Collected Agenda Scene Wiki

New York

430 min read

New York

Article

New York is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 52 times across 52 issues between May 19, 2024 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “the best steak in New York”; “New York feels all new again, all because I left for only three days”; “of first moving to New York”. It most often appears alongside KGB, David, Chloe Pingeon.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 52
  • Issue count: 52
  • First seen: May 19, 2024
  • Last seen: March 18, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

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

COLLECTED AGENDA #1
May 19, 2024 · Original source
Kat Chamberlin’s show Tulip Mania at Parent Company in the morning. Kat and I share a stalker, and separately, the show is so magical. I want to write more about the show because I haven’t reacted that viscerally to a gallery show in a long time. For now, I make notes on the subway home. Heading: magical. I lived in Switzerland as a child and serendipity is more common there and my father sometimes still describes really special things as like the magic of Switzerland. That’s how he describes Kat’s show when I tell him about it that afternoon, which is a comparison that sounds almost meaningless outside of personal context, but which is just say that there’s a lack of anonymity and a strangeness that is eerie but almost pleasant in the context with which I view it, and an integral intergenerationality of the exhibition and of my morning there that is exceedingly rare and hard to find in New York.
Inline links: Tulip Mania, Parent Company
Raining in the evening, but I still want to walk to Chelsea after work. Lecture with Bill Armstrong at the School for Visual Art. I don’t typically find photo theory interesting, but I do like career retrospective lectures, and the artist blurs the images in ways I really like. Later, dinner at The Knickerbocker; coziest restaurant and the best steak in New York. The only steak house in New York. Ordering - dirty martini, cocktail shrimp, medium aged rib eye with onion rings, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes
Inline links: Bill Armstrong, The Knickerbocker
COLLECTED AGENDA #2
May 28, 2024 · Original source
I’m flying back from Texas and then I’m in an Uber to the Lower East Side to collect things and then I’m in an Uber to the West Village and then I’m going to sleep. New York feels all new again, all because I left for only three days. I’m thinking I should leave more. I’m thinking I should cherish the night but then I’m so tired. I go to sleep so early, but outside, there is Ellie’s MFA/MA (?) Graduation Party on the Upper East Side, and an EGirl party at Le Bain. Later, I’m hearing I missed a night that was spectacularly fun on both fronts.
Inline links: Ellie’s, EGirl, Le Bain
Running into everyone I know on my walk to a Strange Party in D*mes Square. I walked A Million Miles today. New York feels so SMALL in the summer. I’m eating North Dumplings in the back of a party and I’m sound asleep by midnight.
Inline links: North Dumplings
COLLECTED AGENDA #3
June 06, 2024 · Original source
Early evening I’m back in the Upper West Side throwing oreo cakesters in the trash of my aunt's apartment that reminds me of childhood and also of first moving to New York and also of always coming back from the coast when it’s always late May and everything is always this green and humid.
The drive back to the city from the coast is longer than it has to be because we get turned around on I-95 North after the first rest stop and nobody realizes until we’re almost back in Providence and by then it’s almost mid afternoon.
COLLECTED AGENDA #5
July 08, 2024 · Original source
Too hot for steak, but I go for dinner at Knickerbocker Bar and Grill anyways. Knickerbocker is not the only steakhouse in New York, but it is the best. It’s better in the winter, but it’s good now too. Ordering: sea bream, salad, steak with creamed spinach and fries and onion rings. Bartering diet coke with my sister in exchange for promises to help move the dead trees off my roof.
Inline links: Knickerbocker Bar and Grill, not the only steakhouse in New York
I’m making a list of restaurants that are actually special in New York because I hated Bar Pitti so much. My list is pretty small because I pretty much only like places that are cozy and that serve roast duck, but Knickerbocker makes the cut. Knickerbocker is number one.
Inline links: Bar Pitti
Wednesday, July 10 at 7pm - Lucky American Films x Uncensored New York presents the premiere of BRUTALIST COUTURE by Jonathan Rosado. There will be a Q+A moderated by Adam Lehrer (of Safety Propaganda) and a panel featuring Jonathan Rosado, Salomé, and Roman D’Ambrosio. After party at Home Sweet Home hosted by Label NYC, among others.
Inline links: Lucky American Films, Adam Lehrer, Salomé, Home Sweet Home, Label NYC
COLLECTED AGENDA #6
July 27, 2024 · Original source
I’m writing again. I’m MAXIMIZING my TIME. I’m walking the perimeter of New York or at least downtown Manhattan but I’m walking it in circles so it counts as more. Dinner at Cafe Hong Kong where two lobsters are $38 and where the walls say RIGIDITY AUTHORITY PRECISION RESTRAINT.
Inline links: Cafe Hong Kong
COLLECTED AGENDA #7
August 14, 2024 · Original source
Anyways, I find this all to be rather depressing. I forgot to take notes this week, and so now I can’t remember if The Hegelian E-Girl Dinner I meant to write about was on Tuesday or Wednesday. I don’t remember what you missed this week. I can’t possibly begin to imagine everything I’ve missed, this week, this month, all the time, ever. This is a journal entry, but I’m not monetizing it. I probably would, if I thought that would work. I’ll be in El Salvador this week, but if you’re in New York, here is what’s happening. Here’s some of it:
Inline links: The Hegelian E-Girl Dinner
Also Wednesday, August 14 - Roman D’Ambrosio presents a reading of his new play Homemade Dynamite at Sovereign House. The play debuted at the New York Theater Festival — featuring “intense drugs, sex, violence, and religious fervor”. Doors at 7pm, Play at 8pm
Inline links: Roman D’Ambrosio, Homemade Dynamite, Sovereign House, New York Theater Festival
COLLECTED AGENDA #8
August 23, 2024 · Original source
Dinner at El Xolo, which is the best restaurant I’ve been to in a very long time. I’ve never been to a restaurant like this in New York. I’ve rarely been to a restaurant like this in life. It’s a deeply special meal. Food can probably best be described as “Modern Latin Fusion” - small plates, many of them, with foams, emulsions, mousses etc. We order one of everything on the menu. It’s a small enough menu. The best is a crudo with matcha ponzu, cilantro, fried corn and a watermelon basil vodka drink full of clarified ice. I tell my boyfriend's friend across the table about the jaguarundi I saw, and he tells me that jaguars (a different cat) were the very first bio-hackers.
Inline links: El Xolo
I’m waking up late, walking to a mall, buying cargo pants and taro iced tea, buying ceviche and pork shoulder tacos and diet coke at Fisheria. I was planning on returning to New York tonight, but instead I’m going to the mountains, to Coatepeque Lake, spending the night at Cardedu Hotel. The hotel is weird, very hard to find, very hard to reach by car and full of oddities on arrival like a large ropes course on the edge of the restaurant and a never open popsicle stand. I don’t like it here at first but then in the evening it’s storming and you can see the clouds and rain move over the lake like it’s in slow motion, and everything is very quiet and still and the outline of the strange hotel gets obscured by the storm.
Inline links: Fisheria, Coatepeque Lake, Cardedu Hotel
That first night, I’m on the terrace of a home rented by the group hosting the conference looking out over San Salvador. The house is indoor outdoor, lots of glass, so much of the architecture is like this here. There’s a pool built into the cliff edge onto which the house appears to be carved, rock steps leading down the steep lawn, heat lighting sparking over volcanic mountain ranges in sky that gets darker and darker and darker as the land retreats from the city. Deliriously tired when I fall asleep.
What Are You Doing In The Fall?
September 03, 2024 · Original source
I’m back from El Salvador. I'm back from The Hamptons. I broke the air conditioning in my apartment but it’s not too hot, the air is just still. No one has been here this August and that’s not what I intended for this summer, but I think that was good. New York is obviously not stale, but anything self-referential is. I've been talking too much about things that are becoming insular. I really liked El Salvador, the ocean, I’m happy to return to my greenhouse apartment.
Back in New York, at dinner at Hop Kee, my friends are talking about The State Of Things. They're talking about The State of New York in particular. The State Of What People Care About. I say something cynical and boring, but then my friends are talking about an increasing draw towards real life, things in real life, probably live music more than literature as the next main thing, because live music is more conducive to real life than, for example, a reading. Reading is arguably a solitary activity being forcibly thrust into a social sphere when performed. Music might be more inherently visceral. I prefer readings to concerts but I do think one is a more natural concept than the other. I’ve been in El Salvador and I miss hanging out. Tonight: something new - a meet and greet with an infamous explorer at Sovereign House.
Inline links: Hop Kee, Sovereign House
The Mars Review of Books White Party feels like the end of summer for real. It feels misty and hazy and the party is in Connecticut, it’s only ninety minutes outside the city, but the party is sparkling in a way that only a late afternoon in the country can be. There’s a purity to the afternoon. A cleansing of sorts. Summer incarnate to end it all. In the pool, eating fruit, drinking sparkling water because my mouth is dry from drinking gin earlier, I’m struck by a tremendous sense of relief that tomorrow, it will be September. I’m not ready for anything to end, but this feels like a natural fade. I’m floating on my back, waiting for winter. In the moonlight, later, high drama unfolds. I’m not there. I’ve been getting better at learning not to linger.
Inline links: Mars Review of Books
I wish I had more to say about fashion week.
September 21, 2024 · Original source
There are so many pop-ups outside my apartment today, so many stands on the street, so many restaurant openings. My friends are telling me that New York is coming alive again this season, which is strange to me because I’ve felt the opposite. A slowing, a removal, I suppose time will tell.
Collected Agenda with Vivien Lee
October 23, 2024 · Original source
Vivien Lee is a writer and copywriter from Northern Virginia. I invited her to Guest Edit immediately upon first reading her work, mostly because I was struck by her voice – unique in its ability to merge cool elegance with visceral, aesthetic, and physical engagement. Vivien writes a substack titled Lessons for Next Time which is loosely tied to the theme of detachment. She describes the Substack as an exercise in exploring her tendency towards aloofness as a person. She does this vividly with essays such as going to the opera in my red miu miu heels during a storm - emotionally untethered, yet sharp and grounded in its aesthetic pinpoints and moments of vulnerability. Vivien has written for The Cut, Architectural Digest, Family Style, and elsewhere, covering art, sex, love, design, music, books, history, film. Last summer, she taught a writing workshop on speculative fiction at the School of Visual Arts. Lately, she has been quietly exploring fiction and screenwriting. She cites Clarice Lispector, Carl Jung, Simone Veil, and June Jordan as voices she finds timeless. She is drawn to symbolism, abstract concepts, psychology, and the metaphysical… topics that transcend the ordinary. If Vivien Lee was not a writer, she probably would have pursued a career in psychoanalysis. WHAT VIVIEN LEE DID Friday, October 11 It’s my day off and I text Ani, who is back in New York. We meet to get lymphatic drainage massages at Pure Qi, which is like a neti pot for your nervous system. I’m addicted, and need one once a month. At the appointment, she surprises me with a gift — a pair of Betsey Johnson stilettos — that look like Beetlejuice and Barbie had a lovechild. After our massage, we try to get a table at Bernie’s. I’ve heard their burgers are good (I am a burger connoisseur, in case you didn't know) but the wait is 3 hours long, so we opt for Five Leaves. Ani orders a salmon and I ask for the shepherd’s pie. We discuss the play we are working on, along with other things, like the mysteries of vigorous bonding and the embarrassments of “being known”. Ani teaches high school and writes fiction. Most of my close friends, now that I think about it, are either teachers, therapists, artists, or writers. Ani and I get along, I think, because we both understand the value of privacy, and the sense of self that stems from solitude, which often feels lonely at times. With Ani, we can each share our loneliness without drowning the other in it. And that is nice. Sunday, October 12 I spend the morning reading Karmic Traces by Eliot Weinberger. I’m one of those people who will delay finishing a book if I am enjoying it too much. I grab the latest issue of Harper’s and skim through Lauren Oyler’s cover story. I don’t know why everyone hates her. My boyfriend takes me to Duals Natural to go spice shopping. I’ve been curious about white pepper, which is apparently earthier, milder, and more umami than black pepper — usually used in Asian dishes. We restock the staples: cumin, coriander, marsala, ceylon, bay leaves, along with basmati rice and various blends of tea. My grandmother warned me not to buy anything grown in China because of the pollution — unconfirmed, but fine — I decide not to get the pu’erh this time. A few years ago for my 30th birthday, my friend Soraya surprised me with the most perfect parcel of spices, tea, perfume, and wine. Sumac with tinned cod in biscayne sauce is a doomsday prepper’s delicacy. That little canned fish was so precious to me that I ended up hauling it around in my suitcase through three different countries “in case of emergencies”. Gift your loved ones non-perishables… a gesture of thoughtful care and preservation, symbolic of a friendship with no shelf life. For dinner, I make a mille-feuille nabe (nappa cabbage and pork hot pot dish) in a clay pot. It’s simple, yet decadent. Just my taste. All you need is cabbage, thinly sliced pork (or beef if you so desire), ginger, soy sauce, water. I use miso paste in lieu of dashi and a splash of fish sauce. The white pepper adds a nice subtle kick. Thursday, Oct 14 I don’t like to talk about my job because I tend to be precious about things, which is why I love NDAs. I enjoy being in an office again though, and dressing up to start your day for who-knows-what-drama! After work, I make a trip to Eataly, and have my mind blown because I’ve discovered kiwi berries. On my way out, I fill a cellophane bag with an assortment of Italian chocolates (Venchi, the best) and grab a box of lemon amaretti cookies for a friend’s mom’s going away party later in the week. I love shopping for gifts because I’ll be walking around the city with nothing but three different types of dessert and exotic fruit in my purse and nobody knows it. PS. I want to befriend everyone’s moms. When Andrew and I started dating, he was working for WNYC, and we talked about the station’s struggle to survive ever since Giuliani cut funding for public media. On the evening of their 100th anniversary, we turned on the radio, and while listening to the analog tradition, enforced a rule that we would eat dinner together as often as we could. That night, I made us a seaweed omelet with rice, mackerel, and fermented pollock roe... a meal I often had with my family back home, when we still ate together. Tonight, we’re celebrating 7 months (which feels like 2 years in New York time) and for dinner he’s making us chicken meatball soup adapted from this NYT recipe. Saturday, Oct 19 I’d like to contend that today is the last nicest day of the year. I have plans to hit some golf balls at the Chelsea Piers driving range, because I’m feeling a lot of pent up energy from last night’s full moon. On my way over, I walk down 14th and look at what the girls are wearing. Straight black denim over square toe boots. Mini claw clips and messy half pulled ponytails. Sleek shoulder bags. Sporty pullovers and tailored houndstooth pants. Quarter-zip sweaters. Trench coat, trench coat, trench coat. Ralph Lauren is in the air. Next to my favorite burger joint, I have yet to find my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. Coastal elite “European cuisine” is an elusive concept to me. Don’t get me wrong — I love to keep up my inconceivable spending habits on niche and aspirational dining, but I prefer an honest plate of pasta made by someone’s 100-year-old grandmother in their kitchen any day (hello, Pasta Grannies). I do like Bamonte’s, because having angry centenarian waiters throwing plates of mediocre food at you creates the same comforting effect, to a degree. Andrew asks if I want to try Emillio’s Ballato, but I’d remembered my friend Daniel of Alimentari Flaneur told me his favorite Italian spot is Il Buco in NoHo, so we book a reservation. Their menu is technically “Mediterranean” and changes every day. We order the octopus with sweet potato, roasted lamb and broccoli rabe, and the orecchiette with eggplant and sausage. Everything is rich, especially the olive oil. The atmosphere is dark and rustic. Cozy romantic. I need a nap. WHAT VIVIEN LEE THINKS YOU SHOULD DO Visit Family Social activism, by its definition, is the practice of working toward the reform of relations and expectations, however that looks. It doesn’t always have to be about protests or shouting the loudest. Sometimes, it’s more private. One form, for me, has been returning to my family. Our first source of error. As I get older (I need to stop saying that), I find myself craving connections that aren’t so seeded in the economy of validation. Wanting to sit with discomfort and tension without completely losing myself to it. Also, learning to forgive. I mean really forgive. Get a New Scent It’s the next best cure for seasonal depression. These are my current favorites, powerful and sweet with patchouli as their thread-through. YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Inline links: Lessons for Next Time, going to the opera in my red miu miu heels during a storm, Ani, Pure Qi, Betsey Johnson, Bernie’s, Five Leaves, Karmic Traces, Lauren Oyler’s cover story, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CX7t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee318a9e-fb9d-4df4-a793-2afac060ca87_1600x1200.jpeg, Duals Natural, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sp4x!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8abf7d2-4d40-43ef-9acf-e33c9c4a382b_1600x1200.jpeg, Eataly, WNYC, recipe, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KeRg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcffcd2f-9edd-4695-80a8-81d300b01e87_1600x1200.jpeg, Chelsea Piers, Ralph Lauren, Pasta Grannies, Bamonte’s, Emillio’s Ballato, Alimentari Flaneur, Il Buco, YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Thursday, Oct 14 I don’t like to talk about my job because I tend to be precious about things, which is why I love NDAs. I enjoy being in an office again though, and dressing up to start your day for who-knows-what-drama! After work, I make a trip to Eataly, and have my mind blown because I’ve discovered kiwi berries. On my way out, I fill a cellophane bag with an assortment of Italian chocolates (Venchi, the best) and grab a box of lemon amaretti cookies for a friend’s mom’s going away party later in the week. I love shopping for gifts because I’ll be walking around the city with nothing but three different types of dessert and exotic fruit in my purse and nobody knows it. PS. I want to befriend everyone’s moms. When Andrew and I started dating, he was working for WNYC, and we talked about the station’s struggle to survive ever since Giuliani cut funding for public media. On the evening of their 100th anniversary, we turned on the radio, and while listening to the analog tradition, enforced a rule that we would eat dinner together as often as we could. That night, I made us a seaweed omelet with rice, mackerel, and fermented pollock roe... a meal I often had with my family back home, when we still ate together. Tonight, we’re celebrating 7 months (which feels like 2 years in New York time) and for dinner he’s making us chicken meatball soup adapted from this NYT recipe. Saturday, Oct 19 I’d like to contend that today is the last nicest day of the year. I have plans to hit some golf balls at the Chelsea Piers driving range, because I’m feeling a lot of pent up energy from last night’s full moon. On my way over, I walk down 14th and look at what the girls are wearing. Straight black denim over square toe boots. Mini claw clips and messy half pulled ponytails. Sleek shoulder bags. Sporty pullovers and tailored houndstooth pants. Quarter-zip sweaters. Trench coat, trench coat, trench coat. Ralph Lauren is in the air. Next to my favorite burger joint, I have yet to find my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. Coastal elite “European cuisine” is an elusive concept to me. Don’t get me wrong — I love to keep up my inconceivable spending habits on niche and aspirational dining, but I prefer an honest plate of pasta made by someone’s 100-year-old grandmother in their kitchen any day (hello, Pasta Grannies). I do like Bamonte’s, because having angry centenarian waiters throwing plates of mediocre food at you creates the same comforting effect, to a degree. Andrew asks if I want to try Emillio’s Ballato, but I’d remembered my friend Daniel of Alimentari Flaneur told me his favorite Italian spot is Il Buco in NoHo, so we book a reservation. Their menu is technically “Mediterranean” and changes every day. We order the octopus with sweet potato, roasted lamb and broccoli rabe, and the orecchiette with eggplant and sausage. Everything is rich, especially the olive oil. The atmosphere is dark and rustic. Cozy romantic. I need a nap. WHAT VIVIEN LEE THINKS YOU SHOULD DO Visit Family Social activism, by its definition, is the practice of working toward the reform of relations and expectations, however that looks. It doesn’t always have to be about protests or shouting the loudest. Sometimes, it’s more private. One form, for me, has been returning to my family. Our first source of error. As I get older (I need to stop saying that), I find myself craving connections that aren’t so seeded in the economy of validation. Wanting to sit with discomfort and tension without completely losing myself to it. Also, learning to forgive. I mean really forgive. Get a New Scent It’s the next best cure for seasonal depression. These are my current favorites, powerful and sweet with patchouli as their thread-through. YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Inline links: Eataly, WNYC, recipe, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KeRg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcffcd2f-9edd-4695-80a8-81d300b01e87_1600x1200.jpeg, Chelsea Piers, Ralph Lauren, Pasta Grannies, Bamonte’s, Emillio’s Ballato, Alimentari Flaneur, Il Buco, YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Saturday, Oct 19 I’d like to contend that today is the last nicest day of the year. I have plans to hit some golf balls at the Chelsea Piers driving range, because I’m feeling a lot of pent up energy from last night’s full moon. On my way over, I walk down 14th and look at what the girls are wearing. Straight black denim over square toe boots. Mini claw clips and messy half pulled ponytails. Sleek shoulder bags. Sporty pullovers and tailored houndstooth pants. Quarter-zip sweaters. Trench coat, trench coat, trench coat. Ralph Lauren is in the air. Next to my favorite burger joint, I have yet to find my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. Coastal elite “European cuisine” is an elusive concept to me. Don’t get me wrong — I love to keep up my inconceivable spending habits on niche and aspirational dining, but I prefer an honest plate of pasta made by someone’s 100-year-old grandmother in their kitchen any day (hello, Pasta Grannies). I do like Bamonte’s, because having angry centenarian waiters throwing plates of mediocre food at you creates the same comforting effect, to a degree. Andrew asks if I want to try Emillio’s Ballato, but I’d remembered my friend Daniel of Alimentari Flaneur told me his favorite Italian spot is Il Buco in NoHo, so we book a reservation. Their menu is technically “Mediterranean” and changes every day. We order the octopus with sweet potato, roasted lamb and broccoli rabe, and the orecchiette with eggplant and sausage. Everything is rich, especially the olive oil. The atmosphere is dark and rustic. Cozy romantic. I need a nap. WHAT VIVIEN LEE THINKS YOU SHOULD DO Visit Family Social activism, by its definition, is the practice of working toward the reform of relations and expectations, however that looks. It doesn’t always have to be about protests or shouting the loudest. Sometimes, it’s more private. One form, for me, has been returning to my family. Our first source of error. As I get older (I need to stop saying that), I find myself craving connections that aren’t so seeded in the economy of validation. Wanting to sit with discomfort and tension without completely losing myself to it. Also, learning to forgive. I mean really forgive. Get a New Scent It’s the next best cure for seasonal depression. These are my current favorites, powerful and sweet with patchouli as their thread-through. YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Inline links: Chelsea Piers, Ralph Lauren, Pasta Grannies, Bamonte’s, Emillio’s Ballato, Alimentari Flaneur, Il Buco, YOU KISSED ME IN PARIS by Lazarus
Indulging in the Eschaton
October 28, 2024 · Original source
From 10pm - 3am — Lantern is throwing an NYC theme Halloween party. Sponsored by Lantern Beverages, Topo Chico, Mizu Sochu, Okinawa Gin, Peter Pan Donuts and others – “Come dressed as your favorite New York City character or as Jojo Siwa, either is fine”
Inline links: Lantern, NYC theme Halloween party, Topo Chico, Mizu Sochu, Okinawa Gin, Peter Pan Donuts
There’s a lucidity in both films that I appreciate. Raving is lucid in many senses, more so than the realms of nightlife I typically frequent. More explicit in its transgression but less explicit in its hedonism, maybe? I’ve only been to raves sober, only in Berlin, only with my sister or more often alone, and I remember those nights very clearly. Buildings like mazes and whimsical gardens and a recollection of those evenings as all very wholesome, even though the contents of the parties were explicitly, not. Regardless, that was Berlin, and when I ask Michelle Lhooq if she sees a nihilism in raving she says that yes, a bit, in places like Berlin and New York, but not really in Asia - where rebellion and novelty and stories of tradition and folklore and myth in the art of it all, gives life to something profoundly optimistic.
Playing With Glass
November 05, 2024 · Original source
For the majority of my life, my physical health was the thing I prioritized most in the world. In New York, I neglect some things. I read a Substack today called How To Feel Good Again, and it calms me down in the simplicity of its advice, except I don’t have a stove to cook my own food and I do have plenty of time but then, well, it’s a matter of using it well. There are some things I do every day now. This wasn’t really true a year ago.
Later, I go to a reading at KGB. The reading is too crowded and I can’t squeeze into the room, and so I order drinks on the main floor instead. It’s crowded here, too. Everyone is talking about the election. I’m a little drunk and so I say that I’m a little sad because I miss things like my parents' 2008 Obama Election Watch Party. Everyone looks confused. I don’t try to explain the purity of the thrill in the air that I feel strangely defensive of. I don’t want everyone to make fun of me for remembering bureaucracy as thrilling and pure. Upstairs, they are telling horror stories. Later, outside Clandestino, some guy in the New York Young Republicans is talking about how he voted four times today, and how tomorrow he’s on his way to Pennsylvania, to vote four more times. I’m pretty sure he’s lying, which makes the whole thing all relatively harmless, and in the-way-of-vibes, makes it kind of more depressing.
From 7pm at Reena Spaulings — Calla Henkel celebrates the New York launch of her new novel Scrap, with a reading and conversation with Whitney Malllett. When I was 21 and an intern in Berlin who kept getting scammed out of apartments, a nice lady took me in and gave me a copy of Henkel’s last book Other People’s Clothes. This ended up being a slightly ominous gift given the plot of the novel, but my Berlin host was genuinely lovely, and I adored this book and read it many times. Very excited for Scrap!
Inline links: Reena Spaulings, Calla Henkel, Scrap, Whitney Malllett, Other People’s Clothes.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
November 19, 2024 · Original source
WHAT I DID Chloe Pingeon's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Monday, November 10 It feels very important to parse through things very carefully today. I write down what I value: truth and beauty. mental and physical clarity. But then, there are other things, too. I don't experience life as this ethereal. Making big lists. Having big fun. Making big points. I write down: This is the thing I dislike about myself most; not experiencing things as this ethereal and wanting to make things like big points. I write down: when was the time you felt most transcendent? Remember: I'm not writing auto fiction. I'm writing my diary. It's weird - picking up the pieces of things. I feel disdain when I see people exercising bad habits. You cannot imagine my horror as I self destruct. Picture This: on the Upper West Side, things are quiet. The stone walls on the edge of the park are lined with trimmed hedges in the summer, but the branches are bare now, and so, you see, now, that the skeletons have always been jagged. The subway has been nicer lately, better to step inside when the warm air is a relief and nothing is steaming. I like the uptown F, the cars with the orange seats, the stations where there's no one there so you can hear the doors whoosh. Picture this: you go to The Central Park Zoo, you wear a Christmas dress, you go to Sarabeth's for lunch, pancakes, toast. After, you don't go window shopping but you do walk home. Not your home, it belongs to someone else, but it's familiar. You make tea by big French windows. The trees are bare already, remember, and so picture the precision with which you can watch the people on the street below. They don't look like little ants, you aren't that high up, they just look as they are - little people in and out. People looking for something. It’s like they are on a little treasure hunt. Imagine you would wish them the best. You wouldn't close the windows - not for a while, at least David told me I smelled like winter when I got home today. I didn't. I smelled like eucalyptus. You would too after a few minutes in that steam room in SoHo. I can’t stop spending money the instant that I make it. I can’t stop spending money like I have it. I have stopped purchasing stuff. I like to wear the same thing most days. I like to sort TheRealReal Black Blazers prices low to high and buy five at once, eight dollars each. When they arrive, they are still nice material and still from places like Armani or at least Theory and you spend little and you can sell them for more when it’s time to declutter. It’s been so wonderful to declutter lately. I’ve gotten rid of almost all of it - stuff, I mean. In the new place, there are no closets. I’ve gotten rid of all my storage space. I’ve gotten rid of all my streams of income. My Stuff is still in storage somewhere. Not in New York. I’ll sell it soon. You can have some but not all my earthly possessions if you want them. You can have the ones I’ve packed away. I like this idea – “Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence” Tuesday, November 11 My new favorite blog is this - Health Gossip. It’s an old school newsletter. The health advice is very Pure and True, but more than this, it is beautiful to consume. Health Gossip is my favorite thing on the Internet this week. Very rarely does something in digital form elicit a real sense of calm in me. Usually, things in digital form make me feel kind of manic and bad. I’m not sure why this project strikes me so profoundly. Today, I spend multiple hours reading Health Gossip. A writer texts me after last week's letter - “your writing is always “good” ie flashy/ineffable… but this one bummed me out.” I’m not sure if he’s referring to the happenings of the week, or to the passivity, lethargy, dare I say gluttony and sludge… with which I’ve been diluting my descriptions of it all. I don't ask him to clarify. Regardless, his assessment of the piece in some sense parallels my own, and an attempt to dredge out an opinion from an acquaintance I admire that might placate my own sense of shame does not feel like an endeavor of any significance. “it bummed me out to write… ”, I say. We’re at a large group dinner at Olive Garden Times Square tonight. The host picked this place with a genuine fervor, nothing snidely ironic about it, and so I am more good humored in this venture than would be my usual inclination. It's less kitschy here then I l expected, anyways. Wall to wall carpeting, lots of families, lazy susan’s, the color schemes of muted Americana. I have a healthy appreciation for Times Square Charm. I have a healthy Relationship With Capitalism. I can't really eat the food here but isn't some of it just so fun to look at. I'm drifting in and out of focus at dinner - preoccupied by unrelated concerns of wavering integrity and petty betrayal, not important, not interesting. When I do tune in, a girl across the table is talking about Politics. “My grandma is spending her time so worried about school shooters because it's an obsession of the news,” she says. “It makes me angry and so sad for her. She shouldn't be spending her time thinking about this.” I get her sentiment a little bit. A sensationalist sense of doom that makes my skin crawl at some family dinners. Sometimes, there is frost on the grass just outside the window and when it catches my eye during these conversations - look at the dew, look at the mist, there are fawns in the field - then I just want to scream. But then, I worry sometimes that I am not very empathetic. I am envious, sometimes, of people who become utterly consumed by suffering that for the most part, they could simply look away from. Nihilism is something I am trying to avoid for the main reason of - its been breeding cruelty more than healthy removal, lately. Walking through Times Square after, David asks me if I am ok. I guess my eyes have glazed over. I realize this now, that it's been called to my attention. “Of course,” I say. “I worry that everything in my life is going to very suddenly fall apart,” I say. I am reassured. The night passes peacefully. Thursday, November 14 I take the Q to the end of the line today. It's something I've always wanted to do - take the train until the cars stop and I'm the last one left on board and a voice comes on and says please exit the train for cleaning, this is the last stop on this train, please exit the train so the train can be cleaned. I'm in Bay Ridge to shoot a music video today. To be an extra in a music video, that is. I'm exceptionally bad at acting. I'm bad enough that I am even bad as an extra. I'm not particularly bad at lying, but I am bad at having an expressive face. The neighborhood at the end of the Q is nice. I've been taken to other places in New York like this before. Places where you feel like you're by the seaside, where you're under the bridge, where the architecture is more brick, more limestone, more instances of art deco. The Hudson widens into the open ocean somewhere not too far from here and so of course the air feels different. It's strange, even if anticipated, to take the subway ninety minutes to a place where the air feels different, to walk down strange streets and into an unfamiliar gothic building, to open the door to a room where I have never been, and to find it filled with people I mostly already know. The past few years have given me many instances like this. This is something I am very grateful for. The music video is for DDM / Uncensored New York. It's a cool concept. It's cool to watch things come to life. The shoot is outside, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I'm still having fun. I'm thinking about things like how monks orient their consciousness and focus towards the cause of their suffering, and then I am trying to think only about the cold. I am not able to transcend myself, but even freezing, I don't wish I was elsewhere. In the afternoon, I sit in a warm car and I thaw my hands. I have miso soup, tea, and cheese sticks. There is still a chill in me even once inside, which is simultaneously unpleasant and cozy. I'd been wanting a day like this very badly. Friday, November 15 Beckett's Tense comes together with serendipity. There was a crisis with the headliners, Lucy Sante was sick. Beckett ran into Penny Arcade outside of Madame Matovu on 10th. Now, Penny is the headliner. The unsalvageable is always salvaged. The bar can serve real liquor tonight. There's a lot of people here and it's a different crowd than usual. Tense is back in Manhattan. Penny says she’s here because she wants to see what the new New York is doing. I give Beckett a hug at Sovereign House. I say hi to Chris and Adeline. Chris and Adeline are drawing big Tense bubble letters on the chalkboard. The seats are already mostly full. I climb to the top of a ladder and I sit up there. From up there, I have the best view in the house. Tense is not just a reading series, Tense is a show, and this distinction is important. There is a program, an order of events, a flow of new and old. The serendipity with Penny’s arrival lies in this - she seems to understand exactly what Beckett is doing, and while she didn’t write her piece specifically for TENSE (she describes it as “cultural criticism you can dance to”), it speaks with exaction to the spirit of things. Here are some things that Penny Arcade says: I’d rather put a stick in my eye than go somewhere where everyone is the same age. When I was young, if I went to a party and everyone was under thirty I thought... I'm at the wrong party.”
Inline links: Health Gossip, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BqEq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d9f96c9-96e5-4a0b-9813-061226dc9197_3024x3775.jpeg, DDM, Uncensored New York, Beckett's, Tense, Lucy Sante, Penny Arcade, Madame Matovu, Chris, Adeline
Thursday, November 14 I take the Q to the end of the line today. It's something I've always wanted to do - take the train until the cars stop and I'm the last one left on board and a voice comes on and says please exit the train for cleaning, this is the last stop on this train, please exit the train so the train can be cleaned. I'm in Bay Ridge to shoot a music video today. To be an extra in a music video, that is. I'm exceptionally bad at acting. I'm bad enough that I am even bad as an extra. I'm not particularly bad at lying, but I am bad at having an expressive face. The neighborhood at the end of the Q is nice. I've been taken to other places in New York like this before. Places where you feel like you're by the seaside, where you're under the bridge, where the architecture is more brick, more limestone, more instances of art deco. The Hudson widens into the open ocean somewhere not too far from here and so of course the air feels different. It's strange, even if anticipated, to take the subway ninety minutes to a place where the air feels different, to walk down strange streets and into an unfamiliar gothic building, to open the door to a room where I have never been, and to find it filled with people I mostly already know. The past few years have given me many instances like this. This is something I am very grateful for. The music video is for DDM / Uncensored New York. It's a cool concept. It's cool to watch things come to life. The shoot is outside, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I'm still having fun. I'm thinking about things like how monks orient their consciousness and focus towards the cause of their suffering, and then I am trying to think only about the cold. I am not able to transcend myself, but even freezing, I don't wish I was elsewhere. In the afternoon, I sit in a warm car and I thaw my hands. I have miso soup, tea, and cheese sticks. There is still a chill in me even once inside, which is simultaneously unpleasant and cozy. I'd been wanting a day like this very badly. Friday, November 15 Beckett's Tense comes together with serendipity. There was a crisis with the headliners, Lucy Sante was sick. Beckett ran into Penny Arcade outside of Madame Matovu on 10th. Now, Penny is the headliner. The unsalvageable is always salvaged. The bar can serve real liquor tonight. There's a lot of people here and it's a different crowd than usual. Tense is back in Manhattan. Penny says she’s here because she wants to see what the new New York is doing. I give Beckett a hug at Sovereign House. I say hi to Chris and Adeline. Chris and Adeline are drawing big Tense bubble letters on the chalkboard. The seats are already mostly full. I climb to the top of a ladder and I sit up there. From up there, I have the best view in the house. Tense is not just a reading series, Tense is a show, and this distinction is important. There is a program, an order of events, a flow of new and old. The serendipity with Penny’s arrival lies in this - she seems to understand exactly what Beckett is doing, and while she didn’t write her piece specifically for TENSE (she describes it as “cultural criticism you can dance to”), it speaks with exaction to the spirit of things. Here are some things that Penny Arcade says: I’d rather put a stick in my eye than go somewhere where everyone is the same age. When I was young, if I went to a party and everyone was under thirty I thought... I'm at the wrong party.”
Inline links: DDM, Uncensored New York, Beckett's, Tense, Lucy Sante, Penny Arcade, Madame Matovu, Chris, Adeline
Florida, Massachusetts
December 03, 2024 · Original source
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: 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
Save The Date — there's a full bill for this DDM / Uncensored New York event
Inline links: DDM, Uncensored New York
With ninety minute performances at 2:30pm and 6:30pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research — Let Her Cook is a show of food and dance by Kaylen Tanner and ArtsAppetite - “Structured like a three course meal, you will be served bread, vegetables, carbs, protein, and dessert. Chefs from some of New York’s top Michelin kitchens have crafted dishes that have deeply layered connections to the content of the three new dance works you will watch. These dishes have also been creatively prepared to, at times, be plated while the dancers are still performing.”
