Collected Agenda Scene Wiki

England

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England

Article

England is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between July 23, 2025 and October 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “My father found an illustrated biography on Shelley and his friendship with Byron at the pub in England”; “I would like to become very strong in England”; “the part of England where all the Thomas Hardy stories took place”. It most often appears alongside KGB Bar, London, New York.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: July 23, 2025
  • Last seen: October 27, 2025

Appears In

None.

Source Context

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

Coffeeshop Gossip
July 23, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Friday, July 18 Civil twilight haze of the nicest kind outside and, I forgot to turn the lights off. Caffe Reggio is open until four am, so this will be a good place to start. There is always so much time, I noted. There is, actually, not that much time, I noted after that. So for example my sister really likes the opera and so we go to the opera a lot, my one other Reggio compatriate is telling his date. It’s good here because there is no music. It’s good here, because without music, and sober somewhere loud and public for once, you can really hear the chatter. Stain glass lanterns and big glass windows and relics of worship. I tell Amelia she can join me if she wants but she’s sleeping. I tell Amelia I haven’t been having bad dreams. So you feel at home in your house, my old man Reggio compatriate is telling his very pretty date. I do, the date is saying. I do. I am thinking - It’s good to be sure about why you are eavesdropping. It’s good to be sure about what everyone else can hear. It’s ok for now. I’m the only one who can hear at this hour, and it doesn’t seem like much of what my compatriots are saying is secret. Coffeeshop Gossip. I regret most of the times I have become particularly open. In my plans; I am mostly sober; I possess tremendous integrity and discretion. Sitting in Caffe Reggio with a glass of wine and a chicken caprese salad live blogging my early morning. The date next to me got up to leave and they passed off to me, two overflowing chalices of wine. Insane thing to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Thinking about who I can call right now. I don't think I have ever been lonely before. Insane and annoying thing to say, but I think it might be true. I make a few more notes. I'm not lonely. I'm at Caffe Reggio at civil twilight alone with two overflowing chalices of wine that I cannot drink lest I get drunk or vomit or god forbid, fall asleep. I sleep with the lights off, but it is already bright through the greenhouse windows. Saturday, July 19 The play last night was nice; one of my favorites - By Morning. Talk of watching geese while they fly overhead at dusk from the porch, tyrannical fathers, a family composed of equally near irredeemable brothers whom I found all to be strangely endearing, and nearly the whole family's mutual gf who is deemed manipulative but not that smart. It ended with a gunshot. I walked down the stairs of the strange theater. My friends were in Brooklyn. My friends were in Flatiron. I was asked to stop live blogging. I said; I never live blog, I write a Diary of Fiction. It all quieted down. You have a lot going for you, they said. I guess, I said. They cancelled my meeting and I would like to not be disappointed. I walked for a while at sunrise again and slept little. This is fine. So you admit you are neurotic, I was told. It started to rain again outside Caffe Reggio. Madelyn says she is not intentionally influenced by any artist but it is like, she grabs the color green! I would like to become very strong in England. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, July 23 From 10pm at Night Club 101 — Jasmine Johnson, Crush Sahara, and Ezra Marcus
Inline links: By Morning, Night Club 101, Jasmine Johnson, Crush Sahara, Ezra Marcus
Walk The Cotswolds
July 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, July 21 There was lots of turbulence on the plane to London and my good mood was effusive. I wrote for all six hours of transit. My seat-mate played hang man on the Virgin Atlantic TV. Next door, I scribbled frantically. On review, every word was about Me Me Me. There was rain that started all at once in the greenhouse apartment, in New York, in the afternoon, before I left. The drops started heavy over my glass house and then the walls turned to waterfalls and a siren howled down the streets towards the left and I did not feel, for the first time in some time, like I would do anything to leave here with sluggish abandon and never return. Choppy and treacherous plane ride. By the way, Iris texts me. A Push For More Organ Transplants Is Putting Donors At Risk. Yes, I text Iris. Though, my aversion to medical generosity in death is not so much