Massachusetts

Article

Massachusetts is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 13 times across 13 issues between October 21, 2024 and March 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “I say something incoherent about Massachusetts”; “this isn’t strictly a guide to Massachusetts / Berkshires”; “Before I go to Massachusetts”. It most often appears alongside Los Angeles, New York City, Night Club 101.

Metadata

Category: Places
Mention count: 13
Issue count: 13
First seen: October 21, 2024
Last seen: March 06, 2026

Appears In

- Los Angeles (9 shared issues)
- New York City (7 shared issues)
- Night Club 101 (7 shared issues)
- EARTH (6 shared issues)
- New York (6 shared issues)
- Amelia (5 shared issues)
- KGB (5 shared issues)
- Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research (4 shared issues)
- East Village (4 shared issues)
- El Salvador (4 shared issues)
- Florida (4 shared issues)
- Sovereign House (4 shared issues)

External Links

- https://whitneyreview.org/

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.

Everything I Wanted

October 21, 2024 · Original source

I say something incoherent about Massachusetts. She suggests we all exchange emails. I’m not particularly enthused, but I wish the middle aged couple well. I wish their fake older-zoomer daughter well. I go to Clandestino. I go home. It was a birthday dinner tonight. It was nice

Inline links: Clandestino

Collected Agenda (lite)

November 26, 2024 · Original source

From 7pm — Come Confess in the Red Room. Lineup coming soon. OF FURTHER INTRIGUE For Mundane Mag, I wrote about the NYC Launch Party celebrating Christopher Zeischegg’s novel The Magician. It was a great party, and it’s a wonderful book (available for purchase) I will be in Williamstown, Massachusetts for Thanksgiving this weekend. The Berkshires remain one of the most special places in the world — I made a list of places I want to show my boyfriend while we are there, which I will put below for viewing pleasure and travel purposes: MASS MoCA: My favorite contemporary art museum in the world - putting aside the strength of programming (and the programming usually is pretty strong), the architectural space, lack of crowds, and integration with landscape and nature that Mass MoCA boasts is unparalleled. The museum is located in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex, and much of the art is site-specific to the bones and scale of this structure. The permanent (and/or very long term) exhibitions are worth a visit alone - Anslem Kiefer, James Turrell, Sol Lewitt, etc.

Inline links: Confess, Red Room, Mundane Mag, purchase, MASS MoCA, Anslem Kiefer, James Turrell, Sol Lewitt

Thomas Cole National History Site: Technically located in NY State (meaning this isn’t strictly a guide to Massachusetts / Berkshires but I digress). This is a very lovely historical home in the Catskills that (again) incorporates the natural landscape of the surrounding area into exhibitions and preservation. I visited an exhibition I loved here in 2022, pairing Marc Swanson’s contemporary work with Thomas Cole’s historic landscapes.

Inline links: Thomas Cole National History Site, Marc Swanson’s

Pine Cobble: A wonderful hike

Inline links: Pine Cobble

Florida, Massachusetts

December 03, 2024 · Original source

Florida, Massachusetts WHAT I DID Before I go to Massachusetts, I go to the ExPat Press Party, I go to Holy Cow for fries and grilled chicken, I go home and David makes me pistachio pudding, I wake up, I go on the roof. The roof is all torn up on account of the rain. The railings were lined with little pine trees when we moved in, but the trees have died and we ripped up all the paneling to fix a leak. Now, it's all potholes and fallen brown branches. I'm doing yard work at the top of Manhattan. I can't imagine how I'll ever get the trees back down. Other things: I think I might be thinking about myself too much. At the gym again. In earnest writing things like OUT OF YOUR HEAD INTO YOUR BODY again. What if something drastic happened? I hope it doesn't. Before I go away for Thanksgiving, I go to dinner at Decibel with Madelyn. We go to Pardon My French for a martini. We go to KGB. I go to the Lower East Side, I go to a going away party, I go to the bodega, I go home. At a party in the Lower East Side, a girl is talking about censorship, the age of censorship, how liberated she feels by the passing of This Terrible Era. "So what do you want to say?" Her friend is asking. "What?" the girl says. "What were you waiting to be free to say?" The girl rolls her eyes. "It's the principle" "Yes," her friend is saying. "The principle is important, but you can be free to do whatever you want and still be entirely uninteresting." At a party in the Lower East Side, people are talking about The Internet. "Everything you say is regurgitated from The Internet," the girl is telling her friend. Before I leave New York for only a few days, I go to Franz Kafka at The Morgan Library. It's not a very nice exhibition. They've put pop up walls and bright colors and crowded superfluous exhibition text all over the whole place. I write a review, but then I think it's kind of snarky. It's ok to be mean, but it's not ok to be cheap. "Why are you afraid of being mean," someone asked me a few weeks ago. "Because I don't want to say things that hurt people close to me," I said in response. What I should have said is - because what if I'm mean for nothing? What if I'm mean and I'm wrong and it's cheap. I get a martini at Moynihan Station. David cuts the Amtrak line. “What are they going to do?” he says. This infuriates a woman near us. Afterwards, I think I see this woman everywhere. She's sitting next to me at The Tunnel Cafe. I book a dermatology appointment for when I'm back in New York City. Select any provider, I say. I receive my confirmation email shortly after and I swear to god - the doctor they assigned me is the woman from the train. I cancel the appointment quickly. If this is fate, then it stems from nothing good. God‘s hand has nothing to do with it. Someone is simply playing tricks. the Amtrak Some things that happen in Massachusetts are: I behave very badly. I can't find my keys. It's raining. I can't go outside. I'm in an airbnb where I have never been before and It's so cold and these walls are gray, nothing like home, a lot like the kind of walls that one could imagine closing in. I start shaking by the window and I think about how I could probably be someone who does something like punch a hole through the glass. I wouldn't do this, but it's strange to feel capable of it. I think about how I should probably just go outside. It's objectively strange to spiral. I never crash out. I don't know why gray wall to wall carpeting and people talking too loudly and vicinity to an unknown suburban street freaks me out so much. I wish I could scream at the sky and the rain would stop just like that. I calm down. I don't actually wish I could control the weather. That would be no kind of a life. I go to a hotel I can't afford and I try to break into their gym to use the treadmill. I can't get into the gym, but no one stops me in the lobby. I drink their lemon water. I drink almost the whole pitcher. I call my dad and I say can you please come pick me up now. In a different house, a house that is familiar, a house that I have always known - I sit by the fire, I sit by big glass windows, I watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), I drive to the snow. "I'm driving to Florida to drive to the snow," I say. Welcome to Florida, Massachusetts the sign on turnpike says. It's a white sign flanked by plaster palm trees. A little snowman with yellow hands and feet throws his hands in the air. Troop 76 Pack 76, the sign says. It's a blizzard up the turnpike. It's snowing in thick wet sheets. It's the type of snow that's fast and heavy, almost like rain but it's opaque and it's sticking. Everyone gets out of the car but me. I'm too cold, I say. My sister is throwing snowballs. I get out of the car too. We drive down the mountain. My dad plays Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. We play all twenty-five minutes of it and then we play it again. We pick up David. Do you want to hear Alice's Restaurant?, I ask him. Alice’s Restaurant, Album Cover Things are nice, from here. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, December 3 From 5:30 - 7:30pm at Il Bisonte — Yolo Journal celebrates the new Fall/Winter issue. I love few things more than a beautiful travel journal (something that has become few and far between). Yolo Journal, however, fits this bill to exaction. Wine provided by Franciacorta. RSVP to ilbisonte@novellapagherapr.com