Inline links: The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research, Let Her Cook, Kaylen Tanner
kind of a dud socially
December 09, 2024 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, December 1 Mental and physical clarity is the thing that is the prerequisite for everything else. This is the thing to which I have returned. It happened suddenly. It happened in a hotel in Western Massachusetts. I'm not enlightened, but now I can breathe. I like to run every day. It doesn't have to be for lengths of times that feel like eternity. Just a few minutes is fine. The uptown B is late. I’m sitting in the subway station with plenty of time to Make Big Plans. I'm going to Be A Hostess. I'm going to Be A Tutor. I'm going to be a Professional Rock Climber. The truth of it is, my stint in bohemia is becoming unsustainable. "If you need money, you should be a pilates instructor," says Shannon. "Oh, true." I say The truth of it is, this idea sounds as good as any. I've tried to stop correlating monetary concerns with any sense of my creative ambitions. In a mirror world, I ghost write letters for my friends. I teach strangers how to scale buildings and to make their limbs long. In New York, I am better. I crave the forest and the snow and the pine trees by the window and particularly the ocean. I crave all this more than anything. When I arrive in the country, the expanse always shocks me. I don't know what to do with all that space. After class, I go to the dermatologist. It’s decorated for Christmas. They tell me everything is fine. This is the part I like the best: where I brace myself for terror, and then they tell me everything is fine. Uptown, I go to my aunt’s office. We have sushi and tea. We go the AMC. I like Wicked. It’s very sweet. I saw someone say they like Wicked in the way you like Barbie, but I like Wicked more. I like the soda machines and the supersized cups and the reclining red seats and the nerd clusters at the AMC. I like uptown. I could live here. I did live here, once. Wicked feels like a movie in the way a movie-in-the-theater should. Afterwards, David asks me three times if I liked Wicked. Yes, I say three times. He asks me if I can give a full review, but I can’t, not really. I liked it, I say. In the car home, I am cruel on a phone call that I made with the express purpose of being kind. I meet David at Cassidy’s house, where a lot of people are watching Spy Kids. Do you want a white claw, someone asks. No, I say. I am crying a little on account of my cruelty in place of kindness. David tells me something I should remember about being kind. I don’t, ultimately, remember what he says, but after this, everything is good. Tuesday, December 2 Riley and I go to Fanelli’s for dinner. Club sandwich and martini. I haven't felt removed from social activity or the desire for extroversion lately. To the contrary, I've been wanting very suddenly to connect very deeply with old friends. I want to go to Florida and drink Virgin Pina Coladas. I did that in college. I had so much fun when I did that in college. Can I come if you go to Florida this year, I ask Riley. Yes, she says I think we should go. I make a vlog with David. It's so much fun. David says I can't post the vlog, but then I edit it with Slavic music and then he says ok fine. I've felt an aversion to parties that place themselves at things like The Intersection Of Culture and Nightlife lately. I don't like when people who immerse themselves in these things express cynicism or borderline disgust towards a Scene. I feel immensely grateful for a community with adjacency to and/or aspirations towards art. I like readings. I like gestures towards intimacy, even false intimacy, even social climbing intimacy. I like that these things stem from something other than voyeurism, despite their tendencies towards voyeuristic or pseudo intellectual descent. But, I can't bring myself to attend. You haven't seen me in weeks. Not that anyone is counting. Not that I'm even counting, except it's hard to find things to comment on outside of Myself when I'm keeping close quarters. So bored by brooding. I could do something like Get Arrested. I could do something like Make A Gift Guide. David's friend calls him. "Do you want to go to KGB," he asks. "No," says David. "I'll go," I say. "Do you want to take Chloe to KGB for me?” David asks. “No,” his friend says, “she's kind of a dud socially." David takes his headphones out. "He says you're kind of a dud socially," "I'll see her six days in a row and it’s just her, and when I finally don’t see her, Chloe has a party with all her beautiful friends," he says. Then he lists out all my beautiful friends. We don't go to KGB. Wednesday, December 3 I stay inside for most of the day, that's what I assume you do when there's a man hunt. I remember the Boston Marathon bombing. I’d canoed there on the Charles River with my dad, and after we left the race safe and sound we learned that no one was allowed outside for days. They eventually found the guy in the hull of someone else's boat. Some different suburb. I assume that it’s the same today, but the UnitedHealthcare Assassin proves to be less of a threat to public safety. I go outside around two pm. SoHo is booming. Back inside, it starts to snow. I can see it through the greenhouse ceiling. David reads me transcripts of conversations he’s overheard in coffee shops. It would be hard to fake real coffee shop gossip, we both agree. There's a strangeness, a nonsense almost, in the overheard familiarity of conversations among people you don't know. The snow has come with wind, and I can see an umbrella on the roof above swinging wildly. I worry it will come crashing through. I worry that wind and icy pebbles of snow and shattered glass and the sphere of the umbrella stick are all about to crash down on me. The snow is thick and icy, but it’s melting as it lands on the glass and so there is no noise. I kind of think the snow looks like nuclear fallout. I almost say this out loud, but then I think that wouldn’t be very pleasant. David gets a text that “It’s snowing!!” and he rolls his eyes. “I don’t find whimsy in snow,” he says. “I do,” I say. Of course I do. Thursday, December 4 It's a strange week. I keep grasping for some concrete sense of how things make sense. I was acting insane last week, but now I am not. I was floating in space last week, but now I have mental and physical clarity. Things are never that simple. Acting Insane tends to happen in waves. The truth of it is, my sense of stagnation comes largely from the fact that I am acting very stagnant. It also stems from my phone and from things like staying up all night. We go to Sarabeth’s for dinner. They have happy hour now. I don't like to eat or drink early, and while I’m quite familiar with the concept of happy hour, I feel like I'm discovering it for myself for the first time. I'd like to order all the eight dollar cocktails, the shrimp, the deviled eggs. We’re sitting at the bar and it's cozy even though it smells slightly like cleaning supplies. Sterile in an old school way. This is not something I hate. The Greenwich Village Sarabeth’s just opened down the street. I like the Upper West Side Sarabeth’s because I would go every year on my half birthday as a child. We would go to The Central Park Zoo and then to Sarabeth’s. It wasn't as spoiled or superfluous as it sounds. It was just a nice tradition. Today, Sarabeth’s is nice until it isn't - a slow crescendo into an unhappy hour as the three to five pm menu is swapped out for normal prices. So, I stay up all night and reconsider if I have rediscovered mental and physical clarity after all. I call my friend and she says I have literally no idea what you mean by that. But I don't think I'm just using buzzwords. Clarity is the prerequisite to everything else. This makes sense to me. Next week is all the holiday parties in the world. I like this time the best. I'll go to the tree at Rockefeller tonight. I'll go to The Central Park Zoo. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO It’s the busiest week of the year… choose your ventures wisely. Monday, December 9 From 7:30pm — The Thing Is returns to Jean’s. This month's show (It’s A Wonderful Life) will star Delaney Rowe, Julia Shiplett, Jake Cornell, and Rebounder.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6r7b!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46b17e6b-abf9-4738-96fe-3836b061abc3_1334x872.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CEI2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe956e9be-2073-42ec-8943-74e226bc24bf_1518x850.png, The Thing Is, Jean’s, It’s A Wonderful Life, Delaney Rowe, Julia Shiplett, Jake Cornell, Rebounder
From 6pm at Gonzo’s Studios — The Russian Cosmism Circle of New York presents POST-DOOMERISM - a talk with labor leader Chris Smalls. Ft Geo Yankey, Joshua Citarella, and Prada Horse Shoe.
Inline links: The Russian Cosmism Circle of New York, Chris Smalls, Geo Yankey, Joshua Citarella, Prada Horse Shoe
From 8pm - late — Mcnally Jackson and Cafe Gitane celebrate the launch of Cafe Gitane: 30 Years - “a celebration of New York’s iconic NoLita neighborhood by two of its most beloved institutions”.
Inline links: Mcnally Jackson, Cafe Gitane, launch
Moral Framework
December 16, 2024 · Original source
Risotto David made for me + prints from Paris Wednesday, December 11 I went to the Russian Baths on Wall Street on my first day in New York. I still go often now. It’s not really of my own volition. It’s a family tradition. It’s still pouring today. It’s been pouring all week. I used to think the Russian Baths were all liminal space and Russian mob, but now it feels less secret. The Doritos are from Israel. Russian Jews and Russian Gentiles, I hear someone explaining in line behind me. The building is huge. The pool area does feel kind of like The Backrooms. I have night terrors every night. In my dreams, I am never stuck in places like this. My aunt likes the cold plunge. She can stay in it for seven minutes, far beyond the recommended time of three. The Wim Hof method recommends rapid bursts of breath coupled with exposure to the extreme cold. I’m in the Infrared Sauna. On Christmas, I will swim outside in Walden Pond. Wim Hof (the man) lost a finger, an ear, something detached in the retina of his eye… I can’t recall the specific injury but something bad happened swimming across an icy lake. He took it too far. When I get back to New York, I will swim off Orchard Beach. There’s a group that goes every morning. My aunt tells me you have to go to Orchard Beach in the winter. It’s like Siberia in the Winter. It’s finally getting cold enough to swim. On my Wednesday at the Russian Baths, I lose my keys. I lose the big rubber slippers that they give you on arrival. I can’t last very long in the extreme heat or the extreme cold. An actor in the infrared sauna is talking about how he can only memorize lines in the cold plunge. I’m thinking about how I’m in an infinite feedback loop where everyone I meet keeps being actors. We go to dinner at the Russian Restaurant at the spa. It’s called Matryoshka like the dolls. I only learn this later David and I split potato pancakes, salad olivier which is the one with mayonnaise and egg and chicken (delicious), beef stroganoff, steamed chicken pelmeni. More stroganoff and borscht and red wine is also passed around the table. I can’t drink red wine, so I drink ginger juice and ginger vodka instead. Afterwards, too full to continue. There are other plans tonight - a film, a party, I promised I would go and I never cancel plans but sometimes I do just neglect to show up. A very bad habit. Inertia ultimately breeds pure evil! Time doesn’t pass at Spa 88. Still pouring but dark now, when we emerge from the underground. Thursday, December 12 My abridged review of Dimes Square (revival) today. I didn’t see it the first time around - I wasn’t here. I was in Boston. I was in a sorority. I arrived in this godforsaken ecosystem after it was already dead. I’m kind of being facetious. I think people try to qualify eras too concretely. Concretely: Dimes Square (the play) is indeed a period piece. In the vein of all Matthew Gasda’s plays, it is emotionally rich, lucid, kind of yearning, which catches me off guard but I think adds depth. The thing I like most about Dimes Square is this: it’s not self serious but also it is not sneering. The best satire is actually quite sincere. This is why most satire is generally and particularly in contemporary culture, bad. Dimes Square (the play) is excellent. I will be publishing a stand alone review of the play here shortly. I already wrote the review but then I realized I was far too stuck on historical accuracy and far too personally tortured. In the meantime (from my notes) -- “The main fault of the characters in the play is that they are cruel, but the main critique of this scene in real life is that it is (was?) (is?) full of people who are pathetic”
From 7:30pm — TheaterLab presents the final performance of Tender Napalm – “The New York revival of Philip Ridley’s explosive exploration of love”. I’ve heard really excellent things about this one. Tickets are sold out online, but available on standby.
Inline links: TheaterLab, Tender Napalm
From 7pm at KGB Bar — KGB Lit celebrates their Issue 22 Release. A lit journal from the best bar in New York. Follow the green light to the release party.
Inline links: KGB Lit
Christmas Stories
December 28, 2024 · Original source
Christmas Eve Dinner is my favorite meal of the year, but David convinces me to stop at the alcove at Main Street Cafe around three pm. It's like a diner but cozier, he says. The alcove is tucked away down a driveway, near a parking lot, the real restaurant faces the street and it's decked in pine wreaths and dried chains of cranberry and orange. Upstairs, it's bustling. There's a long wait by the pastry shelf. To bring you your food here, in the alcove, the waiter comes outside, walks down the driveway, the door bursts open, we're the only ones left inside. Sitting at the hidden little bar, David convinces me to share corn clam chowder and onion rings - fantastic but now I'm full. I still eat at dinner later. Roast duck and roast goose and cranberry sauce and pie. It feels sweet, and not gluttonous. The season doesn’t feel gluttonous this year. I used to be so averse to this sin - gluttony, that is. Overindulgence hasn’t crossed my mind too much these past few weeks, I suppose a natural conclusion if you believe overdoing it to be a product of self destruction, and not pleasure. This year, I can access Christmas in a way that I can’t recall experiencing similarly since childhood. I like when winter is visceral. A visceral winter is my favorite season. I would like to feel the cold in my bones this year. I would like to feel nostalgia in bursts that are sharp when I walk around certain corners at dusk. I get everything I would like this year. It doesn’t unsettle me. It just means my memories are more precise. It’s a strange thing, to come back into yourself that is. Thursday We sleep til ten, light candles on the Christmas tree, polar swim in Walden Pond. Breakfast is maple butter on toast. Linner is cranberry moscow mules and cocktail shrimp. Later - an icy woods behind the house. The boardwalk over the swamp is caked with snow. I can see Saturn in the sky, even in the early afternoon. There's a Christmas Tree in the woods; a pine strung with ornaments, red and green ornaments, no lights because it's too deep in the forest to power them. We only see one other group on our walk; a family pulling a child in a snowsuit on a sled. Old friends come over for Christmas. You wonder, with these things, if there will still be things to say but then it seems, there always is. I feel grateful to have grown up in the presence of characters. People whose aesthetic and ethical sensibilities remain solid and unique and admirable. We have lasagna and salad by the fire and then pie made from a special type of sweet squash with homemade sweet cream. My mom is telling a story about the sheep farmer across the street and the fist fight she got into at the town swap exchange (the scavenging table at the dump) that got the whole operation shut down for years. The swap exchange was getting out of hand. My mother was being solicited for two hundred dollars in the parking lot to relinquish the neighbor's china that she'd spotted abandoned only five minutes before. The swap exchange was a nice thing though, environmentally friendly. You wouldn't believe the age of the women throwing hands over discarded silver. The dinner table conversation turns to strength of heart. "She has a good heart, they are saying, re the elderly women prone to physical blows over perfectly good silver. “She has a good heart but she has common sense too, and if you are not doing the common sense thing, then she will not withhold harshness.” My parents and their friends are shrugging. Sensibility does come with age. I've been learning this more lately. Level headedness when appropriate, too. Discretion when it comes to suffering fools, gladly or otherwise. We have many special items from the swap table around the house, and I used to find trinkets more of an inconvenience than a joy but I like the red table cloth with the little green and silver pine trees, the metal stars and chimes candle that spins and jingles when lit, the field of rocking horses always growing and dwindling by one or two but remaining a herd of sorts in my parents backyard. I can't stay here very long. The sense of interiority, quiet, the pale beauty of shifting light marking hours and time... it is lovely but it's also in conflict with my sensibility. This is symptomatic of some rot, likely. In another life I am endlessly entertained in the birch trees. Going to bed, it’s been dark for a while now. Here, you see one star first every night. The sun has been setting in a special shade of pale blue this winter. It was dark out the windows by dinner time. You could still see the shadows in the fields. Friday I consider changing my train back to New York, staying here a bit longer, sinking into hazy dusks and evenings by the wood stove and the fires. There was a gas leak in the furnace and so now the gas is off. We've been using the wood stove and the fires a lot. I don't change trains because it's too last minute. I'll become too suspended in time if I stay. There's a pink sunset over salt marshes in places like Mystic, Connecticut on the ride back to the city. I've been trying to work on the things I've put off for too long. I'm been trying to think about the way people talk about culture as I try to write a few reviews. I wrote this sentiment before Christmas -- I know that there are things I'm supposed to be scandalized by, and I'm not really scandalized, but I also remain defensive - it's the worst of all worlds. I have the hearty puritanical roots of a New England Jewish Wasp. It's difficult for me. God it feels good to agree with whatever the person speaking is saying. Now, the truth of it becomes -- morality as a simulacra is so dull. I can spend two seconds in real life and it hits me so starkly how much imitations of reality pale in its contrast. The diagnostics of the times suggests that the individual life becomes more and more disconnected from the collective life, your sphere of influence shrinks as the mirror world of technology gives you every reason to believe it grows, the word of the times isn't nihilism so much as absurdism. One symbol is easily swapped out for its opposite - they bear little material or spiritual significance. You know you don’t mean it. After the terrible Bob Dylan biopic, we're driving on the highway towards the train station and my dad is asking me if there are examples of contemporary genius, what that would look like, and I'm saying that the thing is you have to make a concerted effort to even engage with art at all now, or sometimes to engage even with real life at all and it's an effort that goes against most of the forces in your day to day and so the thing is I think genius is unlikely, although there are contemporary artists I admire and genius implies some innate transcendency of the general malaise anyway, so maybe these issues are irrelevant in the face of genius. A conversation at a coffee shop a few weeks ago - a younger man of the Monarchy school of thought is saying that an ideal society would not ask people to deal in the realm of public good and ruling provenance. Your sphere of influence is yourself and those around you, the best thing that can be done is we drop the illusion. An older man is saying but I've seen you be hugely influenced by the teachings of people you've never met. He's saying that now more than ever, we are living in an age that is cruel. I appreciate his point because - I appreciate learned wisdom and practicality only earned through time. And because, isn't it strange to say that now, more than ever, we live in real life? Finding pure purpose in interiority- this is something that can be learned. It's not something I've learned yet, though. Pure Purpose in Interiority WHAT YOU SHOULD DO This week is prone to slip into oblivion of the sort where you won't really know what you did at all. There is not a ton going on in New York – it's hard to throw a party during a week that doesn't exist. But, you needn't become senselessly bored! Sunday, December 29 From 7pm at KGB – Cassidy and Annabel present The Last Confessions of 2024
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!anOr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19fb445b-fa79-478c-9e16-cc4b74362148_4284x5363.jpeg, Cassidy, Annabel
Pure Purpose in Interiority WHAT YOU SHOULD DO This week is prone to slip into oblivion of the sort where you won't really know what you did at all. There is not a ton going on in New York – it's hard to throw a party during a week that doesn't exist. But, you needn't become senselessly bored! Sunday, December 29 From 7pm at KGB – Cassidy and Annabel present The Last Confessions of 2024
Inline links: Cassidy, Annabel
WHAT I DID Monday I wake up early - the light is gray but brilliant and it hits me like a beam. Shivers up my spine. We don't have curtains. I don't miss a thing. It's the type of cloud cover that you might love to fly through. In a plane, you might break through one crisp layer of fog over the city and then there would be nothing but sun. I want to watch all that gray severe light filter through the windows while I run in slow motion in my otherwise sterile, open, empty-beside-for-me luxury Soho gym. The city has emptied out. Me next. My whole day is free. I have until eight pm. It's luxurious, though maybe not entirely rare. It will be soon. Rare, I mean. The end of the year approaches. There is something terribly wrong with this train to Boston. I could reflect on everything I did this year if I wanted to, but the significant parts feel singular in a way that I imagine as too sacred to attempt to describe. Fall in love. Retreat away from routine and find replacement in whispy days in an endlessly bright apartment. It’s been the closest thing to bohemia I will ever have again - which is something that one actually probably should not seek, but which one puts on a childlike pedestal nonetheless. Selection from Toulouse-Lautrec’s Table I intend to qualify nothing. This is always my intention, but sometimes I follow my own rules more closely than others. Do you feel self satisfied when you say that one year changed everything? I would, which is why I’m not going to say it. The train to Boston is late, and then I later learn, cursed. Stopped at New Haven, pulling out of the station, there's a loud thump on my window and then I see a young woman staggering back along the platform. She gears herself up and then hurdles at the train again, slamming her body into another window a few seats down, but now the train is beginning to pick up speed. She starts sobbing as it leaves the station. Her bags are by her side. David is getting whisky and hotdogs at the dining car, but I tell him when he returns. I think you're hallucinating again, he says. Again being the pivotal word, because he suggested I was hallucinating when I saw a jaguarundi in the back garden of an urban hotel in San Salvador, too. The other passengers seem unfazed. Almost inhumanly so. And so, of course, I also wonder if the oddities might be a simple trick of the mind. The train stops again later on. They lost their crew, someone says on the loudspeaker. They will start the train again when they can, but as of now, there is no one to start the train, what with the missing crew and all. There are footsteps running up and down the car halls but I'm in the inner seat and I can't see anything. There are shadowy figures sprinting on the platform. I wonder if we should get off - are train robberies still a thing? - but then we're moving again and then we're in Boston, the oddities unexplained, the hex apparently dissipating in the car ride to the country. Snow and clear skies, here. It’s amazing how quickly the platform in suburbia can fade into a sense that you are the only ones around for hours. Moon over the fields. Pesto pasta for dinner reheated. Far from the backroom haze of a train ride where something was amiss. Tuesday On Christmas Eve Day, we drive to town. Happy Christmas Eve, I tell David. David tells me that he doesn’t consider Christmas Eve to begin before evening. As a matter of semantics, I can’t disagree. It’s a bright morning. Piercing. There’s snow over the fields and I drive slowly round the bends. I prefer when people say happy Christmas to merry, I tell David, and he wrinkles his nose. That's the traditional way, I say. That's the very British way. I'm not being didactic, I'm just being a snob. In the rendition of “A Night Before Christmas” that we read in the evening - there are a few copies around the house but I like the 1870 illustrated paperback copies best - they say Happy Christmas To All. I can't remember all the lines, but I do remember this one. David wants to know if the pond we like to swim in will be frozen. The little ponds are, but the big one - Walden - isn't. I drive faster the further I get from home. You can see the surface churning even from the road. Ripples in gray black water. The surface is moved by wind, not yet stabilized by cold. Christmas Eve Dinner is my favorite meal of the year, but David convinces me to stop at the alcove at Main Street Cafe around three pm. It's like a diner but cozier, he says. The alcove is tucked away down a driveway, near a parking lot, the real restaurant faces the street and it's decked in pine wreaths and dried chains of cranberry and orange. Upstairs, it's bustling. There's a long wait by the pastry shelf. To bring you your food here, in the alcove, the waiter comes outside, walks down the driveway, the door bursts open, we're the only ones left inside. Sitting at the hidden little bar, David convinces me to share corn clam chowder and onion rings - fantastic but now I'm full. I still eat at dinner later. Roast duck and roast goose and cranberry sauce and pie. It feels sweet, and not gluttonous. The season doesn’t feel gluttonous this year. I used to be so averse to this sin - gluttony, that is. Overindulgence hasn’t crossed my mind too much these past few weeks, I suppose a natural conclusion if you believe overdoing it to be a product of self destruction, and not pleasure. This year, I can access Christmas in a way that I can’t recall experiencing similarly since childhood. I like when winter is visceral. A visceral winter is my favorite season. I would like to feel the cold in my bones this year. I would like to feel nostalgia in bursts that are sharp when I walk around certain corners at dusk. I get everything I would like this year. It doesn’t unsettle me. It just means my memories are more precise. It’s a strange thing, to come back into yourself that is. Thursday We sleep til ten, light candles on the Christmas tree, polar swim in Walden Pond. Breakfast is maple butter on toast. Linner is cranberry moscow mules and cocktail shrimp. Later - an icy woods behind the house. The boardwalk over the swamp is caked with snow. I can see Saturn in the sky, even in the early afternoon. There's a Christmas Tree in the woods; a pine strung with ornaments, red and green ornaments, no lights because it's too deep in the forest to power them. We only see one other group on our walk; a family pulling a child in a snowsuit on a sled. Old friends come over for Christmas. You wonder, with these things, if there will still be things to say but then it seems, there always is. I feel grateful to have grown up in the presence of characters. People whose aesthetic and ethical sensibilities remain solid and unique and admirable. We have lasagna and salad by the fire and then pie made from a special type of sweet squash with homemade sweet cream. My mom is telling a story about the sheep farmer across the street and the fist fight she got into at the town swap exchange (the scavenging table at the dump) that got the whole operation shut down for years. The swap exchange was getting out of hand. My mother was being solicited for two hundred dollars in the parking lot to relinquish the neighbor's china that she'd spotted abandoned only five minutes before. The swap exchange was a nice thing though, environmentally friendly. You wouldn't believe the age of the women throwing hands over discarded silver. The dinner table conversation turns to strength of heart. "She has a good heart, they are saying, re the elderly women prone to physical blows over perfectly good silver. “She has a good heart but she has common sense too, and if you are not doing the common sense thing, then she will not withhold harshness.” My parents and their friends are shrugging. Sensibility does come with age. I've been learning this more lately. Level headedness when appropriate, too. Discretion when it comes to suffering fools, gladly or otherwise. We have many special items from the swap table around the house, and I used to find trinkets more of an inconvenience than a joy but I like the red table cloth with the little green and silver pine trees, the metal stars and chimes candle that spins and jingles when lit, the field of rocking horses always growing and dwindling by one or two but remaining a herd of sorts in my parents backyard. I can't stay here very long. The sense of interiority, quiet, the pale beauty of shifting light marking hours and time... it is lovely but it's also in conflict with my sensibility. This is symptomatic of some rot, likely. In another life I am endlessly entertained in the birch trees. Going to bed, it’s been dark for a while now. Here, you see one star first every night. The sun has been setting in a special shade of pale blue this winter. It was dark out the windows by dinner time. You could still see the shadows in the fields. Friday I consider changing my train back to New York, staying here a bit longer, sinking into hazy dusks and evenings by the wood stove and the fires. There was a gas leak in the furnace and so now the gas is off. We've been using the wood stove and the fires a lot. I don't change trains because it's too last minute. I'll become too suspended in time if I stay. There's a pink sunset over salt marshes in places like Mystic, Connecticut on the ride back to the city. I've been trying to work on the things I've put off for too long. I'm been trying to think about the way people talk about culture as I try to write a few reviews. I wrote this sentiment before Christmas -- I know that there are things I'm supposed to be scandalized by, and I'm not really scandalized, but I also remain defensive - it's the worst of all worlds. I have the hearty puritanical roots of a New England Jewish Wasp. It's difficult for me. God it feels good to agree with whatever the person speaking is saying. Now, the truth of it becomes -- morality as a simulacra is so dull. I can spend two seconds in real life and it hits me so starkly how much imitations of reality pale in its contrast. The diagnostics of the times suggests that the individual life becomes more and more disconnected from the collective life, your sphere of influence shrinks as the mirror world of technology gives you every reason to believe it grows, the word of the times isn't nihilism so much as absurdism. One symbol is easily swapped out for its opposite - they bear little material or spiritual significance. You know you don’t mean it. After the terrible Bob Dylan biopic, we're driving on the highway towards the train station and my dad is asking me if there are examples of contemporary genius, what that would look like, and I'm saying that the thing is you have to make a concerted effort to even engage with art at all now, or sometimes to engage even with real life at all and it's an effort that goes against most of the forces in your day to day and so the thing is I think genius is unlikely, although there are contemporary artists I admire and genius implies some innate transcendency of the general malaise anyway, so maybe these issues are irrelevant in the face of genius. A conversation at a coffee shop a few weeks ago - a younger man of the Monarchy school of thought is saying that an ideal society would not ask people to deal in the realm of public good and ruling provenance. Your sphere of influence is yourself and those around you, the best thing that can be done is we drop the illusion. An older man is saying but I've seen you be hugely influenced by the teachings of people you've never met. He's saying that now more than ever, we are living in an age that is cruel. I appreciate his point because - I appreciate learned wisdom and practicality only earned through time. And because, isn't it strange to say that now, more than ever, we live in real life? Finding pure purpose in interiority- this is something that can be learned. It's not something I've learned yet, though. Pure Purpose in Interiority WHAT YOU SHOULD DO This week is prone to slip into oblivion of the sort where you won't really know what you did at all. There is not a ton going on in New York – it's hard to throw a party during a week that doesn't exist. But, you needn't become senselessly bored! Sunday, December 29 From 7pm at KGB – Cassidy and Annabel present The Last Confessions of 2024
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TQZY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6959c89a-b44e-4ab3-bcab-eeea6a79d3aa_3024x2272.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ipqy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61f8c38c-c101-44a5-aaa1-17218317525b_4284x5363.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!anOr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F19fb445b-fa79-478c-9e16-cc4b74362148_4284x5363.jpeg, Cassidy, Annabel
The End Of The Year
January 03, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Tuesday, December 30 I struggle with specificities of Resolution - there are things I care about in the new year, but these feel more like seasonal ideals, wrought in the empty clarity of colder months and then you hope, adapting gently and seamlessly as time passes. Health, reverence, the discipline to resist the slop of it all until you cease to desire things of excess and rot in the first place. I return to New York today. I start my New Year today, too. I feel too bogged down by too much to wait. I am trying to feel pure again. I write big letters in my planner - First Week Of The Year. I write in little letters below - I am trying to feel pure again. Back in the city means there's a party and I'm feeling really sick of talking about these things. I'm feeling like a scene as defined as "social circle" is a wonderful thing to have, but a scene as in "microcosm of politics and culture and the malaise and dreams of our times" is something that I shouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. David is telling me about everyone who's going to the party and he's listing off so many names and then he says oh wait it's actually just three people and he says oh they want us to bring beer and then he says do you want to split an uber with some other friends I didn’t know were in town and then I feel like I'm being absolutely ripped off and so I absolutely refuse to attend. Instead, another Party, I trail David to his friend's house. Mostly people I don't know, but I'm feeling pleasant. The boys are playing on a vintage video game console that someone got for free, and I find solitude in the hallway - surprisingly long and isolated for a Chinatown apartment. I pace up and down the hallway like it's a treadmill and I play on my phone. It's kind of dark. I would be an eerie sight walking up and down by myself here, but no one can see me. David tells me later that everyone could hear my thumping footsteps going an and and on. I didn't know this at the time, though. I walk two miles in the hallway. A really weird thing to do, but it's raining outside and the night feels quietly spooky in a way I want to embrace. Now and then someone on their way to the freezer to replenish the jäger crosses my path, but I avoid collision with ease. I'm listening to music that sounds particularly sweet. I want to bunch it all together. I make a list. Winter Dinner, I call it. It's a fittingly cheesy name. A playlist title should sound cheap. These are some songs in a playlist. If someone actually played this at a dinner it would probably be a little bit much. Playlists probably shouldn’t even exist. We should probably only listen to albums. The titles of sloppy curation shouldn’t make sense. Winter Dinner Elliott Smith - Rose Parade
Joan Baez - It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue Later, someone puts on After Hours (1985), and so I cease my pacing in place and I go rejoin the group. "Maybe this is just a movie about guys who are lost in like... New York and girls who are scary and incomprehensible," someone is saying. "I hate to make everything political, I'm self conscious about making everything political, but there are no movies except for this about men and the weird, weird, weird ass shit women put them through," says someone else. Later, I go back to the hallway and I practice leaping and twirling. David tells me my twirls would be very impressive if I was like… eleven years old. Later, we go to The Scratcher. It’s a bar in the East Village. "They have onion and cheese sandwiches," David says. He says this three or four times. I ask the bartender about the sandwiches when we get there. It's a suspiciously small bar. No kitchen in sight. I broach the topic gently. "My boyfriend is wondering if you... have a kitchen?" I ask. The bartender shakes his head. "Onion and cheese sandwiches?" I say. The bartender shakes his head. So don't come here for the food, is the lesson, but it's a nice vibe. I get a terrible moscow mule. I get two vodka sodas. I liked the night better before the drinks. Intentional haziness intuitively goes against everything I have recently been craving. Tonight, the first half of the evening is best. Wednesday, December 31 Rebecca asks me about my Resolutions at Clandestino. Give me three, she says. Avoid being cruel and prioritize mental and physical clarity, I say. My sister rolls her eyes, because these sentiments are kind of just My Talking Points lately. One more, says Rebbeca. Be really healthy, I say. This seems to satisfy everyone. Morning - I walk for an hour and I write on the treadmill. I do this every day. It's the only element of "routine" that I can honestly claim as consistently mine. The main thing to consider is this: I have a life now, that I fundamentally thought I was too half formed and unstable to access maybe ever, least of all soon. I cherish this more than anything. There is so much beauty now. It happened suddenly. A fundamental conflict comes in an occasional residual desire to destroy it all in ways that are very cruel. This is the fundamental conflict, I suppose. The main thing to fix. If you remember how much you cherish all you have, then the desire to destroy it fades. Things like this are often very simple. I'm walking at a quick pace and I'm writing about how much there is that I cherish. I'll be less confessional this year. New Moon yesterday. This is the last of it. The last of purging my sins in broad vague strokes, I mean. Afternoon - purging my apartment. The roof is leaking and they're saying it needs to be replaced. I love this apartment. It's far too small for two people, but I hope we can stay. I'm getting rid of all the excess in the meantime. I want to wake up to empty floors and sparkling windows. Evening - a beautiful dinner party. New Years downtown, after. Six am. Everything feels very fresh. There's always more to say, but I shouldn't. Nihilism doesn't cure paranoia, but absurdism does. I want to walk outside for hours and write by hand in little notebooks. It's time to stop musing. Days of self indulgence. Sick of it. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Happy New Year. Things are still picking back up in New York… Friday, January 3 From 6pm - 9pm at Harkwaik — Exene Karros solo show Spirit opens. These paintings look really beautiful, and the exhibition seems interesting – “the ubiquity and ambivalence of corporate iconography, the banality of violence and pleasure, the vacancy of identity articulated through narrow registers, and the thrill of transgressive appropriation linger.”
Inline links: Harkwaik, Exene Karros
From 7pm at Books Are Magic — Adam Ross and EmRata (?) are in conversation on Ross’s new novel Playworld. Per The New York Times - “the hero of this novel is 14. His married girlfriend is 36”
Inline links: Books Are Magic, Adam Ross, EmRata, Playworld
Life before inositol
January 13, 2025 · Original source
Wednesday, January 8 Meeting with Beckett and Jonah this morning at Caffe Reggio to discuss Tense - Reggio is full and so Beckett suggests Dante. It’s not like he remembered it, now. It’s a coffee shop, he says, but it’s a cocktail bar now. Expensive green and red martinis in thin glasses whirling through the room even now, at two pm. They still let us sit for coffee. I have an interview after. Madelyn texts me. At Altro Paradiso at 3pm, they are saying goodbye to the head chef. I’ve gone to Altro Paradiso a few times recently, because Madelyn works there mostly, although even independent of that it’s the best food I’ve had in New York in a while. Today, I was in a rush, the plans were last minute. I'm still wearing my workout clothes and their ‘archival lululemon’ - hand-me-downs from a closet of a friend of my mothers when I was about thirteen years old. The shirt is striped and black and white and a small band bearing slogans like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” folds up or down at the hem, depending on how flagrantly antisocial you feel like being on that particular day. I’m keeping the band folded under today. I’m wildly underdressed but it’s afternoon, the restaurant isn’t even technically open yet. There’s a toast to the chef and I’m the only outsider in attendance and so I stay at the bar while the group of staff and friends and family assemble. It’s very special, even to bear witness to as someone uninvolved. There’s a heart and soul to food and drink and service that other industries, even creative industries, really don’t have in the same way. I’m a tiny bit tipsy, now. I need to start hostessing again. I make this note on my phone: “NEED TO START HOSTESSING AGAIN!!!!” We stay at Altro Paradiso til dinner starts, and we continue to stay till it feels like dinner is about to end. Everything is magical - the alla prima cocktail, wine, dirty martini, pane e ricotta, salad with figs and dates, octopus, olives, oysters under beds of thinly sliced veggies, malfatti (which is pasta that is like little pillows), linguine al nero (which is pasta with squid ink and cuttlefish and basil), a few deserts - pistachio ice cream and the pear cake. The afternoon turns to a sparkling evening. I walk home. I go elsewhere, after - fun too, but I probably shouldn’t have. I should probably learn when to call an evening. Decadence in excess, turns all that sparkles sour. Thursday, January 9 It's been the same day on repeat so far this year. The same three days, really. Rinse and do it again. The year has only held nine days. I can't view my stagnation with too much harshness. Decadence, in contrast, should be viewed with harshness. Los Angeles is burning up and it feels uncouth to talk about this here as this tragedy is not my life, but I can't stop watching. Most emotions are triggered through all five senses - it's a strange feeling of muted horror to see destruction of places and lives you know on a screen, detached from your physical experience but visible in real time in your cognizant mind - peripheral vision. I accidentally get stuck in the Louis Vuitton x Murakami line in SoHo. I accidentally steal a pair of Split sweatpants from the gym. I accidentally read all the books on the 4chan 2024 Top 100 Lit Board list. I'm on tiktok watching videos of the apocalypse overlaid with Lana del Rey audio. I’m browsing r/lainfluencersnark and they have a lot to say about the way their parasocial relationships are handling the apocalypse. I tried to write something about phones and chaos and end times but it was silly. These are resources / writing from people in LA. The Angel - L.A. Fires — How to Help
Inline links: Tense, Altro Paradiso, The Angel - L.A. Fires — How to Help
From 7pm at Gonzo’s — The Russian Cosmism Circle of New York presents POST-DOOMERISM; a talk with labor leader Chris Smalls, featuring artist and podcast Joshua Citarella, comedian Geo Yankey, and Prada Horse Shoe. Dope afters lineup to follow.
