all the way down. Jeff Buckley died at thirty-years-old. Someone who destroyed himself early but at least he had something to show for it. The desire to toss out everything I own becomes pervasive in the snow. The desire to get rid of all these things I wish were not mine. Gathering up all these clothes and throwing them in a big white trash bag. Thinking about the big smile on my face when my mother gave me a blue and shiny dress and then thinking about throwing it in a donation bin which pipelines to landfills, obviously. Hours can pass, percolating in guilt over what to do with this blue dress among other items. There are many more wasteful things than throwing out a dress. Buying and drinking alcohol for example. Buying and eating protein bars just to feel full by which I mean full of trash. Scrolling on my phone. Being cruel. The snow is both coming down and melting outside. Smells like ski racing. Nothing I am getting rid of is special. If the people whom I don’t want to see show up at a party, then I will leave. My friends are in the basement of the party when I arrive. Another friend’s new bar. The wood has been stained dark brown and the place is starting to look formal and nice. My friends are vacuuming and putting away books. We all look like little elves putting the books away, Quinn says. Many interesting books. Esoterics of Health and something about Aliens, for example. Thursday, January 15 Rinse and repeat. Blueish silver light in my apartment, where the sun barely penetrates, but at least nothing is artificial. Outside, everything is melting, melting, melting. White and chipped paint on the fire escape, and I can see the drops of water growing from the metal edges and then… drop! Leafless trees shimmering like they’re coated in gum drops. Each silver water droplet crystallized as its own little form, and then together, they are turning the whole tree silver. Since they turned down the central heating and then I turned off my air conditioner, a few days ago, everything has begun to feel quite quiet. Should we do a dress exchange? I ask Cassandra. Should I bring you your bible and a book called The Elephant in the Brain and also your blue cashmere sweater in exchange for my polyester Aritzia slip? Yes! says Cassandra. The West Village is wet and cold and the church is white and the doors are blue. The dining room of The Marlton Hotel is full of red velvet booths and gold lined mirrors and star shaped yellow lights. The mirrors and the lights make me feel a little bit like I am in a room full of sun, but I am not in a room full of sun. I am in a windowless hotel lobby full of mirrors. Cassandra takes out her Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls at table over are taking out their Sunday Riley lipgloss. Girls everywhere are just the same. Olivia has her Rapunzel hair bundled up in her scarf like a baboushka. Cassandra is wearing a beautiful red scarf tied around her neck and wearing beautiful gold jewelry. The girls at the table over are talking about how we were created to have gentle souls. Why would anybody make it their mission in life to seek out… chaos? Cassandra interjects. To seek to degrade others, Olivia says. Cassandra teaches me a new word: Odoriferous. Cassandra tells me about her friend who lives in Northern California off the grid, farming salmon or maybe saving them, researching them, I can’t remember. A girl stumbles into the dining room to greet her friends at the table over. I can feel how cold you are, her friends say. I can’t wait to see the ocean again, Cassandra says. It feels really weird going so long without seeing the ocean. I guess I won’t see the ocean again for a while. Thinking about feeling manic. Thinking about every other timeline. Thinking about pouring big glass of water and black coffee with five splenda because I am still glutenous. Getting right to the cusp of something means that in at least a few other timelines, you probably figured it out. Nice to assume you’re capable of that, at least. Nice to know that in another timeline, my diaries are probably anonymous and I can be less vague. Nice to know that in another timeline I can probably lie. I can probably say what I actually mean. Spraying perfume over green sweater and imagining myself as someone who moves more slowly. Ordered a glass of wine because I love relapsing on an empty stomach. Telling Olivia about when my life was hot and cold and up and down and crazy all the time, because for the first time, I am realizing that she did not know me then. It’s hard to describe to someone who wasn’t there. Feeling a little bit nauseous and like I wish I hadn’t spoken. We could be living in the Midwest driving golf carts, Olivia says. Indiana is just corn and soy but not even produced for human production just animal feed or corn syrup, she says. I have a fondness for cornfields, Cassandra says. We could belong to country clubs, Olivia said. I wonder what that is like. Friday, January 16 In my dreams, I am