Inline links: ExPat Press, Holy Cow, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VRXh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa510d062-c847-4fe9-ae3e-dc6b21176f8e_177x285.jpeg, Decibel, Pardon My French, KGB, Franz Kafka at The Morgan Library, The Tunnel Cafe, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ir9V!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbd04dfd6-f357-422e-a521-9d17731dfe1b_4032x3024.jpeg, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Alice's Restaurant, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WxiA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe78658ae-4123-4810-ad03-f0e13a55cd31_316x316.jpeg, Il Bisonte, Yolo Journal, Franciacorta

the Amtrak Some things that happen in Massachusetts are: I behave very badly. I can't find my keys. It's raining. I can't go outside. I'm in an airbnb where I have never been before and It's so cold and these walls are gray, nothing like home, a lot like the kind of walls that one could imagine closing in. I start shaking by the window and I think about how I could probably be someone who does something like punch a hole through the glass. I wouldn't do this, but it's strange to feel capable of it. I think about how I should probably just go outside. It's objectively strange to spiral. I never crash out. I don't know why gray wall to wall carpeting and people talking too loudly and vicinity to an unknown suburban street freaks me out so much. I wish I could scream at the sky and the rain would stop just like that. I calm down. I don't actually wish I could control the weather. That would be no kind of a life. I go to a hotel I can't afford and I try to break into their gym to use the treadmill. I can't get into the gym, but no one stops me in the lobby. I drink their lemon water. I drink almost the whole pitcher. I call my dad and I say can you please come pick me up now. In a different house, a house that is familiar, a house that I have always known - I sit by the fire, I sit by big glass windows, I watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), I drive to the snow. "I'm driving to Florida to drive to the snow," I say. Welcome to Florida, Massachusetts the sign on turnpike says. It's a white sign flanked by plaster palm trees. A little snowman with yellow hands and feet throws his hands in the air. Troop 76 Pack 76, the sign says. It's a blizzard up the turnpike. It's snowing in thick wet sheets. It's the type of snow that's fast and heavy, almost like rain but it's opaque and it's sticking. Everyone gets out of the car but me. I'm too cold, I say. My sister is throwing snowballs. I get out of the car too. We drive down the mountain. My dad plays Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. We play all twenty-five minutes of it and then we play it again. We pick up David. Do you want to hear Alice's Restaurant?, I ask him. Alice’s Restaurant, Album Cover Things are nice, from here. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, December 3 From 5:30 - 7:30pm at Il Bisonte — Yolo Journal celebrates the new Fall/Winter issue. I love few things more than a beautiful travel journal (something that has become few and far between). Yolo Journal, however, fits this bill to exaction. Wine provided by Franciacorta. RSVP to ilbisonte@novellapagherapr.com

Inline links: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Alice's Restaurant, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WxiA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe78658ae-4123-4810-ad03-f0e13a55cd31_316x316.jpeg, Il Bisonte, Yolo Journal, Franciacorta

End of the Cold Front

January 27, 2025 · Original source

Friday, January 24 You think you will wake up in a haze, but you don’t. Bright light this morning. It is still morning, not yet early afternoon, although close enough. They turned the water back on in the night - sent the ice fairies flying back through the streets. The faucet lurches and then starts to spew all rust colored. All the drama of the evening becomes silly in the light of day, obviously. You put smooth serum on your face - sea buckthorn, La Roche Posay, Embryolisse. The rusty water has turned all clear again. Warmer today - weaving in and out of sanity, if I'm being honest. I decide to go to Massachusetts and then I decide against it. David brings me a white chocolate bear from Lil Lac. I run into him and the bear on the way back from the gym. "I got you a really stupid present," he says. I call with the people in El Salvador in the afternoon - talking about things like The Art of The State. Red Light Therapy. I need to write my story. I need to start doing things like eating fresh fruit, drinking lots of water with things like added drops of Maldon sea salt. There's the reading everyone is going to at EARTH tonight, but the line is too long. I hear that through the rumblings of people who are there before me. The line is way too long, and there are other things to do too but I stay put which is depressing, and rare for me, and I don't do anything with the solitude except I am asleep the earliest I've been in years. Saturday, January 25 I knew I was going to get sick. It was only a matter of time, and I’m a little relieved that it’s finally here. It’s not too bad. My eyes sting, and I slept twelve hours. I slept peacefully though, no nightmares, a fever dulling whatever tripwires my mind most nights and so in this sense it’s kind of nice - the being sick. Someone asks me to write a story about ANTI REALITY - “I think of your writing as a sense of unreliability of perception,” they say. And so of course, I want to write about my nightmares, but I’ve been having fewer nightmares lately, and now I’m sick. I’ll have to think about this more, later. Honestly, I feel strange about putting these event calendars here, now that the other parts have for real become my public diary. I feel weird about putting up paywalls, but I don’t want SEO to find my Secret Thoughts. I started writing this in May, and I started writing about Everything I Did and Everything You Should Do, but now I kind of want to be doing less, or I want to be going to things because I know no one and not because I know everyone. I still feel so grateful to have places to go where I know everyone, and I do think you should go to these things, too. Creative things. Special things. Isolation is so sad and so lonely and I am so grateful that my life is mostly devoid of it. It’s like a fluke - not being isolated, I mean, but I’m not, and I feel very lucky for this. I go to a reading in Union Square tonight. Something for Casual Encounters and a new newspaper called Ummm. My illness dissipated as quickly as it arrived. I think I made myself sick because I cried a lot, if I’m being honest. But I’m fine now. I’m really relieved this happened, because it was only a matter of time, and because now it’s all fine. The reading is wonderful. I'm so happy all night. It's in a beautiful apartment, dazzling, really, and I'm there early, embarrassingly early, and so be it out of pity or mistaken identity, I am given a tour. Here is the roof. Here is the room where the reading will be. Here is the artist's studio. Here are fifty sculptures above the hallway, each sculpture is by a different artist, interpreting the same person in a different way, can you guess who the person is? Sam arrives during this part. “Hillary Clinton,” he guesses. He's right. I like readings like this. One glass of orange wine and then water. I've been so cynical lately, but this feels lovely. Natasha arrives. Others, too. It's a nice mix of people I know and people I don't. It feels so easy for things to go wrong, but sometimes a night hovers just right. Sitting on the windowsill with David later, surveying the room. Up on a basketball court later, but I'm not smoking cigarettes these days. Sometimes glamor is just glamor and you don't have to feel jaded to it. The theme of the newspaper is good - umm… exercise. And this is really the root of it all, isn't it? You run, you write, there are other things, too, but this has always been the crux of things for me. This, and then hedonism, sometimes. “I'm going to make you a french omelette with parsley and guanciale and three eggs,” David tells me at home. “And it's going to be the best omelette you've ever had.” “Was the omelette pretty decent,” David asks later. Davids’s Decent Omelette Suddenly, all my music is new. The things we’re playing over and over again - they're songs I've never heard before. This means my nostalgia for this time will be different - new emotions recollected when I revisit images of now, as compared to in the months before. I feel silly and cheap reflecting on things like this - future nostalgia, imagining the contemporary as a memory. It's a slightly drunken conversation. There is no feasible counter culture anymore, no zeitgeist to seize in a think piece, interest draws towards the interior. This doesn't have to be narcissistic if done well. It's a little narcissistic, in my case. I keep on listening to these songs, over and over and over again. Home - Kinlaw