Inline links: The Russian Cosmism Circle of New York, Chris Smalls, Joshua Citarella, Geo Yankey, Prada Horse Shoe
End of the Cold Front
January 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, January 23 It was past midnight and there would be a morning tomorrow, an early one for once, I set an alarm. I was walking past KGB and it was still bitter cold. It hadn't gotten any warmer yet. No one milling on the steps so the place felt desolate but there was no way to really tell for sure without entering. You'd be out of your mind to loiter in this weather. The people were probably all inside. Everyone I know in New York, clustered in the Red Room like sardines. The KGB sign was all red and lit up, frost and ice crystallizing around it at a slight distance from the letters. The letters themselves were clear - incandescent heat off their light melting the ice in direct contact before it could solidify. Riley texted me when I was just too far from her apartment to turn back last night: "You left your Urbit hat. Do you want it?" "I do but later," I said. "lol," I said I didn't even consider stopping. Not last night. The hat isn't even mine. Later, I'll retrieve it later. Each day that the cold front continues, I am enjoying it more and more. The tundra is so visceral. I hope we can stay like this, for a while at least. And so, it is morning. You're up early. David is still sick but you've continued to avoid whatever he’s come down with this time. Leftover cookies on the counter. Cold brew in the fridge. You call a car because you lost track of time. You would have taken the F to the L, but it's too late now. You aren't used to having to track your mornings. It's good, though, having some sense that the days progress linear-like. Good things keep happening to me, and I'm very grateful and; I’m very happy too. I try not to quantify too much. If I choose this, then imagine I lose that. I don't want to do everything all at once. I've never possessed this desire. There is paralysis, though, sometimes, when I think about what I'm doing and therefore, by default, what I'm not. First day of my internship today. I like it a lot. First day of the semester yesterday. Very good. I take the subway home. I run a few miles. Thawing in the steam inside, but I'm sick of talking about how cold I've been, and particularly of how much I've been enjoying it. Writing a lot - maybe too much, honestly. Out of my head and into my body. I spend too much time alone and I become very dissociative. Vision blurring on the treadmill. Self indulgent. I yell a lot when I get home. It’s not important. There are worse things. Natasha and I go to Bar Veloce for drinks and a panini. “One second,” I say on the phone when we’re making plans, and then I hang up to yell, and then I am calm again and then I’m walking back through the frozen air, light and breastless in its dry frigidity. Inside Veloce it’s warm, orange lamps, thin and laminated menus, I get two martinis - extra dirty extra dry," I say. I used to order it “vodka martini no vermouth with lots of olive juice”, but I’ve been trying the abridged version most people use lately, and it works just as well. I forget how many hours we’re at Veloce. Nice night. Quiet night. I tell Sophia I can bring her zyns for the opening of Doomers. I’ve been zyning lately. My bag is chock full of them. They make me dizzy in an unpleasant way. Even thirty minutes on the subway alone, and I start to feel disembodied and strange. It’s strange how many more people are reading my public diary now, even though I wrote it for this reason - to be public. I’m trying to write in a way that is honest, but I’m becoming too ethereal in my descriptions. This isn’t really true — me being ethereal that is. Natasha asks me what I think about transcendental meditation at dinner. “David Lynch’s cult?,” I ask. “They make you pay for it,” she says. “But their whole thing is clarity.” I perk up when I hear this bit. “I would pay,” I say. “Clarity has been your buzzword,” she says. "Where did you get that?,” she asks. “I realized I just didn’t have clarity and I wanted it,” I say. I still don’t have it, not really. Eating fontana truffle prosciutto grilled cheese with my martini. They kick us out at closing. Midnight, it’s still early. They froze our pipes about three hours ago. The ice fairies, I mean. The building will restore the pipes soon. “EMERGENCY” the email says. “Hello, Thief”, the flyers in Riley’s lobby say. You want to end things on a good note, but then the night goes awry. 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: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LqrH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb418313f-a9c0-4483-adfe-52a23d42c656_1179x624.jpeg, Bar Veloce, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!54KV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fba999c41-1577-4575-8943-285aaa6064b7_1600x1200.jpeg, 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
Meditations
February 14, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, February 10 I woke up in a storm today. Stormed around the apartment a bit, all mad about who knows what, stormed to the gym for self actualization, skipped all the fashion week stuff last night, the show I was so excited for, the after parties too. I was sick, after all, though I didn’t realize it then. You only realize it now, sunroof windows, all this energy, the contrast visible now that you’re flooded with Being Well. “It’s funny how you live off the provisions David and the world throw at you,” Lara texts me. “Having a hard time articulating a reason/framework to start taking care of yourself more sometimes that isn’t cheesy,” Lara says. “It will be good for your writing because you’ll get more information from the environment and have more energy,” Lara determines. “I actually do care about health, vanity skin etc, I just have cognitive dissonance," I say. And I do. I ordered collagen, after all. This is not so bad. None of it is so bad, really. I am thinking of joining David in Paris. It's a bit of an act of fleeing, though, and it's no good to leave out of some desire for escapism. I am treading very cautiously this morning. A matcha with almond milk and the oatmeal with apples and cinnamon and raisins. The bright sun is melting all the bright snow. They are talking about Aristotle's Ethos Pathos Logos in class today. The only one that matters to me is the Ethos of it all. I believe everything I’m told if I trust the authority of the person telling it to me. I’m all swallowed up in the undiscerning masses. It would be nice to leave New York, yes, but it will be nice to stay here, too. It'll be nice to come back to life right where I've been sleeping. In the evening, my friends arrive. They sit at my kitchen table, and they tell me crazy stories about staying up late and everything that happened in between. I was lonely for a moment, or really, I was just struck by the the being alone of it while he is still away, but then my friends arrived, and the stories were all sparkling and shocking. I know secrets again, now. It's more fun when I have things to hold. Wrapping my hair twice in towels by the open window before bed. It's too cold to keep the window open, but the space heater was drying everything out. Lara left some cocktail shrimp in the fridge, and I drop the tails into the empty Sephora box on the floor. I'll still take out the trash, I am not more disgusting than average. Tuesday, February 11 Coconut oil, beef bone broth, muscovado sugar on a silver spoon for breakfast. There is reason to think this kind of thing will make me become better. I would be very easily indoctrinated into a cult based on the certain determining factors, I forget the exact formula of each trait but I know my balance of each fits the bill; agreeability, desire to belong, etc. I have to stay vigilant. Left to my own devices and I’m half asleep and I’m making potions. I wrote a story in the night. Hologram Girls, I called it. Stupid title but I think this one, yes particularly this one, I imagine I could turn this into a book with just some discipline and a little joie de vivre. Natasha comes over just as I am starting to lose my mind. Just as the snow is starting, too. Snow in the evening, and Natasha is taking photos of me on film. Usually, I wouldn’t like this. Me, at home, on film. Madelyn would have something to say about Lacan and the image of it all. I would have something to say about; I’ve been addicted to deciphering the angles of my face in my mind until they become shapes and forms and pieces beyond recognition. Vanity is so obviously self indulgent, so blatant in its gluttony that it avoids interpretation, becomes silly to give voice to, turns omnipresent. Out Of Your Mind And Into Your Body. You will walk on the treadmill and you will write this sentence until it becomes true. I don’t function well in my own company. That’s the truth of it. Even the most basic things. On film, I wear a dress from Brandy Melville, black tights, barefoot or, the Prada boots my mother found for me cheap at a vintage store in Vermont. The snow hasn’t started yet. I like taking photos at home, and I trust Natasha with the camera. I can’t see my own reflection. It’s fading to blue hour in the greenhouse windows. We will see how this turns out. At drinks, later, with old friends, their Colleague came, and he's talking about how if you are not early you are late. He works in Revenue Recovery, he explains. Like if someone ordered a burger and fries but they forgot to pay for the fries, he would recover that, but for bigger things. For things like a scalpel when they’re doing surgery. “If they lose the scalpel?” I ask. “If they lose the revenue,” he says. I’ve felt very defensive lately. I’ve felt an annoying need to emphasize things like I know what Deloitte is, but barely. I’ve felt an intolerable need to explain things like where a Reading ends and a Party begins. This is the greatest bar in the world, I am told. You can tell, because my vodka soda is actually full of clarified juice. I say something insufferable about how I prefer hotel lobby bars and martinis. We could all go to DCP (Double Chicken Please), someone suggests. Because this, in truth, this DCP is actually the greatest bar in New York. Outside, it’s snowing now. Inside, there are big red orbs on the ceiling and the bartenders keep swinging them around in big sweeping circles. I thought they did it on the hour, I thought they did this like a clock, but the time keeps passing and the orbs keep being set in motion, seemingly at random. There is talk of vulgarity in comedy at our table. There is talk of a probiotic soda brands marketing scandal and the colleague hates influencer marketing, he thinks its immoral, and I’m asking things like the dumbest questions in the whole world like oh but do you think that any marketing really is moral though, and oh but do you think that brands are people, though, and oh my god you can hear your own echos sometimes and you can just want to scream. Outside, the snow is making the street and all its lights become dizzy-like. They pulled the shades down behind me in the window in the restaurant due to the draft, and I wished they hadn’t, but I like it better coming out into this quiet night covered in snow like a quiet surprise. Yellow cab fringed with ice. This will always be lovely. I’ve felt a little more lyrical in my writing lately, and there is nothing wrong with this at times, only at times. Except, the repetition I think, feigns a kind of spirituality I don’t actually have when I am doing things like being on my phone and eating protein heavy processed snacks. Later, returning home, reading more of Augustine’s Confessions to penetrate these skin deep musings. I put the space heater on the floor and I do feel sad now, overwhelmingly so, when I think about how terrible things could come to pass so quickly and how I could just be caught off guard, somewhere on a long walk, somewhere being vain. I sleep downstairs tonight, because I do feel very small, and because there are no shades upstairs to cover all that glass. Lying under all that night sky, you begin to think that it might suck you right in. Wednesday, February 12 After I walk outside this morning, where the thin branches of the trees are still coated in these thin smooth layers of snow even in this early morning sun, and after I go to The Standard for the latte with almond milk, after Libra for the small cookie with tahini and chocolate chips, after class and then the walk home and then the dropping off of laundry and the grocery store and the run in the cold sun, after all of this; David returns from Paris bringing a hairbrush and perfume from Officine Universelle Buly. We are going to go out, but then there's ginger beer and vodka on the kitchen table and the caesar salad pizza from La Vera and then, it's nicer to just stay here. Thursday, February 13 I’m back to listening to the interviews today. I’m not sure what these will become, but there’s a lot of wisdom in other people's words, and a lot of hesitation in my own voice when recorded. There is some existential dread these days, but David says it’s all just math I don’t understand at all, and the apocalypse is not imminent. I disagree sometimes, but I am trying to worry more about things like the State Of My Soul. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, February 14 If I was looking for a last minute dinner reservation tonight, here is where I would go… Knickerbocker Bar and Grill is my favorite restaurant in New York and I’ve lauded it many times before. Classic, old school, not too many frills but still feels tasteful and nice, great t-bone, liquor on the grand piano, jazz on the weekends, etc etc etc. I like this description best - Beckett Rosset on his father dining here: “My father went here for lunch for god knows how many years. He probably consumed hundreds of gin martinis and rum and cokes there. When he died, after the memorial at Cooper Union, the family and close friends, a good thirty or forty people, went there. The owner comped everything. I thought it would not survive covid but clearly it has. Glad to know a new generation has taken to it.”
Inline links: Officine Universelle Buly, Knickerbocker Bar and Grill
Knickerbocker Bar and Grill is my favorite restaurant in New York and I’ve lauded it many times before. Classic, old school, not too many frills but still feels tasteful and nice, great t-bone, liquor on the grand piano, jazz on the weekends, etc etc etc. I like this description best - Beckett Rosset on his father dining here: “My father went here for lunch for god knows how many years. He probably consumed hundreds of gin martinis and rum and cokes there. When he died, after the memorial at Cooper Union, the family and close friends, a good thirty or forty people, went there. The owner comped everything. I thought it would not survive covid but clearly it has. Glad to know a new generation has taken to it.”
Inline links: Knickerbocker Bar and Grill
Villa Mosconi: My boyfriend pointed this spot out to me on a walk a few weeks ago, absolutely thrilled by its run down exterior, cozy bar, and Soprano’s-Style dining room visible through slightly dirty windows. Also thrilling is its proximity to Tiro A Segno - the mysterious Italian sportsman club with a basement shooting range. “The club did not provide details on how it obtained the firearm permit,” says New York Post, alongside an image of said basement shooting range, appearing to be decked in the colors of the Italian flag.
Inline links: Villa Mosconi, New York Post
My lame blog
February 17, 2025 · Original source
From 9pm in the Lower East Side (dm @Jackiearielle for location) — Painters Pool returns. A weekly party for painters and friends, Tuesday in New York and Thursday in LA. Gather your painter friends - that's your ticket in.
Inline links: Jackiearielle
My Glass House
February 25, 2025 · Original source
From 8pm - 1am at Honey’s — Friend Of The Letter Vivein Lee hosts COSMOPOLITAN: a dance party in support of local nonprofit Make the Road New York. Other hosts include Alexi Alario of Nymphet Alumni, Alyssa Davis, Fiona Duncan, Ani Tatintsyan, and Kit Zauhar. I’ve been meaning to revisit Honey’s since artist Sarah Mehoyas took over ownership, and this seems like the perfect occasion. Music by Goop Girl, Miho Hatori, and more. Snacks by Sakura Smith, the coolest list of hosts, etc etc etc.
Inline links: Honey’s, Vivein Lee, Make the Road New York
From 9pm in the Lower East Side (dm @Jackiearielle for location) — Painters Pool returns. A weekly party for painters and friends, Tuesday in New York and Thursday in LA. Gather your painter friends - that's your ticket in.
Inline links: Jackiearielle
From 7pm at Pianos — Uncensored New York presents Absolute Divinity album release party, ft Joslyn Crocco, Smith Taylor, Sacred, and No Boundary. Herbal remedies by Beck Iasillo.
Inline links: Uncensored New York
Here, There, Everywhere
March 17, 2025 · Original source
Tuesday, March 11 The things I overhear begin the process of reconsidering all over again. You confess that the knee jerk reaction is one of possession over things you do not even want. You confess that you do not want to tell that story even if this particular story is one that has always been yours. We go to Tiny Bar, and then the Odeon. Earlier, it was like they were doing a character study in the things you overheard. Wednesday, March 12 I went to St Dymphna tonight, but I didn't hear a single reading and I didn't watch Heat (1995) when I got home, even though David had it playing on the projector, even though he kept on playing scenes of significance over and over and over again. This is me and you, he kept saying, when some girl in some house with some glistening pool in Los Angeles calls her husband names like gambling addict and child the years keep passing by, and then the husband screeches off through Hollywood in a nice sleek car. It's not us, really, but this wouldn't be so bad. I want to party beautifully forever, David said a while ago. The key part being: beautifully. Maybe this is how people party in Los Angeles. This isn't really how people party in New York. And I should have gone to Poetry Project, to the after party for the Anne Imhoff show which I am guilty to admit I never saw in the first place and now it's too late, to the club, maybe. It's not that I worry what I missed, it is just that time passes faster when I am not here there everywhere, and I like it best when time slows down. In my dreams, my consciousness can take one second and turn it into one year. Here are the songs tonight. And the shoes are the shearling style cowboy boots my grandmother gave me from her closet last thanksgiving. Love For Sale - Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga
Inline links: Love For Sale - Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga
From 9pm in the Lower East Side (dm @Jackiearielle for location) — Painters Pool returns. A weekly party for painters and friends, Tuesday in New York and Thursday in LA. Gather your painter friends - that's your ticket in.
Inline links: Jackiearielle
From 7pm at KGB Red Room — Tom Willis’s Soho Reading Series is in New York. Readings from Nico Walker, Anika Jade Levy, Zans Brady Krohn, Christian Lorentzen, Megan Nolan, Sophie Kemp, and Yasemin Kopmaz.
Inline links: Tom Willis’s Soho Reading Series
El Salvador
March 31, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 26 El Salvador has taken me out of myself, and I'm glad for that. It's been a different type of writing, too. Exacerbated proximity, and my notes have nothing to do with Me. I’m going to tell you something about Network States. Not here, though. Different forms. I don't want to write too much, now because I am writing something different about all of this. I am doing some reporting, for once. In San Salvador, there is the hacker house - it was other things before, but this is what it is now. Orange art deco, white car at night streaking down the highway, coconut stands and pupuseria and low visibility closer to the airport. “The fast foods signs here remind me of idiocracy (2006),” David is saying, as we near Zona Rosa, a reference to the cartoonish nature of this one low strip, though we pass through the land of the Big Food Boom quickly, then it’s moss and hills and dewy air, quiet night. Then, there's the turn through San Benito, the roads up through El Escalón, the guards at the gate but there's not much need for that anymore, and you could blow right through those flimsy gates anyways, on foot or, with a car if that is what you really set your mind to. It's mossy roads up Calle Norte, plants on the side of the road that are pink and vibrant green. Like animations, almost, I tell David. It's like a compound when we get to the house. Smooth high walls mountainside compound or, it could be like a compound if it wasn't all so opened up. An open air compound and it's all built into the hills. The living room opens up onto the terrace. Stone fountain wall beneath the arched stairway, stone stairway into the hill. I can drift into the pool that extends out over all of it, over the edge of the garden, yes, but it feels like it extends over the whole of San Salvador too. Drift into the pool and you can think about spilling over the edge. You can think about what would happen if the tile walls levitated away and water merged with air; you were taken out too far. Logical conclusion in these moments over ridden by a very strong feeling of; there would be no splattering on those rocks below. The strong feeling suggesting: you could just float away. "There was heat lightning last summer over the volcano," I tell David's friend. "Heat lightning isn't real," David's friend says. "Distant lightning from storms over the volcano that you could see in the dry heat," I corrected myself. No heat lightning now, but you can see the population density of San Salvador, even the areas beyond San Salvador, quite clearly from here. It's mapped out in clusters of light, they become more sparse and shimmery the further away you look. They disappear entirely by the mountain's eventualities and then, it's a big moon hovering above all the rest of it. You can still see the outline of the mountains cast in the glow of the moon. And then the rest is my journalism. I’m sorry. The rest is still secret, the rest until we’re on the coast. On the coast - and I am on the coast now, it's diet coke and coconut water and ceviche at Le Garten. We go to the Bitcoin Farmers Market first. They're keeping all Quiet Tension contained in Tecoluca now. El Zonte is coming to life. Hippy Dippy Crypto Optimism. Even Bitcoin Berlin is evangelizing here. There are kittens up for adoption, and a small dutch woman selling lemonade except it's just butterfly flower and water and lime. No seed oils here. No network spirituality once we sneak past the restaurant and down to the black sand beach. The currents here are crazy. The undertow could sweep you up and spit you right back out somewhere in the Pacific, somewhere down the coast, it could turn in a U-shaped formation and it could grind you into pulp on the rocks. From the black sand shore, the rocks are shrouded in mist. It's like a fairytale, really. David marched right into a pack of wild dogs last night and they all lunged viciously. Stem Cell therapy at Mizata down the coast, and we just might go. They had their first conference here, also, I am told. There will be people to talk to. There will be people who can tell me how to make things last forever. How to become a genius. I don't want to be immortal but if I did, it wouldn't be so I could act in opposition to all the forces of bodily and neurological degradation and come out unscathed. In my immortality purgatory, things just stagnant, then. Complete harmony with the powers that be and in the place of time you find: stasis. I missed the book club in New York. The book club on the seven volume Danish series wherein, time freezes but our lady continues on. The same day over and over and over but our protagonist's hair and nails grow and, presumably, she could even get wrinkles. Aspirations towards a journey towards immortality feel very combative, to me. Test fate when you can and emerge victorious. This feels like an urge I can understand, one I would understand better if I were a boy but I still get it now. You won't win, though, and in the meantime, my hedonism, hedonism for me, makes me feel very very sad. After they told me at Garten Hotel that the cabana was not for me, we moved to Boca Olas. Boca Olas in El Tunco. El Tunco being, where you party. I ordered a blue margarita at the swim up bar. I am on vacation now. My notes are good. The sculptor liked the concepts of Palestra last summer, because when weird people seek exile together, then special things happen. He liked these concepts too, because he is a futurist, and because he says he was cancelled on the premise of prejudice against force and form. David's friend says that the second anyone starts showing delusional and insane tendencies you need to cut them loose along with anyone who doesn't see things clearly. He speaks in language that is intentionally obfuscated sometimes. I am unsure what clarity means to him. On vacation, after I order a blue margarita, David says, "that's a real drunk bitch drink to get.” I say, “it’s just that I like anything that’s blue. This is a weird entry. I am omitting too many details and then randomly inserting others and I’m sorry if this all seems crass. I was not writing in this way this week. I was writing something else. Bitcoin missionaries. I was writing about The Network State. It’s the end of the high season. Plane back to New York. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO In El Salvador In San Salvador, I stayed at a hacker house in the hills, except for one night, where we stayed at Il Buongustaio. Il Buongustaio is where we stayed the whole time in August - Roman looking white marble arches in a sweet garden, and a formal-ish dining room that bleeds into the open air, humid breeze. The rooms are very nice, each one quite spacious and sparse in a chic way, and each one opening up to a private garden. I saw a jaguarundi here. Nature is healing, they told me back at the airbnb, when I first relayed this jaguarundi story.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X6Vn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa62329cf-e1a7-472f-a34e-611826574e2e_1600x1200.jpeg, Il Buongustaio
My favorite restaurant in San Salvador is El Xolo - one of my favorite restaurants in the world, really. It’s hidden behind a car park, listed on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It doesn’t have a Michelin star but the food is significantly better than at most of the restaurants that do have Michelin’s in places like New York. Open kitchen and slick but not stuck up interior, inexpensive enough that if you go in a group of eight or so you can order every single thing on the menu, a few drinks each, still spend less than $100 per person. Ingredients are sourced from indigenous communities across different regions of El Salvador. It’s a really special experience. Very magical and rare.
Inline links: El Xolo, World’s 50 Best Restaurants
New York weekly itinerary coming tomorrow…
Live Diary.
April 04, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 27 Midnight in New York, I'm taking stock of my glass apartment in the sky. I brought back nine dresses from El Salvador - eight old ones, one black tennis dress from El Tunco. All to be washed. Open the window. There is spring breeze now, all of a sudden, really, but I've been growing accustomed to real heat. These things I used to hate - dense hot air, beating sun, a day that stretches on under direct natural light, no end, no plans.... I would suddenly like to return to this, actually, over frigid and clipped stories about foggy northern coastlines and other things in that vein. Over stories about New York, and other things in that vein. David has stayed in San Salvador, and then, Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. It would have been basically free for me to come and yes I have commitments here but not too many if we're being really honest. I would have become kind of a freak after three whole weeks in airbnbs that are calling themselves "hacker houses," though, is the main issue. And, I wanted to do laundry and stretch in the spring breeze, open the window, set an alarm. It would be so easy for me to untether the physical circumstances of my whole life, these days. It would be easy to have distance from New York, as the main thing, but distance from physicality more generally, too. I've done it before. Honestly, I'm not eighteen anymore, I don't think it makes sense for me to do it again. I will probably stop being so strange and vague once I have even one conversation with my friends back in New York. For now, it is very strange to be alone. Very strange to walk around even a small space, that even only temporarily, is belonging just to me. The past few weeks have been about eclipsing interiority with observation. Floating in realms that are foreign. Not El Salvador, even. The hacker house stuff more. The dialogue of it all, more. The other reason I am here, home, abandoned visions of a hologram of Santa Teresa and also I already really miss my boyfriend - well there was responsibility and laundry and the reading and the stories to finish but also, the lunar eclipse played a role for sure. Something about the Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The floods and the fights. Seek less direct attention from that vivid piercing beaming beating sky. Seek solid ground, I saw someone say online. So, I did. I'm back in stupid dumb New York. Window open. You can barely feel all that fresh air. Friday, March 28 I do go for a walk in the morning, and I do still love New York, I decide. I want to have very delicate arms and boundless energy. I want to have tremendous discipline in a way so as to elicit joie de vivre, and also paths of clarity. The brain fog is so bad today. In the middle of the night, the jet lag woke me up, and I hate sleeping alone in this apartment. I'm sorry, I know I’m being a child but I hate it, the emptiness, when I wake up from paralysis, there are often moments of brief delusion. Alone, glass house, I have to talk myself down. I’ve tried to bring myself to life, today - long walk, two protein bars, slice of papaya, sushi roll for dinner, diet coke and cigarette, make a Vlog, make a Call. David had sleep paralysis, too, last night, he tells me on the phone. This is weird, because usually, this is a plight that is just for me. In real life, there was a creepy elderly woman occupying the hacker house in El Salvador, too. “I started a magazine last year,” she told me, when I told her I was a writer. “Oh, cool, about what?,” I asked her. “I don’t remember,” she told me. Blank gaze. Empty eyes. She would sometimes walk through our room while I slept, and one time I woke up to her passing by, vacant glance, I was obviously shocked, she looked obviously pleased. “How are ya, Love?” she said. The word “love” here, carrying a lot of the weight in making the indecent violation of space a lot creepier. “It’s fun, isn’t it?,” she told David’s friend, while he was doing the dishes. “Turning the water on and off is fun, it’s all fun, isn’t it?” She had referred to herself as a refugee, in El Salvador. From where, I had asked her. From Canada, she had said. A real eccentric freak, and in David’s dream, he wakes up to her sneaking up behind him, looming over him, it’s all fun isn’t it. She says sinisterly: “do you know what I think?” Then, in his dream, he felt her weight bend the bed springs and begin to smother him. Lunar eclipse. New moon. I find this dream ominous enough that I begin to become very concerned. You have to get out of there, I tell David. I'm leaving tomorrow anyways, he reminds me. Saturday, March 29 I spent the night last night reading at Tense and it was really lovely. Kansas Bowling reading and Valley Latini doing a hip hop show and Beckett Rosset on the Providence Hotel and me on half formed thoughts on the half complete piece I am writing on Techno Spirituality and El Salvador. I’m back in Real Life, and I don't regret it. I spent the morning by myself working on my edits. David is still traveling, and I am being more normal about it this time. In jet lagged fugue state, I burned the kettle down to a lump of molten plastic, not on purpose, obviously. I called my dad who's moral judgment I trust in full, so this clarifies a lot of things. I forgot how much I like running really really really fast. Whenever I am craving the extremes, I should access them through lots of sprints. The wind is crazy today. The wind has everyone whooping and hollering through the streets. I'm making TikToks again. I don't care. There are worse evils or, rather, you can leverage anything for evil if you really want and honestly, I am just trying to have lots of fun. Some of you are awfully pretentious for being addicted to things like Ketamine and Feeld. Not me. I don’t like drugs, and I have a soulmate. It is just as bad if not worse to be addicted to your phone as it is to anything else, but I’m regulating my time, and I’m microdosing my slop - or so I tell myself. Sunday, March 30 I order uber eats groceries at midnight, and then it's like celsius and chicken just washes up at my door. I don't like this. Chemicals, aspartame, the dissolution of the social fabric, really. How these things just materialize when you want to actualize some gross borderline animalistic whim. Craving. Diet Blackberry Pepsi. I would not like to live anywhere but New York City, or really anytime but now when I think it through on a very personal and very literal level. But there is something here that I increasingly am wary of as mere hallucination. There is much to consider. I am trying to be very energetic which, really, is the feeling that I increasingly cast as synonymous with Health. We went to Bacaro for dinner last night, then to Clockwork, later. “Do you know about how to get dinner for free,” some girl sitting next to my friend and me said. Then, she explained the concept of Club Promoters. Yeah I know, I said. I didn’t say it in a rude way. I just told her that I already knew, which I already did. My energy feels back in a way that feels very True today. Before I left for El Salvador, I was getting in the habit of killing time. Looking at an hour and wishing it over. I don’t want to quantify anything. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8Mb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e326f20-1685-4e59-8b0e-e29ce386a22e_950x406.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
Simple glassware, open windows, vanilla ice cream, orange wine for my friends (i'm allergic) so, something crisp for me. vodka. sparkling water. sleeping under a cool breeze when things start to get all starry. diet coke always propped on the shelf above the bed but throwing out the cans in the morning. rosehip oil. coconut oil. buckthorn oil. you sleep and wake up naturally, but the schedule aligns itself somehow. you keep the windows open. spring peepers in the fields outside. little planes blinking above New York. Dusk over a trampoline that is rarely frequented these days but not abandoned, really. a schedule, life, day to day, whatever, that really does kind of just sort itself out.
Santa Teresa
April 10, 2025 · Original source
Friday, April 4 It's been such a haze since arriving in Costa Rica and at first I felt strange about it, like this isn't Good Behavior, treating a Big Trip kind of glibly, feeling a bit pouty and out of sorts and letting myself just be whisked away like it's nothing, when really it's never nothing, when really it's always touch and go and particularly something like this should make me feel ecstatic. Though, I kind of do feel ecstatic. I never really do become jaded. I quantify and calculate it all far too much to take anything for granted. You do kind of feel like you're floating, though. Cold beer to clutch between my knees on the sea plane that starts up all shaky and then scares me less even than a commercial plane because I can see into the cockpit and I can get the sense of how these pilots are navigating this thing. A cloud is just a cloud. I've been using too many words to inadequately explain myself. Send some bizarre texts upon landing that I hope will be encoded with… what, exactly? But, you’re in the jungle when you land. The sea plane slipped over the rainforest and then slipped out to sea, into the clouds. This part made me a bit nervous because there was nothing to spot except the horizon ahead. The scary part didn't last too long. Peninsula de Nicoya. Thick brambled forest by a single black tarmac. David sent me a video when he got here last week. The Jungle, he said, and now it’s like a hologram seeing it here myself. I really wasn’t going to come here. Two A.M. last night and the flights were so cheap that it felt like a glitch or something and then all I had to do was decide, ok, and then everything else was taken care of. There’s a driver at the gate for me. CHLOE, the sign says. That’s me, I say, and I point to the sign. I don’t know why I said it like that. It's a different vibe at the house here than in El Salvador. Surfer spiritualism over techno spiritualism. The aura here makes me feel significantly calmer. Because I am someone who accounts for danger at every turn (neurotic) I can remember being twelve or thirteen somewhere around here, handed a stick to ward off snakes at night, warned that don't you dare touch the frogs, the ants, they told me, fall screeching from the trees and it feels like a bullet wound when they bite you. But, “there is nothing actually scary here,” David’s friend tells me. “The main thing you have to worry about are these.” He shows me a picture of a scorpion. He tells me that the sting hurts a little, but after that the main thing is it makes your body feel all electric. “People sting themselves on purpose to get high,” David’s friends tell me. “They make you high???” I ask. One of the only things that scares me more than getting hurt is getting high. “No, not really,” David’s friend says. When I got here it felt kind of like I’d been teleported. David was there with an ATV where the car dropped me off, up a dirt road, by some stables and then he said - this might scare you but no backseat driving and then we roared up a mountain, nighttime already, I was left in a room in the hills in the jungle alone while the others offroad up and down and up and down until everyone was here for dinner. You can see the stars in a way that is so special here. I’d been told about this part, but it’s better to see for yourself. You couldn’t make out what parts were ocean and what parts were horizon but you could see that the darkness was placid and lovely and it stretched out quite some ways. You could see where there were villages, because lights close to the ground edged up against the stars in the sky but lacking any visual markers to ground them, these villages appeared to be hovering, unmoored. “You’ll be able to see the ocean in the morning,” David told me. So, in the morning, I thought, I will be able to distinguish which parts are ocean, and which parts are sky. Saturday, April 5 In the morning, there is a gecko on the ceiling and a dog outside my door. Chat GPT got way better overnight, I am told. It’s harder for me to suss out the vibe here. They are bullish on AI, but they are hesitant about some of the other stuff. We’re not really doing much of the hacker house stuff anyways, this time, though. Back down the mountain, and we’re in a hotel, and there’s surfer girls with pretty hair in pretty dresses dancing barefoot in all the nightclubs here. The heat makes a run in the morning unbearable. Even the walk to the shop is heavy and thick but I don't mind this. The only thing I do every single morning is walk for an hour and write while I walk, but the heat makes this hard. It's ok, because I can float instead. Yerba mate and corona extra and white claw and paloma in a can and redbull green and coconut water all stacked side by side in the shop, but I leave empty handed. Before, we got cold brew mixed with orange juice and a cashew avocado tart at a cafe run by the girlfriend of one of David’s friends. Since I tried it out and basically just became an alcoholic bartending my way around Eastern Europe at eighteen, I have kind of found the whole nomad thing to be spiritually ugly. Like it's something for mid thirties men that look older from the partying who stop you in back alleys in Croatia and tell you things like the key to it all is to never buy a couch. And they would say it like you were supposed to really get it. And you did get it, you got what they meant by it at least, but the thought was just a bit half baked and unconvincing. Ok, so, I wouldn't buy a couch but then what? Then what would I do? What should I do? I didn't want to stay listless and skimming the surface forever. New York is kind of empty too when you aren't living at least a little bit gently, and so these are the different pieces I am trying to parse out. I would stay here for a while with a project. David drops a chip on the beach lined with hermit crabs and he creates this huge commotion. Anarchy, really. All the little crabs begin to rip each other to shreds. "I hope the big one comes in and destroys them all," David says, regarding the hermit crab pile-on situation. There's not really any metaphor here, he’s just being vaguely sadistic. It does happen as you would expect. One big hermit crab sees its opportunity, identifies his leg up in this whole situation or perhaps, they aren't the brightest creatures, perhaps it just wants to try its lot at the prize like all the others and is surprised to find itself emerge victorious. He makes a clean break with the chip down the beach. The crabs kind of look like spiders from my vantage point. A mass of little tendrils for legs chasing after someone six times their size. They all have the death drive, because when they do catch up, it's not good news for any animal involved. An underdog swoops in and gets the chip. I don't know, I lose sight of it all. You have a target on your back when carrying the bounty though. If I was a hermit crab, I wouldn’t risk it. I put my head underwater in the ocean to get myself sorted. I walk back through a little bit of jungle and then past the fishermen in Malpaís while David turns around the ATV. Soles of my shoes are all sticky on the pavement. Herd of goats in the road. The heat makes all my thoughts become all slippery and smooth. If I spent a month here, I could learn how to become all tan and bendy and strong. Sometimes, I become slippery and smooth. I could spend the first part of my month learning how to notice when my mind becomes like this, and I could spend the second part learning how to make the feeling last. I would stay here for a while with a project… WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, April 10 From 6pm - 8pm at Blade Study — Clare Koury presents the opening of solo exhibition Scaling Laws For An Open EnTrainment Structure. With this installation, Clare Koury is addressing the part of the color spectrum that eyes don’t see.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yrdc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78d590ff-7675-437a-bec3-6777487c94e1_916x372.png, Blade Study, Clare Koury, Scaling Laws For An Open EnTrainment Structure
[REDACTED] is awful
April 15, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, April 5 My boyfriend is in Costa Rica posting photos of Mel Gibson's house down the hill and playing me recordings of Mel Gibson verbally abusing his wife. I'm lying on a small thin bed in Costa Rica and I'm mostly tuning this out, along with mostly tuning out the other things - horses and howler monkeys outside. Quieter, the buzz of insects and even, distantly, the roaring waves. These are the types of things I should really tune in. Everything just clicked these past few weeks. I know how to be now, but I don't know how to vocalize it yet. We took the ATV over the mountain to the chocolate shop this afternoon. We bought iberico ham and we ate it in the forest along with melted chocolate in ceramic cups, vegan pear cake, espresso, cocoa husks. SUPER DAVID, the sign on the convenience store said. Tsunami evacuation route, all the signs on the side of the road said. I am getting better at sitting on the back of the ATV. I haven't tried the driving part, because I don't know how to drive stick shift and because they told me there is some correlation between the two. I am getting better at being very focused, and sometimes, at being very removed. There is a crash outside, and my boyfriend opens the door to tell me it was just because he fell out of the hammock. I tell him I am going to go for a walk. There's a beach close by, and if I pace this stretch of road a few times over I can catch the sunset at all its different stages. I can catch myself surprised each time I round the bend and I see how the colors have just barely shifted. There is going to be a lot more routine once I am back in New York. I have a lot of plans, and there will be a lot more staying put. My fingernails are filthy from the dust. I have decided that, going forward, I am going to be significantly more removed from all the things I used to seek. Sunday, April 6 Watermelon slushie for breakfast and I woke up all feverish which means the sea plane isn't an option anymore so we'll be lingering here for at least a little longer. Dinner was nice last night - left the hotel in hazy dusk and we hit a storm surf side almost as soon as we were on the road. "It's pouring," said the friends we were meeting for dinner, and I said oh really it's not raining for us and then shortly after we were barreling through the downfall. David drives too fast but I haven't been being too difficult about it. There is very little in today, then. Shivering down the secret path at sunset and there's something kind of nice about being very ill in very intense heat. My boyfriend is unenthused by the sunset. “We'll watch the sunset here tomorrow," he says. He makes up a rhyme about me to compensate for his lack of appreciation in the magic of the view. REDACTED is awful. REDACTED is stupid. REDACTED is going to choke on ceviche and get put in an unmarked grave. With full sincerity, I find the rhyme kind of sweet. It's sweet like its opposite day, and like he's grinning ear to ear and so I know that he actually really hopes that none of that stuff actually happens to me. I haven't been reading anything that's not for school because the heat has made me not just languid but also feverish and with all that - hyper impressionable. I've been absorbing anything I consume and taking on the tone like it's my own. I read some novella that I don't even like and then I write a nasty little short story about what I imagine it is like to be my friend. I don't know why the story is so nasty, because I think I am a pretty good friend. A better friend than I am a daughter or certainly a sister or even a girlfriend and, it's either all this useless contemplation or it's taking off-brand medication to quell the fever and now I can go to the party. I go to the type of party where it's on the beach and the tourists are making a congo line and my boyfriend and I are eating things like ceviche and fish skewers and Coco Loco and I say please give me the BAD rum when the waitress asks which one i want (bad, medium, and great are the options, price differences to match and i am totally out of money). The rain has come way too early this year. Something about Climate Change. Something about Climate Change is accelerating once in 1000 year weather cycles here to once in one year. I sit under a straw hut at this conga line party in the acid rain storm and I carve out the inside of my coconut drink with a spoon which makes everyone, particularly my boyfriend very annoyed. A river full of hermit crabs forms in the sand under my feet, and I prop my beat up sneakers on my boyfriend's lap which makes everyone, particularly him, even more annoyed. Anyways, I'd been trying to be more gentle about it. I will try even harder tomorrow. Monday, April 7 Me Being More Gentle About It: Little spiders climb up and down my arms as I sit in the yoga tent and go to school on my Computer. The men are back at the horses stables this morning, brushing the animals off and dust goes flying, red flower petals keep blowing down from the trees and creating a sort of storm of pollen in the dusty air. Something great happened last night. At first, I was worried about it, but things turned out fine and so in retrospect, it was something great. Driving back from dinner on the ATV, there had been a storm on the beach and so we’d been stuck there for a while, getting a little drenched even huddled under the tent and finally we were driving back, open air, wet road, bright moon and suddenly there was a little black colt standing lost in the middle of the street. I got off the ATV, moonshine shimmering off all the puddles, the animal was not concerned, it was just standing in the street looking up at me and then we walked together, across the wet pavement and into wet dirt, down the dark dirt road and then I left it by the stable - we couldn't find the gate but it wasn’t looking to wander more. Today, the horse is fine, and I knew that it would be. I think it was some kind of omen, maybe. A reminder to consult with the stars, and particularly, lately, to check on the tides. I'll be back in New York tomorrow - having strange flashbacks to being a gallery girl intern and waking up all bright eyed and opportunistic with the sun. When I think about that, I get all excited to be back in the city. I could be a Permafreelance assistant for a prestige publication and make $9.77 an hour this summer if I wanted. Permafreelance is their word, not mine. It means you work full time but you don't get benefits or vacation. You can’t, with any self respect, be nearly twenty five years old and still reveling in an exploitative half job lugging garment bags around New York but if you could, then you probably still would. I could spend the summer reading The Greats and I could spend the fall reading everything Semiotext(e) has ever published. I could start a strange project called [REDACTED] that is sure to be a hit. Yeah, it's time to go back to New York though. David and I watched the sunset for real tonight. I found the Secret Beach. Yeah, it is pretty magic, David said. Tuesday, April 8 I had too many yuca fries before the beef stew dinner last night and so I wasn’t too hungry, went to bed early, didn't sleep a wink and now it's dawn. We eat dinner at Ritual most nights in Malpais. Ritual is the cafe that David’s friend's girlfriend owns. It is full of wonderful things like a tart made of avocados and cashews and coconut oil, or espresso mixed with orange juice, or, last night was stew from the meat we grilled over the weekend, and last night the restaurant was closed, just accessible for us, I went to bed too early. Fog at sunrise today. I pack up and I tiptoe out of the hotel. David finds me by the horses in the morning dew making scratch marks on paper. I tell him that I don't take any of it for granted, and I mean it when I say it. I get in a taxi, and then I am by myself again. At the airport, I am too tired to even be on edge. I text Sylvie and Rebecca about the project idea that is sure to be a hit. Do you want to be a part of [new hit project] I say. Yes, they both say. At the airport, I kind of want to go slump over in a booth, and so I go and sit inside an awful place called GastroPub and I order one of those awful salads with the canned black olives and the dried mushrooms and cranberries and shaved almonds and some generic seed oil filled dressing, you know the type. I order a black coffee, too. The seed oil dressing on the side comes dangerously close to sloshing all over my coffee. I pick the chicken out of my salad with some care and eat only that, while the rest of the whole soggy heap of food kind of collapses in on itself. I spend twenty one dollars. Then, I spend nineteen dollars on some coffee and electrolytes and macaroons from Starbucks. I make sure to time my macaron consumption to end at twelve noon exactly, and then I set a timer for 36 Hours. A Monk Fast. This is the sort of thing that can be done when one is at the airport feeling bogged down. Obviously, I am not actually going to join a cult. It's mostly just aesthetic fixation. Style over substance. The real issue intellectually is if you can't truly distinguish yourself from something like the plastic tray on the plane in front of you. I haven't even really tried too hard to find a God. I'm sorry. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, April 15 From 8pm - late at (RSVP for location) — Terms Eccles is throwing another tax day party!! - “talking broadly about money and art and downtown and midtown, all at once. the only thing that will make tax day worth celebrating.”