due to risk as it is the Purgatory between Oneself and Someone Else. I wake up at cool ten pm sunset in the Redesdale Arms Hotel, Moreton-In-Marsh, Cotswolds, England. The plans were made in different seasons and the summer has pumped things full of gluttony and inconvenience so, it is still nice to get away. I will try to go back to sleep. I will try to read the wall texts in the closet of this hotel, which they have told me once was haunted. We arrived early. My father found an illustrated biography on Shelley and his friendship with Byron at the pub in England. It is gray and chilly here and I do not quite know what to do with myself on measured time. I catch the train on time. Moreton-in-Marsh has one long street, limestone cottages, little gardens. Reading Pynchon stories full of strange winding houses and the dream logic spaces that their basements open into. My room comes with a glass bottle of milk, two oil paintings of deer, a pink ceiling fan, a silver mirror. And I do keep half expecting the floor to open up and swallow me whole, or at least the closet to burst open and reveal something upsetting, delightful, off putting, transgressive and weird. We liked hotels because of anonymity and aesthetic cohesion. Abandon your One-Week-Life. I dozed off with a diet coke in the hotel lobby. Chicken skin orzo risotto and syrup-sweetened lemon lime water at dinner. I tried to articulate, to my father, the types of ways these certain types of people can be - She is bored. She is always looking for some sort of activity to fill the time. She is not bored. She is endlessly entertained by a life sitting very still and thinking about herself. Third option… Tuesday, July 22 I will be hiking from inn to inn here. This is the plan. It is a good plan, all things considered. 8:00am - Follow the river upstream through ancient trees passing the old mill with its waterwheel. 12pm - cut across a field of brambles and sheep towards Sezincote House, where grounds of an Indian estate rise out of the Marsh. It is quite spectacular and seems to be quite abandoned. A caravan decorated on the inside like a love seat sits behind a moat, behind barbed wire. We found a manor for dinner. We found a church before that. It was 1300 years old and it hit me with heavy quiet inside like I have never been so sure to be somewhere before. This is not unusual for people in your circumstances, I was told later. But it was unusual, I said. The door is locked and so you kneel outside. You find a key. You are the only one there and so you stay til almost dusk. You walk miles til almost dark. You are not religious. You have been saying something else. You have been saying a lot of things. You planned a certain type of life in New York. You planned a different type of life first. It looked like wheat fields and wild flowers. You cannot recall one second in which I have ever been bored. Maybe, you have never been bored. Maybe, you lack recollection. Mossy patch under the crabapple tree where I would like to fall asleep. It is kind of just this thing of waiting now. reduce Inflammation, incoming emails, art and life, take a deep breath in and hold it. Wednesday, July 23 8:45 am Because I'm getting sick, when I close my eyes there is no color. Open my eyes, and I told them to leave me behind in Bourton-on-the-Water 12:00pm Pacing three loops around Windrush Public Path and thinking about everything I have ever wanted. It is a bit like a fairytale. Wind in the Willow, Windboy, Back to Oz, I have wanted things like this. The river is nice because the water is clear but the bottom is dirt and fern. So, it's brown a bit but you can still see patterns. Patterns and circles and moss. There are flowers along garden gates. I don't mind when things are a bit precious. 1:13pm I am walking through this little village again now. I am listening to silly music. Writing now. I do need to finish my story. I felt so sick this morning. I thought some little things. I took a little nap. A necklace for me a perfume and a soap for my mother I am kind of glad I skipped the hike today. Dinner was nice last night. It's nice to eat scallops and salmon on spinach shaped toast. It's nice to be sincere in art and life and perhaps to never go to a party again. I put all my cards on the table. It is so good to be busy. I should take the bartending job and remember that is is good to be busy. But, before I even begin to consider these sorts of things, I should sort out my preoccupations. There are worse things. There was a month where I was not so busy. I am pacing through the English countryside now. There was a strange man on the path and it made me jump. I do not believe a life can just fracture and then split into segments, infinite. I do believe that it is just one life all at once. It is desolate but not sad, here. It is very difficult to imagine what the rest of my life will look like. Well, we'll see. I have stories to write. I will walk back to the hotel now and finish my story. That's fine. I quit nicotine and mostly alcohol and anything unhealthy so now it won't feel like my face is melting off. I have red light therapy and a desire to be good. 6:05pm I’m back in the room and I called my best friend, whom I miss. 8:57pm I went to dinner with my mother and my father. I was quite nice and not too much of a vile little bitch full of lots of vitriol and being very unpleasant. 