Inline links: sea buckthorn, La Roche Posay, Embryolisse, EARTH, Casual Encounters, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vpvu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d8030ea-1dab-4e47-8fa8-9689c3704780_1124x1492.png, Home - Kinlaw

Dream Logic

February 03, 2025 · Original source

From 7:30pm at Solas Bar — Riley Mac and Montana James Thomas present the launch of My Gaping Masshole by Madison Murray. Readings by Coco Gordon Moore, Alissa Bennett, Elizabeth Ellen, and Greta Doyle. Hosted by Dirty Magazine and Neoliberal Hell. As someone from a weird town in Massachusetts, I'm excited about this one.

Inline links: Solas Bar

Summer Break

July 15, 2025 · Original source

Tuesday, July 8 There is a fire by the ocean and gray gray gray dusk and I had wine against my own best interest. I thought I would say, here is what I recall. I recall nothing. There is so much I could distinguish from the wreck of it all. I'm ok but you are not so in this world today, Iris is saying on the beach. I recall we went to The Folly. I closed the door in the bathroom up the stairs. I ate Chicken and Rice, Joe's Pizza, Springbone Kitchen, Two Martinis. Throw the butter from the fridge in the trash because it really smells like rot. I was not always convinced that everything was about to rot, but I was always pretty sure about the butter. It all becomes a bit trite in writing. Not in recollection. I wish I could recall so much of anything at all. What are your favorite furniture items in memory, my dad asks Iris after the beach. Iris says a yellow ottoman. My dad lights a fire. My dad is on StreetEasy. I'm on that artificial intelligence wave in a big way. You can tell I've developed the habit because I sound abruptly so much stupider. You can tell I have little ground to stand on because, absence, no memory, relinquish nostalgia and I have nothing to say. I liked the little wooden chairs by the fire in Massachusetts. I like my map of Buzzards Bay. I liked the wooden table at a house surrounded by all that green. I did first like the Bacchus mask in New York, though I am learning to be cautious with symbolism and the thing of what you may conjure. My dad liked the bed he built into his cabin. There are people who build cabins. There are people whose whims don't dictate their attacks. There are people who are just one person all at once. The dog chased the coyote up the beach and I chased the crab apple path up towards the house and there is a paisley blanket and an oil painting of a woman in a long pleat white dress and a black hat with a black bow and a small child with his hand clutched in hers. Wednesday, July 9 Lying on the speckled blue sheets under a canopy of white veil thinking about how I’m going to get the fuck back to the city. Thinking about where I am going to live. I am going to need to pull a lot of favors. I will not be listless. Wander around my all new neighborhood in a daze of self abandon. Abandon limbo. It will be interesting to see what happens when I abandon limbo. I suspect that it'll be nothing good. Were you so addicted to the chaos? Iris asks me. Will you need to manufacture new situations to respond to? It’s just that, reckless abandon doesn't really bother me, I say. It’s not so much that this is necessarily what I crave. There is a music box and I am noticing my initials on the inside. There are mussels in coconut milk and bluefish on the porch and I was quiet quiet quiet today, though I get the sense that suddenly all around me, it is beginning to happen fast fast fast. Thursday, July 10 I stopped with all the quiet and then I regretted it in an instant. There are gray walls like paper maché and a white wooden canopy bed frame and a toy boat all tan and teal green propped up on the bookshelf. You have been lying in every bed in the house, Iris said. Rotate them like musical chairs. I was not so sure where I should land. I was lying on a yellow bedspread, then. Dusk, then. The curtains were drawn but they were light and sheer and easy to imagine what was just on the other side. Friday, July 11 New York is pulsing pulsing pulsing summer and I am glad to be back even just, to do little with it. Dinner at Lure Fishbar which is lovely and a clarity summit on the terrace which is less rotten in its final days, smog over the railing and the lights are blinking on and off in dusk haze across the river and then, everyone leaves. I leave too. Bring drinks in plastic bottles to the bar. Starting my days earlier and ending them later. There will be other things. I could handwrite it next time. I could use lugger.com or the nice neighbor from May or the generosity from others that I worry I do not return or deserve to move the couch. So, nothing ever happens. Stay up until seven in the morning and then it's taking down the fir wreaths because those are becoming a fire hazard too. Taking down the buoy and the copper pot because those are coming with me. The terrace has become all clogged with cigarettes and I notice it only now, plastic tarnished wood and the cracks are all stuffed with tar and rainwater and dead branches. So, I could do yard work I suppose. Or, I could just leave. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, July 15 From 8pm - 12pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — a one night only reading of an AI generated play trained on all Matthew Gasda’s plays. Error 404: Play Not Found. Tickets are free but donations are encouraged. - “This will be done with ample drinking and unseriousness--but the experiment may also be interesting on a philosophical level.”