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Q9U2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5cd9b963-4230-4508-8b2a-e1eb27f1bdce_1600x882.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j6Cp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb33657e9-0216-4c78-a2b9-25d2e1c66ed3_1600x1200.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5KHr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08e93783-43a6-4b3f-90ab-827d6d614ce1_1200x1600.jpeg, Terms Eccles
Monday, April 7 Me Being More Gentle About It: Little spiders climb up and down my arms as I sit in the yoga tent and go to school on my Computer. The men are back at the horses stables this morning, brushing the animals off and dust goes flying, red flower petals keep blowing down from the trees and creating a sort of storm of pollen in the dusty air. Something great happened last night. At first, I was worried about it, but things turned out fine and so in retrospect, it was something great. Driving back from dinner on the ATV, there had been a storm on the beach and so we’d been stuck there for a while, getting a little drenched even huddled under the tent and finally we were driving back, open air, wet road, bright moon and suddenly there was a little black colt standing lost in the middle of the street. I got off the ATV, moonshine shimmering off all the puddles, the animal was not concerned, it was just standing in the street looking up at me and then we walked together, across the wet pavement and into wet dirt, down the dark dirt road and then I left it by the stable - we couldn't find the gate but it wasn’t looking to wander more. Today, the horse is fine, and I knew that it would be. I think it was some kind of omen, maybe. A reminder to consult with the stars, and particularly, lately, to check on the tides. I'll be back in New York tomorrow - having strange flashbacks to being a gallery girl intern and waking up all bright eyed and opportunistic with the sun. When I think about that, I get all excited to be back in the city. I could be a Permafreelance assistant for a prestige publication and make $9.77 an hour this summer if I wanted. Permafreelance is their word, not mine. It means you work full time but you don't get benefits or vacation. You can’t, with any self respect, be nearly twenty five years old and still reveling in an exploitative half job lugging garment bags around New York but if you could, then you probably still would. I could spend the summer reading The Greats and I could spend the fall reading everything Semiotext(e) has ever published. I could start a strange project called [REDACTED] that is sure to be a hit. Yeah, it's time to go back to New York though. David and I watched the sunset for real tonight. I found the Secret Beach. Yeah, it is pretty magic, David said. Tuesday, April 8 I had too many yuca fries before the beef stew dinner last night and so I wasn’t too hungry, went to bed early, didn't sleep a wink and now it's dawn. We eat dinner at Ritual most nights in Malpais. Ritual is the cafe that David’s friend's girlfriend owns. It is full of wonderful things like a tart made of avocados and cashews and coconut oil, or espresso mixed with orange juice, or, last night was stew from the meat we grilled over the weekend, and last night the restaurant was closed, just accessible for us, I went to bed too early. Fog at sunrise today. I pack up and I tiptoe out of the hotel. David finds me by the horses in the morning dew making scratch marks on paper. I tell him that I don't take any of it for granted, and I mean it when I say it. I get in a taxi, and then I am by myself again. At the airport, I am too tired to even be on edge. I text Sylvie and Rebecca about the project idea that is sure to be a hit. Do you want to be a part of [new hit project] I say. Yes, they both say. At the airport, I kind of want to go slump over in a booth, and so I go and sit inside an awful place called GastroPub and I order one of those awful salads with the canned black olives and the dried mushrooms and cranberries and shaved almonds and some generic seed oil filled dressing, you know the type. I order a black coffee, too. The seed oil dressing on the side comes dangerously close to sloshing all over my coffee. I pick the chicken out of my salad with some care and eat only that, while the rest of the whole soggy heap of food kind of collapses in on itself. I spend twenty one dollars. Then, I spend nineteen dollars on some coffee and electrolytes and macaroons from Starbucks. I make sure to time my macaron consumption to end at twelve noon exactly, and then I set a timer for 36 Hours. A Monk Fast. This is the sort of thing that can be done when one is at the airport feeling bogged down. Obviously, I am not actually going to join a cult. It's mostly just aesthetic fixation. Style over substance. The real issue intellectually is if you can't truly distinguish yourself from something like the plastic tray on the plane in front of you. I haven't even really tried too hard to find a God. I'm sorry. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, April 15 From 8pm - late at (RSVP for location) — Terms Eccles is throwing another tax day party!! - “talking broadly about money and art and downtown and midtown, all at once. the only thing that will make tax day worth celebrating.”
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j6Cp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb33657e9-0216-4c78-a2b9-25d2e1c66ed3_1600x1200.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5KHr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08e93783-43a6-4b3f-90ab-827d6d614ce1_1200x1600.jpeg, Terms Eccles
From 7pm at The Strand Rare Book Room — Alex Kazemi and Kelly Cutrone host the launch of New Millenium Boyz. An old-school New York night, featuring a performance by Lydia Lunch, and special appearances by Honor Levy, Peter Vack, Madeline Cash, Brittany Menjivar, Erin Satterthwaite, Ryan D. Peterson, and Filip Fufezan. Afterparty: Internet Killed The Literary Star from 9pm at Gelso & Grand.
Inline links: New Millenium Boyz
The Strangest Hotel in New York
April 21, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, April 12 I am back on the train to New York - I had to come and go and come and go again. It feels a little like wading through the muck, all this coming and going, particularly when there was this period of being all twitchy and discontent here, and particularly because now, this time, returning to the city this time unlike on some other occasions, I can suddenly remember all that there is here to miss here. It feels like Fall in New York. This is really throwing me for a loop - knowing that it is Spring but it could not feel more like Fall. Flying back into the city on Wednesday evening, the trees looked all orange and glowing as we circled in on them from above. My dad pulled over the car last night in Vermont to enjoy the snow. Do you appreciate things like when you’re lying on a porch and the air is so hot you can’t really move and you drink a beer with your friends and you feel drunk from it but you might just be drunk from the heat,” I ask my dad. “Or would you prefer to just always be in snow?” “You’re making that sound nice, but I would find the heat suffocating,” my dad says. Just like it was from the plane, the trees are orange on the amtrak back to the city, too. I’ve never noticed spring as orange like this before. I’m noticing it now because I’ve been surrounded by all green in the tropics. It’s just that there are still no leaves on these empty branches, and the air is getting brighter, the air is getting twinged with budding flowers and evening haze. It’s not autumn. There are optical illusions. Everything here will be coming to life, soon. This week, there is a lot to do. I realized that suddenly. The conclusion was to zoom on back towards the city. That is where I am now. The story is almost there. I haven’t worked on something to completion like this, before. It’s not a matter of length or time or even attention it’s more so, just, I’ll be breaking the habit of being all loose and touch and go about it. Sunday, April 13 After a day spent on your phone, you do wake up and it feels all gray. Sun, water, in my dreams I was swinging on a rope swing into a swimming hole in the jungle over and over and over again - a little ominous in energy but it was certainly very beautiful there. Anyways, you can bring things back into sharp focus if you latch onto momentum and if you view inertia with disdain and disregard. It's not too complicated. You go in circles sometimes, but this does not have to continue. A return to the pace of things: an hour of walking briskly on the treadmill at an upscale corporate gym. Walk faster; and then thoughts move faster. Edit and publish the diaries I culled from the Internet this week. Gem Home for trout toast. They had to get rid of the open seating plan because it was starting to feel like a WeWork, the waiter tells Natasha. Now it feels like Vermont in Nolita. Nice and sweet. I am not too cynical even if it is candlelit at noon, which feels like some sort of cosplay in the context of Nolita. I take the F to the 7 to the Whitney Claflin show at Moma Ps1 in the evening. I've never been here before, and I like that the museum feels all cavernous. Someone tries to spit on me on the subway - avoided with ease. Darby is looking at the New York Review of Books shelf in the gift shop. Is there anything you think David would like, I ask. Renaissance poetry, she suggests but she’s kind of half hearted with it. Nothing really speaking to me on the shelves. I’ll invent my own polemic. I just have to conjure some convictions, first. After the exhibitions, which are a little bit of Rookie Mag and Things Culled From Tumblr and Darby is telling me about the theory of The Internet where it all originated from Tumblr - after the Whitney Claflin and James Turrell (my favorite James Turrell) and Sol Lewitt in the basement boiler room and Yto Barrado in the lawn - we take the train home. Lavender and vodka. I meet David at a strange hotel. Cop cars are swarming the building. I wonder if it’s because of the helicopter that went down, David says, but the helicopter was days ago and I am getting the creeps and, I want to go inside, I say. My grandmother gave me some of her collection of Samuel Beckett books this weekend. In the books, all they do is wait and wait and wait. Missed happenstances. Restless. I’m not good at all this waiting. The books are in my bag and I fall asleep with a few back covers folded over on my lap. It’s a friend of a friend's hotel room. David’s been Co-Working. I’ve been sleeping. The windows are tall and glass and the room gets dark naturally. Fades with the sun. David doesn’t want renaissance poetry from Moma Ps1 for his birthday. David wants a mask of Bacchus like the one at my parents house and an 88 dollar overnight stay at the 88 Allen Street Hotel. Monday, April 14 The issue is, I am so disconnected from nature here. The wilderness, yes, but my own sense of instinct too. Yeah, intellectualize it. Drag it out step by step by step and then there are logical conclusions I can live with. Though, if removed from cold hard fact I would know very little here at all. I know nothing viscerally here. Sometimes, elsewhere, I can know things intrinsically from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. New York is good, though, and there is nowhere else for me, anyways. I woke up this morning and my whole body popped. It’s hard to explain it. Like my muscles all revolted and then I couldn’t really move. It’s not the worst thing in the world except I know this would not have happened if I was somewhere else. I am rock solid certain that this would only have happened here. So someone put a hex on me. And then I almost forgot that desperation reeks. I spend all day acting boxy and square and off-putting in my many Academic Classes on account of not being able to really move. Every time I start to feel nauseous about the future considering this sort of bodily degradation beginning at Age Twenty Four Years Old, I try to remind myself that I have probably just been hexed. My friend in Witch School sends me some guides for lying down realignment. She calls me. You can join my cult, she says. Too many cults, and none of seem very all immersive. If I am going to do this, I would like to go all in. David is back to coworking at his friends hotel and so I march my way through the Lower East Side for some company after school. One cannot wallow alone. They have a heating pad at the hotel. They have a Lush Ice Vape. David’s friend says that he’s been fasting and praying a lot. There’s a permanently skewed gold framed painting of a gold chalice of flowers and some thick tan curtains at the hotel. The curtains are pulled open so we can all see outside. David brought opera binoculars. I brought swedish candy. David goes to get some chinese food so I settle in to write, but he returns with his friend sooner than I would have liked. “Bro,” David says, “I might go get the Penthouse Balcony King Suite Deluxe.” “Hotel employees are better friends than 99% of people’s friends,” David’s friend says. David does get the suite, and so we decamp upstairs. The curtains are more ornate in this room, and the aura is more creepy. Everything is funnier when you’re sober, David’s friend is saying. Something about coming face to face with your own absurdity. Something about how when you’re drunk, you think your’ madness makes sense. Two bathrooms and the shared patio and the love seat and the dog bed and David is saying that instead of dinner, instead of ever wasting money on a dumb dinner again, we should splurge on staycations instead. I brush my teeth with the hotel provided tooth brush and I sit on the floor of the erratically tiled shower. I don’t totally get the bit and I feel bad because it’s frivolous but, I do love hotels. Suspended circumstance The safest and most secure sleep. Float me out somewhere I’ve never been before. It’s good for girls with night terrors like me. Tuesday, April 15 David stayed up all night making a borderline satanic short film. I think I’m manic, he says, which is probably why he got us the stay in the strange hotel in the first place. You’re not manic, I say. Not manic, like I need lithium, David says. Last night I was compulsively reading these decentralized networking protocol white papers, David says. David starts telling me about an opera he wants to see. Something about The Only Monotheistic Pharaoh. I walk home and I stop at Whole Foods to buy some Clear Headed Kombucha and Chicken Sausage and Cymbiotika Vitamin C. I feel really terrible. I make a list of affirming statements. I FEEL AMAZING. I HAVE NEVER FELT BETTER. I take a nap. Wakeup and, David and his friend are on the phone downstairs talking about a startup. Eavesdropping and, it sounds like they’re about to independently invent the concept of the Male Influencer. “Imagine believing yourself to be cunning and self-serving, and you're doing so by working for [redacted],” David is saying. “Anyone can learn to code,” David is saying. Tune out, tune in, and now they’re inventing the Vending Machine. They’re talking about Jon Raffman and Petra Cortright. They’re talking about LA. Evil Women. Tax Day. “Girls already invented being an influencer eons ago,” I tell David, when he gets off the phone. David pauses for a moment. “I think girls and guys invented being influencers at about the same time.” Friday, April 18 I haven't been able to fill in the blanks of the past few days. Becoming: utterly consumed. It was deeply unpleasant, honestly. I feel bad for me on Monday, thinking it would be easy to wrap up this thing I was working on and then almost losing my whole head instead. I stayed up all week. All through the very peaks of the night and then past that, even. At first it was all disjointed, but now it is making more sense. And the good news is, good for art and life - I can intuit things again! WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, April 21 From 8pm - late at Night Club 101 — I will be reading in the Domino Reading Series, alongside Jess Wolfe, Dani Narins, Ruby Hoffman, Gordon Glasgow, Jade Wootton, and Matthew Gasda. Gallipony x Solar System DJ set after the reading.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!i2kf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe2899bb7-1e22-4a8b-93bc-14bf7e6ffb02_892x444.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gyqH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96641088-5f01-40d2-883f-cf79d91add2c_616x798.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CQwj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8402160-9491-40d2-95e0-9dee6e25a00a_852x318.png, borderline satanic short film, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sXNu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2692d191-2567-4b52-ab49-e81eacdf528d_730x832.png, Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series
Sunday, April 13 After a day spent on your phone, you do wake up and it feels all gray. Sun, water, in my dreams I was swinging on a rope swing into a swimming hole in the jungle over and over and over again - a little ominous in energy but it was certainly very beautiful there. Anyways, you can bring things back into sharp focus if you latch onto momentum and if you view inertia with disdain and disregard. It's not too complicated. You go in circles sometimes, but this does not have to continue. A return to the pace of things: an hour of walking briskly on the treadmill at an upscale corporate gym. Walk faster; and then thoughts move faster. Edit and publish the diaries I culled from the Internet this week. Gem Home for trout toast. They had to get rid of the open seating plan because it was starting to feel like a WeWork, the waiter tells Natasha. Now it feels like Vermont in Nolita. Nice and sweet. I am not too cynical even if it is candlelit at noon, which feels like some sort of cosplay in the context of Nolita. I take the F to the 7 to the Whitney Claflin show at Moma Ps1 in the evening. I've never been here before, and I like that the museum feels all cavernous. Someone tries to spit on me on the subway - avoided with ease. Darby is looking at the New York Review of Books shelf in the gift shop. Is there anything you think David would like, I ask. Renaissance poetry, she suggests but she’s kind of half hearted with it. Nothing really speaking to me on the shelves. I’ll invent my own polemic. I just have to conjure some convictions, first. After the exhibitions, which are a little bit of Rookie Mag and Things Culled From Tumblr and Darby is telling me about the theory of The Internet where it all originated from Tumblr - after the Whitney Claflin and James Turrell (my favorite James Turrell) and Sol Lewitt in the basement boiler room and Yto Barrado in the lawn - we take the train home. Lavender and vodka. I meet David at a strange hotel. Cop cars are swarming the building. I wonder if it’s because of the helicopter that went down, David says, but the helicopter was days ago and I am getting the creeps and, I want to go inside, I say. My grandmother gave me some of her collection of Samuel Beckett books this weekend. In the books, all they do is wait and wait and wait. Missed happenstances. Restless. I’m not good at all this waiting. The books are in my bag and I fall asleep with a few back covers folded over on my lap. It’s a friend of a friend's hotel room. David’s been Co-Working. I’ve been sleeping. The windows are tall and glass and the room gets dark naturally. Fades with the sun. David doesn’t want renaissance poetry from Moma Ps1 for his birthday. David wants a mask of Bacchus like the one at my parents house and an 88 dollar overnight stay at the 88 Allen Street Hotel. Monday, April 14 The issue is, I am so disconnected from nature here. The wilderness, yes, but my own sense of instinct too. Yeah, intellectualize it. Drag it out step by step by step and then there are logical conclusions I can live with. Though, if removed from cold hard fact I would know very little here at all. I know nothing viscerally here. Sometimes, elsewhere, I can know things intrinsically from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. New York is good, though, and there is nowhere else for me, anyways. I woke up this morning and my whole body popped. It’s hard to explain it. Like my muscles all revolted and then I couldn’t really move. It’s not the worst thing in the world except I know this would not have happened if I was somewhere else. I am rock solid certain that this would only have happened here. So someone put a hex on me. And then I almost forgot that desperation reeks. I spend all day acting boxy and square and off-putting in my many Academic Classes on account of not being able to really move. Every time I start to feel nauseous about the future considering this sort of bodily degradation beginning at Age Twenty Four Years Old, I try to remind myself that I have probably just been hexed. My friend in Witch School sends me some guides for lying down realignment. She calls me. You can join my cult, she says. Too many cults, and none of seem very all immersive. If I am going to do this, I would like to go all in. David is back to coworking at his friends hotel and so I march my way through the Lower East Side for some company after school. One cannot wallow alone. They have a heating pad at the hotel. They have a Lush Ice Vape. David’s friend says that he’s been fasting and praying a lot. There’s a permanently skewed gold framed painting of a gold chalice of flowers and some thick tan curtains at the hotel. The curtains are pulled open so we can all see outside. David brought opera binoculars. I brought swedish candy. David goes to get some chinese food so I settle in to write, but he returns with his friend sooner than I would have liked. “Bro,” David says, “I might go get the Penthouse Balcony King Suite Deluxe.” “Hotel employees are better friends than 99% of people’s friends,” David’s friend says. David does get the suite, and so we decamp upstairs. The curtains are more ornate in this room, and the aura is more creepy. Everything is funnier when you’re sober, David’s friend is saying. Something about coming face to face with your own absurdity. Something about how when you’re drunk, you think your’ madness makes sense. Two bathrooms and the shared patio and the love seat and the dog bed and David is saying that instead of dinner, instead of ever wasting money on a dumb dinner again, we should splurge on staycations instead. I brush my teeth with the hotel provided tooth brush and I sit on the floor of the erratically tiled shower. I don’t totally get the bit and I feel bad because it’s frivolous but, I do love hotels. Suspended circumstance The safest and most secure sleep. Float me out somewhere I’ve never been before. It’s good for girls with night terrors like me. Tuesday, April 15 David stayed up all night making a borderline satanic short film. I think I’m manic, he says, which is probably why he got us the stay in the strange hotel in the first place. You’re not manic, I say. Not manic, like I need lithium, David says. Last night I was compulsively reading these decentralized networking protocol white papers, David says. David starts telling me about an opera he wants to see. Something about The Only Monotheistic Pharaoh. I walk home and I stop at Whole Foods to buy some Clear Headed Kombucha and Chicken Sausage and Cymbiotika Vitamin C. I feel really terrible. I make a list of affirming statements. I FEEL AMAZING. I HAVE NEVER FELT BETTER. I take a nap. Wakeup and, David and his friend are on the phone downstairs talking about a startup. Eavesdropping and, it sounds like they’re about to independently invent the concept of the Male Influencer. “Imagine believing yourself to be cunning and self-serving, and you're doing so by working for [redacted],” David is saying. “Anyone can learn to code,” David is saying. Tune out, tune in, and now they’re inventing the Vending Machine. They’re talking about Jon Raffman and Petra Cortright. They’re talking about LA. Evil Women. Tax Day. “Girls already invented being an influencer eons ago,” I tell David, when he gets off the phone. David pauses for a moment. “I think girls and guys invented being influencers at about the same time.” Friday, April 18 I haven't been able to fill in the blanks of the past few days. Becoming: utterly consumed. It was deeply unpleasant, honestly. I feel bad for me on Monday, thinking it would be easy to wrap up this thing I was working on and then almost losing my whole head instead. I stayed up all week. All through the very peaks of the night and then past that, even. At first it was all disjointed, but now it is making more sense. And the good news is, good for art and life - I can intuit things again! WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, April 21 From 8pm - late at Night Club 101 — I will be reading in the Domino Reading Series, alongside Jess Wolfe, Dani Narins, Ruby Hoffman, Gordon Glasgow, Jade Wootton, and Matthew Gasda. Gallipony x Solar System DJ set after the reading.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gyqH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96641088-5f01-40d2-883f-cf79d91add2c_616x798.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CQwj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8402160-9491-40d2-95e0-9dee6e25a00a_852x318.png, borderline satanic short film, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sXNu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2692d191-2567-4b52-ab49-e81eacdf528d_730x832.png, Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series
Monday, April 14 The issue is, I am so disconnected from nature here. The wilderness, yes, but my own sense of instinct too. Yeah, intellectualize it. Drag it out step by step by step and then there are logical conclusions I can live with. Though, if removed from cold hard fact I would know very little here at all. I know nothing viscerally here. Sometimes, elsewhere, I can know things intrinsically from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. New York is good, though, and there is nowhere else for me, anyways. I woke up this morning and my whole body popped. It’s hard to explain it. Like my muscles all revolted and then I couldn’t really move. It’s not the worst thing in the world except I know this would not have happened if I was somewhere else. I am rock solid certain that this would only have happened here. So someone put a hex on me. And then I almost forgot that desperation reeks. I spend all day acting boxy and square and off-putting in my many Academic Classes on account of not being able to really move. Every time I start to feel nauseous about the future considering this sort of bodily degradation beginning at Age Twenty Four Years Old, I try to remind myself that I have probably just been hexed. My friend in Witch School sends me some guides for lying down realignment. She calls me. You can join my cult, she says. Too many cults, and none of seem very all immersive. If I am going to do this, I would like to go all in. David is back to coworking at his friends hotel and so I march my way through the Lower East Side for some company after school. One cannot wallow alone. They have a heating pad at the hotel. They have a Lush Ice Vape. David’s friend says that he’s been fasting and praying a lot. There’s a permanently skewed gold framed painting of a gold chalice of flowers and some thick tan curtains at the hotel. The curtains are pulled open so we can all see outside. David brought opera binoculars. I brought swedish candy. David goes to get some chinese food so I settle in to write, but he returns with his friend sooner than I would have liked. “Bro,” David says, “I might go get the Penthouse Balcony King Suite Deluxe.” “Hotel employees are better friends than 99% of people’s friends,” David’s friend says. David does get the suite, and so we decamp upstairs. The curtains are more ornate in this room, and the aura is more creepy. Everything is funnier when you’re sober, David’s friend is saying. Something about coming face to face with your own absurdity. Something about how when you’re drunk, you think your’ madness makes sense. Two bathrooms and the shared patio and the love seat and the dog bed and David is saying that instead of dinner, instead of ever wasting money on a dumb dinner again, we should splurge on staycations instead. I brush my teeth with the hotel provided tooth brush and I sit on the floor of the erratically tiled shower. I don’t totally get the bit and I feel bad because it’s frivolous but, I do love hotels. Suspended circumstance The safest and most secure sleep. Float me out somewhere I’ve never been before. It’s good for girls with night terrors like me. Tuesday, April 15 David stayed up all night making a borderline satanic short film. I think I’m manic, he says, which is probably why he got us the stay in the strange hotel in the first place. You’re not manic, I say. Not manic, like I need lithium, David says. Last night I was compulsively reading these decentralized networking protocol white papers, David says. David starts telling me about an opera he wants to see. Something about The Only Monotheistic Pharaoh. I walk home and I stop at Whole Foods to buy some Clear Headed Kombucha and Chicken Sausage and Cymbiotika Vitamin C. I feel really terrible. I make a list of affirming statements. I FEEL AMAZING. I HAVE NEVER FELT BETTER. I take a nap. Wakeup and, David and his friend are on the phone downstairs talking about a startup. Eavesdropping and, it sounds like they’re about to independently invent the concept of the Male Influencer. “Imagine believing yourself to be cunning and self-serving, and you're doing so by working for [redacted],” David is saying. “Anyone can learn to code,” David is saying. Tune out, tune in, and now they’re inventing the Vending Machine. They’re talking about Jon Raffman and Petra Cortright. They’re talking about LA. Evil Women. Tax Day. “Girls already invented being an influencer eons ago,” I tell David, when he gets off the phone. David pauses for a moment. “I think girls and guys invented being influencers at about the same time.” Friday, April 18 I haven't been able to fill in the blanks of the past few days. Becoming: utterly consumed. It was deeply unpleasant, honestly. I feel bad for me on Monday, thinking it would be easy to wrap up this thing I was working on and then almost losing my whole head instead. I stayed up all week. All through the very peaks of the night and then past that, even. At first it was all disjointed, but now it is making more sense. And the good news is, good for art and life - I can intuit things again! WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, April 21 From 8pm - late at Night Club 101 — I will be reading in the Domino Reading Series, alongside Jess Wolfe, Dani Narins, Ruby Hoffman, Gordon Glasgow, Jade Wootton, and Matthew Gasda. Gallipony x Solar System DJ set after the reading.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CQwj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8402160-9491-40d2-95e0-9dee6e25a00a_852x318.png, borderline satanic short film, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sXNu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2692d191-2567-4b52-ab49-e81eacdf528d_730x832.png, Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series
Big long list of activities
May 01, 2025 · Original source
From 6pm - 8pm at Hauser & Wirth (542 W 22nd St) — Francis Picabia Eternal Beginnings opens - traveling from Paris to New York, this is the first major solo exhibition exclusively exploring Picabia’s unique final period.
Inline links: Hauser & Wirth, Eternal Beginnings
mutually assured destruction
May 06, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, April 27 Sitting up in the middle of the night and saying things I don't mean and, it's not that I'm talking in my sleep exactly. More so, I've been trying to figure out if this harshness comes from being evil or if maybe it's more of a vindictive thing instead. Being vindictive implies, at least, that you are seeking some sort of equilibrium. Wrong and be wronged. You aren't just a gratuitous little freak about it. Causality is irrelevant, and I'm nauseous at the gym, playing high vibration Youtube videos in my headphones, standing on an electric plate that can jostle my insides, lymph nodes, drain me like a detox, and yes, there needs to be one of those soon. Making calls and making complaints, and then I'm like, oh sorry, I didn't mean it, I was drunk. And then I'm saying that I feel crazy instead. I feel insane. You don't understand. I have lost complete touch with my judgment. Costa Rica, in the rain I was kicking around mud with my feet and drinking too much and his friends were like oh you think you're in a teen movie or something because I was saying kind of nasty things, too. It's way worse in New York. That is the definitive thing and, also the fact that there is nowhere else. Something can be confusing and still not impossible to regulate. Sorry to be all obfuscated about it. I can control my consciousness. It's my consciousness after all. I go to church in the evening, which feels unbelievably affected - would a girl that is evil redeem herself on her knees before God? - though, that isn't really the question. You believe in good and evil, yet you have found yourself entirely incapable of distinguishing the difference between the two. Yes, then, prognosis, logical conclusion, you have lost your mind. I eat a cookie for breakfast and then the leftovers of the quiche for dinner that I fugue state ordered for my boyfriend at six am, which was a disaster in and of itself. I decided to do something nice, and then the delivery guy couldn't figure out the buzzer and so I stumbled down in my socks and Brandy Melville, I wasn't even very polite about it when he handed me my bag. I pointed to the buzzer and said that's the buzzer and then I called my boyfriend over and over because I realized, also, I'd forgotten to bring down keys. It's the type of day where I spend almost no time eating, but I still feel kind of full in a bad way. Everything I did eat is so calorically dense that it creates some kind of cognizant dissonance. I shouldn't feel this bogged down from just some stupid scraps. I don't want to say terrible things, I said. And yet you constantly are saying terrible things, he said. I wish we didn't do these things, I said. That's like saying you wish spiders weren't real, he said. People are vicious and awful. Then, I do pilates from the pilates app that they sent me for free on Instagram. I'm enough of an influencer these days that brands will send me spam mail disguised as PR. Like 20% off coupon codes to their clothing line personalized just for me, but I still have to pay them 80% if I want the clothes. This means, basically, that I am not an influencer at all, but I have just made things like my email address and my diary psychosis way too public. The pilates studio said - "share if you can!" but I'm sorry, I can't, I'm not really talking about me, I'm talking about something else. First name, last name, coupon codes, face to the name, you're ruining all my plausible deniability. I started sobbing by the window, and he said don't worry, you're sweet. I started thinking he was dead, and he said don't worry, I'm ok. I'm blurring the timelines a bit. He told me I could meet him on the steps of a Chinatown apartment a little bit after sunset. Inside, his friend took calls and let the bathtub-in-the-kitchen Chinatown apartment become a kind of neutral territory. I sat in the guest room and held my breath. Say the same things over and over, and because you mean it, they eventually stick. Viewing everything in black and white. They've told me that's my problem. That and being too suggestible, and also out of control. I started being all dramatic about it and yeah there's been too much partying, but I come to learn I'm pretty much like this sober, too. Things were really really really pure and sweet, and I keep on thinking in ninety days, ninety days of being pure again, and everything bad can be problems that belonged to someone else. I am trying to become like a Monk about it. It's not so much that my impulse towards reaction is wrong, but rather that I act purely on impulse, and impulse alone never did anything other than make a situation that much worse. Spring and Redemption, I say, on my dumb fucking TikTok. Spring and redemption, my boyfriend says. Yeah, that's cute, this one is cute. Did you spell synchronicity wrong for engagement or to be insane? my boyfriend asked. Insane, I said. He stopped to think about it. So stupid, he said. You aren't that insane. Order diet pepsi bean and cheese burrito nicotine gum and we're lying in the sun. So much sun through the windows that we have to keep the blinds shut or the light goes too crazy, the air conditioning fires up but not much can be done in the face of UV like this. Lucky, luck,y lucky. I spent the week talking to myself. Lying on the floor and I'm trying to seek cognizance in repetition. The same word three times. First, you remember what it means. Second, you determine what you think is true. You don't take it for granted. If you don't take it for granted, then you won't lose your mind. Monday, April 28 Eiverything gets better overnight. No more crying in my sleep. 2:22am and I’m not yelling. I see things more with precision than as if through angels and mystics. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be so transcendental about it. It’s really evil to try to mythologize something that is neither beautiful nor true. I stayed at Hudson Square until late last night. Black socks and black shoes and a tennis skirt that doesn’t match to be late to class today. The sun has rushed back and it’s iced tea no breakfast no lunch. David meets me at Cafe Reggio, where to our left, an awful woman is berating her husband to levels of borderline abuse, and to our right a lovely couple is talking about the difference between mere activity, and real fulfillment. You gain fulfillment from things like C-suite and making tv shows and real estate, the man is saying. Activity is something like going to Europe, he is telling his wife. These are the things that fulfill us, for others it might be different, the woman is saying. I am surprised to hear, that in referencing C-Suite, they are suggesting real fulfillment.. Materially, things are working themselves out. The rot has been first, material, and then secondly, spiritual. We go to Lupa for a lovely spring dinner. Sweet then sour then sweet. I am endlessly interested in reiterations, but that just makes things worse and worse. Homemade focaccia and olive oil and arugula salad and lobster corn ravioli and lamb chops and tartufo which is like a shell of hazelnut, ice cream, paper plane to drink and the restaurant is closing by the time we leave. Tuesday, April 29 You stop a night terror like this: creep down the ladder and say to your boyfriend, you need to turn off the projector right this second. The light was emitting vibes that were very off putting and I was concerned about scentless and odorless gas. My boyfriend makes me pasta and gives me a beer. You kind of briefly entered a state of psychosis, he tells me. I get super offended by that one. A bad dream doesn’t mean I need lithium or something, I say. I didn’t say you have schizophrenia, he says. I said you seemed to be under the impression that the projector light was toxic, poison, and evil, which is the very definition of a state of psychosis - the merging of reality with hallucination. No, I say, that’s the very definition of a bad dream. Anyways, I’ve been having sleep paralysis because I’ve been having insomnia. I’ve been much more normal about it. Run, coffee, iced tea, the world's worst sandwich back at Cafe Reggio in the afternoon. Do you have any favorite spots in New York, the tall man next to me is asking the short man across the table. “Well, it’s far from here,” the short man tells the tall man. "it's really far from here. it's called Coney Island." I pick out all the healthy bits of my dinner and eat just the bread instead. I’ve been feeling tempted to get really fucking skinny again. Being weird and off putting with my sandwich and then leaving my scraps with abandon. Feeling pretty sane today, I don't really want to get out of here anymore. Wednesday, April 30 Up all night just like last week, and I'm in class reading from my story like oh I'm probably not going to freak out but it's still a possibility. David turns older today. He's still asleep when I get home in the afternoon. Macarons and iced coffee on the table. We go to Vol de Nuit and I get promptly drunk on cider. It's bright and nice and I'm writing tipsy. This week won’t eb and flow in the way that I hate. Make yourself head empty and then see what happens. We go next door to Dear Stranger for dinner. Red snapper and jalapeno sauce and wedge salad and shrimp tostadas. Two martinis. David makes a scene in a scuffle with one of those guys on the streets who shill comedy shows on the way home. Then, I wake up and it feels like morning but it’s only just past midnight. I used to miss the things I have right now so much. I’d miss it through abstraction, really. All through hypotheticals because it had never really been mine in the first place. It shocks me when I see my life emerge unscathed from fits of self destruction. Playing fast and loose when it comes to the thing of redemption. I am trying not to be that way. First it is sour and then it is sweet. This is one of two directions that any progression of events can take. Obviously, I know the direction that I would like to pursue. Thursday, May 1 Everything has come alive again, though I'm not quite sure if it's solid yet. I almost step in a pool of blood on Rivington Street, and then we're talking about the uptick in dead bodies that people keep finding around town these days. I'm going to stop being so morbid. You can be thinking about one thing, and then you can decide to be thinking about something else. Yesterday evening felt sparkly and nice. David and I stayed at Vol de Nuit for a while, drinking cider, which makes me feel full but not that drunk, lots of sunshine and we bring in our own food. Peanut mayonnaise garlic sauce on french fries. I'm less disgusted by these things than I used to be. Yesterday's dinner felt nice but a little too drunk. I was drinking iced tea at two in the morning and then my boyfriend was throwing bottles across the room in a way that was funny, not crazy. I got an email asking me if I'd like to talk about Dimes Square for a German newspaper but I wouldn't like to do this and so I didn't respond. I got an email regarding Amtrak tickets. Things have been too whiplash lately. I got an email from my friend. I owe edits on some projects, and I like when big things happen quickly, though we are not quite there yet. The nature of how I am creatively always edges on narcissism - reflection and observation being more natural than imagination to me, I suppose. although the night terrors suggest some kind of imagination. People like to tell me that. I’m close to the mystics. On a literal level - clinical - the night terrors suggest nothing other than a flirting with psychosis, though my paranoia does not extend to fear over my mind. Nobody actually thinks I’m losing my mind Physically, a parasite cleanse can be dangerous because the heavy metals your parasites held will be dumped right back into your body. I do have paranoia surrounding being poisoned, though this is more a concern of the mind. April - I wrote 40,000 words in my secret diary that I do not share here. This is surely excessive. There are worse things. What I meant to say is: the narcissism has felt less like filtering observation and reflection through the self these days, and more like actually just kind of sloppy-like, thinking about Myself. The sun is nice, because it heats my greenhouse apartment so quickly - downstairs becomes for the daytime, and upstairs becomes so bright and burnt to a crisp that it has to only be for sleep. Sleeping in the day here is nice. It’s like somebody cast a spell on me. I am not someone to sleep in the day, but a greenhouse apartment is something like a potion this time of year. Friday, May 2 When I think about how to synthesize an idea into a quote or a meme, something pithy really, then the idea is immediately ruined. Even it was a good idea at the start. This makes me want to distance myself from the quote, meme, thing of posting more generally I suppose though, I’m still having fun. I’m so sure about things, now. I was feeling really really really unsure about things and I’m so sure now. I feel so bad for acting all ambivalent about it. I’m so certain. I have never been more certain and I have never been more sincere. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 6 From 7pm at Pete’s Candy Store — Mind Palace Poetry presents The Girls Room, with special guest host Sophie Appel. Featuring Sascha Cohen, Siena Foster-Soltis, Jude Lavelle, and Montana James Thomas.