12:56pm open the windows out over thatched hotel roof so the outside air matches in but I am not so lucky with equilibrium and there is still much motion. Thomas Pynchon “Entropy” Thursday, July 24 Winchim is a very ancient town, the taxi driver tells me. I have been here for a few days now and already my lungs feel pumped full of air and spirit and the moments of solitude feel quite still and nice. Being alone is no longer fire alarms immediately and then alert, abort, sitting in a bar with a sparkling water til close. None of this, anyways. None of it here. Sitting in the forest full of contentment. Sitting in the secret garden full of apple elderflower juice, black coffee, rye banana bread. Winchim has been on a downward spiral for the past fifty years, the taxi driver tells me. Something about Henry the 8th, the monasteries, the drought, a tremendous amount of damage. It was all on a selfish note, the taxi driver told me. The walk today was foggy and long and I liked it best. I liked the church on Tuesday best of all, but I liked the walk today. It is kind of plotless, this walking walking walking. I have never wanted chaos. I have wanted pure metabolic function and to stay up late. Friday, July 25 Church, lying under a beach tree, cricket field established by the author of Peter Pan. I went down to the hotel bar to read about Entropy (which I hope to not believe in. Downstairs, the evening festivities were moving into their final hour. I don't know if you're drinking or anything, the bartender said to me. Must I, I said. You can do anything you want, the bartender said. The bar was lined with portraits of polo sport and big yellow orbs. The fields outside were misty and gray and peppered with racing horses. The grass was soft and sweet and so, I'd stopped for a while. You will have to hop a barbed wire fence to avoid a small horned cow and his mates, an old man had said. You will have to learn to wait a while, my father had said. There had been another warplane, only this one over the pasture not the college, and I had not quit believing in signs and symbols just yet. Outside, the pub was bright, lethargic and chilly. The hotel felt something like a sanctuary. Royal green walls and no night terrors in foggy fields and self containment. And it's been nice to be brought back to the things that were mine first. They'll pick up the bags at eight in the morning. We'll loop back around to the marsh where we began. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Travel advice for something quite restorative: I walked The Cotswolds via Mickledore Travel which is nice because I detest tours and organized fun of any kind, but this “tour” requires zero interaction with anyone outside of your travel companions and friendly strangers. Accommodations are booked across a walking route and every morning bags are picked up from a drop spot along the route and deposited at the next destination the following evening. Unburdened by baggage, you then hike to your next inn. There are little towns peppered along the route, as well as sheep fields, castles, horses, and ruins. It really is more of a long walk than a hike, which I find to be more pleasant than hut-to-hut backpacking or other similar adventures I have attempted in the past. You still are walking some ten to sixteen miles a day, so you will not feel bored or lazy.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J_pV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e858c46-2c01-4d8f-aa7a-8b0df7060361_1200x1600.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!bDOj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3fff7678-eb4f-4149-9480-ea6634866f9f_1200x1600.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dh11!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdb2108b7-67f0-4f06-a1eb-f4c5a28fa486_1200x1600.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_CyN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F623b1e47-66cc-463a-b6fb-f18ff7145043_1600x882.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5It-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7379e57-3e3f-4173-82e9-ea976cd835e5_742x320.png, Mickledore Travel
Walking Poems