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5VsE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa28d040d-b3a0-4770-82bd-6e231622df77_632x410.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYwU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46ea23c2-0020-4017-9cf8-fb844593afb0_1536x2048.jpeg, The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Error 404: Play Not Found

Drinking Dreams

September 04, 2025 · Original source

WHAT I DID Monday, August 24 Lay with filthy tangled hair hanging off the edge of the roof for a while last night, watching the Chase Clock Tower lit up too royal blue and the Empire State Building lit up the nicer sort of baby blue. I've been collecting shades of blue. Kind of navy blue Frankie's Bikini little number reflecting something sort of aqua off my Diet Pepsi on the D-line towards Coney Island. Screaming children on the D-line. Naked man running around trying to steal pedestrians pants on Coney Island. He keeps on saying to the other guy, Darby says - “I like those pants ! Gimme those pants!” And it was all these beautiful friends coming and going last night. Coming and going until it was late, really late, so taxi home and then I ate the toppings off a slice of pizza on the floor with a spoon. I spent the morning alone doing Rituals. Tretinoin before sleep and I did wake up screaming for the first time in a while. Red light therapy and copper multi peptides and avocado eye cream and mineral sunscreen and now I'm on the Subway. Kind of braindead on the subway. It sometimes takes it out of you. This sort of thing can really take it out of you. It's been summer for forever, now. I have a lot more friends now. Connectivity, connected tissue, I walk down Brighton Beach by myself, walk to Tashkent Supermarket for a towel and carrot salad and on the phone I'm saying it is not that I wish for death and even sometimes I fear it but things have become a lot less Risk Averse. I'm a lot less Risk Averse now. It would be better to be dead, someone was saying at the bar last night. She was looking at me eyes all intense and no one was really listening, I could tell no one was really listening but everyone was watching her all the same and I could see them all clenching their bodies and kind of pulling away.. Me particularly, pulling away. Perhaps I'm being self absorbed. It wouldn't be better to be dead, someone else said. He looked at me then, locked eyes which usually makes me kind of uncomfortable but I felt inclined to agree. It's definitely better when nobody is dead, I said. The bar was full of plants and glass. Like a glass jungle, I told my nameless friends at the bar.. That's not very astute, a nameless friend told me. Tonight, the cocktail menu is flavored and priced like a full course meal, and so tonight I order Cold Pizza for dinner. Cold Pizza in a crisp glass bottle, plus greasy fried chicken after that, which comes in thick paper cups. And everyone is so grateful to be alive, tonight. Everyone is so grateful for one more year of life for themselves and for their dear friends particularly. Purple sunrise if I hadn't slept through it. Yellow sunset if I hadn't gritted my teeth and clenched my eyes shut through it. Planted two feet firmly in the ground and screamed through it. First, I made one thousand promises I couldn't keep. Second, I sat on the stoop with an energy drink, water, cool minty menthol gum and the antiseptic kind of sore throat with some bodega spray gripped tight in my hand to heal all my problems. My ailments and the other things. My organs and my mind. Overjoyed to be alive again after leaving my apartment, I told Amelia. It does make things better again, Amelia told me. Tuesday, August 25 Bartending school feels kind of like an alcoholic's vision of a drinking dream. Like holograms of condensation, dim lighting, one takes a sip to the tune of disappointment. Water and food coloring dye. Bowery Park and Whole Foods and JPress nearby and inside; Christmas is coming. Smooth jazz. Everything has felt a bit the same for a time, but my room is clean. Summer is passing. Three months is not so long. Would a functional alcoholic lace up black ankle boots at seven in the morning with a clear mind and bright eyes to catch the train towards midtown towards Bartending School, at the top of the week, at the tail end of August? I am not so good at pretending like anything is changing. Like habits stack towards something greater. It might as well be yesterday, I sigh on the phone. For you, it might as well be yesterday, Amelia agrees. I do the things a person should. Cake for friends' birthdays and the waiter keeps stacking on fees at Union Square Cafe. Cut the cake fee, sit at the table fee, big group of people fee, bring your own food fee. There are other tables next to us all inhabited by people who all appear to be exactly the same, though perhaps I am being uncharitable. Imagine them as skeletons. Imagine them as children. My parents used to tell me this when I was little. Kind of a hack against boredom. I imagine myself as a psychic, looking out on things overpriced and people all exactly the same. You will have a small child and feed her nothing but buttered noodles. You will advance in age but stay exactly the same through invasive surgical facial intervention and stunted social development. You will spend evenings eating french fries with caviar for One Hundred Dollars despite a rich inner world and a childhood pumped full of extracurricular stimulation designed, specifically, to avoid a fate like this. You will fear God more than death and you will understand self destruction to be akin to suicide hence rendering you too, on a trajectory like this, a rather hellish creature. You will wake up in the middle of the night in a small box criss-crossed wood roof apartment in New York City to the sense that there are No Loopholes Left. You will go to bartending school. You will recognize that, while you can be cruel there were other factors at play. There were worse factors at play. Wednesday, August 26 Walking from Greenwich Village to Long Meadow in Prospect Park with a bag filled up with white linen and Thomas Pynchon and a plan to celebrate sweet Sylvie's birthday. A different sort of nostalgia in the air today. Nostalgia of all sorts being kind of a form of mental illness, of course but once - we were woodland fairies. Once, there were fall morning running races and cranberries that crunched under bare feet on Massachusetts roads. Once, there were rounds of Tom Collins in a kind of jazzy jungle garden restaurant in the tropics that my boyfriend who liked gender-roles enjoyed because they wouldn't let girls order their own drinks. Once, I went to the Yankees game in late August, blue and pink hazy skies, the sort of advertisements that blare out notes about Fast Food and Safe Driving in the stadium, and the sort of crowd that is so big it starts inspiring feelings of Life and Spirit rather than Homogoninity and Dread. Once, I walked from bartending school full of Tom Collins, Chambord, a sip of walnut martinini, frangelico liquor. Walked to Caffe Reggio for egg white omelet, toast, a creamy cannoli. Walking to Prospect Park a little bit tipsy. Thinking about the sort of things I used to pretend to care about. Writing about the sorts of things I used to pretend to care about. Writing it all down. Writing and walking. Writing it everywhere. Writing it on the walls. Though, I'm not so bad at keeping secrets anymore. Thursday, August 27 Amelia and I sat at Caffe Reggio until close last night, and now I have returned. Tomato soup and side grilled chicken and creamy cannoli and mint tea because things feel decadent again. Limited consumption. I haven’t really been limiting consumption. The waitress is complimenting the gray sweatpants on the boys at the table over from me, and the waitress seems to be vaguely annoyed with me, though I am trying to be pleasant. Thanks the sweatpants cost enough, the boys are saying, at the table over. Thanks we didn't realize we couldn't split the bill, Amelia and I were saying, last night, our tea was four dollars total and everything was starting to feel a little bit hazy. Sitting on the floor at sunrise, this morning, Amelia and I were watching videos from Miami. Videos from Bahamas. Videos from New York City, 2022, we'd been at all the same parties, but I hadn't known a soul. BAHAMAS, we are beaming, in one video, in the back of a taxi cab, streaking over MacArthur Causeway, Miami-Dade County, Florida, and so, as I recall, the driver was confused. I'm putting on makeup in the photo booth webcam on the floor of a hotel room and Amelia is talking in the background. It's Opposite Day in the background. Who had a mental breakdown, someone is saying in the background. From an outsider's perspective, who was it who had a mental breakdown? Friday, August 28 6:30pm, and I am back at IFC for my third viewing of Diva (1981) in twenty-four hours. I came to view Diva (1981) for the third time in twenty-four hours, because I became very sick of thinking about myself. This is a desirable alternative. The film is beautiful, and I wish to live in places like the apartments pictured. A large and wrecked studio in a car park with painted walls and recording equipment or, a hotel in Paris or, a castle by the sea or, the best one of all is a large blue flat full of puzzles and high ceilings and echoing sea sounds and an aqua glow and a man who wants to learn to stop the waves. They are fighting crime in the film. They are entrapping the criminals and they are doing it kind of like performance art. I don’t wish to spoil the ending. It really is the perfect little film. So; I will send out the recipe for zucchini (courgette) soup, and I will explain away the things I did in breathless optimism as things I did while bored. I will go to The Scratcher, Killarney Rose, Funny Bar, then Gospel then Caffe Reggio again - these are the decadent places to which I continue to return. I will draw my name with Riley on the table in crayon writing Best Friends Forever and listen to Feryquitous ft Sennzai and Sigur Rós and John Maus and think about Switzerland, Iceland, having a lot of dreams about places that are lush, lush, lush. Thinking about places that are quiet quiet quiet. Thinking about places that are green green green. Feels like Fall, outside, after church. Amelia woke me up in a living room that looked like a library and she was screaming that the air was poison. I was difficult to awaken, because it is my own delusions of poison air that wake me up screaming on other nights. Different from tonight. I was reminding myself of reality. I was reminding myself of delusions and keeping my eyes clenched shut while Amelia screamed. Well, the air wasn’t poison after all, just late night and late august and heavy with mosquitos and dust from renovations and revelations and; we walked back to the cafe. I walked through Washington Square Park at dawn. The doorman wished me good night at seven in the morning and the cycles repeated. It isn’t opposite day and we aren’t in hell, just working on things like bed time and emotional regulation. Working on archiving the things that happen outside of my head. It becomes good to have been an archivist all along. It becomes good to become sick of dealing with things mainly in repetition. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, September 4 From 6pm at Carinito — Saloon is throwing a party. Drinks from Dio. Dancing, DJ, tacos, etc