Inline links: Pete’s Candy Store
From 8pm at Beverly’s — Blade Study presents a night of video by friends & family. David and I are showing video art from The Strangest Hotel in New York. Other videos by Drew Zeiba, Emily Janowick, Joshua Citarella, Sophia Giovannitti, Webb Allen, and more. Music by Dreamer, Skype Williams, and Umfang. See you there <3
Inline links: Beverly’s, Blade Study, The Strangest Hotel in New York.
Panopticon-ing Everyone
May 13, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, May 8 I've been panopticon-ing everyone here, and you have asked me to stop. Ok. I'm sorry I have already told about what happened on Wednesday. Not here. Imagine it's all fantasy. I mean it when I say that I am really not talking about myself. Being all confessional and then I feel kind of gross about it. Being kind of glib about the parts I thought were most sincere. I've been neglectful, most of all. Right now, I am most sorry about that. In the end, you'll be lying on a Japanese floor mattress and you'll be thinking about the parts that are still the same. Tonight, I went to the party that I usually avoid. I went home before the parts that come next. Another flight tomorrow, and I wish there wasn't more travel though, I am glad for where we are going. An old school hotel, Sue Wong beaded dress, borrowed shoes and sharing the different details of my life like oh it's been all grad school and true love and self surveillance - this part will be nice. My friend suggests at dinner - I don't have insomnia, I live in an environment of psychological torture sleep depravation. I could latch onto this. Psychological torture. My friend says - New York vs LA; you can find nuance in uglier things here and she cites me as the example of nuance as if I am something like resilient or tough. I have never been described as either of these things before, and I hope I haven't been plying myself in victimhood too heavily, because really - my circumstances are wonderful. It is a sweet description, though. I'm glad I'm not a fraud, at least. Lots of parties this week and those were nice while they lasted. You can't be indignant without clarity, which - I am working on having more of. I set up the summer so as to have the days stretching endlessly in front of me. This concerns me a bit. I will need to read for two hours every morning. There is a novel forming mostly beneath my writing here, and I will need to finish that. All at once it's like everyone has drawn the same conclusions about good and evil. Everyone was all like this is so good, and then everyone snapped at once and it was like: this is evil. I have briefly wondered where this change would map out cosmically, though, I have tried to be a mystic about it, and my basic impulses revolt. I was culling chapters from my Secret Diary a while back. Here, I was saying. Time stamp it in Google Docs and you know I meant this before I even knew I would need to show you it was true someday. None of it was really so long ago. So, I wonder, for example - what July will be like? I wonder about June. You could be a bartender or a DJ. Sounds like something someone who has lost their intuition would say. I'm talking in hypotheticals because I mean it when I say that I am not, really, talking about myself. Friday, May 9 Rebecca and I sat at Bar Belly in the rain for a while last night. Shannon made me cauliflower rice and avocado for lunch. I did circle around to my boyfriend's culty and evil type hang later in the night. There was chicken from the street, there. Rebecca will stay at our place while we're gone. She stayed at ours for a while last night. Everyone went to KGB, later, but I am being more regulated about it. Making pasta at nine am because I was up all night in spite of new efforts. Pouring rain and then we're driving towards Laguardia. In retrospect, I still do not think I was being dramatic about things, but it feels distant and small now. Short term memory maybe, or, the present is often quite extreme and so; wherever I am, it absorbs me. I like his brown leather bag, cufflinks, it's been to and fro this airport all spring which serves to dividend the chaos a bit. Anyways, everything is fine. I have a life in New York that I will still feel so lucky to return to. "You guys are in love!" a girl in micro-shorts told us at the party last night. "How long have you been in love for?" "Almost two years," he said. This is the pragmatic answer and also this is true. The girl beamed. "I've been in love for ten days," she said. I need to hold things closer to my chest. Not here - I am obfuscated enough about it here, so it's hard to do much damage. It's different in the real world. I say things that I know to be true, but I say them before I really understand what they mean. I am more protective of the things that are good, and I am quick to give away all that is bad. This is not how a person should be. Happy Mother's Day, the light and water show at the airport is saying. Elderly couple to my left devouring fried chicken. I feel incredibly ill, come to think of it, but some of this stays sweet. Darling darling darling, he keeps telling me. Are you ready to fly in a plane in the sky? Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the earth and you will be like twenty-five years old and on your phone and talking badly about your friends behind their back and forgetting to call your family and drinking to disgust. Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the world and you will call your sister, call your mom, lie under the open window with your boyfriend. You will be making up stories and praying over a glass of sparkling water. You will be listening to music and sound and language from real life. You will picture a relic of yourself still human, and you will be pleased. Saturday, May 10 I have decided to return to Photos. It is funny how these things work. I felt quite repulsed by images for a moment, but even just a few days of speaking out loud how much the equilibrium has been missing and how much now, it is time to get it back - I said this out loud along with other things, and now I can face the physical form again. And so much of the physical form is so pretty. I do like when things are ethereal and kind of between realms - it is why I have always liked to be very thin, although I’m pretty Normal in Body these days - and this is the most boring of boring things to discuss, anyways. My tendency is to archive and hoard. It is comically wrong to suggest that I seek to leave behind no trace. My point is, for a while now, I could not bear the traces. Something has shifted. There is a gold framed photo of a palm tree across from the bed in this hotel, and it’s the kind that is old school not tacky. Everything is art deco here. The ceilings at the bar are ten stories high, he told me, before dinner. There was salad and a cosmopolitan and such nice conversation and, I do always get whisked away when the time is right. I’m feeling pretty even keeled. If April happened again, it wouldn’t happen like this. The day has been so good so far. The hotel is old, classic, and art deco. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 13 Doors at 7pm, reading at 8pm at TJ Byrnes — Bronwen Lam & David Dufour present Patio, an evening of reading. This rendition features Martina Mendoza, Mark Iosifescu, Myles Zavelo, Stephanie Wambugu, Babak Lakghomi, and Steve Anwyll.
Inline links: TJ Byrnes, Bronwen Lam, David Dufour, Patio
Total Nightmare Policy
May 21, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, May 12 At the Holiday Inn, there are Yakisoda noodles and banana cream pie snack pack jellos and krabby patties gummy candies and lances cream cheese and onion dip crackers. All the most disgusting snacks imaginable, and kind of perverted, too. I’m so particular and annoying with my sleeping issues that I always find myself at depressing hotels, even when there is a wonderful home down the road where I am welcome. I need a Big Bed and Isolation. I need Temperature Control. As a child, I liked things such as camping in birch forests and cramped little stone cottages in some village where my parents would find someone on the Internet to swap houses with. Unfortunately, I grew up into someone with severe and undiagnosable sleep disorders, and a taste for adventure that is rooted more in hedonism and less in fresh air. I feel really full and sleepy heading back to New York. Well, things are better than they were. Total nightmare policy. Total, blow up your life brother, policy. I was so addicted to writing in my google docs journal this weekend and now I have a lot of annoying slop to show for it. I call my dad in the sun outside the Starbucks in a Strip Mall. Stop thinking about things in such eternal terms, they tell me. You wouldn’t get in a car crash and say When Can I Go 100 Again, they remind me. Fiction, again - they are talking about somebody else. The idea of compromise no longer makes your blood boil. It’s an unsavory trait that it ever did in the first place. "The other alternative is that I just become a nightmare and you become perfect," I told him. "That is certainly an alternative," he told me. It is 11:30pm, and I am thinking about getting a job. I am thinking about the Current Body Red Light Mask and the Ayede heels from ssense.com. "What if I hadn’t simply crashed out," he said. "There would have been pros and cons to that," I said. There is a fire alarm and mauve curtains and two weird arched doorways because we booked a suite and so the architecture suggests some simulacra of something vaguely Roman. Marble. Plaster cut to look like marble. I go to buy water and they have turned off the creepy lights at the creepy pool. Tuesday, May 13 I was feeling really terrified, if I’m being honest about it. I was sitting on the sidewalk picking at my nails and drinking hot coffee in the hot sun, eight splenda, curdled almond milk. I was voicing concerns in a high pitched voice and I was losing track of the distinguishment between ideas imagined and conversations regurgitated. God forbid I have an original thought of my own - that part wasn't even on the table. It isn’t so dark and depressing anymore. Walk in the rain and everything is so green here. I’ll be back in the city tonight and there are better omens in the astrology these days around things like planes, the return, glass apartments in the sky. He leaves my keys on the bedside table at the hotel, and he’s still asleep when I pack up my things and leave to eat black coffee, turkey deli meat, garlic aioli, marcona almonds. We drive to his parent’s house and he gives me drumstick vanilla ice cream. Working on this laptop, surrounded by all this green. You know that every time you hit this vape it coats your lungs in sweet thick paste, I am telling him, as I hit his vape. The last time I wrote about hitting a vape I received an infuriating pseudo intellectual email about the verbiage "hit" as suggesting a sado-masochistic impulse in our digital age. "I wonder if soon, you'll be saying you 'Beat' or 'Pummeled' your vape?" the idiot email writer wrote. The email made me so mad. You're so stupid, I wanted to write back. We go for a walk in the bright green forest. There is a sweetness here. A coming-back-into-control that makes the out-of-control-ness feel so distant. Escape from Evil and two days later you mistake reprieve for salvation. Unless, you are not mistaken. It really could be that simple. What was it they were saying on The Internet? Break The Pattern Today Or The Loop Will Repeat Tomorrow. What was it I've been saying online? Edit Artificial Intelligence robot voice over text to speech words - "Taking My Party Boy Boyfriend On A Walking Tour Of The Cotswolds." I clarify that I've been defending his honor. We're crushing up the plastic water cups, and the hill is steep up the road. I clarify that there are people of extremes. It was very bad, but now it is very good, I am texting my mother. Honestly, I'm so sick of clarifying anything at all. You're a little more sober with it. You're a little more gentle about it. It transformed in two days. Imagine two weeks. Imagine a year. Imagine rushing even one second. I can control my consciousness. Though, it isn't my consciousness, really, that I've been concerned about. I'm glad we share a frame of mind. This plane is basically empty. Wednesday, May 14 We went to KGB late last night. Thursday, May 15 The woman who does yoga on her fire escape is out there with a cigarette, today. I’m not in a bad mood today. The apartment is a mess and I am concerned about my past. Things become steady, and then even bright. Friday, May 16 Well, I didn't write because I have been busy in real life. I've been imagining an identity rooted in delusions in the secret diary that stays offline. It is not so delusional. I am feeling so sincere. Rebecca is here. My sister is here. We went to KGB Bar and Fanelli Cafe and Funny Bar where we met a Gagosian guy turned AI guy, which I guess has kind of been my career arch too though I am not so pleased about that direction. We went to the party at Bowery where the waiter from Fanelli Cafe was the DJ and I had two vodka sodas then soda water with lime which might be all I do soon, though I keep on having all these cyclical conversations with myself about these things - consumption and gluttony - and there is little that more dull, so I will not bring it up again. I went to the sleep specialist and she giggled when I said I don't scream in my sleep if I am in the company of strangers. That's different but great, she said. Do I control my subconscious, I said. Stupid idiot, she said. I did actually go to all these parties, and I did call him from the bathroom. He'll be back in New York soon, making film and code and learning banjo. It's way better than the alternative, and I do feel very proud this week which is something I have not been able to say in a good long while. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, May 21 From 7pm - 8:30pm at The Flea Theater (20 Thomas St) — I’ll be seeing Revolution: The Play. Sophia Englesberg is associate producer, and everything she touches is wonderful. Written and produced by Brett Neveu, directed by Rebecca Harris. The theater is next to The Odeon, so you can get my favorite martini before or after the show. - “Who celebrates their 26th birthday in the alley outside of her hairdressing place o’ work? Revolution interrogates and celebrates the very nature of creating community and building friendships in our ever-evolving, ever disconnecting world.”
Inline links: Revolution: The Play, Sophia Englesberg, The Odeon
generative and godly secrets
May 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, May 18 On the first day of My New Life, I walk to the film shop, pour old windowsill tea down the drain, come to consciousness in the Infrared Sauna at Spa88. In the Russian Spa Cafe, you drink carrot juice in a bikini because Rebecca taught you what Fiber is yesterday, and now you are sure to get your fill. There is lox and seaweed and brown bread. There is a Caesar salad later, at Fairfax in The West Village, and they don't actually harvest your personality at the door. I journal a lot, I told my friend. I journaled the whole train ride in my mind, she said. I journal in Google Docs, I said. I don't know why I decided to say it like that. Like manic transcription of thought until it becomes more vibe than writing at all is some sort of one-up over mental assessment and determination. I have not been trying to one-up at all. I've been trying to be so honest about it, and I guess the concern remains that the truth will all surface and the roots will turn topsy turvy and inside out and then you’ll see that untangled, it was all kind of just midwit and ugly. I wrote about nihilism and absurdism and Samuel Beckett, but the piece turned out so simpleton that it makes me kind of queasy to return to. I wrote about the magazine release party on the roof where I felt kind of wobbly in this halter top dress tied way too tight. Then we walked to Casetta and I had wine and fish floating in tin and oil and then I lay here for a while when I got home. I lay very very still and when I twitched then rose again, there were packages at the door, a taxi cab and a friend on foot and his airtrain en route heading towards the apartment. I was standing in socks and hovering in the building's communal mudroom when he got home. Things are nice. I was talking not too quietly about all of it in the Spa 88 Wall Street Russian Baths Hot Tub. The most liminal space in New York with smooth warm aqua water and yellow kind of burnt light and chipped paint no windows. Dorito bags with Hebrew packaging usually stacked in the restaurant, today abandoned half eaten on the table by me. I could tell the fat guys in speedos were lingering sweaty just to listen, but I was doing no sort of performance for them. On the train, the girl on the phone kept glancing around to make sure others were listening. I felt sad for her. At the Spa88, I said my story all matter of fact in the hot tub and my Aunt said well, you really have your hands full and the fat guys looked away kind of bashful, and it was only then that I realized they were listening. You can disassociate away the concept of public space, too. Spilled coffee and voice echoing in this pool room with no windows so it becomes like time isn’t passing at all. I wasn’t talking to myself, but communication reverberates, and I was drifting all unaware of perception. Then I was in the cold plunge, in the infrared sauna which really does something nice to the fascia (the part that matters when it comes to things like Wim Hof and Heating Up and Cooling Down.) After the infrared, I began to gain awareness of my surroundings and movements and recollections of the sound of my own voice and things like the coffee my stray limbs sent flying off the shelf at Mille Feuille this morning and then I was there saying OMG Sorry and floating napkins towards the ground but also kind of just standing and blinking like some kind of dud. You wake up alone but there are people on the way. People already late. Keys and company and you are texting with an intensity that borders vitriol. The vitriol is what he’ll point out later. Before that, he is at the door and you are so happy to greet and be greeted. There is spilled coffee and Equinox Gym and Spa88 and Iced Tea, Sparkling Ice Soda, Cool Mint Zyns. I woke up and I waited around and I trapezed over to Equinox Gym and when I got upset later because told me he did not care about my story; it was then that he clarified he did not so much mean he did not care but more so that the story was full of vitriol. And so perhaps he was just feeling full of love and life. You can't get all rageful over something like that. I'm sorry I forget sometimes that you are not resilient, he said. My blood didn't boil. I went for a walk. You forget that all of this exists all the time, Natasha and I were saying by the Hudson River. In my glass apartment in the sky, I was alone for a while but now I am not. There is an Arabian rug and a Marble table that I hope someone will take off my hands for free. There is a CurrentBody LED mask and cocoa nibs and nothing in the fridge but the butter that I replaced with the wrong brand. I feel uncomfortable when I speak like this - about these little things that compose a life. Like I'm painting a picture in the details of routine, but there has been no routine. There have been a few false starts, and then now, a real one. I am conjuring an image of a morning with an empty fridge and an Arabian rug and the kind of person who reaches for different serums at different hours. If anything, we’ve been dealing more in potion than serums. But every potion certainly has its godforsaken limit, and so now - there is something else. Monday, May 19 I will take the rest of my youth as it is. He turns on the air conditioner for me and leaves to drink Non Alcoholic Beers while I stay put and read the Diaries of Girls Online. I walk ten miles and I do not really believe his friends who say there are worms at the Russian Spa. This is how rumors spread, I tell him. You are Married To The Truth, I tell myself. In the morning, there is light through my greenhouse roof and to start; I am the only one awake. It feels like this; I had one of the best weeks ever last week, where everything came rushing back into being as it should be and I was certain it would stay like this forever. Then there was sudden chaos on the phone, chaos on the train, serenity at Spa88 and then I was calling my mom muttering sentiments I knew she would find vaguely offensive, stomping around the financial district saying bad words like a child intent on proving herself lovable even if insufferable. He said it wasn't that I was so uninteresting, more that my story was bizarre, not really a story at all, full of vitriol. Everyone was running along the Hudson River and I had two or three diet cokes with dinner and I was up not all night but close. It goes like this: in the morning there is energy and a package thief filling a suitcase up with my boxes of celsius and fiber powder and whitening strips and dental floss. I crouch above him on the stairway and I scream HEY. He screams back HEY and so I let him have it. I turn on my heels and I run up the stairs. My favorite things are leaving the house in the morning and not coming back till late night, cool mint zyns, blackberry dr. pepper, turkey cold cuts with truffle mustard eaten in a kind of self-punishing way. I lie on the roof in my boyfriend's Adidas track shorts and a black tank top that I stole from the gymnastics locker room in highschool. The thing about New York is there is immense competition to be skinny, beautiful, successful, rich all in circumstances that are entirely unconducive to all these things, my friend is telling me on the phone. Circumstances like the package thief and your metabolism doesn’t even get a boost from the sun and also there are hard drugs and alcohol. I don’t feel above all of that, but I do feel distant from it now and so I suppose, with some plausible humility, this adds up to kind of the same thing. I wish I was a gentle person. I feel lazy today, but this is not the same thing. Tuesday, May 20 Last night, we went to Lucky's for dinner and I had something with tequila and Saint Germaine straight up and he had more non-alcoholic beer. Then, they brought us mountains of shoestring onion rings and a big wedge salad and it was good for a while, until I started to feel sick. I went to the bathroom to play on my phone while the scent of grease dissipated. The drinks were crisp and they brought the shaker right to our table. Lucky's was like a steakhouse, but with a smaller interior than your average We went to Matthew's house after, to sit in his barren family room while he hacked up a lung. I rolled up my Zara blazer that I stole from Paul's Casablanca lost and found after someone stole my blazer first and also back when I was an alcoholic. I curled up under my blazer on Matthew's tiny couch while Matthew and my boyfriend talked in code and made rankings of all their friends. Matthew's apartment was pretty empty except for a whiteboard with a list of girls he likes and a Chinese new year banner and a huge pile of hats that said I'M IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. “Jesus, she is combative. you're right, she's so combative,” Matthew told my boyfriend, talking about me. "It's possible that Canne after dark was something that happened in the daytime," he said. "she'll get mad if I ask her why she won't play anagrams," he said. "The activation triggers a chain of events leading to increased dopamine release," he said. Sometimes, when I am with my boyfriend's friends I feel like I am in a video game, or maybe in an orphanage. You don't want to be someone who is contorting your face and yelling. It is morning now. I don't really know what happened there. Being at these parties more sober is strange, because there is nothing else but me and yet I still don't really understand. I am listening to sweet and gentle music, and I feel a total surrender. S - i do feel bad i was not so gentle and kind about this. i get myself trip wired and lose it. but it is always better to be gentle and kind and i understand new york can kill the soul and there is something beautiful in a peaceful house alone and that is why you left which is innocent and pure and it's not fair to be rageful to you for that. Wednesday, May 21 There were two cigarettes and two glasses of wine at Voile de Nuit. This becomes some sort of Diary of Consumption. I met Ellie at a tall house on a wooded street in the West Village where she works on things pertaining to design and then we spent the hours in the courtyard of Voile de Nuit, which I adore because it’s reminiscent of Summer and Reality. I behaved badly the last time I was here. My boyfriend comes by to drop off fries. We run into friends at Caffe Reggio and it's raining by the time we reach home. My boyfriend says: Spreading secrets is entropic Keeping your mouth shut is static Spreading misinformation is generative and godly I do think he is mostly kidding. It's Simone Weil who says about rage - “To be able to hurt others with impunity—for instance to pass our anger on to an inferior who is obliged to be silent—is to spare ourselves from an expenditure of energy, an expenditure which the other person will have to make.” And I wonder which character I am in this story and it's not always the good one. I was thinking about all of that in the novel. That and the self surveillance of it all. Unfortunately, my thought experiments are ruining my life and also, the novel is ending up being All About Me LOL, too. The play tonight (Revolution at Flea Theatre ) is nice, because I walk through the rain to get there and smoke cigarettes outside The Odeon after, and because its depiction is of genuine weirdos, not like Quirked Up, not like the girls my friend texts me about after the party, “have you met them? so spacey!” not like, becoming strange because of course there is some desire to conjure up some personality and if you’re pretty then it’s fine and even appealing to be off-putting. The play is like grocery store clerk alcoholic, gun in the purse grocery store clerk alcoholic, therapy speak coping mechanisms like count up then down then up and it’s employed in the play as the coping mechanism not as an ironic tactic. Drinking beers on a birthday in the back alley and the play is disaffected from glamor in a way that I’m realizing not many things are. Like even most depictions of poverty in a lot of media, at least media coming out of New York at least certainly media surrounding youth culture and a narrative surrounding a party, goes like; we have nothing but we’re slippery adjacent to everything as a result of our charm and good looks and happenstance. The play is like, leftover charcuterie from her husband’s weird mega church and splurging at the liquor store and old cocaine shoved into a bowling ball but there’s an innocence and almost childlike wonderment to the way they tackle the expired drug situation, and the play is not about drugs. There’s a genuine kind of earnest stiltedness to the conversation that lends itself to sincerity. Thursday, May 22 May is quivering right before me; I'm not letting it lapse like April did but there are still smokescreens, silkscreens, my fingers are sleeping right through it. The Club, last night. The Play then The Club. It was smokey and sweet. My lungs felt coated in something sour by the end. The smoking patio was wet with dew and I was kind of floating, not in a bad way. Not hungover, it's something way more visceral but still hazy. I could feel it all start to slip, and so I held onto myself quite tightly. My boyfriend's screen time is 102 hours a day across devices. My face is encased in sheaths of plastic that keep you young, but they're not the temu kind that's weird and freaky. The light I use is Science Backed. I'm thinking of getting into vintage workout wear. I'm thinking of getting into Vlogging. I'm thinking of getting into filling out paid surveys online for luxury perfume sellers that require you to swear your spending habits are High and you like perfume from MiuMiu and you Hate Balenciaga and what perfume means to me is; I think sometimes scents can bring up... nostalgia? I say. Do you own a Prada dress? they ask. We leave the party early - I'm sick and he buys me chicken caesar salad pizza. Aren't you glad we left early so we could dance a little at home, he says. In the living room, the windows are all a little frosted from the rain. There are lights in the neighbors windows across the courtyard but it's thursday night, the rain has stopped. You couldn't have expected everyone to just stay home, really. I notice the people in the windows if he is spinning me across the room. Exhibitionism. I catch myself in the peripheries. The windows. The back of my mind. And I never shut the blinds but that is just no Executive Function or Detail Orientation. I am not some sort of voyeur. Friday, May 23 10:45am, and they are playing some kind of staticy electric classical mashup of music from the Fedex truck outside. "Even as a grad student, I felt they were looking down on chaos," one young man at the Yemeni coffee shop is telling another. Buying: coffee and chicken quiche but none of that is for me. Buying: peanut butter perfect bar and celsius and my boyfriend's screen time is up to 316 hours since midnight since he's doing things indiscernible to me but which he clarifies are Not Fraudulent. I am trying not to write so much in the google doc diaries. It is like I have learned these diaries as a trick, and now I am addicted to it. Now, I can’t do anything else. I must release all thoughts, but to release one thought I must go through, again and again, everything else. And so I go through it all, again and again and again. The thought, and then everything else. We were going to talk more about Spirituality today, but the tripwire keeps happening - stuck on: Vanity and Careerism. I make subheadings to keep myself in check. VANITY. CAREERISM. CAREERISM: Here is where I am: I have the substack for now which is nice this is something that I suppose in some ways is a defining thing I have done but it does not feel like so much it does not feel like it culminates to anything just proof of existence, yes, but everyone has some sort of proof of existence and it is nice to write the story behind something. The story itself cannot just be the story of writing about yourself. And for a minute I was very very very sad and so that plotline became dependable, but that is no sort of thing to rely on. And this is why it cannot all just be the writing of the self. It hasn’t been. [redacted] felt like something different, investigation, beginning middle end, it was not just here I am, it was like a puzzle it was like being very precise with it and it was the biggest thing I have done so far and I sat with it for such a long time. And perhaps I am being dramatic because there are other projects I could start in the meantime but I can’t sit down and make myself think oh what would be an interesting and pithy thing to talk about for somewhere glossy, I cannot do it. I think about doing it and my stomach rises into my throat with how little I care. And so it has to be a story that bursts out of me. There was one, and I can tell there is almost something else too but it’s like David said yes, it’s difficult while you are in the waiting room. Since beginning writing this, my fever got higher, and we are hanging the Bacchus masks around the apartment plus yellow golden softlight and, now I feel more peaceful about it. I wasn’t having so much humility. Nevermind. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 27 From 6pm (show at 7pm) at Baby’s All Right — Baby’s Presents a benefit concert for the Immigrant Defense Project with Palehound, The Ophelias, and Grumpy. Dj set by WeTakeManhattan. - “All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting the IDP’s 20+ year mission of fighting for the rights of immigrants targeted for imprisonment and mass deportation via advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.” | GA (18+) $38.86, Ticket and Bonus Donation $49.69
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RaEX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7945ab16-c051-4062-8d64-a0fd574c3968_1106x420.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rmSM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8f3b744-fe77-4a40-b032-304d78f13ff1_428x548.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zRlU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5106c642-5b7c-4f8f-a799-c60b10039a5d_488x486.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QlxV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9c5eb95-81d2-4503-852b-4bdc513730dd_698x434.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0g1m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3da24e28-0d39-4802-abf2-53116dd83b00_308x392.png, Baby’s All Right, Palehound, The Ophelias, Grumpy, WeTakeManhattan
Monday, May 19 I will take the rest of my youth as it is. He turns on the air conditioner for me and leaves to drink Non Alcoholic Beers while I stay put and read the Diaries of Girls Online. I walk ten miles and I do not really believe his friends who say there are worms at the Russian Spa. This is how rumors spread, I tell him. You are Married To The Truth, I tell myself. In the morning, there is light through my greenhouse roof and to start; I am the only one awake. It feels like this; I had one of the best weeks ever last week, where everything came rushing back into being as it should be and I was certain it would stay like this forever. Then there was sudden chaos on the phone, chaos on the train, serenity at Spa88 and then I was calling my mom muttering sentiments I knew she would find vaguely offensive, stomping around the financial district saying bad words like a child intent on proving herself lovable even if insufferable. He said it wasn't that I was so uninteresting, more that my story was bizarre, not really a story at all, full of vitriol. Everyone was running along the Hudson River and I had two or three diet cokes with dinner and I was up not all night but close. It goes like this: in the morning there is energy and a package thief filling a suitcase up with my boxes of celsius and fiber powder and whitening strips and dental floss. I crouch above him on the stairway and I scream HEY. He screams back HEY and so I let him have it. I turn on my heels and I run up the stairs. My favorite things are leaving the house in the morning and not coming back till late night, cool mint zyns, blackberry dr. pepper, turkey cold cuts with truffle mustard eaten in a kind of self-punishing way. I lie on the roof in my boyfriend's Adidas track shorts and a black tank top that I stole from the gymnastics locker room in highschool. The thing about New York is there is immense competition to be skinny, beautiful, successful, rich all in circumstances that are entirely unconducive to all these things, my friend is telling me on the phone. Circumstances like the package thief and your metabolism doesn’t even get a boost from the sun and also there are hard drugs and alcohol. I don’t feel above all of that, but I do feel distant from it now and so I suppose, with some plausible humility, this adds up to kind of the same thing. I wish I was a gentle person. I feel lazy today, but this is not the same thing. Tuesday, May 20 Last night, we went to Lucky's for dinner and I had something with tequila and Saint Germaine straight up and he had more non-alcoholic beer. Then, they brought us mountains of shoestring onion rings and a big wedge salad and it was good for a while, until I started to feel sick. I went to the bathroom to play on my phone while the scent of grease dissipated. The drinks were crisp and they brought the shaker right to our table. Lucky's was like a steakhouse, but with a smaller interior than your average We went to Matthew's house after, to sit in his barren family room while he hacked up a lung. I rolled up my Zara blazer that I stole from Paul's Casablanca lost and found after someone stole my blazer first and also back when I was an alcoholic. I curled up under my blazer on Matthew's tiny couch while Matthew and my boyfriend talked in code and made rankings of all their friends. Matthew's apartment was pretty empty except for a whiteboard with a list of girls he likes and a Chinese new year banner and a huge pile of hats that said I'M IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. “Jesus, she is combative. you're right, she's so combative,” Matthew told my boyfriend, talking about me. "It's possible that Canne after dark was something that happened in the daytime," he said. "she'll get mad if I ask her why she won't play anagrams," he said. "The activation triggers a chain of events leading to increased dopamine release," he said. Sometimes, when I am with my boyfriend's friends I feel like I am in a video game, or maybe in an orphanage. You don't want to be someone who is contorting your face and yelling. It is morning now. I don't really know what happened there. Being at these parties more sober is strange, because there is nothing else but me and yet I still don't really understand. I am listening to sweet and gentle music, and I feel a total surrender. S - i do feel bad i was not so gentle and kind about this. i get myself trip wired and lose it. but it is always better to be gentle and kind and i understand new york can kill the soul and there is something beautiful in a peaceful house alone and that is why you left which is innocent and pure and it's not fair to be rageful to you for that. Wednesday, May 21 There were two cigarettes and two glasses of wine at Voile de Nuit. This becomes some sort of Diary of Consumption. I met Ellie at a tall house on a wooded street in the West Village where she works on things pertaining to design and then we spent the hours in the courtyard of Voile de Nuit, which I adore because it’s reminiscent of Summer and Reality. I behaved badly the last time I was here. My boyfriend comes by to drop off fries. We run into friends at Caffe Reggio and it's raining by the time we reach home. My boyfriend says: Spreading secrets is entropic Keeping your mouth shut is static Spreading misinformation is generative and godly I do think he is mostly kidding. It's Simone Weil who says about rage - “To be able to hurt others with impunity—for instance to pass our anger on to an inferior who is obliged to be silent—is to spare ourselves from an expenditure of energy, an expenditure which the other person will have to make.” And I wonder which character I am in this story and it's not always the good one. I was thinking about all of that in the novel. That and the self surveillance of it all. Unfortunately, my thought experiments are ruining my life and also, the novel is ending up being All About Me LOL, too. The play tonight (Revolution at Flea Theatre ) is nice, because I walk through the rain to get there and smoke cigarettes outside The Odeon after, and because its depiction is of genuine weirdos, not like Quirked Up, not like the girls my friend texts me about after the party, “have you met them? so spacey!” not like, becoming strange because of course there is some desire to conjure up some personality and if you’re pretty then it’s fine and even appealing to be off-putting. The play is like grocery store clerk alcoholic, gun in the purse grocery store clerk alcoholic, therapy speak coping mechanisms like count up then down then up and it’s employed in the play as the coping mechanism not as an ironic tactic. Drinking beers on a birthday in the back alley and the play is disaffected from glamor in a way that I’m realizing not many things are. Like even most depictions of poverty in a lot of media, at least media coming out of New York at least certainly media surrounding youth culture and a narrative surrounding a party, goes like; we have nothing but we’re slippery adjacent to everything as a result of our charm and good looks and happenstance. The play is like, leftover charcuterie from her husband’s weird mega church and splurging at the liquor store and old cocaine shoved into a bowling ball but there’s an innocence and almost childlike wonderment to the way they tackle the expired drug situation, and the play is not about drugs. There’s a genuine kind of earnest stiltedness to the conversation that lends itself to sincerity. Thursday, May 22 May is quivering right before me; I'm not letting it lapse like April did but there are still smokescreens, silkscreens, my fingers are sleeping right through it. The Club, last night. The Play then The Club. It was smokey and sweet. My lungs felt coated in something sour by the end. The smoking patio was wet with dew and I was kind of floating, not in a bad way. Not hungover, it's something way more visceral but still hazy. I could feel it all start to slip, and so I held onto myself quite tightly. My boyfriend's screen time is 102 hours a day across devices. My face is encased in sheaths of plastic that keep you young, but they're not the temu kind that's weird and freaky. The light I use is Science Backed. I'm thinking of getting into vintage workout wear. I'm thinking of getting into Vlogging. I'm thinking of getting into filling out paid surveys online for luxury perfume sellers that require you to swear your spending habits are High and you like perfume from MiuMiu and you Hate Balenciaga and what perfume means to me is; I think sometimes scents can bring up... nostalgia? I say. Do you own a Prada dress? they ask. We leave the party early - I'm sick and he buys me chicken caesar salad pizza. Aren't you glad we left early so we could dance a little at home, he says. In the living room, the windows are all a little frosted from the rain. There are lights in the neighbors windows across the courtyard but it's thursday night, the rain has stopped. You couldn't have expected everyone to just stay home, really. I notice the people in the windows if he is spinning me across the room. Exhibitionism. I catch myself in the peripheries. The windows. The back of my mind. And I never shut the blinds but that is just no Executive Function or Detail Orientation. I am not some sort of voyeur. Friday, May 23 10:45am, and they are playing some kind of staticy electric classical mashup of music from the Fedex truck outside. "Even as a grad student, I felt they were looking down on chaos," one young man at the Yemeni coffee shop is telling another. Buying: coffee and chicken quiche but none of that is for me. Buying: peanut butter perfect bar and celsius and my boyfriend's screen time is up to 316 hours since midnight since he's doing things indiscernible to me but which he clarifies are Not Fraudulent. I am trying not to write so much in the google doc diaries. It is like I have learned these diaries as a trick, and now I am addicted to it. Now, I can’t do anything else. I must release all thoughts, but to release one thought I must go through, again and again, everything else. And so I go through it all, again and again and again. The thought, and then everything else. We were going to talk more about Spirituality today, but the tripwire keeps happening - stuck on: Vanity and Careerism. I make subheadings to keep myself in check. VANITY. CAREERISM. CAREERISM: Here is where I am: I have the substack for now which is nice this is something that I suppose in some ways is a defining thing I have done but it does not feel like so much it does not feel like it culminates to anything just proof of existence, yes, but everyone has some sort of proof of existence and it is nice to write the story behind something. The story itself cannot just be the story of writing about yourself. And for a minute I was very very very sad and so that plotline became dependable, but that is no sort of thing to rely on. And this is why it cannot all just be the writing of the self. It hasn’t been. [redacted] felt like something different, investigation, beginning middle end, it was not just here I am, it was like a puzzle it was like being very precise with it and it was the biggest thing I have done so far and I sat with it for such a long time. And perhaps I am being dramatic because there are other projects I could start in the meantime but I can’t sit down and make myself think oh what would be an interesting and pithy thing to talk about for somewhere glossy, I cannot do it. I think about doing it and my stomach rises into my throat with how little I care. And so it has to be a story that bursts out of me. There was one, and I can tell there is almost something else too but it’s like David said yes, it’s difficult while you are in the waiting room. Since beginning writing this, my fever got higher, and we are hanging the Bacchus masks around the apartment plus yellow golden softlight and, now I feel more peaceful about it. I wasn’t having so much humility. Nevermind. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 27 From 6pm (show at 7pm) at Baby’s All Right — Baby’s Presents a benefit concert for the Immigrant Defense Project with Palehound, The Ophelias, and Grumpy. Dj set by WeTakeManhattan. - “All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting the IDP’s 20+ year mission of fighting for the rights of immigrants targeted for imprisonment and mass deportation via advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.” | GA (18+) $38.86, Ticket and Bonus Donation $49.69