July 29, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, July 26 Sitting in a polo themed hotel bar abreast a ceramic bowl piled high with every variation of tesco mini croissants. The Lygon Arms Inn features long corridors and stone walls that give way to glass. Dark oak furniture and a courtyard and some heavy wood doors that open into quite modern and empty conference rooms. My father reads me stories from the guidebook. In 1380, a shepherd built a house that still stands. Next time, we will go to the part of England where all the Thomas Hardy stories took place. On my last day in the moors and the marshes, I walk ten miles and then run the last six as fast as I can. Make some calls. Clear my conscience. I cannot imagine, while I sprint for no reason, ever doing anything to betray my body or spirit again. I pause on the stump of a fallen beach tree to write this part down: PURITY OF BODY AND SPIRIT. Arrive at the hotel where we began a few days ago and they give me a key. Ahead of the pack, they laugh. I have to make a call, I say. In the Internet Room, I am soft spoken and nearly cautious. In the courtyard, I am wearing dirty clothes and making eye contact with strangers. The people here seem less grim than I’m accustomed to, which I suppose is to be expected from days of discipline and contentment. Robust outdoor strolls and ancient sights of worship. I will not destroy myself with sins like sloth anymore. It is very difficult to find anyone with a soul anymore, everyone was lamenting, underneath the Broadway Tower, built in 1759 and my father kept reminding me that it wasn’t that old, it really wasn’t so old in the comparative scheme of things. I know plenty of people with souls who still become incredibly didactic, my father was saying. Or something of that sort. Paraphrased a bit. The sentiment reminded me to be more gentle about it, anyways. I was being a bit contrarian for the sake of it, but trying to temper my will. Let me tell you about the age of individualism in the 80s as a reaction to the collective spirit of the 70s, my father was saying. Let me tell you about a return to tradition, I was declaring, walking too quickly, no one wanted to keep up. I wrote lots while I walked. I marched through windy fields and scribbled memories and sacraments into my phone. I was not uninterested in the view and the mist, but this is the only way in which I can really write anything at all; walking briskly and taking notes. Walking briskly and making promises. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday July 29 From 6pm - 8pm at BANK NYC — Qingyuan Deng and Lily Kwak present a public program extending the exhibition “To Save and To Destroy” into literary realms. Readings by Matilda Lin Berke, Paige K. Bradley, Fiona Alison Duncan, Sophia Giovannitti, Olivia Kan-Sperling, and Diana SeoHyung.
Inline links: BANK NYC, Qingyuan Deng, Lily Kwak
Do you find everything interesting? Have you ever been bored? Was your last emotion in 2015?
August 14, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, July 28 Amelia is at the apartment when I arrive, bearing cloned keys and summer dresses. It is not a relief to return, I am afraid. Tiptoe across dusty slanted floors and this sense of oddity and dread creeps back no matter how quiet I am about it. There are planes overhead and I have loved all this glass before, but I am clenching my eyes shut now; wishing for drapes that close. Earlier, the flight from London was delayed hours upon hours and things went awry the moment I was left alone. Comparing notes of past present and future and then I laid my roller suitcase horizontal on the bathroom floor to take a seat and think about it. Left my passport in the airport bar where the woman beside me was making friends with every single customer cycling through aside from myself and then I sprinted over to security, where the lights were flashing all schizophrenic and neon and no one would speak. You'll miss your flight, dear, the airport attendant smiled. They opened a small door with a large electric key. They sent me to the Back Rooms. They sent me through endless identical silver doors and a mirror maze and down a long gray magic carpet. I emerged on the other side to find another magic carpet just like the first. I imagined infinite magic carpets extending in every direction. Motion activated so the feedback loop would reveal itself every time I thought I reached solid ground. I was not moving horizontal anymore. It was a vertical descent into the underbelly of Heathrow. I forgot the status of Boeing VS0137. I forgot to ever leave. I woke up in the Kids Play Center. We've lifted your curse, the airport attendant beamed. Most slides can also be used as rafts, they tell me on the plane. Cartoon villain voice playing on Virgin-Atlantic-TV and they're blasting it through the cabin speakers, too. You were an A+ travel companion, they told me in the airport. I wake up to take stock of these things: safety guidelines and praise. I fall back asleep. Tuesday, July 29 After things fell apart in June, I did not eat or sleep for four days and three nights. On the fourth night, I called the NYPD informational line quite dizzy and more out of curiosity regarding physical resilience and atrophy than out of any sincere safety concern. If you cannot sleep tonight, then you can call me in the morning, the operator said. And so I