Inline links: Carinito, Saloon, throwing a party

Apocalyptic Ideation

September 26, 2025 · Original source

WHAT I DID Monday, September 15 Joe and Darby drove me back all the way from Washington DC to New York City yesterday. Me, nauseous sort of hungover laid flat in the back seat, shoes pressed up against the already smudged glass window and the September sun reflecting off the highway and the hood of the car and the tar black pavement turning everything so warm inside. A long warm drive where time passed somewhere between not at all and all at once. Too lethargic to really notice. We turned on a tape. The Shirley Jackson story based on all those girls wearing distinct raincoats that were disappearing into the woods around Bennington, Vermont in the 40s and 50s. In the story, nineteen year old Louisa Tether runs away from her beautiful old white wood Massachusetts home and nice-enough family on account of mostly a sense of ambient contempt and a desire for a whole new life. As it turns out, one can get a whole new life without too much trouble. All it takes is swapping out your nice blue jacket for your old rain jacket and retreating to a town that is not too-big but still-big-enough. Three years later, Louisa Tether is Lois Taylor. In the story, Lois Taylor tries very hard to act in accordance to the stories she is telling herself. This, Lois Taylor learns quickly, is what it takes to be a good liar or maybe just a new person, the two are kind of the same in this case. I doze in and out of sleep, but the sound of the audio-book is nice and I am curious what will happen when Louisa decides to come home. “Louisa Please Come Home”, the story is called. It ends with a chance encounter, a change in whims after three years, and the realization, too, that it is just too late. By that point, it is just too late. A three-years-older Louisa washes up at her three-years-older family home and her three-years-older parents and sister look into her just slightly aged face and irrevocably changed eyes. It’s just been too many years of playing pretend. You shouldn’t pretend to be our Louisa, Louisa’s parents say. You have a family who loves you, and you should go home to them. We hope that someday, our Louisa comes home, like you should go home to your parents. Our Louisa was younger than you, Lousia’s father explains. In my own small and strange apartment things are still a bit cluttered but at least nothing is sterile. I made a call and I imagined a big white Massachusetts home. A stone patio in the back and still-green trees and hobby horses in the front. Windows that I could stare in and a door that I could still walk through because I have never run away. An old car and quiet roads and little red berries that crunch underfoot this time of year. Three years is quite some time. This part of the story made me uneasy. The emphasis on how much older all these should-be happy and youthful people look after only three long years. New York City is still so steaming hot. I weigh my options, and decide to stay for a while. Tuesday, September 16 In my life where I am staying for a while, Celia sends me mantras in the night. Today is a good day to become harder to kill and easier to love, Celia says. I have already seen this mantra on Health Gossip, but I appreciate it all the same. I wake up in a room that is small now, and so it is easy to take quick stock of things. The light and the white bedspread and a little gold swan and gold watch and gold cross and black Orca stone of Protection clustered on the edge of the table. Celia is joking I presume, but most things do come down to energy and integrity. Volatility is what emerges when there is energy without integrity. So; I am working on things. In the morning, there are mantras from Celia and there is sludge and dirty water seeping through my ceilings from the bathroom of my always-yelling-upstairs-neighbors. This is not so much a thing of patterns and symbols everywhere for those with eyes to see, and more an indicator that people who are very loud often also live kind of disgusting lives. One kicks into gear. Call the people one should call. Say thank you very much and the anonymity of these things still feels strange. I am very easy to kill like most people are and I don’t really believe in quantifying or even speaking on things like easy to love. There is lymphatic drainage and athletic resistance and pyrogenics and snake oil face tape and blue multi peptide serums and red light therapy and real sort of detox incoming because yes, there needs to be one of those soon. I sat at Dr. Clarke’s with snake venom filled saki and martini and free champagne til late enough last night to say goodbye to friends who come and go in and out in this city and then I wandered home through the remnants of the never-ending-San-Gennaro fair, where teens were scrambling on the ferris wheel and a nice seeming man was shilling free fried oreos. I sat at The Odeon which is really just the perfect restaurant til almost sunset tonight, perched at the bar alone for a while waiting for Celia to arrive, old school vibe, pink and green glowing clock, men walking in straight from the plane carrying luggage. I ran into an architect and an editor and there was talk about throwing a party. Celia arrived full of stories about design and plans that made me full of energy and a night and life that could stretch endlessly if I could find it in me to not flee shortly after dinner. Are we going to an after party, Celia asked me. I presume I’m un-invited because of an incident where I was acting hard to love and easy to kill, I told Celia. That’s ok, Celia told me. We went to a reading instead, where the lamps were stained glass and the stories were about people who are too bored to cook but still need to eat. We went to a party then, too, which is always how these things go and then I wandered home through quiet streets of the Financial District and up a ways and it was too late for anyone to still be out shilling anything or too quiet for me to stop if they were, regardless. The windows were left open at my new and