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rmSM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8f3b744-fe77-4a40-b032-304d78f13ff1_428x548.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zRlU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5106c642-5b7c-4f8f-a799-c60b10039a5d_488x486.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QlxV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9c5eb95-81d2-4503-852b-4bdc513730dd_698x434.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0g1m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3da24e28-0d39-4802-abf2-53116dd83b00_308x392.png, Baby’s All Right, Palehound, The Ophelias, Grumpy, WeTakeManhattan
Tuesday, May 20 Last night, we went to Lucky's for dinner and I had something with tequila and Saint Germaine straight up and he had more non-alcoholic beer. Then, they brought us mountains of shoestring onion rings and a big wedge salad and it was good for a while, until I started to feel sick. I went to the bathroom to play on my phone while the scent of grease dissipated. The drinks were crisp and they brought the shaker right to our table. Lucky's was like a steakhouse, but with a smaller interior than your average We went to Matthew's house after, to sit in his barren family room while he hacked up a lung. I rolled up my Zara blazer that I stole from Paul's Casablanca lost and found after someone stole my blazer first and also back when I was an alcoholic. I curled up under my blazer on Matthew's tiny couch while Matthew and my boyfriend talked in code and made rankings of all their friends. Matthew's apartment was pretty empty except for a whiteboard with a list of girls he likes and a Chinese new year banner and a huge pile of hats that said I'M IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. “Jesus, she is combative. you're right, she's so combative,” Matthew told my boyfriend, talking about me. "It's possible that Canne after dark was something that happened in the daytime," he said. "she'll get mad if I ask her why she won't play anagrams," he said. "The activation triggers a chain of events leading to increased dopamine release," he said. Sometimes, when I am with my boyfriend's friends I feel like I am in a video game, or maybe in an orphanage. You don't want to be someone who is contorting your face and yelling. It is morning now. I don't really know what happened there. Being at these parties more sober is strange, because there is nothing else but me and yet I still don't really understand. I am listening to sweet and gentle music, and I feel a total surrender. S - i do feel bad i was not so gentle and kind about this. i get myself trip wired and lose it. but it is always better to be gentle and kind and i understand new york can kill the soul and there is something beautiful in a peaceful house alone and that is why you left which is innocent and pure and it's not fair to be rageful to you for that. Wednesday, May 21 There were two cigarettes and two glasses of wine at Voile de Nuit. This becomes some sort of Diary of Consumption. I met Ellie at a tall house on a wooded street in the West Village where she works on things pertaining to design and then we spent the hours in the courtyard of Voile de Nuit, which I adore because it’s reminiscent of Summer and Reality. I behaved badly the last time I was here. My boyfriend comes by to drop off fries. We run into friends at Caffe Reggio and it's raining by the time we reach home. My boyfriend says: Spreading secrets is entropic Keeping your mouth shut is static Spreading misinformation is generative and godly I do think he is mostly kidding. It's Simone Weil who says about rage - “To be able to hurt others with impunity—for instance to pass our anger on to an inferior who is obliged to be silent—is to spare ourselves from an expenditure of energy, an expenditure which the other person will have to make.” And I wonder which character I am in this story and it's not always the good one. I was thinking about all of that in the novel. That and the self surveillance of it all. Unfortunately, my thought experiments are ruining my life and also, the novel is ending up being All About Me LOL, too. The play tonight (Revolution at Flea Theatre ) is nice, because I walk through the rain to get there and smoke cigarettes outside The Odeon after, and because its depiction is of genuine weirdos, not like Quirked Up, not like the girls my friend texts me about after the party, “have you met them? so spacey!” not like, becoming strange because of course there is some desire to conjure up some personality and if you’re pretty then it’s fine and even appealing to be off-putting. The play is like grocery store clerk alcoholic, gun in the purse grocery store clerk alcoholic, therapy speak coping mechanisms like count up then down then up and it’s employed in the play as the coping mechanism not as an ironic tactic. Drinking beers on a birthday in the back alley and the play is disaffected from glamor in a way that I’m realizing not many things are. Like even most depictions of poverty in a lot of media, at least media coming out of New York at least certainly media surrounding youth culture and a narrative surrounding a party, goes like; we have nothing but we’re slippery adjacent to everything as a result of our charm and good looks and happenstance. The play is like, leftover charcuterie from her husband’s weird mega church and splurging at the liquor store and old cocaine shoved into a bowling ball but there’s an innocence and almost childlike wonderment to the way they tackle the expired drug situation, and the play is not about drugs. There’s a genuine kind of earnest stiltedness to the conversation that lends itself to sincerity. Thursday, May 22 May is quivering right before me; I'm not letting it lapse like April did but there are still smokescreens, silkscreens, my fingers are sleeping right through it. The Club, last night. The Play then The Club. It was smokey and sweet. My lungs felt coated in something sour by the end. The smoking patio was wet with dew and I was kind of floating, not in a bad way. Not hungover, it's something way more visceral but still hazy. I could feel it all start to slip, and so I held onto myself quite tightly. My boyfriend's screen time is 102 hours a day across devices. My face is encased in sheaths of plastic that keep you young, but they're not the temu kind that's weird and freaky. The light I use is Science Backed. I'm thinking of getting into vintage workout wear. I'm thinking of getting into Vlogging. I'm thinking of getting into filling out paid surveys online for luxury perfume sellers that require you to swear your spending habits are High and you like perfume from MiuMiu and you Hate Balenciaga and what perfume means to me is; I think sometimes scents can bring up... nostalgia? I say. Do you own a Prada dress? they ask. We leave the party early - I'm sick and he buys me chicken caesar salad pizza. Aren't you glad we left early so we could dance a little at home, he says. In the living room, the windows are all a little frosted from the rain. There are lights in the neighbors windows across the courtyard but it's thursday night, the rain has stopped. You couldn't have expected everyone to just stay home, really. I notice the people in the windows if he is spinning me across the room. Exhibitionism. I catch myself in the peripheries. The windows. The back of my mind. And I never shut the blinds but that is just no Executive Function or Detail Orientation. I am not some sort of voyeur. Friday, May 23 10:45am, and they are playing some kind of staticy electric classical mashup of music from the Fedex truck outside. "Even as a grad student, I felt they were looking down on chaos," one young man at the Yemeni coffee shop is telling another. Buying: coffee and chicken quiche but none of that is for me. Buying: peanut butter perfect bar and celsius and my boyfriend's screen time is up to 316 hours since midnight since he's doing things indiscernible to me but which he clarifies are Not Fraudulent. I am trying not to write so much in the google doc diaries. It is like I have learned these diaries as a trick, and now I am addicted to it. Now, I can’t do anything else. I must release all thoughts, but to release one thought I must go through, again and again, everything else. And so I go through it all, again and again and again. The thought, and then everything else. We were going to talk more about Spirituality today, but the tripwire keeps happening - stuck on: Vanity and Careerism. I make subheadings to keep myself in check. VANITY. CAREERISM. CAREERISM: Here is where I am: I have the substack for now which is nice this is something that I suppose in some ways is a defining thing I have done but it does not feel like so much it does not feel like it culminates to anything just proof of existence, yes, but everyone has some sort of proof of existence and it is nice to write the story behind something. The story itself cannot just be the story of writing about yourself. And for a minute I was very very very sad and so that plotline became dependable, but that is no sort of thing to rely on. And this is why it cannot all just be the writing of the self. It hasn’t been. [redacted] felt like something different, investigation, beginning middle end, it was not just here I am, it was like a puzzle it was like being very precise with it and it was the biggest thing I have done so far and I sat with it for such a long time. And perhaps I am being dramatic because there are other projects I could start in the meantime but I can’t sit down and make myself think oh what would be an interesting and pithy thing to talk about for somewhere glossy, I cannot do it. I think about doing it and my stomach rises into my throat with how little I care. And so it has to be a story that bursts out of me. There was one, and I can tell there is almost something else too but it’s like David said yes, it’s difficult while you are in the waiting room. Since beginning writing this, my fever got higher, and we are hanging the Bacchus masks around the apartment plus yellow golden softlight and, now I feel more peaceful about it. I wasn’t having so much humility. Nevermind. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 27 From 6pm (show at 7pm) at Baby’s All Right — Baby’s Presents a benefit concert for the Immigrant Defense Project with Palehound, The Ophelias, and Grumpy. Dj set by WeTakeManhattan. - “All proceeds from the show will go towards supporting the IDP’s 20+ year mission of fighting for the rights of immigrants targeted for imprisonment and mass deportation via advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.” | GA (18+) $38.86, Ticket and Bonus Donation $49.69
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zRlU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5106c642-5b7c-4f8f-a799-c60b10039a5d_488x486.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QlxV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9c5eb95-81d2-4503-852b-4bdc513730dd_698x434.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0g1m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3da24e28-0d39-4802-abf2-53116dd83b00_308x392.png, Baby’s All Right, Palehound, The Ophelias, Grumpy, WeTakeManhattan
A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again
June 09, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, May 31 I wake up at six am to Miami Beach hazy dawn, honey bear full of gummy bears, skinny pop popcorn and torres truffle potato chips and I believe this mini bar isn't motion-censored but if it is, well, is already to late because I am crouched over on the floor playing pharmacy with the sorting of cosmopolitan, candies, pretzels, aperol spritz. The sun is hot and already almost too bright outside. There's a kind of resignation to the physical exhaustion of today. I could pump myself full of junk food and sink into the hotel carpet disassociated, spinning, things have been oscillating in such extremes and I guess there is some solid ground now, but I am still so breathless and uncertain when I try to consider this as real. "What I like about a hotel is the idea that you can just completely change vibes," my boyfriend was saying. "Anonymity. Abandon your two week life.” I came to consciousness in my two week life sobbing in the morning. I came to consciousness with tears pouring down my face in the bluest water you have ever seen. There was cognizance while gasping for air at the coconut stand, warm liquor, a scene at The Standard. I plugged the story into chat gpt like someone evil or something all made up. Is the narrator likable, I asked. Is this genius, I begged. A whirling tale about wearing the wrong linens, said the robot. the narrator is kind of redeemable, unlike, clearly [redacted] I have lost all my vindication. I have promised not to beg. I reread the letter and they told Rose at breakfast at The Social Club that she is getting sick because of Central AC. You know you are in Miami right, they ask us. The servers beam big wide beams and only I beam back. I have been working on fiction a lot, but then I find it difficult to swing back here. I find myself very cold and with a lingering sense of maybe fatalism more than nihilism but regardless there is such removal in my made up language no matter how much I try to bring it down to earth. I am not removed at all, here. I learned quickly. I deleted my transcription of the other days so I could better tell you about the parts that Never Happened. I remember almost nothing but it's like I don't really drink anymore, so this was something else. My Miami Beach: The Standard, The Beachcomber, The Betsey, The Social Club. The coconut stand and the diet coke mini bar and the pleading about what happens now - a sunburn, a whole entire life, there was the mystic who was telling us about Gnosticism that summer. There was the quivering lady at the quaker church who was telling us about angels and destiny and if we became unaligned, then there would be nothing else. I did write a story of fiction and so you're getting the scraps, here. I came to consciousness already half in a dream. My consciousness has never faltered, before. We began in Connecticut. Things were bright and nice that weekend. All the green of Connecticut was very lush and it caught me by surprise. I did not feel much to prove nor a need to get all on the defensive. I wrote stories outside of myself, and I was pleased to find an escape. There was a castle over the river ferry in lush and luminous New England spring and it reminded me of somewhere further South and of a life that stretched out all human and endless. I didn't mean to leave again. I didn't mean to cycle on and on and on. We went further South. Bahamas then Miami. It wasn't so much a thing of irresponsibility or of being in a cult as it was, having lots of friends and being given a gift. Drops of water in a wave don't move with the wave, they simply jostle around in place with the wind. He read this aloud to me from my book like this was news and I was stupid. I'm not stupid, I said. His face became crestfallen like he was surprised to find me harsh. I'm sorry for being careless with the only thing in the world I know to be true, I said. My mind was moving too fast but it might have just been the sterile setting and the dehydration. I left New York and I landed in a place where I should never be. It was a bit of impulsivity and a bit of an exercise in absurdity and camp perhaps, though none of it is ever really my decision with these things and these trips. There Are Casinos Everywhere For Those With Eyes To See. There are golf cart highways and fake black marble lounge tables and a DJ saying Let's Get It Started with no irony. There is plenty of sun, too but the rejuvenative qualities of light become quite negated when filtered off of all this pale concrete. Ancestral memory or something of the sort, but I was really craving foggy pine forests by the gray ocean. What was it they were saying in El Salvador? The teachings on light and life from the Bitcoin Doctor in El Salvador were proven to be true because Las Vegas was so palpably optimized to be terrible. They were saying a lot of things in El Salvador, but I did feel like there is something almost nefarious in the Casino-Desert air, here. We took the plane to Miami after that. I'm obscuring the timelines, a bit, again. I rediscovered Privacy and Fiction at right about the same time. I rediscovered golf course concrete roads and mind numbing sun and privacy and fiction and now I'd like to write what happens next but it all begins to feel a bit stilted. The Beachcomber was kind of party party party and bottomless brunch in the lobby and windows that opened onto all that green jungle Miami swim week bottle service ceviche room service drifting around the paths outdoors taking short sharp breaths. The Betsey was more colonial, like a maze, they considered themselves to be bookish and we moved there for the purpose of manufacturing stability and more cheer. Iris came over in the afternoon. I picked her up in the lobby. I dove for my boyfriend's lost coral in the pool downstairs. The skin off my chest burned easily. I lay on the deck of the pool on the roof with a virgin bloody mary for electrolytes, and a spicy watermelon margarita for a self destructive haze. How are you doing, Iris asked. What are your favorite foods, Iris asked. Octopus, apples, apple pie lamb chops with mint jelly, creamed spinach, a certain type of barbeque salmon, a whole roast chicken. It was funny to say Best Day Of My Life because I cried a million billion tears and now we’re swimming in the moonlight off Miami Beach. I like the club scene pulsing behind all the crescent moon glow and waves. It’s a shame about that night and that day. The resurrection has been unsteady but it’s like Kygo and a palm grove and a cityscape behind me, and all blue dark ocean and saturns return to the front. There was a moment there where I lost every piece of everything good. Gulps of water and air. I pull it all back. Sunday, June 1 The flight back from Miami is gray and swift. I spent the evening on the rooftop at The Betsy yesterday. Iris asked me for the list of my favorite foods. Octopus, apples, apple pie, lamb chops with mint jelly, creamed spinach, a certain type of barbeque salmon, a whole roast chicken. The concrete by the pool bar was hot and steamy and we didn’t bring identification and we would not be served. David bought us bloody marys and we drank them behind the tarp where the bartenders couldn’t see. I swam laps up and down and up and down the length of this pool that was mostly for drinking. I found Chanel sunglasses while standing barefoot in the bathroom and I returned them to the French girl. It’s like I’ve been immune to the permanence of ramifications of the things that are really bad, these days. I keep forgiving and I keep on being forgiven. They gave me free Pina Colada samples in little plastic cups. Ok Intense Girl, he was saying, because every time I would pop my head out of the water to say the things I thought, it would be with beady eyes and a determined stare. I like ice cream particularly matcha ice cream and I like lamb, Iris told me. Iris taught me about Gnosticism, and I believe this is somewhat aligned with the situation with me and him, though he thinks it's kind of sacrilegious when I equate my nightmares with mysticism, or when I attribute the interest that people who are kind of half of this world and half of another take in me to anything other than high agreeability and openness. Iris and I walked along Ocean Drive to Kalamata way down South Beach, and then we walked back along the water. A writing retreat, a rave, apocalyptic undertones. You can’t choose solitude and practicality at the edge of an extinction event, is one of many roots of it. I walked barefoot along the boardwalk. I met him for a second dinner. The ribeye was bloody and it came with a gross side of pasta alfredo. I woke up screaming. I woke up all smiles. I took photos of our hands on the plane Just In Case. I showed him a song. The Message. Is this a good song, or is this a secret message, he asked. It’s just a good song, I said. The frat guys in front of us on the plane are reading A Court of Thorns and Roses smut novels and buying tickets to Jake Shane's comedy tour. The guy on my boyfriend's phone intercom is stealing all my LA Apparel underwear from our lobby. I'm eating the Worst Sandwich Ever and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I am taking pictures of our reflections in the clouded plane window and I am thinking about how impossible it feels right now, flying like this, to imagine that so often, we become something else. Monday, June 2 I read some GirlInsides on the airtrain back from JFK who I think is just like me if I were more honest and precise about it, or maybe whom my stories would echo more precisely if I did not have this sick need to put my face all over everything. Anyways, GirlInsides was talking about how summer would bring things like long long long hair and farmers market plums eaten over the sink in underwear and writing and reading all over the place, and her ideas made me feel like I was melting and going to cry. Then I wrote what I wanted summer to bring, all - getting off the subway because it's too hot and walking in sandals sticking to my feet until i find somewhere that glows right and then its morning and we're sitting first then lying down on the terrace in sun that becomes unbearable drinking sparkling water out of glass bottles dripping it over my chest opening the door for the blast of air conditioning and to let the friends that come by in and out people floating by in and out and come and go and then at dusk i put on something green and i drink cold cider cold diet coke or spicy watermelon margarita outside at kikis in swan room away from the heat at vol de nuit with fries and garlic sauce on the roof, on my roof, in the backyards and basements and i walk out and walk everywhere when it is time to leave i leave and sometimes it is time to leave and so then I take the train and there’s the coast and then I’m putting laundry on the line in a black bikini and drinking diet coke with lemon in my black bikini and driving to the ocean down the driveway at night headlights breaking through june gloom fog and jumping off the dock where the sharks don't eat us but any summer now they could, or then it's morning and i'm sober writing in my google docs journal walking outside, writing in my greenhouse apartment in new york, writing along the overgrown pond and field and it always smells thicker there outside of boston, writing by foggy shores and rocky shores and sometimes the air becomes thick too and my dad plays dougie mclain and we make pesto pasta mozzarella chicken sausage in yellow china bowls on yellow placemats the meal gets kind of hazy through the sheen of blue hour rain coming through the window and then i'm pacing and writing down ocean drive in Miami because I can't decide where i want to be anymore and i like flashing lights i like coming back to the very nice very cold hotel that we're staying in because he's Sorry but I don't want any more apologies i want this summer to be Being very very very in love because i really have been anticipating extinction events or at least things become robotic sterile i used to think id be pretty good at both being in love like this and at not being robotic and sterile and i have become slightly above average at both these things in practice i guess though, it's nice to have the most human thing in the world, it's nice for me all the time, even then, even when it isn't for him i think it's nicer for me then it would be to not have this all the time and I don't know why i keep sabotaging the only thing i know to be true and human and so i am hoping for a summer of all that, hands pressed against the plane window greenhouse window train window glass mirror glassy water plunging my face underwater no more eb and flow. Anyways, none of that made any sense and then shock of all shocks it did eb and flow again last night. Everyone was so nice to me about my story and I wore the Nasseau, Bahamas shirt he bought for me all Life Is Better In FlipFlops and he wanted me to wear the sunglasses too, to exacerbate the bit but I thought that would be a little bit too far. He said “you know why I’m mad at you” when we got home, and I didn’t know, I had no idea actually, and so then I got sad, but the story was fiction. This is fiction too. I’m not being facetious when I say that. This isn’t even autofiction. This is literally all made up. “they seem lost and completely clueless,” he is saying now, downstairs, on the phone, he is talking about some forty year old woman and an awful charleton and some guy who does RedPill posting online and some guy he personally has a strong dislike for who has a lot of medical malpractice suits against him. Maybe he’s a genius, he is saying. I don’t know, he is saying. These people are so strange, he is saying. Tuesday, June 3 His friend rubs my head like i'm a dog or something when i walk into his stupid fake exclusive evil party that i'm not invited to and then my heart swells with rage. I'm so mad, I was telling everyone. I'm so sorry I didn't mean to say that I guess I had one too many, I was saying. I didn't have one too many, I had just right, I was telling him. I like The Sweet East, he is telling me. I like Yeats and social norms. Yes and, I say; I hope that you get everything you have ever wanted. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, June 9 A quiet night in the realm of events. Consider; dinner at The Marlton’s new restaurant Chez Nous followed by a screening of Buffalo 66 at Metrograph (10pm). I have historically liked The Marlton because it is vaguely past its prime and also a five minute walk from my apartment, and a place where no one ever tells you that you’ve stayed too long. The food at the old restaurant was terrible (so I’ve heard) (I only went for tea), but the recently refurbished Chez Nous is chic and fun and has maintained all of the hotel's original charm. The shrimp salad is very good, as is the martini. I’ll report back after my second visit (possibly tonight). Otherwise - 10pm on a Monday evening is the perfect time to see a film bar none, besides, possibly 1pm on a Friday.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZjW-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F67ecce3d-02cd-4260-91aa-07adc92be735_1052x484.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S7lB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14d7d73e-4a99-4bc0-ad57-1dae414e4c21_1018x416.png, GirlInsides, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!grTj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d8950da-492c-4aea-8f52-bfae799e190d_968x440.png, Chez Nous, https://metrograph.com/film/?vista_film_id=9999002294, recently refurbished Chez Nous, 1pm on a Friday
Monday, June 2 I read some GirlInsides on the airtrain back from JFK who I think is just like me if I were more honest and precise about it, or maybe whom my stories would echo more precisely if I did not have this sick need to put my face all over everything. Anyways, GirlInsides was talking about how summer would bring things like long long long hair and farmers market plums eaten over the sink in underwear and writing and reading all over the place, and her ideas made me feel like I was melting and going to cry. Then I wrote what I wanted summer to bring, all - getting off the subway because it's too hot and walking in sandals sticking to my feet until i find somewhere that glows right and then its morning and we're sitting first then lying down on the terrace in sun that becomes unbearable drinking sparkling water out of glass bottles dripping it over my chest opening the door for the blast of air conditioning and to let the friends that come by in and out people floating by in and out and come and go and then at dusk i put on something green and i drink cold cider cold diet coke or spicy watermelon margarita outside at kikis in swan room away from the heat at vol de nuit with fries and garlic sauce on the roof, on my roof, in the backyards and basements and i walk out and walk everywhere when it is time to leave i leave and sometimes it is time to leave and so then I take the train and there’s the coast and then I’m putting laundry on the line in a black bikini and drinking diet coke with lemon in my black bikini and driving to the ocean down the driveway at night headlights breaking through june gloom fog and jumping off the dock where the sharks don't eat us but any summer now they could, or then it's morning and i'm sober writing in my google docs journal walking outside, writing in my greenhouse apartment in new york, writing along the overgrown pond and field and it always smells thicker there outside of boston, writing by foggy shores and rocky shores and sometimes the air becomes thick too and my dad plays dougie mclain and we make pesto pasta mozzarella chicken sausage in yellow china bowls on yellow placemats the meal gets kind of hazy through the sheen of blue hour rain coming through the window and then i'm pacing and writing down ocean drive in Miami because I can't decide where i want to be anymore and i like flashing lights i like coming back to the very nice very cold hotel that we're staying in because he's Sorry but I don't want any more apologies i want this summer to be Being very very very in love because i really have been anticipating extinction events or at least things become robotic sterile i used to think id be pretty good at both being in love like this and at not being robotic and sterile and i have become slightly above average at both these things in practice i guess though, it's nice to have the most human thing in the world, it's nice for me all the time, even then, even when it isn't for him i think it's nicer for me then it would be to not have this all the time and I don't know why i keep sabotaging the only thing i know to be true and human and so i am hoping for a summer of all that, hands pressed against the plane window greenhouse window train window glass mirror glassy water plunging my face underwater no more eb and flow. Anyways, none of that made any sense and then shock of all shocks it did eb and flow again last night. Everyone was so nice to me about my story and I wore the Nasseau, Bahamas shirt he bought for me all Life Is Better In FlipFlops and he wanted me to wear the sunglasses too, to exacerbate the bit but I thought that would be a little bit too far. He said “you know why I’m mad at you” when we got home, and I didn’t know, I had no idea actually, and so then I got sad, but the story was fiction. This is fiction too. I’m not being facetious when I say that. This isn’t even autofiction. This is literally all made up. “they seem lost and completely clueless,” he is saying now, downstairs, on the phone, he is talking about some forty year old woman and an awful charleton and some guy who does RedPill posting online and some guy he personally has a strong dislike for who has a lot of medical malpractice suits against him. Maybe he’s a genius, he is saying. I don’t know, he is saying. These people are so strange, he is saying. Tuesday, June 3 His friend rubs my head like i'm a dog or something when i walk into his stupid fake exclusive evil party that i'm not invited to and then my heart swells with rage. I'm so mad, I was telling everyone. I'm so sorry I didn't mean to say that I guess I had one too many, I was saying. I didn't have one too many, I had just right, I was telling him. I like The Sweet East, he is telling me. I like Yeats and social norms. Yes and, I say; I hope that you get everything you have ever wanted. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, June 9 A quiet night in the realm of events. Consider; dinner at The Marlton’s new restaurant Chez Nous followed by a screening of Buffalo 66 at Metrograph (10pm). I have historically liked The Marlton because it is vaguely past its prime and also a five minute walk from my apartment, and a place where no one ever tells you that you’ve stayed too long. The food at the old restaurant was terrible (so I’ve heard) (I only went for tea), but the recently refurbished Chez Nous is chic and fun and has maintained all of the hotel's original charm. The shrimp salad is very good, as is the martini. I’ll report back after my second visit (possibly tonight). Otherwise - 10pm on a Monday evening is the perfect time to see a film bar none, besides, possibly 1pm on a Friday.
Inline links: GirlInsides, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!grTj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d8950da-492c-4aea-8f52-bfae799e190d_968x440.png, Chez Nous, https://metrograph.com/film/?vista_film_id=9999002294, recently refurbished Chez Nous, 1pm on a Friday
Bad Luck Spot
July 06, 2025 · Original source
Sunday, July 6 Summer storm of the nicest kind outside, and I think I’ll leave the lights off. I don't have so much to say about the time back in New York. I came back to the ocean because, of course, this is the sort of place where summer storms are nicer. And I have spent a while, so long really, quivering in this assurance that it would be ok; cling onto this one thing so tightly and then it will be ok, for the sake of this, to lose everything else. Well, there was a two-year-life and now there is everything else. It is not so much that I value peace. I value many, though not all, things before peace. It is not so much that I am gracious or really even care to be. I am being opaque. I was a guest there, for a lot of it. My old life, I mean. And it is not so much that I was too gentle for things like wild dogs and self surveillance. It is just, there were things that were mine first too. Summer storms and lace curtains on the edge of the bed. I did not always view things as possessed in this way though, I realize, now - it's been a few months, at least, of starting to think in terms of what belongs to me. "It is funny when you two talk about raising children on gray rocky shores, because you sure have no problem creating rocky shores," Rose told me in Miami. We'd been up all night,. Poured the liquor from the mini fridge down the drain and stood barefoot in the hotel hallway with a coconut juice, short quick breath. A baseball team had marched down the corridor at sunrise, and it was strange, even then, to watch myself become so shameless. My father video called me from New York, after. His hands made a downhill slope, steep then level, then steep and dropping and; “at a certain point you will not be able to stay,” he had told me. “At a certain point he will deem you problem no matter how determined you are to remain some sort of martyr.” At the end of the world there is a warplane over the graduation and a psychic in Rhode Island and he is screaming about cocks and his mother at a wedding in Michigan and he is screaming because I am opening my own doors at the hotel in South Beach and he is screaming at me in the apartment, later, it did all blur together. He was taking the art. He was taking his ShitCoin passkeys. He was taking his copy of Generative Energy and I was taking cigarettes, a sweater. I was trying not to be so voyeuristic about it. He was trying to use fewer slurs on the phone. I was doing front flips on the bed at the Holiday Inn and yelling: I can’t wait for our dry wedding, dry wedding, dry wedding. And he was saying that he drinks with the intention to forget and so it wouldn't come to all of that. Bad habits, strip mall parking lot and Rose was saying my denial was as deep as his was though, there had always been this thing of performance art. I want to party beautifully until we die, he used to tell me. I want to live like Match Point (2005), After Hours (1985), Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Later, we were walking up spring green hills and he was saying it would be easier, all of it, getting better, getting kinder, getting sober, getting bored, getting pregnant, if I stayed for a while. He wore gym shorts to the airport and returned in a rage. Later, on the floor, tuck my knees close to my chest by the open window and say I love you but my life is so much better when you are not in it and then he'd said how could you. Lie on the floor and he would say I orbit you. Summer storm and I'm texting him like I'm sorry. Because there were many letters and they kept on getting worse. Summer storm in early July and I was texting him even now like, I orbited you too. Iris came over in the afternoon in Miami. I picked her up in the lobby. I dove for his lost coral in the pool downstairs. The skin on my chest burned easily. I lay on the deck of the pool on the roof with a bloody mary that he bought me and that South Beach vibe, sunglasses, beady eyes. Ok intense girl, he said. How are you doing, Iris said. I didn't like the way he was holding you at dinner after everything he did, Iris said. In Rhode Island, last summer, we'd still been talking about things like soulmates last summer and we'd been driving in the rain. There had been a quaker church house, red Talbot sweater, a copper pot that we'd hang in New York but not till later and a little old lady. “You were a soldier wounded in the war in a past life,” the little old lady had told him. She had grabbed my shoulders, all shivering. “And it is a beautiful journey for you and him,” she had told me. “If you are ever pulled apart it will be a difficult and dark journey, but it is a beautiful journey for you and him.” “And so you cannot leave him,” Iris said in Miami. We liked hotels because of anonymity and aesthetic cohesion. He liked me because of blue eyes and devotion. He liked Miami because everyone was packing heat and I liked symbolism, numerology, gnosticism. “I like when things are fun,” I wrote him. “I like when things are fun and sweet.” And I showed up late to some basement apartment back in New York. The funny thing is, I had begged him not to go to that final party. I had begged him not to beg me to come. “My wife should think it's hot if I fight someone at a party,” he said later. “I want to get sober and treat you with the affection you deserve,” he had said, first, a few weeks before all of that. Once, we lived in a glass apartment in the sky. Central air conditioning but the greenhouse roof still made things boil and we'd call it the Boat House like some sort of joke, because floors slanted and careened and because of course, it was the only house. But so quickly, I am taken in as if I’m some sort of orphan. So quickly there are other houses. "He called and sounds like a horror movie, so you should get the fuck out of the apartment," Rose said in the aftermath. And it was Isabel who screamed first and so I did snap then. He is not a horror movie, just a shark or an orca whale or mostly a boy who is not here. Get out if you want to act scared. And so we did take some things and get out. And I did drive down the coastline because I still just could not stay put. It had always been a thing of kind of here, there, everywhere with us. High spring humid heat and there'd been no crocodiles in the river, no liquor at the hacker house, just warm beer and tall trees and broken glass and, “I'm looking forward to being very sweet to each other.” he had said. In the end, it wasn't me who lost my mind. So you were speaking as you two in one when you said you had the real sort of breakdown, the other party goers said, at that last party. I nodded. The party goers patted my shoulders. The party goers wanted no part. The texts were warm and made me ill. They took him out. They took me home. Blue paisley sheets at the home where I grew up and I remind him, for the first time, of the parts of it that were first all mine. Pull the blinds shut tight. Thunder and acid rain. He never bought into ideas of living forever in quite the way his friends did and, “your ideas of eternity become quite juvenile,” he says. Staring at cinched shut cream white shades and, “I’m looking at the ocean right now,” I say. “Don't you want to look at that ocean again?” The rot hits all at once. It smells like sickness and cruelty I did not know could be true. Lying on the bathroom floor - not my bathroom, I have been taken in like I am some sort of orphan, though I feel strangely less orphaned than ever before. I said I will not leave the party with him and so he said he will not ever come home again. There was discretion and bringing in reinforcement and he’d call first, before anyone else, stilted voice, some sort of laugh, he would like to be the one to break the latest news. He would like to be the one to make me guess. “Everyone heard you say that when she was your age you were nine,” he tells me on the phone, later. “That is because when she was my age, I was nine," I tell him on the phone, too. I talk a lot about decadence and gluttony and our no-beliefs-but-pleasure dumb lives but; for me it has not always been rotten. For me it was the opposite or; I could always see all the rot just drifting around in piles of money and provocation and drugs and alcohol and I do think there were the years of just floating, I've been floating alongside all of this rot and shock of all shocks it got sick. For me it has not always been rotten, though. It is very important that I make that clear. I did feel I could float around it. I have always been arrogant in a way. I did sit on the floor by an open window and I did lie in the rain in the night on the terrace. I remember laughing very quietly on the terrace. I remember trying to laugh as quietly as we could. At the end of the world I am working on ontology. Because you always did like to ontologize things, he is laughing on the phone. Because I think six hours in the future and you think in terms of forever, he is saying on the phone. The end of the world is something like an extinction event, abandon your whole entire life, chinook fighter plane carrier streaking over the graduation and, after the quaker church burned down I decided to get out of town. There were other things too. I threw up lobster and vodka after dinner. The dog bit the neighbor. He called because I asked him to and also to say; he missed the dog, and my family, and a little bit me. Psychosis felt like dancing, he tells me on the phone. And you felt like tells me what to do and she feels like take it to the internet, he never had a problem, kicked out of the bar, and then it’s have another baby while there's still precious time. Once, it all felt like lie on a Japanese floor mattress, white arched doorway and we wanted to remember it here and, “I wish I could start it all over before you,” he said. You wake up in the middle of the night in a hotel in the midwest to the sense that you are on the seven hundredth floor and there is no air left. You wake up. But you were already awake then, weren't you? You go to the bathroom, a normal bathroom, normal for a hotel like this. Small, compact, gray, windowless. You close the door, press your back hard against its now steady frame. You imagine that if you opened it again, you would be met with another bathroom just like this. You imagine a million identical bathrooms extending beyond every wall. In the car the next day, you tell him that it’s opposite day. On opposite day, you ask him if he loves you over and over again. You revel in hearing him say no. The charade is comforting. He’s driving recklessly. You drive for hours. The land is flat, his hand is on your thigh, he’s saying things he doesn’t mean and then he’s smirking because you're both in on the joke. He tells you to take her feet off the dash. In case there’s a wreck, he says. You tell him that opposite day is over. “Do you love me?” you ask. “Yes,” he says. “Is it opposite day,” you ask? “No,” he says. “But if it was you’d never know because no means yes and yes means no and…” He finishes explaining the word play. He explains it well. You get it. “Do you get it,” he asks. “Yes,” you say. You don't like these new rules. You are driving too fast, through a field of sunflowers. You think about how you could ask if the sky is blue and if he said yes then she could know that today was a day for telling the truth. You think about what you left behind. “I did not mean to leave those drawings behind at the apartment,” I am saying. The cartoons that he made me and I de-magnetized the fridge on accident and could the drawings be for me, and, “that's ok,” he says. Storm out of another party. He threw cash at me at dinner. Tip over his chair and say the issue is perhaps he never cared and so, it becomes good I was an archivist all along. It is good that nothing bad has ever really happened. He and I walked to the park. The fountain was spraying droplets mixed with rain. The air was sheened rainbow. The bench was covered in packets of ketchup that he was pushing off and down to the ground. He cleared me a seat. We were sitting not in silence, but in conversation that I did not recall even as it happened. “He keeps on taking really somber videos of me like he's already eulogizing me as his Dead Wife," I told Rose on the phone. "Do you know how we could make this even worse?" I asked him. Walk to a circle of wet chalk on the wet pavement. Bad Luck Spot, the writing on the ground says. Plant my feet firmly in the middle, and I wait for the curse to hit. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Sunday, July 6 From 7pm at KGB Bar — I will be reading at Confessions along with Mara Stoner, Sarah Fradkin, John Padula, Cassidy Grady, Annabel Boardman, and more.