was unconscious in an instant. Put some limits on one's own neurosis. I decided to stay up late last night. It was muggy and hot outside JFK, and I missed the moors and the fog for just an instant. Then, the glass doors slid open into hot sweaty americana summer and all else was forgotten. Felt a bittersweet sort of close to home. Sat on the curb. The airtrain to the car park turned onto the highway. Felt like a road trip. Felt like team sports, two-in-the-morning, intermission. I'd been so quiet that day. I had not spoken one word since Heathrow. Everybody understood that the apartment was rotting. Great place but full of mold. Great place but full of memories both good and bad. Somebody should have thrown out the milk. Somebody should have done something about the feng shui. The dead trees. The slant of the floors. The roof, which nearly caved in last winter. Three in the morning arrival but I asked Amelia if I could come over instead, and Amelia understood it would be best to sit on her floor. Amelia had been leaning into performance art. How was your vacation, Amelia asked. Not transgressive and weird, I sighed. But rejuvenating, pleasant, precious in the sort of way I'd like to hang onto. And I am feeling physically fit from all the walking and running that went on and on and on. The heat wave has not passed in New York despite one more week dwindling into summer, and I sleep until midday around when I open my eyes and begin to feel uneasy. The lines out the stores are down the block and everyone is becoming very thin. The summer foods are things like GREENS 01 Juice and maca-powder-peanut-butter-protein-bites and very rubbery cocktail shrimp at The Smith. It is Julia who suggests The Smith for dinner and I am not picky with those sorts of things. It is me who suggests the party, despite my increasing hopes, generally, to avoid these sorts of things. Wednesday, July 30 Sitting at Banter with the Big Breakfast and hot green tea reading fairytales. It was a nice night last night. Whirling sort of thing. Nightclub101 to KGB to following a group to Ludlow House to Ripple Room. The sort of thing I like as often as possible, but really must limit to now and then. Sitting at the Australian Cafe now, using my Moldavite to mark my place in my book. The fairytales are describing relentless compassion as a form of some sort of psychological warfare. Psychosexual manipulation. Relentless compassion so as to provide one with a moral advantage, knowing it is impossible for the recipient of such compassion to reciprocate. Relentless compassion so as to cast a desperate, selfish, striving plea for reciprocation. The second option is probably more common, but it would be nice to be kind of on a high horse. August will be like oysters at The Knickerbocker with the cocktail sauce in the martini glass and we're sitting by the cracked glass window and Drew says don't cut your hair not yet and so it'll be like humid heavy hair almost down to my waist now, sparkling water in plastic cups with lime and diet coke in a bikini and I will stay put for a while. I will sit at KGB sober in the evening like I do most every evening. They're tearing chocolate chip cookies apart with their hands at the table over and Amelia says she thinks a bit too much about herself to give too much thought to the existence of God but she remembers, as a child, crying tears of joy because she couldn't believe her luck. She just realized she had somehow made it into a human body on Earth, and she couldn't believe her luck. I don't wish the evenings went on too much longer. The timing is starting to feel just right. I want to fill a Desani water bottle with white claw and catch a cab to a pool party but the evening might start to feel too late. I'll read Fanny Howe, Thomas Hardy, Dawn Powell on the floor - big cracked hard cover dog eared copies of all my books. Then, I will pack up my books into Ikea plastic storage trunks. I will pack up all my books and dresses and then the movers will come. The movers will haul my things out the door. They will haul the place bare. I will turn off the air conditioning in this glass apartment in the sky, and then I will leave. August will be somewhere else. Thursday, July 31 Rebecca and I are making plans. Involving - The Chakras by C.W. Leadbeater and Esoteric Healing by Alice Bailey. I don’t want to work harder than I ever have before, but I do wish to be a bit more intuitive about it. Rebecca is telling me about Energy Hygiene in a Chaotic City. Rebecca is telling me about Seven Rays & Soul Typing. Taking Thomas Pynchon, guasha, monastery sage oil, yoga mat, mineral sunscreen up to the roof for Abundance Meditation and Contemplation. I receive good news. The best, really. I am sorry to be opaque, but something shifted in the winds in England. So far, I have managed to hold onto it here. Careful! Open up the blinds because it's foggy this morning which means we get to let some light in. No bright sunlight baking things alive. No