strange apartment and I counted the turtles in the clean water in the pond outside and back inside the water had stopped dripping through the floors of my horrible neighbor’s disgusting and loud apartment. Dirty water, clean water, everything dripping out all over the floor and the pavement and then someone cut the supply and so; the cycles repeated nine million times. The cycles repeated and then they grinded to a halt. Wednesday, September 17 There was the idea of thinking about oneself until one invented an entirely new self. There was the idea of finding the place between past and future which of course logically concludes with present but, definitionally becomes hard to sort out. Something like wading through mud which these rooms often seem to be full of these days. I am reading a story about the Organ Donor Registry and why one should remove oneself at my party on Saturday. You will know you are ready to have a child when you are tired of taking care of yourself, Veronica says, in the story, and she said it to someone else in real life, because this part of the story is true, though it is not a true story. One can think about nostalgia and how to fill a day and right from wrong and if one is sincere or not and how to tell based on things like your own sense of your own soul and the cadence of your voice and often based on things you can kind of just see in the faces of yourself and others. I realized a long time ago that I live a life that people are interested in reading about, K said on the Internet. How to fill a day? I could have been far more voyeuristic about all of it. Instead, I talk about how to fill a day. I could have been far more interesting. If I am going to think about something besides myself it should be something fun like art not physics, Amelia says. I am going to think about: buy a Sony camera and make some flat-lay videos and join Raena Health to figure out the root of things and become very strong from all the climbing and write the story about Gnosticism or what happens when people seek meaning in signs and symbols when it’s all just randomness and is it a form of nihilism to turn towards religion if you are really still not sure? I am skeptical when people are very certain about things, Iris says. You’ve been learning to withhold your opinions but I hope it’s not just because you have none, Celia says. At the party - another party - everyone is very well dressed in things like linen, and I fit right in by coincidence because I am wearing a blue linen shirt. Are you bored yet because I am, Rose says. I am endlessly entertained, I tell Rose. But there were other problems too. Thursday, September 18 You don’t need anything but this, the waiter tells me at 9 Orchard. It is 2pm and hot. He brings me a Tequila espresso martini listed simply on the menu under; Day Drinking. He brings me a salad that is chock full of thin gray hairs so he removes it from the bill. Saoirse joins me. We are here to write in the Blue Room, but both our laptops are dead on arrival which is evidence, really, that neither of us were really here to write at all. We are here to hang, Saoirse keeps on saying. It is productive, really, because there were many things that had to be said at some point, and if a task necessitated completion at some point, well, now is as good a time as any. The bar at Nine Orchard is full of business people and weekday leisure. Wearing sunglasses. Drinking diet coke. I’ve been trying to be less gluttonous about it. Everyone is hoping to take advantage of the last dredges of sun, and so Saoirse gives me a hotel tour and then suggests we go outside. New ownership at the hotels around here. New blazing hot fires in the blue rooms at the hotels where the shades are pulled shut against the still blazing hot autumn resistant summer heat. We do cartwheels in the ballroom. We aren’t asked to leave. Before there was Dimes Square, there was The Metrograph, a German walking tour guide is saying, back on the street. No way that is real, I am saying to Saoirse. I see them all the time, Saoirse is saying to me. We walk to Le Dive. The hours tick onwards and so today is the last day of it. Last days of gluttony. My second-to-last-day in my-gluttenous-life. Saoirse is showing me a free library web application. Saoirse is showing me a free web application to read The Bible a little bit each day and then all at once in one year. Saoirse wants to sit outside. Saorise wants to drink wine. Saoirse wants to remind me how much better my life is now and I want to say; I’m not sure if I agree, I can’t drink sulfates, I am kinder now certainly, I am happy in this moment, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry. I am so sorry for how I used to be and how I’ve been. I walk home as the sun fades. Plans for self improvement. Plans to revel in solitude (the thing I hate most). Plans to stay for a while. I don’t want to, really. I have been talking about how the apartment is clean but I still won’t let anyone else come inside. I imagine a winter where I was the happiest I’d ever been. You will be that happy again, Saoirse says. It’s ok if I’m not, I say. I imagine it is just one life all at once. I imagine what I think about when I pray. I imagine somewhere else. A place full of wind and desert and proverbial change that wouldn’t come. So, there is nowhere else but here. I decide to stay again. I decide this every day. Friday, September 19 An Aristotelian tragedy requires the tragic figure to be a hero, which is why it is particularly disappointing to suffer while you are feeling irredeemable. Apocalyptic ideation is when you’re thinking about how good you’d be at the apocalypse. Relentless optimism is when you’re challenging your friends just to see if they challenge you back. I wear a black dress to go ballroom dancing. I eat meatballs and gem salad and drink sparkling water at home. What are you doing today, Iris asks. Throwing a party, I respond. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, September 26 From 7pm at EARTH — Patrick McGraw, JT LeRoy and Meg Superstar Princess open for Laura Albert.