Inline links: Confessions
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
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: The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Error 404: Play Not Found
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
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_!_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
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
Early August
August 21, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, July 29 It was a hot dog and white claw and blue hour over the marshes on the Amtrak last night. I took inventory of things when I arrived by night. The road was dark and it is August. My wrists were swollen from the heat and the city and there were lights around the bend and then only the sound of pebbles and tires and Davey-the-dog at the door and; it’s too late in the season for spring peepers. I haven’t been home in August in a few summers. It’s usually somewhere further down the coast this time of year. There was a pull towards this place sometime around noon on Wednesday. A pull towards cornfields specifically, and the way suburban heat would hit me heavy and hard when I would come back from the ocean as a child. In New York, I dreamt of a small house somewhere in someplace that felt like Topanga and wood floors and glass windows and a blue dress that looked like Leslie Van Houten’s in court, only the implications were less evil. I dreamt of palm trees and ferocious winds and sunrise over a cliff over volcanoes over the mountains over San Salvador. It was a mix of dreams. Some places where I have been before, and some places where I haven’t. I decided to play it safe. So, everything is exactly as I left it. There are farm fresh eggs and strawberries in the fridge. The empty April whisky bottle is still in the drawer where it was left after the eclipse. I am thinking of getting less into gnosticism and more into God. I have not been thinking very much lately at all. 2:09am - eating salted caramel gelato out of a plastic container in bed and vitamin water zero and cool smooth minty menthal zyn. My father stopped at the Cumberland Farms outside the train station so I could restock up on zyns. He is so nice. Everyone is so nice. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, August 21 From 7pm at St Lydia’s — Label NYC and Doxy Mag present SERVICE #2 - the second group chat reading. Featuring Mike Crumps, Dan Mancini, Scott Litts, Maxwell Foley, and more. Photos by Nick Dove. | Free
Inline links: St Lydia’s, Label NYC, Doxy Mag, SERVICE #2
City Built on Crystals
September 09, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, September 1 On the train to Coney Island, my friends are talking about the motifs that keep occurring. It's the sort of thing that happens to you when you have a pure heart, one of my friends is explaining. It's the sort of thing that people try to do to Real Life Angels, my other friend is explaining. Real life angels aren't real, I am saying, though I understand her point. The train is streaking through open air with towns on both sides. Housing projects rising up beyond that. Fallen green leaves and gray pebbles on the edges of the tracks. I have had these concepts of destruction explained to me before, only then it was by my mother or my friends in Miami and they called it Evil Eye. Here, they call it Devils and Angels. Real life Demons. I have been spending a lot of time this summer, trying to parse out the difference. Later, we emerge onto the boardwalk to find Curtis Sliwa in his red barret at the edge of the Atlantic. Police officers and children and men with snake tattoos in the ocean. There is live music at Salt and Sizzle and a ferris wheel that is one-hundred-years-old-and-never-any-accidents and the sky turns blue and purple and they cancelled the fireworks last year on account of someone drowning and due respect. We miss them this year of our own accord. When I was in love I spent a lot of time thinking about the apocalypse and feeling kind of giddy and aloof in this anticipation, convinced that the best way to die was euphoria and so end times while the center held would be a relief above all. When I smoked cigarettes and was a teen I would spend a lot of time pondering pop-psychology notions of optimistic nihilism and watching reddit atheists evangelize online. Now, I'm on the F-train back towards block-party-bars and my friends are shooting photos of their merch line, standing in front of the train doors as they open and close and I prefer to stay seated. Mostly aware of how dehydrated I am, which is a relief insofar as it diminishes all less corporeal thoughts. At Time Again, we make new friends with rare and inquisitive souls, which is really what the end of summer is all about. Writing on my phone on the walk home. Scribbling with kind of blurry eyes like an ipad baby on Delancey Street about the things that one has left to lose. Scribbling kind of incoherently about Health and Strong and Pervasive Senses. Scribbling Mother Teresa’s Rules For Humility. Speak as little as possible of oneself and Yield in discussion even though one is right and; well - what else am I supposed to do besides accept and embrace a Strong and Pervasive sense that things are as they are? Things were one way and now they are another. Things are harsher now in some ways, and more gentle in others. Tuesday, September 2 Woke up feeling very concerned about the decay of my physical form as a result of my bad habits and also by my newfound sense of passivity which I hope is driven by surrender and not by cynicism but one can really not be too sure. Woke up to a brand new delusion. In my dreams, someone was knocking on the door. They woke me up screaming. I stayed very quiet in response. Sunlight through my windows that I cannot bring myself to drape with curtains. Looked through the peephole. No one was there. Here are things I need to do: email the priests at Saint Joseph's to join OCIA and consider becoming Catholic despite my generally waspy sensibility. Finish and publish my substack. Create publicity materials for the play, go to class tomorrow, go to screening at Anthology Film tomorrow, write write write. Conjure up some sort of novel-like plot out of my hundreds of thousands of words of musings I keep in secret online documents. Make final edits on El Salvador piece and hope for the best. Conjure up some sort of plausible plot for my novel about gnosticism and also schizophrenia in people who seek to approximate the feeling of being famous by having friends online. Drop off laundry. Workout a lot. Maybe go sober. Certainly be sober-for-today. Today I am Cleansing. Today I am proud of myself in some ways and disappointed in others. Over plates of octopus and shrimp in lemon mustard sauce and pita and eggplant dip, Iris asks if she can treat me. Treat me to what, I asked. Do treatments for you, Iris explains. Treat me with iodine and thyroid and hypnosis. Treat me with methods opposite to my own. My own being mostly, a hysterical dipping in and out of notions of asceticism. Ok to some treatment, I say. Iris and I walk to the shops. The sky is still light but it is getting colder now. Iris buys dish soap and I slip sea kelp spray into my pocket. I have become quite destabilized by my afternoon visit to the glass apartment in the sky with the revolving doors. Not my apartment. No one's apartment. I am less like an orphan now. Iris and I walk back outside and down towards Seward Park. Iris says Sam knows a good aura cleanser. Not that I think the aura in the glass apartment in the sky is necessarily dark or doomed, Iris clarifies. I’d been telling Iris about some theories on the aura of things as dark and doomed. An invisible string but it was most of all bad. Ultimatums of gnosticism but they were delivered with nefarious intent.. Narcissistic to assume spiritual implications in the everyday, obviously. But how does one explain why they feel like they are floating by the time they are drifting up the stairs? On the Internet, they are making up real life retreats to enter the void. On the internet, they will take you to the Real Life House where you can Understand Real Life Consciousness. On the Internet, you can't live forever. Everyone realized that a few years back and I realized too, a few years after that. In Real Life you can maybe live forever, though. Everyone hopes so. I have been worrying, lately, that I hope so too. Wednesday, September 3 It’s Art Week in New York, which means less to me than it used to, besides for a pleasant rise in energies and things whirling back to life. I go to the first installment of the Marjorie Cameron series at Anthology Film Archive on account of Emillia’s recommendation and a slightly uneasy interest in the occult, tonight. An interest in witches who used to dance in a ring of rocking horses by my childhood home and a drive through Lily Dale with Riley in other lives, a few lives before this one. All that greenery and a long road alongside a lake towards the Psychic Capital Of The World. Hub of Mediums. Salmon Rushdie had been stabbed nearby a few years back. A psychic in Rhode Island had told me things would happen as I wanted them too but it would be first a thing of waiting, and secondly a thing of new architectures and spaces given that I’d been dealing in impossible conditions for awhile. Trying to make something stick in an Architecture of Unhappiness for a while. I stayed up til dawn over the weekend. Awoken to a Providence necklace placed around my neck and a burning desire to remove myself from the organ donor registry just in case. I worried about the morality of seeking loopholes as it pertained to the Providence Necklace, but a few days have passed and now it is Wednesday, early evening, tuck the tag under the collar of my shirt and began my hovering walk towards things that happen. The screening shows a Curtis Harrington film called Night Tide (1961), and it is about a girl who is a siren or perhaps it is just about Psychological Warfare, the ending leaves things a bit unclear. I've been nostalgic for the kind of California where I've never really been before. Nostalgic for things that never happened which I think is less a thing of clairvoyance and more a sense of how it all slips away but regardless; the shots are all of witchy Venice Beach and an apartment over the carousel that overlooks the sea and there is a bonfire on the rocks and some dancing that becomes a bit possessed due to dark forces - pulling my hair over my eyes like a blindfold for these parts - but I am thinking I could live in a place like this in spite of perhaps some evil. I have always thought I could float around it. I have always been arrogant in this way Thursday, September 4 Last night, I turned off the air conditioning and spilled Diet Pepsi on the baby pink rug in my sleep. Mom has shipped out baby blue curtains with white stripes and New York (the place where all my problems are) is starting to become a place that oscillates into something more calm. Sophie suggested baby pink curtains, and so I am making compromises in my mind. Compromising my own opinions and the opinions of others. Putting a lot of stock in the opinions of others. Putting a lot of stock in things improving drastically through the help of water in glass bottles and red light therapy and self hypnosis and religious conversion and swapping out the Cool White Linear Fluorescent Light Bulbs for something warmer. Everything becomes warm and still and the air is kind of heavy. I can lie very still for a while. Not forever, but definitely for now. You should just become one of those sociopathic writers who does insane things for the sake of writing, Iris advised me a few days ago. Yeah, I said. Like go to consciousness school in Argentina or conduct strange experiments with materiality on myself and others. Adopt a regiment of strange injections or move to Venice Beach to become Catholic and fight the occult there, too. Sitting on the edge of my bed in my New World in New York City. Closing my eyes and imagining Venice Beach as a magical little enclave with a witchy apartment over the carousel by the sea and arched doorways and conch shells and a jazz club and massage parlors and psychics on the piers. If I became a ruthless psychopath, what could I do in a place like this? In New York City (the city built on crystals). I am not feeling so ruthless. Self-experimentation without self-possession mostly leading towards destruction of a pretty boring variety. At least we don't live boring lives, I used to be told. There is nothing more boring than this, I used to say in response. Friday, September 5 Come in, come in, three psychics beckon on Sullivan Street, but I am pretty clear about how things have been and where they are going, and I would prefer to look for motifs in patterns and symbols and psychosomatic symptoms which reach a peak and then; abandon your whole entire life. That is one thing the psychics could tell me to do. Abandon your whole entire life. They could tell me to buy a whole new personality. I could buy a good fortune swimming in tea leaves and an aura cleansing from the psychics on Sullivan Street. I could buy a membership to witchcraft school and a flat in Venice Beach and a conflicted conscience when it comes to forces of good and evil and certainly, to things like health, sobriety, longevity. It's enticing to create pseudo intellectual or pseudo spiritual explanations for bad behavior when in reality things are obviously much more simple. Most actions are much too plain to qualify as any sort of performance or definitely any art. I'm working on becoming stupider, I told Iris. Will I become stupider? I asked the psychics. Will the apocalypse come sooner or later if the collective consciousness ideates on it or tries to stave it off? Is it better to be witchy but self protective, or ascetic but operating with self abandon. Where can one buy self possession? Taking the C-Train to Fort Greene Summer Fairyland where my dad and Sylvie wait for me at Aita and so everything is better. Plums and peaches and ricotta and octopus which the girls behind us are saying they don't eat after watching My Octopus Teacher (2020). Girls love to say they don't eat octopus after watching My Octopus Teacher (2020) but perhaps I am heartless, and I mostly just found the documentarian in that film to be kind of deranged and unreliable. Beef tartar and potato chips and Sylvie is talking about how she's aware of the balance of power in every single conversation and I'm saying I'm literally never aware of that I'm literally always just seeking equilibrium in any interaction that matters because conversation exists to reach understanding and Sylvie is saying no you are just always making sure that you are the one with the power in every conversation. I say no and she says yes and I say can we seek some equilibrium and she says you make sure that won't ever happen. The combat stops. My dad is asking Sylvie's boyfriend why he seeks intellectual inquiry. Sylvie's boyfriend is pointing out the famous people peppered around the bar. Goodbye you power hungry beast, I am telling Sylvie. My dad drives me back towards Manhattan. Animal skulls are scattered around his mini van and he says I can have a deer jaw for my new place if I want. Wrong turn through the Hubert Tunnel. Twenty-two dollar toll. Drop me off at the most Satanic Nightclub in New York to sulk soberly at the edge of an indoor pool and really lean into nihilism insofar as - what if we stayed for a while? I don't stay for a while. Manhattan night is teeming with people and the city is built on crystals. Good or bad ones? I haven't decided yet. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, September 9 From 7pm - 11pm at Night Club 101 — AltCitizen 15 Year Anniversary Show series launches with The Kickoff. Hosted by Brittany Marino. Featuring Lulu Van Trapp, Suo, D. Treuit. From 10pm - late, after party downstairs | Tickets: $15 advance, $20 doors
Inline links: Night Club 101, AltCitizen, The Kickoff
From 9pm in the Lower East Side (dm @Jackiearielle for location) — Painters Pool returns with hosts Olivia Toups and Nick Hobbs. A weekly party for painters and friends, Tuesday in New York (and now in Paris too). Gather your painter friends - that's your ticket in.
Inline links: Jackiearielle, Olivia Toups, Nick Hobbs
Perfect Little Life
September 12, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, September 7 Woke up to something amazing happening. More rain outside and also, a message from Emma. How are you? Emma asks. Like no time has passed at all, though of course, years have. There are other things to think about first. Octopus and shrimp salad and some cicen cheese at Tashkent Market. Interrogate one’s own sincerity. I am certain that Emma lives a very full and rich life now. I am not sure where in the world she is. I will know this soon. The first time I met Emma, her mom drove her to my house as a friend of a friend on her sixteenth birthday. I made signs to welcome my new acquaintance. Strung up HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA and WE HEART EMMA on poster board in neon sharpie above the wooden porch to greet her when she arrived. Nice to meet you Emma, I remember saying. The formality was awkward because I really wanted Emma to already be my friend. Later, I posted a photo of Emma and I hugging on the beach. Happy birthday Emma, I posted. Like plastering our pseudo-friendship online would make it real. After Emma and I became friends, and after Emma got her learner’s permit a few months after that, she would drive around Natick, Massachusetts with me hidden in the back of her trunk looking for parties that we’d find posted on YikYak. We would come home disappointed, usually, drinking a few warm beers in her parents’ basement or sitting with people we didn’t really know on the outer edges of my parents back yard. A few years had passed that way, and then another year hitchhiking around the Balkans after high school. Emma had convinced me to come bartend in Budapest and so I’d lost or maybe gained another life, here, drinking liquor and taking pills from strange cups in hostel hallways. Hitching rides from strange women across the Montenegro border. We’d bought loaves of bread and tomato sauce and bottles of wine to drink in the backseat and we'd driven for quite some time along coastlines and corn fields. They burned brush to prevent forest fires in this part of the world, and so often the sides of the highway would be almost totally ablaze. Emma and I were always half asleep, half drunk, half larping as destitute and disassociated and developing an early onset case of Peter Pan syndrome as mostly mine but kind of our cerebral ambitions paled in comparison to the magical ephemerality of our alcoholic, older, nomadic, wandering compatriots. My best friend Emma was more solid than I was. She had traveled for a while longer while I washed up in a hotel room in Albania and then, a flight back to Boston. Emma sold coffee in Morocco and then attended Georgetown. Emma calls mid afternoon. Are you still in New York? Emma asks me. She’s in the car in San Diego and she’s driving home from the beach with her boyfriend. Emma and her boyfriend are laughing. The perfect little life. Sitting on the edge of my bed in my New York studio apartment and I’m feeling kind of giddy because here I am, suddenly, with this perfect little window into the perfect little life. It’s exactly as I suspected. I talk quickly at Emma for about twenty minutes when I pick up the phone, mostly recounting the events of the spring and summer, but there are other things, too. Sorry, I say when I finish my story. Sorry sorry sorry. Emma sighs, though she remains cheerful. I always thought you’d marry young, Emma says. Are you ok? Emma asks. You should talk about yourself now, I tell Emma. And so Emma tells me that she is in San Diego with her boyfriend. They have been there since the spring now, and they have started to make some friends. They are driving home from the beach. They are stopping for food. Emma is in a city on the Pacific coast of California known for its beaches, parks and warm climate. Emma is on the edge of a deep harbor that is home to a large active naval fleet. I imagine that it is misty there sometimes and sunny at other times and the houses are bright colored beach bungalows and they are always filled up with a little bit of sand. All my dreams this summer have been about California, I tell Emma. There is an OctoberFest party in San Diego, Emma tells me. Come to San Diego, Emma urges me. Do you surf a lot?, I ask Emma. Where are you getting food? Is everything made of wood and is everyone barefoot all the time and do you buy blue dresses at second-hand shops and wear them as you wander down the coast? Do you feed seagulls scraps of fish as they fly over your perfect white wooden balcony and do you go to the carnival and get massages at open air studios on the pier and is everything kind of pastel and creaky and at what pace does time pass? So, I will go to San Diego. Not in October but sometime soon. Sometime in the spring. Emma and Arthur will drive me around in their perfect little car and I will sleep on their perfect little couch and I will drink Corona with lime and wear a bikini in March and everything will be kind of pastel and creaky and I imagine I won’t be too aware of time passing at all. I will be embraced and absorbed by a life that does not belong to me. Maybe it’ll be like Never Land. Maybe I’ll stay forever. Monday, September 8 In New York City, people feed birds scraps of food and then grab them by their bare hands, too. In Washington Square Park, the tourists from Prague are doing this today. Washington Square Park, which is peppered with falling leaves and fountain mist and Bad Luck Spots, which I will never make the mistake of stepping on again. The park is still green but becoming less so. I’ve been praying for the cold, and now it is almost here. It is September 8th. It is Day One of being Cerebral and Ascetic and I am feeling very horrified that I ever thought it might be good to opt for any other alternative path. I am feeling regretful for my experimentations in self-abandonment and trying-on-new-personalities though, I suppose, this is where God comes in. And it was a God filled day yesterday, which is something I still hope to be somewhat watchful with and let things happen to me rather than intellectualize it all. The greatest thing is to Love and Know and Be Loved And Known, strangers kept on telling me yesterday. I already knew this, but I wrote it down anyway. Write it down and filter it through new contexts. Begin the day. It is Monday now. It is September 8th. I run into Emilia at Caffe Reggio, where I always sit and where she always finds me. You seem kind of volatile, she tells me. You should write about God if you are sick of writing about yourself. You should write about art. You should not write about politics. You should come to Slovenia. I was sitting in a church last night and someone was laughing outside. The laughter was reverberating inside. The laughter was distorting sound waves off the walls and causing interference with the incense and the air and with the silence. Because it was, otherwise, silent. Felt very frozen. Felt like fall. Felt like it was all beautiful even here in stupid NYC. Felt like I slowly noticed myself, shaking. What's your favorite book, a stranger asked me at the bar, later. V by Thomas Pynchon I said, because that's the book I read last and my mind was moving kind of slowly. What's your favorite film, the stranger asked. Diva by Jean-Jacques Beineix because that is the film I watched and liked last or also; Manhattan and Match Point, I said. What's your favorite book, I asked the stranger. The stranger smiled. I always say The Bible when people ask me that. Tuesday, September 9 In the criss-crossed wood-roofed apartment, the lights start to flicker around eight pm which is a good reminder, then, that one is never supposed to linger in the sort of place like this. One is supposed to live in a city like this so that one might pace around and wait for omens. It is Fashion Week which means even less to me this year than Art Week did the week before. It is energies and after parties and humiliation rituals when I'm wearing my cotton non-synthetic workout wear all around Soho at a time like this and; all of this of course, means nothing at all and so this week is just like any other. This summer passed kind of dusty and endless and I do not feel sorry for myself anymore because first of all there is no need for that it is just one life all at once and second of all, Accidie is the only truly mortal sin and so one must proceed with caution. I sat with Amelia in bars with sparkling water in June for a while because I just could not go home. I sat with other sorts of substances for a while after that and I took it too far. Day One (trying again) of being Ascetic and Cerebral tonight. September 9. 999. People on the Internet say that means something and I'm good at taking people at their word. Sitting in the basement of Night Club 101 at the AltCitizen show with Joe and Darby and a cup of Suju waiting for the after party to start. The basement of Night Club 101 feels kind of like a high school music room classroom particularly now, particularly empty. Joe and Darby and I are talking about the gap between self possession and self awareness and a Kinsey Scale sort of method of categorizing people this way. Self possessed people often lacking self awareness and vice versa. The lowest form of discourse being discourse on discourse. Smart people talking about ideas average people talking about events stupid people talking about other people; though, I sort of disagree with this concept. Other people are the root of all loftier things like "Ideas", I am saying. It's like The Backrooms down here, Darby is saying. It's like a kind of weird vibe but we don't want to leave. We're near the bathrooms and so others keep drifting by but they don't want to stay. Fabulous outfits. Rockstar Girlfriends. Los Angeles apparel unitard and big black boots lining up for the restroom or to buy socks that say I CAN DO ANYTHING ON DRUGS. Patchwork style neon dress and small gray loafers, silver ballet flats leather pants light green linen v neck top. Lots of girls with long and flowy and jet black hair here. Lace black dresses that look like spiderwebs paired with emerald necklaces. Lots of guys in jeans with long and curly hair or long and greasy hair and they all are carrying guitars. I'm perched in the bleachers in the basement with my one kind of SEC-school-style-tattoo and an A-line dress watching everyone kind of wistfully. So, there were a few different lives and now there is something else. Maybe in the next one, I will pick a life like the club kids. Micro-bangs and rock music. Fall asleep in Bushwick or in the back of a bus. Buy a bus and drive across the country with a lust for Music above all. Drive past things like diners in Wyoming or sacred hot springs in New Mexico or the haunted Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire or Motel 6s and 8s somewhere along the way. Drive to California wearing True Religion low rise jeans and shredded tees. Drive all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Can't stop thinking about the Pacific Ocean. Drive to San Diego. Wash up on Emma and Arthur's door. I would do fewer things each day in this life, but maybe each of them would matter more. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Friday, September 12 From 7:30pm - 9:00pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — It’s your last week to see ARDOR - a very special play following a group of nine artists and friends on an annual retreat to their aging patrons Vermont farmhouse. Nothing and everything has changed and will change.
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, ARDOR
Big Huge World
October 06, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, September 22 On the Upper West Side, there are stone townhouses and quiet streets and nice branzino and diet coke with lemon and they bring us baskets of red pesto and baguette and memories both good and bad become holographic quite quickly. New York is not all rotten. There are the last days of summer to take care of. Last days of gluttony. Last days of Reading Series. In a cab downtown to meet Lily with a stomach ache, Lily tells me that she is at a bar meeting boys. I meet her on the street. She’s wearing a white dress and she looks sparkling. There are others, on the steps, out here, and we all do the whole charade of all pretending like we have all never met. Lily met a boy at the bar who wants to take her on a road trip with his dogs, she tells me. You’re too young for me, but it’ll be fun while it lasts, the boy tells Lily. He sends each individual word as a separate message and then shares a video of two pitbulls sparing on a field of plastic turf. Lily lays her phone flat in her hand and we loom over it in the orange September sort of night. The video plays on an infinite loop. The dogs unhinge their massive jaws and aim to swallow a basketball whole. You’ll go upstate and get mauled to death by this guy’s pitbulls, I tell Lily. I’m not going upstate, Lily tells me. We walk further downtown, trace the usual path to a magazine launch in a night club that I thought would be more crowded. We sit in the backroom, and you can hear the readings better here than if you claw your way to the front like everyone else, but we probably appear to be kind of checked out. I’m going to save you, Lily tells me. We walk to Funny Bar where Sam is smoking outside. Am I safe to go inside, I ask Sam. He nods and flicks his hand towards the door. His friends are all from The Internet, and they introduce themselves by alias. Standing by the bar and Sam is saying that Los Angeles is it now. I stand a little halfway outside the conversation circle with my shirt pulled pretty tight around me and contribute a few half hearted sentiments about how Los Angeles can’t be it. The cars, the sprawl, the niceties, the plastic surgery. It’s got to be Austin, Sam’s friend is saying. It’s the same stale conversation topic as usual. How New York is over. Culture is over. Sam is listing a few mid to low tier Los Angeles based Internet personalities around which a new and transgressive art scene could revolve. I am dead sober, and therefore relieved to notice that I do not float out of my body and watch myself say something annoying and off-beat, like I inevitably would if I were drunk. None of those people have a mass fanbase of beautiful women, I point out to Sam. In Los Angeles, you’d find fifteen e-girls and they’d have to take Ubers. Sam agrees that this could potentially be a problem. If it’s uninteresting here, then it’s uninteresting everywhere, but I understand why everyone is seeking renewal. Like The Internet isn’t alive and everyone isn’t talking about the same things everywhere. Like Sam and his crew could wash up on Hollywood Boulevard and say the same things five years later, to a five years younger crop of wonderful young girls, fresh eyed and eager, they’d spawn out of nowhere, they would never have heard all of the things that have already been said before. Tuesday, September 23 Watching the gray light filter through the windows of a studio where everything is tan or cream or pale blue or gold. Watching a waiter at a cafe down the street bring over black coffee, cannoli, and strawberries in a chalice. Start the day with solitude. I have never lived like this before. A smooth and slick kind of woman across from me is talking about her sister who broke up with her boyfriend after meeting a Danish stone carver who believes in hard work and apprenticeship and not necessarily general education. The sister became repulsed by her boyfriend after spending time with the stone carver because she felt her boyfriend had too pragmatic a view on life. The sister left her passport at her ex’s place for one whole week and needs an ego death. She needs a concrete understanding of the next couple years. She wants to continue to go to school for forever, though this part, the whole family agrees is fine. The girl across from me is practically dripping gel from her slicked back bright red bun. She’s cloaked in business casual and a bad attitude. She’s drinking a cappuccino and she’s off to pilates. I am wondering if I would find her smug and didactic demeanor less off putting if she were more beautiful. She is wearing a stripped shirt and she gestures a J-Crew sleeve towards me and my own striped shirt as she leaves. It’s like a movie, she says. My shirt is softer and thinner and I want to coil the sleeves up and climb inside. It’s like mimes, I respond. Mimes? she asks. I do not mime. I hope she knows what that word means. It is not so much a thing of feeling out of place. I have worlds of characters and oddities at my fingertips. I like characters and oddities, which, along with a desire driven by ennui and terror to remain right at the very center of things, is why I am still here. I tend to like when people are abrasive, because it means they are fixated on just one thing. I watch the woman leave and I know for certain that I do not like her but it is not a thought that troubles me too much. It is a thought that passes like a cloud. Wednesday, September 24 Later, the air conditioning is off, and I’m pacing through empty health food aisles, drawing signs of the moon in class; waxing crescent moon, Libra moon, PLS GO FETCH ME THE MOON. Later, someone is talking about bio weapons at another party downtown. The genomes, the rapture, the clarity, the apocalyptic ideation. Please do not stress me out right now, the man on stage at the party is saying. I do not like that question. A different question. Could someone in the audience please ask one precise and better question? I see Iris and her blond hair bobbing up and down across the traffic stop as I stand outside the ice cream shop taking stock of my day and my night. Iris is carrying bright-blue-epson-salt and she is walking back towards a glass apartment in the sky. Do you want to sit, Iris asks? Inside? The rotating apartment in the sky. One rotation used to be mine. I can survive going inside. No, outside. We sit on the benches at the edge of the street as the ice cream shop closes, and I tell Iris all about how much things have improved. I have not been home all day, I tell Iris. I throw up my hands. Performative exhaustion. The whole ordeal is pleasant. Iris is very buoyant today. You should write aphorisms, Iris tells me. Passivity responds to harshness. Lethargy responds to good metabolic function. Have you noticed how all the energy here has come whirling-back-to-life? Iris starts telling me about the state of things. She has figured out where she stands when it comes to her positioning in the state of things. She has surmised who will be left behind. I nod. I clarify my own positions and I mean it. So we agree, Iris says. Good! I tell Iris about how I was at a French Cafe in Chinatown drinking matcha with almond milk which surprised my friends because they would have presumed that someone becoming Catholic would take coffee and drink it with whole milk, preferably raw. I tell Iris about how a lot has changed but I am still not so sure. I tell Iris about how culture isn’t dead but a lot of people have just decided not to be a part of it. I don’t say all of this out loud. I am still not so sure. Every apartment I go to is full of relics. Every party I go to is the same. Thursday, September 25 Sitting at Bar Oliver with Celia and it’s all red leather booths, light jazz music, non alcoholic beer which can be good for estrogen levels in women and black coffee and my eyes keep following the ceiling fans in circles. The rain has come and washed everything clean. I can have anything I want. I hang my purse on the metal arm of the tableside lamp. Incandescent bulbs. Write a note on the top of my planner. I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT BUT I CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING I WANT. Chinatown in the rain is cinematic and less like the land of leggings and small dogs that is increasingly stretching its grimy tendrils out and expanding all over downtown Manhattan. Celia turns her laptop around to show me a photograph of a light wood living room, checkered yellow table cloth, soft and warm armchair. This looks like your parents house, Celia says. Where did you find that, I ask. I found it on Tumblr, Celia says. We go for a walk along the East River, where the rain and the heat have turned everything kind of the same shade of fairytale gray. Celia tells me stories as we walk. Sylvia was an heiress and her dad was an inventor. Camilla was a tragic figure. Lucy was a ghost. I can imagine there were a lot of inventors coming out of that part of the world, I tell Celia. Why do you imagine that?, Celia asks me. Because there’s little to do but the temperament of the area is less mundane and passive than in neighboring states, I explain. The opioid crisis never hit, Celia agrees. There was no heroin, and so people invented things. We walk past the Governors Island Ferry and a kind of dilapidated and green Casa Cipriani. This is where the art fair was, Celia says. I have brain fog, I say. I go home, cheerful and ill. I go to an album release party where the singer is shaking with tears streaming down his face as the songs play, and then very cheerful and calm as he greets his wife and friends. I go to a Right Wing magazine launch and then to a celebration for a zine about ETHICS. I listen to the same song until I can’t bear it anymore. Take the M to the end of the line. Take photos of the tennis courts here, because they’re glistening in the rain and night. I show the bartender at Gotscheer Hall my passport from Switzerland and he beams. You should work here, he says. I beam back. I should work here, I say. Gotscheer Hall is huge and cavernous and covered with murals of fairytales. It’s like a whole huge world here. The world of Gotscheer Hall, and then the world of the fairytales that line its walls. It’s a Whole Huge World, I say. I say this over and over again. I took the train to the end of the M line, and then I remembered that it’s a whole huge world. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, October 6 From 4:40pm at Film Forum — Bresson’s Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1972) screens. - “Third filming (following Visconti’s) of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, transposed to ’70s Paris.” Worth seeing before it closes.
Inline links: Film Forum, Four Nights Of A Dreamer
Autumn Secrets
October 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, October 20 Autumn storm of the nicest kind outside, and I think I’ll close my eyes and imagine something else. I’ve been letting the clutter pile up for a while now. The intention was to disappear the clutter by simply leaving it behind. Catch a train. The hurricane rolled in early. The Amtrak lost power. The taxi skidded on black ice on Delancey Street. I circled New York City a few times in the car and then on foot and then I decided to stay a while. It was supposed to be something more like; stack clothing miles high on the floor of a small-box-apartment and then leave it all behind. Watch the waves swell bigger and bigger along gray rocky shores. Watch the wooden dock come crashing down like it sometimes does in the biggest winds this time of year. Run around the tip of a peninsula amidst floods and tornadoes and wear a lifejacket when you fling yourself off the bridge and into the ocean because the currents, in October, have a proclivity for sweeping swimmers out to sea. My mother sends me pictures of the fire, the dog, red berries that crunch underfoot and the nice and drafty sort of windows. How many autumn storms of this kind do I really have left in a lifetime to pass by a cool and gray ocean? Seven, maybe, if I’m feeling lucky. Probably less. It was soft dark stormy and O.K. in New York City this weekend, anyways. Because a butterfly flapped its wings, you spent the weekend in New York, my mother tells me, on the phone. Because I missed a train, I say. Because an elephant stomped its feet and things still happen as they happen, actually. I am feeling a bit unduly self indulgent. Thinking about what I want as itemized and limitless. Gold Ciel Chapman A-line dress.
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
From 6pm at UnHerd US HQ — A Halloween-themed-mayoral debate - “ featuring columnist Ross Barkan and progressive activist and whistleblower Lindsey Boylan (in support of Mamdani) versus the New York Post’s Miranda Devine and National Review’s Caroline Downey (in opposition).”
Inline links: A Halloween-themed-mayoral debate
Things that Happened Once I Gave Up Vice
November 12, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, November 3 And so everything kind of begins to hover as November sweeps in. The in between weeks. One can leave the city and then one can return. I call Amelia and ask if she’d like to go on another vacation for the aim of seeking things that are transgressive and weird, but the heat and the restlessness and the Miami sun of late-may is long gone, we never did visit the falconry like we planned, everyone would probably prefer to just stay put. Boil bone broth, go to a film, seek employment, write at the gym, braid and unbraid my hair three to four times before I decide to give it a rest. Do you really hate staying put that much?, Amelia asks. I go to the West Village Bitcoin Bar past ten pm in response. Still feverish from the last few days, but the wind outside is nice and the walk along Washington Square Park is quiet, tracing the streets along the park’s West edges past the brownstones and the Washington Square Hotel and the Marlton Hotel and then Pubkey Bar. It is not so much a thing of hating to stay put, but more of feng shui, four small walls, wind and water through my open window and I think most people dislike solitude of a certain kind, which can easily be mistaken for stillness. Pubkey Bar is always lit up kind of like an arcade. They sold some sign about crypto for one million dollars here, once. They sold the president’s autograph. They made me pickletinis and diet coke and seed-oil-free nachos and I used to be kind of manic here, drunk and yelling in the wind and on the street. It is such a desperately quiet night tonight. My friends are seated in the back rooms talking softly about the most valuable parts of a whole whale, their most favorite things about the people close to them, the best sound to elicit tears, the best cherry liqueur, the best ideas for how a person should be. It all comes at me kind of underwater, anyways. It’s all felt kind of shadowy as this year writes over the year before. Tuesday, November 4 And so all the energy came swirling back in an instant. They are playing sweet music like some of the My Fair Lady and the Mad Men soundtrack and J’ai 18 Ans and Zou Bisou Bisou at the hotel lobby with the roaring fireplace and the Cecily Brown mural and the young couples wearing cream slacks and red sweaters and holding newspapers and crinkled baskets of pastries. I have loved winter in New York the most of anything these past few years, and I’d been worried this one would not hold quite the same magic. Walk through the park while it is still early. Wear mostly skirts and tights and thin strapped tops and ballet flats, all black. Order ginger turmeric tea and almond milk cappuccino and write stories by the fire. Disavow hedonism. Disavow becoming the sort of person who does the certain types of things. There’s an order to these things. I tell Amelia; it is good to be mostly quiet. It is good to go to mostly the same places a million times over if the places one chooses are good. Wednesday, November 5 Did you notice everyone became very pleased that you were becoming exactly who you were meant to be when they first put you on Adderall?“ Ellie asked me at the party last night. The night was very warm and the party was very quiet and I was pleased with myself for my relative self possession that evening, which was the goal of the fall and the winter and the days that stretched out kind of breathless. Secret-keepers and Promise-Keepers and finding equilibrium between Self-Possession and Self-Awareness. These were the vaguely worded goals of the winter. No I didn’t really find that, I told Ellie. But I never got the chance to live out my potential on stimulants because I took it too far right away. Ellie nodded with sincere interest. My friends these days were very sincere. And the party was strange because the seating was in bleachers instead of tables and the music was jazz and my friends were very well dressed, decked in corsets and ballet flats and beaded belts and hair with ribbons and holding sparkling drinks with lime and aperol and smiling very broadly. I noticed that time had been passing all along sometime in early November. and so the following fervor came spurred by the sense that something might finally happen. The air got barely perceptively colder and ghosts washed up in dreams or in my courtyard or in signs and symbols like the strange numbers I’d been seeing on the sidewalk. It had been five months to the day since the start of summer and the lurching of my life in unexpected and nefarious though perhaps ultimately necessary ways, which I suppose just goes to show that some sort of momentum was required for time to do anything aside from idly tick on. I remembered that it is just one or two or three promises I make myself and others, though it becomes one million promises if you break one promise a million times. Thursday, November 6 I did nothing in the day yesterday besides watch the clouds make shadows out of various shades of light and dusk across my walls and then I pulled on a small black dress and black Ganni crumbling boots and walked through the quiet night towards Chinatown. The air was too stale and tight inside the sports bar where my friends were all smiles and drinking water and vodka and asking me about fun and faith and so then I walked further downtown to the new wine bar on Henry Street. Here, everyone was very drunk and cast in red light and our table was set in a hallway that resembled a kindergarten classroom and an eclectic group of acquaintances I knew from the Internet or Birthday Parties or Religious Magazines were sharing bottles of wine. To sleep very little means a dream state in the gray morning, which is nice because November Ninth marks the first real distance from the summer for me. The cycles repeated. The cycles grinded to a halt. I woke up to gray morning light through my still open window with a spiral bound notebook and an idea for transcription on the blank page: THINGS THAT HAPPENED ONCE I GAVE UP VICE. Friday, November 7 Listening to Chopin Nocturne op.9 no.2 while the sound of rain mixes with the sound of the turtle pond out the window and I swim in all the visions of where I’ve heard this song before. Like twirling around on brown wood floors during summer storms in the dining room at the house by the ocean while my parents cook fish stews in the kitchen and the floors turn yellow linoleum when you approach the stove and the pouring rain outside streams through the windows and all over the counters. The memory of twirling around and the smell of rain is always the most vivid of all. Like I’m always hurdling towards something or lying very still in all my recollections of things. Obsessed with motion. Arrested by motion! So the main thing now is momentum, I suppose. My Computer keeps on queuing up Chopin the The Nutcracker and Philip Glass Mishima based on past listening habits, but these two scores are both a bit too much to bear right now and so I’m hitting Skip Skip Skip. Not too much has happened since I gave up vice yesterday. Just; Rebecca told me that I look well rested, and the story about El Salvador and network states and techno-spirituality is off to print so I will soon be able to hold it in my hands and then relinquish any narrativization of past events and, it would be nice for energy drinks and nicotine to be coursing through my veins right now but there is something more beautiful and languid in self-induced timeout over microplastics and mind altering substances. Moonless night. Moon hidden behind the rainstorm. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, November 12 From 6:30pm at Night Club 101 — Free reading series Reading 101 launches, ft Swati Sudarsan, Adrienne Raphel, Jessica Lynne, Aurora Huiza, and James Barickman. Music by Solex Yoghurt.
Inline links: Night Club 101, Reading 101
Florida, Massachusetts (03)
December 02, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday 7:45am and I am lying very still in my clean crisp bed like it’s a haven or a ship that will float me above and away from the clutter around me. Lying with my head pulled under white bamboo sheets, so I don’t have to see anything other than white noise and whatever I decide to fire up on my phone all around me. Reading Girl Insides live blogging her breakup on my phone this morning, and I do feel envious of the corporeal and anonymous ways in which her brand of compulsive documentation flows. Feeling kind of vague and emotionless after a weekend that was here there everywhere, and I let myself really be sucked into it which is always how it goes but one needs to be careful. I wore Cinq-a-Sept Christmas dress for a few days in a row, and there was dinner in a dark wood uptown apartment and there was a sunrise over the Hudson River and I kind of don’t want to write it like a sequence of events. I kind of hope to talk about the architectures of things and why they happen as they do. On my phone, Girl Insides is in Hollywood and breathing in jasmine and perfect fog and smog and panzanella crackers. All of a sudden everything that happens in my life is up to me, Girl Insides says. Well, me too for the first-time-ever, but it becomes more difficult this way. Perhaps I’ll go to surf in San Diego with Emma. Perhaps I’ll go to Kazakhstan or Tbilisi, Georgia or at least commit myself to no more losing days following wherever the wind blows me. I’ll be in Florida, Massachusetts, anyways this week. A spooky little town. They cursed the Amtrak towards Western, Massachusetts last year. Strangers yelling at me as we sat in dark seats hurdling through the night with train snacks of hot dog and coca cola and chips that came in perfect little packages that one unboxes in the dining car. A girl threw herself at the walls of the train on the platform as it pulled out of Moynihan Station. She bounced off the train and was removed unscathed. The conductor announced that they’d lost the crew somewhere around Albany. I walked into a doctors office and I recognized the dermatologist’s twisted and frozen face as the woman who’d been screaming on a night train heading out of New York. And all of this is just to say that everything was kind of cursed and still is sometimes, but I am trying to find omens in the more beautiful and serendipitous sorts of patterns and symbols and signs. In the hotel lobby, Celia told me to be less vague about it. Either say what you mean or don’t. So I do believe everything that I have ever been told. Which is mostly just to say that before I believed everything bad, I believed everything good. Tuesday We drove from New York to The Berkshires this morning. I stopped at Broadway Bagels and then at a farmstand and now we are here. So, these are the things that have happened. No curses and no omens. The house we can see outside the long glass window got painted green and now it totally fades into the woods. That’s nice, everyone says. That’s so much nicer, now. It’s brilliant blue-gray outside the long glass windows now that the snow has stopped and it is settling into very early afternoon dusk. I am lying by the fire that is crackling louder when the furnace is on and quieter when it isn’t. The Eames chair is empty behind me and the lamps overhead are big yellow orbs, hanging from the slanted wooden ceilings. There are things I could do here. Mass MoCA museum and my favorite James Turrell works there that change with morning and evening light. Or, The Clarke Art Museum and I can hear whispers of a textile show that others are bundling up to go see downstairs, but I think I would prefer to just stay put. There is a Tourists Hotel by the North Adams airport, which is a motel that turned fancy, with individual bungalows looking out at the river and a restaurant that looks like a home inside, all fireplaces and craft drinks and lots of little rooms. There is the alpaca farm up the road and there is Hopkins Forest and Pine Cobble and the Appalachian Trail and the sauna room by the river and trees like skeletons waving in the fading daylight just past my peripheral vision. I drove to Graylock Works when we got here to do ballet and yoga in an old mill and then I drove to the gas station and then to the local hotel lobby where I sat incognito for a moment watching families in autumn dresses and long jackets filter in and out and in and out and then I drove home. I’ve been here for a while. It’s nice to find a house that I can float through. It’s nice that when I look around I see something aside from four small walls. A blizzard just began. It is strange, because the snow is flying horizontally in the Southbound wind, but the trees suddenly appear to be standing perfectly still. Wednesday Field Notes from Florida, Massachusetts and my Google Docs Diary: I woke up this morning and I cleansed my face and put on toner and then guasha with rose oil and then red light therapy while stretching.