leftover drinks or snacks from the Last Party Ever that was thrown last night. So - it’s a very strange day. I’d like to take a different approach to Caution. Generate me a definition. They generate me this definition: The deeper awareness of human limitations, the deceptive nature of false certainties, and the dangers of unchecked power. This will do. Friday, August 1 It’s an unusual sort of incoherence in my dreams today. The shelf above the bed is lined with wine glasses full of water, and there's an in between of sleep and something else - nyquil at six in the morning, cinnamon zyn at six in the morning, the friends went home around six in the morning and now it is sometime around noon, sunlight streaming in. I wake up gagging. In my dreams, the wine glass water was mostly poisoned. In the space between half awake, not all was poisoned but it was a Russian Roulette sort of thing. I take my chances. Chug water out of my safest bet. Wake up screaming. Fall asleep screaming. The Ikea boxes for the move are starting to fill up and I know it's me stuffing the plastic to the brim but I don't really remember. It's been recollection that's lacking, really. It's been a birthday dinner tonight. The sweetest kind in the Lower East Side. Dimes Square but it's just us, I said. Because it was in the general vicinity but the streets were all empty. A stupid joke, but everyone humored me. Everyone was beautiful and lovely and happy and I didn't drink a regrettable amount. A nice sort of night. Got stuck on Thomas Pynchon and now I can't read anything else. Got stuck on esoteric health and now the water is poison. Got stuck at karaoke and now my self proclaimed sulfate allergy is acting up. Wine and hypochondria. It becomes a bit self indulgent then, doesn't it? Saturday, August 2 If the movers weren't late, I'd be gone by now. But they are late, and so I am lying on the couch that’s being left behind in an Everlane striped tee and too-short Los Angeles apparel shorts feeling kind of sorry for myself. I'm not sure why I decided to scrounge up this sort millennial slop getup for the day of my very unceremonious departure. Feeling older than my years. Feeling like I was raised on Madewell and Ann Taylor or, whatever else it is that would feel nostalgic if I'd been born before 2000. Something other than Patagonia shorts and my sister's sweaters, anyways. Feeling culturally un-attuned. Feeling mostly sorry for myself because I am surrounded by grime. I've been flouncing around this place for a while, now. The clutter is so repulsive, and so much of it is new. There was never a day of really moving in, here. It was just step by step, one thing after another, little parcels that were easy to bring up and down and in and out and now; you wake up in the middle of the morning in a glass apartment in the sky to the sense that there is no space left. I would love to toss and toss and toss. I would love to close my eyes on this island of this couch amidst a swamp of Ikea boxes and tell the movers never mind. I would never open the boxes again. I would never do the dishes. I would wear polyester and sleep on the previous owners teak Scandinavian couch. I would sleep surrounded by trash. It would all become trash, because I would decide to throw it all out. What do we need to know?, the movers will ask, when they arrive. Do you find everything interesting? I will ask. Have you ever been bored? Was your last emotion in 2015? YAY, the movers will say. I am picking things up and putting them down. The movers will give me high fives. Me and three Serbian teens high-fiving in a glass apartment in the sky that I am soon to leave and never return. They will pick things up and put them down and haul them out and I will never return. Sunday, August 3 I have taken my things and never returned. All is well except, the lights here are a bit too fluorescent. The courtyard is nice for the turtle pond, but the brick blocks the sun. And, once there was a top lock but now there is not. There is a hole in my door and I can't get it out of my head. There is a hole in my door and now everything is all wrong. Sitting at GMT Tavern with a not very nice martini and the Thomas Pynchon book I just can’t finish or quit. Slow Learner. Slow Learner, just like me. Make it all about me me me. Life is like: another day in my dumb life on my dumb blog talking about me me me. Life does not have to be like this. Life could be like: the hovering curious dominant of their separate lives should resolve into a tonic of darkness and the final absence of all motion (Pynchon). I keep getting stuck on that quote. I keep getting stuck on entropy, which I do not hope to believe in. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, August 14 From 9pm at Silver Lining Lounge — Matt Weinberger and Scott Lipps present The Downtown Prom. Hosts include Sid Simons, Anika Jade Levy, Nicole Naloy, and more. Music by Sexy Damion, Blog Analog, Loose Buttons, and Boxxer. DJ sets and more.