Inline links: Health Gossip, EARTH, Laura Albert

Fever Dreams

November 05, 2025 · Original source

A good nights sleep Monday, October 27 I opened the window to let in the eerie and whistling wind after the reading last night and then I stayed up late, fallen leaves and pollen drifting past my headboard. Called Celia to talk about the same things all over again. Called Celia to request that she confirm my fears and delusions and certainties for the million billionth time. I’m getting a really creepy feeling, Celia said. Like a horror movie, Celia said. In my earliest memories, I recall walking around with this very deep self-assuredness. I would wake up everyday feeling so certain and blessed for the absolute pureness of my heart. So when he said he understood me as perfect, it was like oh someone finally understands me the way that I understand myself, Celia said It is important to always have pure intentions, I told Celia. I like when people share my aesthetic sensibilities and are unfazed about the things I worry hedge towards evil, I told Celia I’m starting to feel so creeped out, Celia told me. Tuesday, October 28 Nothing was so creepy. I was not scared of anything anymore. I could still hear the wind through my open window and in the daylight it was nice. The nicest, really. The nicest thing in the world. I slept through the afternoon half aware of this nice and floating wind and then I donned a black skirt, black top, black Ganni boots and I drifted through orange-hour Washington Square Park and a light fall rain towards the lobby of The Marlton Hotel. Where there was a fire and Celia perched by it, waiting for me. Nothing ever happens. I used to be so arrogant, I told Celia, at The Marlton. Arrogance is a good sort of thing to hold onto, sometimes. Celia told me. Celia said something about our friends being cancelled online, something about moral hierarchies, she was done feeling sorry for herself and love thy god with all thy heart and all thy might and acedia is the only truly mortal sin. The Marlton Hotel and God and Self Indulgence. French fries with garlic aioli and dirty martinis and tuna tartar and writers workshop without too much writing. I was sitting there kicking my feet around and feeling like I might die if I couldn’t break-the-pattern-today-so-the-loop-does-not-repeat-tomorrow. Do you remember what life used to feel like? Do you wish to live forever? Do you wish to never suffer? Do you wish to never suffer, forever? I’m sorry to be cryptic about it. Wednesday, October 29 In my fever dream, I was back on the Amtrak heading towards Florida, Massachusetts and everyone around me was screaming. We were traveling to record something regarding Esoteric Health. It was still October, and I knew the omens we were seeking to be somewhat evil. Everyone was furious at me, and this only bothered me because I did not know why. Woke up in New York City yelling, somewhere between a memory and a fugue state. A recurring dream I used to have where I was driving with my parents over the George Washington Bridge in a winter storm and an old woman was lurching at the vehicle, tugging at the door handles, talking about how it was almost too late. A train ride last winter where everyone was screaming at me because my ex-boyfriend was being abrasive and I was kind of in on the bit. A small faux-thatched-roof apartment in Greenwich Village where no one is angry because no one is here. I paid my dues in apologies and reparations in October, and now God has rewarded me with a real life fever and unpleasant news. A lot of things I loved became shrouded in delusion and vicious self-involvement. A lot of clarity and purity of heart became hard to access because my morning was shrouded in a fever. Kind of wanting to scream. Kind of wanting to take my Brown Prada Boots and Black Fry Boots and Grandmas Suede Ballet Flats to the cobbler. My Blue Pearl Necklace to the jeweler. My Sue Wang Dress and Red Vintage Slip to the tailor. Kind of have been like a bull in a china shop with all my beautiful things, and now there is so much to fix. Kind of feeling indignant. I should really focus on believing in something. I believe in hotel lobbies, superficially. I believe in other things, too, but I am trying to have a bit more discretion about it. Thursday, October 30 Here is what has happened: I am sitting at The Marlton hotel now where everything is cast in a kind of olive glow and the fire place is roaring and I ordered a cheese board with camembert, comté, manchego, six grapes, two halfs figs, spoon of truffle honey and spoon of jam by myself. Ordered chamomile tea and sat with Rebecca and Dory in the sunroom with my fever, earlier. Now, I am sitting by the fire with my fever by myself. I am not ready to go home. I am not really ready to think or write about the sort of things that have happened. A small beautiful blond child and her brother a bit older just walked in both wearing sweet striped shirts. Their father just finished the marathon. Their mother is all smiles, pulling apples from her canvas bag and polishing them on the hotel napkins before placing the fruit in the beautiful children’s outstretched hand. I am green with envy. I am so overjoyed to be looking in on their Beautiful Life. An insufferable duo on a first date next to me is talking about how much they hate parades and how their work is industry agnostic. Their flirting is so nauseating. Bad voice physiognomy. They are flirting with each other in the most insufferable and sexless way and you can tell, so clearly, that they met on The Internet. I am starting to consider forgoing The Internet. There is a soulless kind of song and dance these people are doing. He is listing out his favorite types of Pasta Shapes and numbering his rankings on his stubby fingers. She is talking about food poisoning. Neither of them are religious. I am trying to stomach my distaste. If you have ugly thoughts they will seep through your skin and stomach and long black sleeves of your long black Brandy Melville dress and they will seep up through your mind and out of your pours and intermingle with the rancid scent of your fever that will become a deeper sort of illness and start to rot and fester in you forever. Your bitter and ugly thoughts will start to turn your face all ugly and ruined. I am trying to wish them grace and good will. I am trying to sip my tea and choke down fruit truffle honey and crackers. Twist my hair into two very tight braids. I want to find myself a little less repulsed. I want to look at these strangers’ pale forms and imagine them replaced by orbs of light. I want to look inside their rich inner worlds. I want to look into strangers’ eyes and not be afraid of staring or back holes. I want to wish them well. I want to hope they find a beautiful life. I want to hope they buy a beautiful life. Friday, October 31 Here is what has happened. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Once; I lived in a glass apartment in the sky. I am not sure how things can oscillate in extremes, to that degree, with that level of hot and cold and up and down and everything cruel, like it became. I used to lie on the floor to feel close to things. Lie on the floor and dream about it. The past has been orbiting in ways that make me queasy along with the illness in the air, today and yesterday, since the eve of Halloween, really. At the Halloween Party in Chinatown I wore a black hat and milled about amongst red flowers, plum tart, candles and courtyards. Went bolting up the stairs to catch a car. Went walking under the Washington Square Park archway where the air was very crisp and I was very feverish. The park was overwhelming me with street performers and noise and light and stimulation. And then in the shadows and the grass and tucked away beyond the benches there are figures in sweatshirts and denim and long sweeping hair and interlaced hands and fallen leaves and everything sweet all around the edges. I was sitting at the edge of the park in June with my fingers interlaced and the beating sun fading into dusk and the summer stretching kind of hazy and breathless ahead. It is strange to try to remember anything. Strange all the stories I am hearing in the wind and the autumn and the fever dreams and another passing season. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 5 From 7pm at Night Club 101 — 99 Minutes or Less returns with Maison du Bonheur (2017, 62 minutes). 99 Minutes or Less is a new free film screening showing films that are (you guessed it) 99 minutes or less. This evening’s screening is guest programmed by Elissa Suh of Movie Pudding. After party to follow with sounds by Dj Kyle and Paradise by Replica