surrounded by water on all sides, Somewhere in El Salvador. Somewhere in Costa Rica. Somewhere with all my friends-from-the-internet, and they do not like my new boyfriend. It’s ok, because I don’t like my new boyfriend too much either. I am scheming with my internet-friends. We are scheming ways to get rid of new boyfriend. Everyone is happy about my plots to get him gone, and no one seems to clock that I am the one who invited him in the first place. We are deep sea fishing. I am hanging by my arms from the edge of the boat and my feet are running through the water while a girl I know to be my best friend fires up the boat faster and faster and faster. I am a little scared. I am having so much fun. Salt water. Earth water. Angel water. I wake up. One light left on, back in New York. Yellow glowing floor lamp, so at least there’s nothing shining overhead. Last night, I was walking through the winter snow sliding on ice and filled with energy and adoration and also two illicit drinks. Listening to music and wind and stopping for gum and diet coke and then washing up in a restaurant that was bustling and warm and dimly lit. Telling my friends not to wait outside. For a while, I wanted to show others the places that had always been mine. It had never been like that before. It had always been more of a self protective sort of thing. Back to letting myself be dragged to kind of nice places to which I have no attachment, now. Talking about myself like I am playing SIMS at dinner. Ordering one diet coke and one piece of fish. Dinner passing kind of assembly line cool. Chill and smooth. In the snow and the ice, everything is seamless and then I’m in a car home so that I do not slip. Things could be quiet and end early but I still just can’t stay put. I become more full of energy, later on. I have become very sick of interiority. I went to a small Italian cafe to pass the later night because when I don’t, I always wish I did. It was a snowy and beautiful night. The cafe was made for families and locals and tour groups and dark and lovely. My new friends were talking about things like art-of-business, so it felt kind of far from myself but I could bear it for some hours. A beautiful life. Trying to be more tender and less neurotic. This does not have to mean everything. A person can just be cautious and nice-for-now. Walked home in the snow. Woke up warm. Still can’t stay away from places that have always been mine. Yellow light emanates from the yellow lamp. Nothing fluorescent. A million things to write over a million times. A million things to consider. A million topics on which the thing to do now is to wait and see. Waiting and seeing. Text about finding a DJ for a party in San Francisco. Email about a party at The Mount Washington Hotel. All these very random things that feel so close to being in reach. Kind of want to go. Kind of want to languish in old and beautiful rooms at the Mount Washington Hotel and in the majestic magic pool and imagine that money flows like water by which I mean spend money like it is water. Opening the window, now. Letting it be morning, now. Have to be clear, now. Sober minded and clear. Time passes like water, too, so that is something else to be wary of. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, January 27 From 8pm at The River — Theme Trivia returns with Medieval Trivia.
Inline links: The River, Theme Trivia
Humanoid-Robots
March 06, 2026 · Original source
It is morning and the day feels kind of bright and nice. I am in my room and I am feeling sweet. I am in my room and it is feeling a little bit messy. I am listening to Drasticism which is the new album by a girl who’s playing a show tonight and I am thinking I would perhaps like to go. Listening to a sweet kind of diy soft music that reminds me of crystals. I kind of want to be by the water. I kind of want to learn guitar with my friends. I kind of want sunlight on my face first thing in the morning. I want everything I own to be from Angelmoon and Ebay and LoveThanksWorld. I’d like to be in salt water in Costa Rica or perhaps Brazil but I am trying not to want things outside the present so much. Listening to “Angelica” by Bella Litsa and “If You Were Around” by Celestine Manno and “Yellow House” by Satya and I never listen to new music but it all can’t stop reminding me of crystals. My morning routine is a fantasy land. My morning routine is real life. My window is open and I can say hello to the turtles swimming in the churning water beneath me. Smell of jasmine, orange trees, salted air the song is saying. Something about California. Sweet and lovely. I am thinking of everything on such sweet terms. My morning routine is Current Body LED red light mask and water out of a metal flask and ten minute guasha routine and walk to the Italian cafe for one little morning coffee. One little morning coffee because I just quit everything. I quit everything all at once. We will see what gives.

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