Inline links: Girl Insides
From 9pm - 12pm at WSA — “Office Party” “Holiday Party” for New York’s builders, investors, and tastemakers. Ft a special operatic performance by Cami Árboles and dance performance by Isabella Basha. DJ sets by Rex Detiger and Crowdsurfers. Hosted by Office Magazine, Family Office, Nikole Naloy, and others. Attire: business formal. RSVP here.
Inline links: WSA, here
Hotel Lobby Gossip
December 09, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, December 1 Everyone is sick and dropping like flies but not me. I’m at a rooftop hot tub in Williamsburg tracing my hands through the water and watching the sun come up as I stare blankly ahead. I’m driving back to New York City squinting into the skeleton trees and the blue hour dusk that fills the space between them on the side of the road off the Mohawk Trail. Do you shop at Uniglo, my family members are asking? I am muttering something about Brandy Melville in response and then I am feeling vaguely nauseous. I am break the pattern today or the loop repeats tomorrow. I am imagining everything magical all the time. I am washing up on the Upper West Side where the streets are wide and quiet and sweet and winter rain has frozen everything shining. I am washing up in the Marlton Hotel Lobby, where I am telling Celia about my dream. In my dream, a composite of every person I’ve ever met was calling me on my phone, I tell Celia. They kept on asking me to turn the call to Facetime instead. They kept on saying it was time to see each other’s faces. They were warm and not scary and I was crying and pleading a lot, though I don’t know what for. Was it everyone you ever met, or just everyone you’ve ever cared for? Celia asks me. Same thing, I say. That is unequivocally untrue, Celia tells me. Tuesday, December 2 In The Marlton Hotel lobby, I order black coffee, avocado, smoked salmon and sourdough toast with the perfect type of butter. The butter with salt water mixed in, and then a tall bottle of sparkling water on the side, too. Eavesdropping at The Marlton Hotel, where the bar room is decked in Christmas cheer and the fire, per usual, is roaring. The conversations on either side of me are increasingly hallucinogenic. Two chirpy and pretty girls to the right, and two middle-aged Jewish ladies to the left This is how I feel with a lot of my relationships, one of the girls says. The first was not a provider, but I thought that I could fix that. The second was a psycho libertarian who got me health insurance as his sick way of trying to lock it down The last man I dated told me I was full of shit, her friend responds. I said something in earnest, and he said that I was full of shit. I could never see past that. Me saying something in sincerity, and him saying I was full of shit. On the other side, the middle-aged Jewish women are talking about pizza night. It’s pizza night and then it’s pepper night. They have no plans this week. These are the only plans they have made. I’m getting dinner with a man who thought his whole family was dead, but then they weren’t, one of the women tells the other. He is so amazing. He taught me about exercise. I get the zoomies, says her friend. We don’t work, and so we have to exercise. I hate people who don’t. Exercise? Exercise. When were things the best with him? The first girl is asking her friend. I think, before we met, the friend responds. Who was that coocoo-for-coco puffs lady that you got friendly with, the middle aged woman asks her friend. She is wearing a red amulet. We will call her Celine. Oh, she was crazy. and the sister was out of her mind. she was very beautiful You introduced her to me one week and we loved her. And then the next week you said; She Cannot. Come. Back. Here. We pick up interesting people. Everyone’s interesting It is so weird when we think about relationships as two full selves coming together, one girl is telling the other. They liked coats! Whole family of coat owners, Celine is telling her friend. I mean the father was GAY. The whole family was gay. My first kiss was gay. Well… his brothers were gay. All his brothers were gay…” Celine’s friend says. So he HAD to be! They’re all gay! As long as they’re happy…. Amongst the girls to the right, the conversation has turned to heaven and earth. Death and other realms. They are talking about Neurolink and how they were at a neurolink conference and they met a man who died for twenty minutes because he slipped and fell and chipped a tooth and affixated in his own blood. Do you want to hear what happened when he died?, one girl asks another Yes, the other responds. He was floating in light. He was disembodied. He could hear sounds but they weren’t sounds he could describe in human terms. There was a God-like presence, and God asked the man if he would like to stay. The man started to feel a pull towards earth. It was like when you wake up from a dream. God said you have a choice. God said everyone has a choice. The man made the decision to go back to Earth. The man woke up in the hospital bed. Her friend responds: I spoke with a psychiatry professor at Harvard who briefly died as part of a death-study, but he couldn’t tell me about it because he signed an NDA. He said he can’t say very much, but it’s going to be ok. Girl 1: So what do you think about that? Girl 2: I mean I definitely don’t believe in heaven or hell Girl 1: The reason I never killed myself is because I want to see what happens Girl 2: I mean I definetly do believe that consciousness is eternal… Wednesday, December 3 What do I care about now? Write and read. Wait with pulsing anticipation but not too much anticipation, mostly just a sense that some things are at their tail end and others at their precipices. Something in Saturn, maybe, but I am trying not to play with fire in this way. After I played Kali Uchis off the tinny computer speakers and I read books by healers who possessed demons and I drank sparkling water and cleaned everything top to bottom and flirted with danger a bit, Celia came over to sit on my floor. I think I’m having a bit of a panic attack, Celia texted me. Would you like to come sit on the floor of my apartment, I texted Celia. She arrived in a gray sweater and a blue wool scarf and bearing a suitcase that belonged to me. Do you like the window open? I asked Celia. I am feeling a bit cold, Celia told me. I am feeling very excited and ambitious, I told Celia. I have always had boundless energy and this is the only thing I know to be true. There are magazines on the way to the apartment and I am realizing how nice it is when things are very clean. I am going to go to The Marlton hotel now, Celia told me. Thursday, December 4 Writing, like a list, the things I have that I can quantify, now. A blog
From 9pm in the Lower East Side (dm @Jackiearielle for location) — Painters Pool returns. A weekly party for painters and friends, Tuesday in New York and Thursday in LA. Gather your painter friends - that’s your ticket in.
Inline links: Jackiearielle
From 7pm at Flux Lumina (132 Bowery 5th Fl) — Uncensored New York presents The Dinner Party: a one night only environment of works exploring themes of consumption, spectacle, surveillance, and humiliation. Entry is free, please tip your server!
Inline links: Flux Lumina, Uncensored New York
The social experiment is now over
December 22, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, December 15 Woke up to snow feeling self possessed, self determined, and ill, and so I’ll hold onto this for a while, I think. Everyone keeps on telling me what I should do next, to which I say: o.k. Everything is kind of medium levels of certain, these days. Lying on the floor last night at the after party and I could tell that people’s visions were kind of starting to spin but I have needed, personally, to be more solid about it. I have needed, personally, to keep my own vision clear. You can look at her face and see she’s not a good writer, the boys were saying, last night, about someone, can’t remember who. Can we just talk about pretty girls who are good writers?, the boys were asking the group. I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Just kind of sitting there watching everything because my only real goal here is to be observational and not prescriptive. There’s not a role to be filled if you want God to love what you do, someone was saying. If you want the angels to sing you have to eat the script. Angels weren’t really on the mind as I drifted home, more consumed with things like self improvement and hand selecting a new addiction and a caution to the wind sort of impulse. Potions washed up at my doorstep this morning. Sparkling ICEE water and Advil and fever chills which come as blessings when one reads them as signs. Anyways, magical blue hour snowy dusk over Washington Square Park on the way uptown tonight, and since everything changed this summer or really three days ago in a way that is true, I have started to imagine something else. The Christmas party was in an apartment around the corner from Saint Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church off Lexington Ave, last night. The apartment was open-concept with big windows and a pine tree and roaring fire, poached salmon, chocolate chip cookies and a beautiful bed on which everyone lay their beautiful coats. I wanted to stay there forever, as I always do in places that I like. I wore the Cinq-a-Sept holiday dress and the big wool coat I’ve been donning for weeks now, and I wore pearls, too, which is something new. Everything was slippery and bright and better and kind of like a dream, but I don’t want to get complacent. When I moved to New York, I lived in Yorkville where I could not sleep and where the streets were too muted and it made me uneasy. In the Lower East Side, in an apartment I hated, I was given a whole new life, and there, nothing was muted and everything was windy and cold. The wind made me kind of crazy, as wind tends to do. I was airlifted out of that apartment, ultimately, which I suppose is what I’ve kind of been praying for, here, in a space that is my own and good except for; the bed faces a fluorescent hallway and there is no room for a couch or even really a trash can. I’m seeking clarity for kind of selfish but partly religious reasons. And I’m sick of writing about the things I own or once did. On the end of the year; it is kind of pointless to say anything at all when things were fast then slow then impossible to recall, and all of this is just to say that I hope I’ve been sincere. Almost midnight, and so I go to Caffe Reggio, where things are small and precise and decked in holiday cheer, cozier even than the hotel lobby. Resolutions are: everything beautiful. And more stories that flow like water, obviously. The night is crisp and cool and I care to be extremely alert. Tuesday, December 16 Celia left the scene because she was good at noticing when things became embarrassing, and I resonated with the principle but still could not help but to hover. Nothing was embarrassing, anymore, Matthew reminded me, because everything was dead in the water and then it wasn’t and then it was and now, he suspected a new wave. Last year at this time I had to beg girls to come to parties, Matthew sighed. He gestured around the very crowded and warm bar and towards the people standing and sitting in circles and filtering in and out and the elderly Italian birthday party in the backroom. This is nothing like last year, he insisted. In the Financial District, everything was FAKE. Fake little streets and old-timey bars and I only realized the facade of it all because I walked by a Christmas Tree and the sign at its edges sent the whole charade tumbling down. EVEN THE CHRISTMAS TREE IS FAKE, the sign said. In the freezing cold, the most freezing day of the year so far, Celia and I got burgers at a small and new seafood spot. Celia wore three pops of red (bag, tights, gloves), and I wore all black. After the reading, where the stories were good and where more and more people kept materializing as if out of dust by the door, I bought three books and then sat on what seemed to be a bike rack in the back of a van driving towards the Lower East Side. Ducked my head so it wouldn’t slam into the van ceiling on every bump. The views became Real again, driving out of toy-house-town simulation FiDi, and then the bridges were glowing and the streets were full of snow and I was writing on my phone, kind of just humming to myself and mostly just saying the same things in my head over and over and over again; everything clear and everything sweet. Cold and windy winter where the elements make me kind of lose my mind. Sober minded mania. I am drawn to these kinds of things. The thing about this winter is that everyone has been going crazy. Me first, but then I learned how to put a stop to it. Sophia gave me a white rose at the Marlton Hotel in the morning, and then I found it kind of crumpled in the recesses of my bag. Petals floating everywhere and we’d moved to a different bar by then, somewhere kind of velvety and sleek and my friends and I were the only people there. Matthew was talking about people who fabricate enemies out of neutral acquaintances who just didn’t want to be their friends. A sad sort of thing, but you can’t feel too bad about someone who decides to turn evil. Dimes Square was a two year operation to get [redacted] laid, Matthew was saying. The experiment is now over. The social experiment is now over, and now you can all go home. Wednesday, December 17 I have decided to take the rest of the winter floating and soaring. Orange leaves turning brown outside the open window. Little gold watch and swan and cross and green Dartmouth Tercentenary tile and white Lake Neuchatel winter landscape postcard propped against the windowsill. So, if clarity is the thing that is most important above all, then you know what has to give. I will play “Garden Botanum” and “Come Undone” and “When Autumn Leaves” and everything by Dougie Mcclean and watch as things become crisper and more into focus. It’s important to only make a promise once and then keep it. It’s important to not be so vague about all of it going forward. Very precise and very discerning. That can be what a winter is like. I watch the light and shadows shift and shudder off my walls and bad-feng-shua hallway for some hours. I walk to the gym and I feel normal. Water and hyperpop music and images of faces sheathed in light or maybe armor all around. The television is falling off its hinges at the gym, and so the mantras on the walls are all skewed. COMMIT TO SOMETHING. REACT TO NOTHING. I’ve been culling mantras from the internet. I’ve been making lists of all my friends and everything kind I have to say about them. I’ve been making lists of all the ways I’ve maybe wronged others but have never been wronged myself. Sitting in a basement that’s illuminated blue watching films last night. Sitting in a conversation pit all day and all night for most moments of this week. Sitting under holly and cranberry and splintering wood and dried wasps nests and flowers and everything sparkling and snowy outside, soon, next week. There’s a few more dinners before that. The last days of gluttony but everyone seems over it. Sitting around dimly lit tables and everyone keeps talking about the ways we used to be. We used to wake up with crumbling Prada purses at the foot of our beds, overflowing with candy and mascara and all the things we didn’t remember stealing the night before. We used to be at the gym before dawn. I used to get along with people who viewed things as linear. I’ve always known the happiest days of my life to be exactly what they are, even as they are happening. Slipping away. There are other things, too. What do you think your new addiction will be?, Celia asks me. Something unrelated to consumption, I tell Celia. Something kind of manic and empty?, Celia asks me. It’s not so bad to think about what you want in strictly material terms, I tell Celia Thursday, December 18 THINGS I PROCURED THIS YEAR IN STRICTLY MATERIAL TERMS Silk long sleeve Ganni top
Inline links: Silk long sleeve Ganni top
One life all at once Friday, December 19 The West Side Highway is cold and clear and empty driving home, like everyone is already gone and this night will be the last dredges of things as they were. The taxi driver is playing soft rock and the barges on the Hudson look like little houses from a distance. New York in December is like a fairytale, because most everyone leaves for real life and then you are reminded, in the lost week of the year, that none of this was ever exactly real life. There’s a red sports car doing donuts in the empty lot of Pier 76. There are three American flags blowing in the wind. Every December feels almost inconceivably distant from the one before. It’s been this way for a few years, at least, now. Mostly, this makes me feel self satisfied, and sometimes, this makes me feel sick. The wind has been crazy the past few days. It’s like a wind tunnel, specifically, driving through midtown. The river is churning. The wind is making everyone insane. I wake up to yellow overhead lights left on overnight, and they look particularly warm cast against the winter sun that filters through my windows. No curtains. In my dream, I was sitting in a Starbucks somewhere foreign, waiting on a bench next to two girls whom I did not know. The coffees were taking a while, and so the baristas kept on offering up shared bread. Something to compensate. The loaves of bread were huge and warm. The barista was throwing them overhand over the counter. The bread was soaring through the air and then landing on the floor. The other girls around me were scooping up the loaves and devouring them with their hands. They were breaking the bread in half and then tearing off a morsel for me. That landed on the floor, I was saying. Everyone shrugging. Looks of disgust. I always dream in mundanities. Wearing athleisure and mixing potions this morning, like matrixyl and Argireline and Evian water full of bubbles and microplastics and wind through the open window blowing all the dust around. I watched all the energy come roaring back for each and every false start these past few months, but it’s been a pause in the ebb and flow, now. I like when things are fascinating. Three books from the party are lying on my glass table in the center of my floor. The Champ is Here and Season of the Rat and a book called Alligator, all bought from some place called CASH 4 GOLD. Because the glass table is so big, and the room is so small, the table creates a disproportionate presence. I wonder what will change, once the glass table is gone. Bundled up and then drifted outside to procure a celsius at the bodega and now I am home, again. Listening to Kali Uchis play off my tinny computer speakers from my playlist that reminds me of hot dry desert air and CRYSTALS. Making plans that fifty-percent chance I will then cancel. Trying to finish my Florida, Massachusetts story but the tone requires a kind of gothic and spooky vibe that I am entirely unable to access right now. Everything at Los Angeles Apparel is five dollars, and so I spend the afternoon being gluttonous online. Purchasing a white tube top and a black fine jersey long sleeve and two a-line skirts and some shimmering silver earrings. Purchasing a red circle scarf for Iris, too, because she left her brand new red circle scarf in the basement at my brand new job, and I said I would find it for her but couldn’t. Unsure if I will tell her I have found the scarf, or admit to procuring a new one online. I think I will just hand it over and say nothing. Celia calls, and I tell her about cleaning my windows and live blogging my day. Careful, Celia says. It’s a good idea to talk about things like architecture, or strange observations. It is probably not a good idea to start live blogging your days. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO It’s the most program-less week of the year, and so I’m taking a week off the event call. Watch The Shop Around The Corner and make Sabayon
Inline links: The Shop Around The Corner, Sabayon
Lost Week
January 08, 2026 · Original source
REDACTED resolutions for the benefit of oneself and others Friday, December 26 I woke up to it like a snow globe outside. The type of storm that is hard to describe unless you are me, waking up surrounded on all sides by everything soft and quiet and shimmering in a room that has always been yours. Everything coated white and sweet and branches out my window still heavy from the fresh cover of the storm. Looking at the snow through the sheen of sheer white curtains in my window. Looking at dried wild flowers rising out of fields and the pine forest past the farm shivering kind of silver and the green of the shed and the barn creating pops of color against all that bright white. And all of this is just to say that I slept peacefully through the night and waking up this morning I do feel like I can access this place and this holiday and a sense of rootedness in myself, physical form, physical home, in a way that in the past few months I have not felt capable of understanding. Last year I spent every morning at home writing: cold crisp clear morning and everything it is better than I possibly could have imagined. Last year, I took the train back to a glass apartment in the sky and floated in infinite life for a few more weeks, and then I began to scream. Laundry and writing in my google docs diary at the soapstone counter this morning. I can’t tell if the storm is silent, or if it sounds like ice and little bells. Amelia called last night to tell a different version of the usual story. I am getting so creeped out again, Amelia said. My room here is pale and quiet and blue. it is the only bedroom above which there is no attic, so I can really hear the wind. I’m not creeped out, I told Amelia. Everything about your story just feels kind of distant and strange. Driving to get coffee in the old town center and I’m not hitting anyone’s bumper as I wheel around into Cumberland Farms. Toes cold in my Bean Boots. Extremities always cold from Raynod’s Disease and avoidance of contact with rough fabrics like “wool” out of delusional distaste for “overstimulation.” The town is kind of story book snowy, too, though less so than in the fields by the house, where everything is encased and total and like a picture and a dream and one scene all at once. The scene is less all encompassing here, by noon, in town, where the heaviest parts of the snow have already started to drip down and melt. It is strange to be alone here. Wind moving quickly outside my car and I did imagine something else. I’ve imagined everything a million times over, and so I guess it’s hard to pinpoint any one scenario. Things change very quickly. It used to take my breath away and now it doesn’t. I watch a woman running in place in a phone booth like a treadmill. I watch a young dad placing pennies on the train track with his kids where the commuter rail comes through. Sitting in my car watching the trains and mostly just holding my hands up to the heat. Everything is covered in a blanket of snow. In the car, I have; almond milk latte with peppermint and sugar free vanilla, vitamin D3, vitamin C, Inositol, fish oil, black seed oil. Taking it all in big huge gulps. Taking it all and then stuffing the wrappings in my bag and resuming watching everything around me. Later, I am reading Alain de Botton Architecture of Happiness in blue hour dusk and I am in the passenger seat driving on the highway when I look up to find: it is dark. Crescent moon. The George Washington Bridge looks so beautiful, my aunt says. I’ve never seen it glow like that. It’s never been this dark, this early, on this drive, before. There’s never been a drive that was as fast and smooth and calm, as this one. Back in New York City, it smells like caution to the wind and the mania of a week that exists in a void. Rushed back from dusty fields and Winter Break to find that no one else is here. You can tell that no one else is here, because the sidewalks on the Upper West Side are piled high with snow banks, no foot prints, yellow glow from the townhouses I pass in a yellow taxi cab on my way downtown, but perhaps the lights are simulated or at the very least on a timer, because there are no shadowy figures or even moving silhouettes visible past the windows. Central Park is pitch black, covered in snow that I can’t see but it makes the outlines of things kind of rough and cartoonish. It’s not that I actually believe nothing to be real. I’m just watching the shape of things kind of morph all around me. On the last night of the Lost Week of the Year, I walk to Dr Clark for the sake of fresh air and doing the things I say I will. My apartment was quiet and clean, because I left it quiet and clean. I returned to everything totally unchanged. The quiet part was shocking, and then it was ok. The city was kind of like a winter wonderland, too, except for the snow that had already turned kind of black. On the Houston Street median strip, I was stranded amidst blurry traffic with a man in a blanket, rocking back and forth and drinking whisky from the bottle. HEY, he said. Hey, I responded. He seemed surprised, and I became immediately afraid. Whatever. Everything was normal. Cannot become cynical. Dr Clark’s is quiet, my friends texted, on my walk. I’m sorry we lied and said that Dr. Clark’s was lively, my friends said, when I arrived. You didn’t say it was lively, you said it was quiet, I responded. The bar was full of dried flowers and almost no people. Emilia brings everyone rounds of cheesecake and superba beers. Dried flowers everywhere I turn, these days. Dried flowers everywhere for those with eyes to see. Here are the things that are making me feel suspicious, I told my friends.. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Thursday, January 8 From 12:15pm and 4:15pm at Film Forum — Last chance to see Peter Hujar’s Day - “The best film in Sundance is just two people talking.” - Vulture. | Tickets here
Inline links: Film Forum, here
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.
From 8pm at Night Club 101 — An evening of performances by Volta, Kyle Scheurich, and Tanguay. DJ set to follow by shoy-li. Volta is only in New York for one week, and I’m very excited about this one. Not to miss!! | Tickets here
Inline links: Night Club 101, Volta, Tanguay, shoy-li, here
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
The Bowery Review is back. New York’s best and only humor magazine. Send pitches to theboweryreview@gmail.com
Inline links: The Bowery Review, theboweryreview@gmail.com
Yellow-all-around
February 15, 2026 · Original source
From 7pm at Elsewhere — Antics Mag hosts a fundraiser show, ft babehoven, katzpascale, trumanflyer, and talulahpaisley performing. Come support a quarterly, worker-run print music magazine based in New York City. | Tickets here
Inline links: Elsewhere, Antics Mag, babehoven, katzpascale, trumanflyer, talulahpaisley, here
Friday, February 6 I am awake and I have been for one hour. All around me, everything is pale and still and one small room and one short hallway and one light left on. One of one. One of everything. Everything is just the same. Yesterday, when I woke up, it was yellow all around. I woke up in the country yesterday, and the first thing that I noticed was all that yellow all around. Pale yellow walls. Soft yellow light. Snow reflecting golden yellow rays off a white carriage house roof, but even that part was turned sort of yellow by the early morning sun. The night before yesterday, I stayed up all night. There wasn’t much to do with all those hours, but I knew that in the morning, I’d be whisked away. Good at leaving when I remember all the things I hate. Good at coming back when I decide to get a hold of myself. I’d decided to let the night in my apartment sort of drift. I watched the sky turn dark, stay like that for a while, and then I watched it turn light again. It always kind of happens this way. In the morning, I’d packed a book bag with a suede black mini skirt, black cotton long sleeve top, toothbrush, snow boots, notebook, Off-The-Farm brand caramel protein bar. I took the B-line to the 1-line and towards the Upper West Side. On the Upper West Side, there were big french windows and snowy streets and tree branches that scratch the side of buildings and in the summer coat the whole place green. Not so much this time of year. Empty whisper benches. Powdered sledding hills in Central Park. From the Upper West Side, Laura drove me to New Jersey. A simple enough drive, but we just could not stay on track. The Hudson River was frozen over. Big white ice blocks that solidified and fractured and split. We were trying to spot a bathhouse somewhere in the suburbs of New Jersey. Is this the place to swim? we kept on asking each other, any time we passed a warehouse, or a sign that said something like Pools and Baths and Plumbing. When we got to the country, it was already dark. The driveway was lined with silver lights. I like to return to places where I have not been for years but which stay exactly the same. We lit a fire and we had salad and salmon and white wine and chocolate truffles. I was so excited to be somewhere where there was so much space. I liked the light and the quiet and the fact that there was more snow here than in the city, and I was pleased by how much I remembered. After dinner, I ran a bath in a big white bathroom. Big clear windows looking out at clear dark skies. I liked how everything felt very old, and very big, and very familiar, and very clean. I did not like how I felt a bit like a bull in a China Shop. Everything I touched returned a little less perfect than how I found it. Soap and towels left slightly off kilter. Clothes left in a pile on the floor. I fell asleep in a big white four poster bed, and I made sure to crease the comforter only slightly. I forgot to say goodnight, but no one really minded. I woke up surrounded by yellow all around. Morning, and when I pulled open yellow sheer curtains I could look out at all those skinny barren trees and lots of ice and a long driveway that stretched on and on and on. Laura came into my room and said good morning, and then she told me that she would show me how to make coffee, downstairs, soon. On the landing, there were three bedrooms, and a long hallway with a window seat lined with stuffed animals and a big window that looked out over big snow. The stuffed animals on the landing were all like little lions and zebras and all kinds of pastel and nice faces, nothing creepy. The wallpaper was all mostly white, with little blue or pink or yellow flowers peppered in between but nothing too suffocating. The snow outside the window was silky and icy and pure white and frozen over. There was a sheen over the snow. I could see, even from here, that the snow had been solidified under a layer of crust. My hair was covered in static. When I brushed my hair, I could see it literally spark. This week, I was documenting everything with compulsion. I went downstairs. Laura was working on a puzzle in the living room, where all the windows were long and clear and let the whole space flood with light. I looked out at perfect snow coated verandas. I learned how to make coffee in a chemex glass. Boiled water. Always becoming a bit bewildered in places that are quiet and beautiful and clear. I wouldn’t be friends with someone with bad aesthetic taste, my old friends used to say. My new friends, of late, had developed somewhat of a taste for conspicuous consumption. Later, Laura drove me to the train station through snowy streets and snowy backroads. We pulled away from the house and down the snowy driveway and then we drove through suburbs where everything was all Blue Mercury Skincare and Sweetgreen and farmhouses reminiscent of Boston, Chicago, Connecticut, suburbs everywhere all the same. Ladies everywhere liking Blue Mercury and Pure Barre. Laura gave me white gloves to keep for good on the train platform towards New York. You are so cold, just take and keep these, she said. Are you sure, I said, but I was already slipping the gloves onto my hands. Back in New York, I sat on a bench in Penn Station while I waited for the 1-train. Knees tucked up to chest and clothed in kind of filthy LuLu Lemon leggings. Drinking Dunkin Donuts almond milk latte with sugar free vanilla and almond and one cool-minty-zyn. Watching strangers and all sorts of scents drift by. It is the coldest winter in history or at least in recent memory, but due to sensory issues and the flattering nature of a-line skirts, all I have been wearing is sheer tights and mini dresses. When I got home, everything was very rushed, which is another thing that always tends to happen. Saturday, February 8 Following Cassandra’s confirmation, we went to a bitcoin themed bar and then to a hotel lobby. We went to a cocktail bar after that, where the drinks were made of things like clarified basil and tasted bad. I have one statement, Sam told the waiter, at the bar. Then, he asked a question. Could I have another drink? This one is very not good. In the evening, we went to Bigelow’s to buy the hair bows just like the Kennedys wore, and after that, we went to a dinner in Soho and then a tech-week-party to end the night. At the tech week party all the girls were cute and unemployed. They all made videos on the Internet and all had long-distance boyfriends. We took photos on a digital camera and smoked cigarettes on the edge of the fire escape while the boys all talked about suicidal ideation. When they ran out of liquor, I took the elevator down without saying goodbye. On the street, in the snow, playing tetris with myself in the footholds that other boots had left behind in melting ice as I tried to claw my way into a cab, I ran into an Internet Curator. He appeared out of nowhere, though my vision was already blurry, so perhaps he had been there all along. I’ve never been somewhere with so many people from TikTok in real life, the man said. Usually, I post all these people online, but tonight there were all here in real life. Made three notes in diary in yellow taxi cab home: Freedom of Indifference vs Freedom for Excellence
From 8pm at Pubkey — It’s the New York premier of KIRAC Episode 29: Whore Dialects. - “After the death of God emptied the monasteries, and hollowed out Hollywood, where can whores go to find meaning? That is the question this episode confronts. Whores have found new ways to explore truth.” | RSVP here
Inline links: Pubkey, KIRAC, Episode 29: Whore Dialects, here
West-side-highway-dog-park
March 18, 2026 · Original source
Plagiarized images of spring Saturday Everything in my room was quiet in a way that was a little bit like heaven and a little bit like hell. I lay down in bed with a Spring-2024 copy of American Affairs Magazine and I tried to read over an article about Tech Clusters and Stagnation but I ended up in AI psychosis instead. Affirm affirm affirm, my computer said. Your life seems to have solidified, my computer said. The point of it all isn’t really to be that pretty or even that kind, my computer said. The point of life isn’t love or hate, but understanding. The cycles repeat until they flip, and then they rarely return. You shouldn’t really try to understand yourself that well. You should try to resist the compulsion to share the mundanities of your everyday life and certainly of your rich-inner-world. I was supposed to shut my computer around six-pm, but the call came at five-fifty instead. The West Village was like l’heure bleue. The West Village was humid and sweet and warm and lovely. The trees were like silver skeletons, and Washington Square Park was full of teens hosting vigils for deceased foreign leaders and lookalike contests for girls with borderline-personality-disorder and presidential men. You’re in your spring coat, Max said. He had never heard that word before me. Some coats are heavy, and other coats are light, I explained. The outside of Babbo is somewhat unassuming, and the inside of Babbo is burgundy and warm and old school and sweet. The host stand is set back from the entryway and the bar is lively even at six. The whole place is basically windowless, which makes me feel like I am in a cave or on a ship or at a private party or in a nineteen-fifties-film or an architectural-dream. The menus come in small leather binders and a line drawing of a black cartoon jester carrying a bottle of wine is sketched on the first page. I am somewhat unable to typecast the demographic of the clientele here, which is interesting and somewhat rare. Everyone is quite well dressed but unassuming and of various ages though leaning-older. It is impossible to eavesdrop inside Babbo, which goes against my usual sensibilities, and aligns exactly with my dinner-sensibilities. The hostess was an older lady, because all the best restaurants have older-waitstaff-mostly. I’ll let you sit at a table and I won’t make you move, the hostess said. Everybody laughed politely and was very pleased. In the center of Babbo, there is a velvety staircase. This would be a good place for a private party, I said. The hostess led us up the velvet stairs. In the upstairs of Babbo, there is a burgundy room and a big bar and white-table-cloths and the waiter poured city-water out of metal-watering-pails and into glass-cups. The specialty martini is made very-dry. Can you make it very-dirty, I asked. We can do anything you want, the waiter said. The waiter was an old Italian man. He wrote down the martini order and our names on a napkin. MARTINI ORDER, the napkin read. You’ve been here before, the waiter said. Once, I said. You look familiar, he said. I’m not, I said. The waiter told a story about the time that all the old French restaurants closed and never returned. Only the Italian restaurant remained, he explained. You come as a child then perhaps on a date at eighteen then with family then a wedding, he said. Coming back and coming back and coming back over and over again. Anytime the water glass would run low, the waiter would appear with the metal watering pale, and the glass would be filled up. The bread came with ricotta and fresh olive oil and sea salt. Squid ink pasta and branzino and broccoli. Two martinis and a cappuccino after dinner and I melted the sugar cubes on the surface of the coffee and then I ate them with a spoon. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, all the staff said, when we left. The theme of the magazine launch was print revival and kosher pickle martinis. There were girls scout cookies on the counter, and the vibe was one of general mystique, though all I could make out when the editor spoke was something about “fiction” and “Elon Musk.” Saoirse and Olivia were behind the bar, and they were looking like angels wearing white and being kind. The late winter hadn’t really felt like real life, so it was nice and quite affirming to make eye contact with my friends. You’re the best contract employee in the world, the girls assured each other. You’re the best girlfriend ever. You’re the sweetest girl to ever walk this Earth. The magazine was free and so I helped myself and left by midnight. I can psyop myself, and then I can do whatever I want. My process is I write everything that happened and then I filter it into obfuscation one-million-times. My process is to invent my own school of movement and adopt a moral code. My process is totally against religious iconography as vague gestures towards false meaning, but totally pro iconography when one’s belief in something is complete. My self psyop sometimes looks like self experimentation, or bandaid-solution, or destruction and construction and being social-chair. I tread very lightly, and when I act according to things I hate or things I miss, it goes about exactly how you’d expect it to. Here is something: call up my parents and I read my diaries aloud on my phone. Everything seems like the end of the world in dizzy night, and: The boys hands were bloody in the morning, and; I ordered coffee and milkshake and breakfast sandwich in, and: everyone seems so fragile in the sunshine, and: One thing about being here, hazy in the sun is I feel less aggressive. In New York, the sun keeps coming back and going away and I love it when my friends and I talk about the weather. I order green juice and cold brew in the morning, and it’s quiet and cold-again. I order chopped-green-goddess-sandwhich and I seek intellectual-stimulation and I wear a brown-leather-jacket to the west-side-highway-dog-park. My process is everything-beautiful-all-the-time and iphone photography and whenever my perspective is called into question I can call up Amelia who can affirm how happy I really was all the time, there, and sometimes now. She’s totally straight-edge, and she always has a good sense of the way things were and are and are heading. Sunday Sitting on the couch in an empty apartment watching the gray sky turn light in the courtyard and listening to the garbage trucks fire up on the somewhat distant street. It feels like waking up in New York as a child, right now. Awake too early. Jet lagged, almost. At a magazine launch during evening fading night in a white house with framed art and long french windows and yellow trim, a man was telling me that the only good thing about not growing up in New York City is that you get to experience the thing that it is to understand the city for the first time and to let it consume you. If you grow up in New York, then you understand the city all along and this is mostly a great thing, he was saying, but what about that feeling when you arrive and you’re older and you understand a place like this for the very first time. There were daffodils all throughout the apartment, and carpeted floors over wood that stretched back into room after room like a maze. Everyone was calling each other “dear” and there was a sense of things as generally boisterous but not overblown. I like older people who love New York. I like people that are sober-minded, fun, and rarely cynical. The people at the party wore pearls and black and ballet flats and lived uptown and they kept on asking me about New York. Do you love New York, they kept on asking. And I said yes and I meant it and they seemed pleased The air conditioner is running. The sky is gray and sweet. I always am very aware of causation, and I know how to understand what makes something bad and what makes something good. I don’t think it’s narcissistic to try to understand your own intentions but one shouldn’t go too much deeper than that. I would never betray anyone I love. I want ginger beer for breakfast lunch and dinner. I want hydrangeas in the apartment. I want to fall asleep in a room sized bed and be airlifted into daylight and clothed in blue sweaters. I want to be dosed with soylent but not lobotomized. Last night, at the magazine launch, a man was telling me about the story of his life. I lived across from Jeffrey Epstein, he said. I’m a lawyer, he said. I know hundreds of people, he explained. Do you know any secrets, I asked. The girls never looked underage to me, he shrugged. Isabel pulled me away. We walked down the long and wooden hallway and we stood by open windows. The figures across the street looked almost cartoonish, running like shadowy stick figures down the paths in hazy dusk in Central Park. So winter is great until March comes around, and I am not so ready for spring equinox and abandon-interiority and things moving faster and faster and faster. Everything material feels kind of cartoonishly good. Everything on my computer feels kind of cartoonishly evil. Cassandra and I bought big blue books full of curses, and now we are going to open them on the floor of an apartment on the Upper West Side and wear cable-knit sweaters and assume invincibility until proven otherwise. Since Darby gave me a blue heart-shaped bowl and an evil-eye bracelet that I haven’t taken off since, I’ve realized that I need to hold my cards closer to my chest. I put myself to sleep at dusk tonight because there are colors flashing in front of my open eyes like hallucinations and signs of delirium. I wake up on the couch shivering under my spring coat. Little white dried flowers all around me. A new wooden toothbrush propped on one clean shelf in an otherwise crowded cabinet. I wait for midnight so the new day can begin, and then at twelve-oh-one I say thank you to God one million times. I go outside for a walk in humid winter air. I go inside, and I’m alone again. I go to a building that looks “new” in Tribeca, and I go to a building that looks “old”. I interrupted a meeting, and I was given plastic bottles of fireball behind the bar. My friends were all talking about picking up new hobbies. A boy outside told me about adult gymnastics. I told the girls about rock climbing. I considered aerial silks. I considered French lessons and online shopping and recommending books-to-buy-boys-who-are-just-getting-into-reading. I watched a video essay about how not to let the moon affect your moods. I watched a video essay about undersea cables. So, February was fine. Cold and a little bit dreary and Iris keeps on telling me that above all she considers herself to be pragmatic, which seems to be working out for her and so I’m taking notes. I keep on deciding to just become nihilistic about it, but even when I don’t set alarms, I always wake up in time to do the things I should. DIRECTORY Wednesday, March 18 from 4:45pm at Metrograph —El Sur (1983, Victor Erice) screens. I have a special fondness for the landscapes of Northern Spain and the only beer I like is estrella, per, my Galician friend Rebecca. This film is not about spanish beer, but rather a spanish girl by the same name. “it’s half a film that contains a whole world of wonders.” Thursday, March 19 evening plans: MANHATTAN: From 7:30pm at Night Club 101 — Lubov says THE INTERNET MADE ME DO IT. A night of readings and music with Ada Donnelly, Alex Bienstock, Marble Index, Kyle Sullivan Dobbs, Lorry Kikta, Melissa Seward, Angel Money, and Yuri NYC. | RSVP here
Inline links: Metrograph, El Sur, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j-tT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0957633a-b82a-41e1-80ef-d921967efdf4_1512x1008.png, Night Club 101, Lubov, here

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