Inline links: Night Club 101, 99 Minutes or Less, Maison du Bonheur, Elissa Suh, Movie Pudding, Dj Kyle, Paradise by Replica

Hotel Lobby Gossip

December 09, 2025 · Original source

Fresh memories of weekend in the woods (Florida, Massachusetts)

Lost Week

January 08, 2026 · Original source

WHAT I DID Monday, December 22 Where do your turtles go in the winter, Zoe asked me, a few nights ago. The pond is made of running water, I said. It doesn’t freeze over, and the turtles just stay put. Zoe leaned forward, then, and told me, in a low voice, not to be affected by the temper tantrums of others. I nodded. I said something about the wind. There’s just been something manic in the wind is all, I said. Zoe nodded. Bright winter light reflecting off the turtle pond like a beam this morning. No natural light in the apartment, and no one really left in the city at this point in the winter, but the courtyard is shimmering shimmering shimmering. Longest night of the year. Early morning. Packing up my bags and then I’ll leave for a while, or at least for one week. The other girls at dinner a few nights ago were talking about the things that necessitate passivity, and the things that necessitate action. I’m thinking of moving to LA and getting super into my career, one of the girls was saying. What sort of career? Creative director. I’ve been getting super into my career right here, one of the other girls chirped. A career is a really important thing for a woman to have, her friend deadpanned. The first girl looked surprised. That was so backhanded. She said. You know I don’t actually want one of those. That was so mean. I think that was the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me. After dinner, I went back to my apartment and I stayed there for a while. For a few days actually, which I have never done before and never will again but the stories were flowing like water and I was drifting in and out of dreams where everyone was yelling around me. The apartment was empty and pale and I could see small objects fluttering slightly from the wind through the open windows every time I opened my eyes. The time passed quickly, like nothing at all, and now it is dusk and a full Winter Solstice cycle later. It’s not that I’ve ever been truly manic, or really even bored. It’s just that I found it easy to stay put, for once. There’s no snow on the walk to Caffe Reggio, but the streets are still white with cold. The order here is veggie soup with grilled chicken chopped up and placed at the bottom of a thick white ceramic cup, a neopolitan pastry, coffee with milk. The cafe is warm and full of cheer even though we are at the top of the Lost Week Of The Year. The goal now is to practice being quiet more. The goal is to distinguish between miracles and curses. There are no curses on the Amtrak to Boston this year, though the light is kind of melancholy and the station is less full than I remember it. I get on the wrong train first, and then it’s eerie and first class all the way down. On the right train, pulling out of New York, there are flames like eternal torches burning outside the factories. and underneath the bridges. Listening to Morrissey and George Martin to remind myself of things that are beautiful. The ride is quick and quiet. No strange women throwing themselves at the side of the carriage. No thieves in New Haven, though I’m pretty sure train heists don’t happen anymore and haven’t for a while. Nobody yells or seems particularly cognizant of their surroundings, least of all of me. Last Christmas, it was chaos all the way to Massachusetts. In the dining car, a man is talking about Snow Days. He can’t help but like snow days, because he likes the way they make his daughter’s face light up. Train snacks come in little packages like secrets. Tinfoil and cardboard and many layers to unwrap. It’s just a hebrew-all-beef hotdog and a white claw inside, but the ordeal of it is nice all the same. “Winter” by Johann Wofgang von Goethe is playing off the radio when I arrive. The drive from the train is dark and silent, except for Davey-the-dog jumping at the window. The old magicians were poets,” the radio is saying. “Their art was not to turn one thing into another, but to seek the hidden form of a thing and put it into words. The essence of the thought is that true creative power lies in revealing the inherent, often unseen, nature of the world through art and language,” a woman is reciting on the radio. Her voice is soft and she speaks in a thick British accent. It’s still dark outside, and pine bows are strung over the wooden rafters, along with baby lights that flicker slowly, on and off. The fields are gray and hazy and soft and sheathed in a light fog so you can still see through the window, but not very clearly. “Everyone who saw her looked away quickly,” the reader is saying, on the radio. “as if what she had could be caught by being close. For her it was only winter. Inside and out. She would carry it with her, wherever she went.” Welcome to Night Tracks, the radio says. Where the land is covered in a blanket of snow. Tuesday, December 23 It did snow overnight. Three glass mason jars of water on the kitchen table, along with orange juice, cups of black coffee, and a lemon tart from the Concord Cheese Shop. The whole set up is glimmering in diamond and crystalline light. Everyone else is gone, for the day, and I know because I could hear them talking on their way out. Something about elevators and broken door knobs and all the horrible ways one can get trapped and then die. Someone my sister knew in a small apartment in Berlin sent the bathroom door knob tumbling out into the living room and thus sealed herself inside. Some friend of a friend got stuck in a careening elevator for hours on end, dropping up and down and lurching faster and faster between the twentieth floor and ground. She was about to make contact with the earth and splinter herself. Really, she was. It was about to happen when the elevator stopped. A fireman emerged with a master key. The friend was fine. One is aware, I could hear everyone saying as they all bundled up in winter coats, that when one dies of claustrophobia, the causation of one’s demise is directly correlated to one’s solitude. The doors slammed and in a rush of cold and morbid conversation and bright morning, everyone was gone. I’m in the woods again, after all that energy. It’s just one week all at once. It’s just ten am and there are still small snow flurries blowing off the evergreen forest. Wednesday, December 24 Christmas Eve - accounting for beautiful hours I went to the salon in the car park by the laundromat, where I used to make snow angels in the dead grass, while I waited as a child.

Gift certificate to Colonial Inn in Concord, Massachusetts (a gift certificate to most inns would do)

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

Things are becoming interesting again. Themes of my stories include: copying, rage, seven-deadly-sins, homesteading, wyoming, san salvador, lucis trust, morning routine, drinking routine, night time routine, hotel lobbies, five-star-hotels, spirit airlines, palm beach, network states, ballet flats, event calendar, patronage, patronage networks, geneva, venice biannale, canne, party hosting, weight lifting, rock climbing, publicity, st theresa de avila, underwater communication cables, oil rigs, satellites, social clubs, numerology, patterns and symbols, gnosticism, federal agents, effective altruism, rationalism, catholicism, weaponized incompetence, self obsession, self obsession, self obsession, self obsession, disassociation, disembodiment, embodiment, new york city, massachusetts, glass apartments in sky, gray rocky shores, los angeles california, carmel california, san diego california, ventura highway, silver springs, cults, friends, surfing, architecture

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