Inline links: Matt Weinberger, Scott Lipps, The Downtown Prom
Autumn Secrets
October 27, 2025 · Original source
Printed pdf of Paris Review Anne Sexton poem that Celia keeps on trying to read to me out loud. The Anne Sexton is a thirty-six page poem, and Celia keeps telling me that it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. She keeps on reciting passages. ‘She didn’t have friends, children, sex, religion, marriage, success, a salary or a fear of death.’ and ‘Astonished light is washing over the moor from north to east.’ and ‘At this time of year there is no sunset, just some movements inside the light and then a sinking away.’ Stop trying to read this to me out loud, I keep on saying to Celia. I’ll read it later in my head. I’ll read it once I have a printed-PDF. I’ll suspend my disbelief and read your beautiful poem about art and love and loss and other things, too sometime down the line. Lying on my floor. Once I have a hard copy. Once I have everything I ever wanted. Tuesday, October 21 The screening of Darling (1965) at Film Forum is nice. All about a very beautiful and very selfish girl who cannot bear the consequences of her own actions. She whirls through London and Italy and is momentarily relieved, towards the end of the film, to learn that it is not too late. The scenery is black and white and lovely, and our heroine likes Italy because she finds it more religious, though she dislikes Italy on the other hand, because she mourns the distance from the real love of her life. Things escalate further. Overnight. In an instant. It is, indeed, she is dismayed to find, too late. The ending leaves me feeling quite uneasy. Probably because the souls of all the characters have been pretty much scrubbed and examined and turned inside out and back again, and the conclusion really has to be that these beautiful and mostly trying-their-best people, are pretty bad-to-the-core. Are you staying for the next screening, the staff at Film Forum ask us, well after the lights come on. We have stayed tucked into the seats at the theater. Kept my legs tucked into my sweatshirt in the theater. It has become, I’ve realized recently, difficult to determine the proper times for things. When to stay, when to go. No, no we’re leaving and sorry about that, we say to the staff at Film Forum. It is only two in the afternoon so there is plenty of time to pace around the newly and suddenly eternally rainy city. Looking for a hotel lobby. Looking for a wooden umbrella. A humidifier. Chamomile tea. A job. A meeting. Algorithmic knowledge pertaining to things like; how to spend a day, how should a person be, how to optimize health and intellect. How to buy a Life Well Lived. Wednesday, October 22 In July, I was in a small hotel in Bourton-On-The-Water. There was a chipped ceramic bathtub with feet on it and nice eclectic lamps and the air was humid and gray and cool in the evening, even in summer, this is kind of how things are in much of England, where the climate is somewhat more temperate. I made some decisions, then, which I remember now because they pertain in large part to promises I couldn’t keep. I promised to be a Secret Keeper, for one, and to move forward kind of sober minded and steadfast and without interest in petty resentments or high volatility reactions. I was lying on the floor on the phone, then, by an open window, in the thick of a week full of walks and cable-knit-cardigans. And so one imagines a different sort of life in the quiet mist, and one is very sure about it in the moment. And then back in New York, some solitude on the plane, shifting whims of my own, yes, but mostly of others. I was able to hold onto all of this for a while. Not for forever, though, because there were a few more weeks after that. And I did say everything, to everyone, back in New York. Mostly because I felt like I had to and because I did try to grasp at discretion and couldn’t, but now there are all these secrets spilling all about. I can feel them everywhere in the air. All the things I meant to hold close to my chest, I mean. It is ruining everything, if I’m being totally honest about it. I have tried to be more bright about things, but some basic facts remain. And before I tried to be more bright about things, I did try everything else. Thursday, October 23 Trying something else as in: Boundless Energy. The day flies by. Everyone is upset about the way things are articulated all the time, and so I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Explaining myself, that is. Saoirse teaches me how to breathe both up and down but also side to side at pilates training. The studio is full of light and very clean and very crisp and the movements, up and down and also side to side, remind me of being a dancer or a child or someone who is very quiet and precise. Afterward, Saoirse and I share chicken at the bar at Gramercy Tavern. A nice restaurant. The nicest one. The walls are decked in fall decor, and since Saoirse taught me how to breathe and move one hour ago, I have begun to feel quite alive. Are you nostalgic for a certain type of beauty, or for being the sort of person who feels of and entitled to beautiful things? Saorise wears a Burberry scarf and a Burberry coat and she is very composed, and so I trust her opinions. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, October 27 From 7:30pm at Night Club 101 — Domino Reading Series returns with Evan Donnachie, Armon Mahdavi, Erin Satterthwaite, Jade Wootton, Nick Dove, Izzy Capulong, and Chesea Hodson.
Inline links: Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series

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