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San Benito

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San Benito

Article

San Benito is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 23, 2024 and March 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Driving to an airbnb in the hills, somewhere a little above San Benito”; “I can picture the airbnb in San Benito, the eight or so bedrooms”; “Then, there’s the turn through San Benito”. It most often appears alongside El Salvador, Bitcoin, Confessions.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: August 23, 2024
  • Last seen: March 31, 2025

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 #8
August 23, 2024 · Original source
Tired, when I arrive in San Salvador. There’s Pizza Hut and Papa John’s side by side in a humid lot outside the airport. My boyfriend is sampling both. One is so much better, he says. I don’t remember which. Driving to an airbnb in the hills, somewhere a little above San Benito, past coconut stands and then lots and lots of fast food, weird fast food, Auntie Anne’s and the like, the type of fast food you don’t see a lot anymore and the buildings are all crystal clear, glistening clean. Driving past three embassies (Qatar, Germany, and Palestine) and then everything becomes green and quiet and the houses are built into hills, bigger mountains in the distance, the view becomes so beautiful.
Inline links: San Salvador
January continues
January 19, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Sunday, January 12 Ruby and I go to Bar Belly for dinner. Can we move to a table away from the bar, Ruby asks the waitress. Sitting at the bar is bad for your posture and alignment, she explains. This is another thing she's been learning at witch school. It seems that at witch school, you learn to sit and stand and then by proxy, to eat and sleep and breathe and think. Fruit and honey for breakfast, feet on the ground when you are seated with an unsupported spine. I am craving spiritual guidance, and so I soak this up like a sponge. I want to be taught how to be. This is how you wake up. This is how you shift your feet out of bed, this is how you land on the wood floor, toes first, the arches of your feet, then heels. The truth of it is my movements are products of my best but often misguided judgment. Guesses, really. For all I know, you should wake up in the morning upside down. Palms on the ground first. Heels then arches then toes. I want to learn how to be divine, but there are so many shamans and they all know best. God forbid I become sacrilegious. I certainly know myself to be fringing on this at times. Even the mention of shamans.... Ruby and I were going to go to El Salvador on Tuesday, but then I’m thinking about how I should read more before I continue my research on the ground. I visited El Salvador this summer. Later, halted my story about crypto-charter-state-red-light-therapy-benevolent-dictatorship etc etc etc. A result of overstimulation and laziness - I should deepen my roots before I return to them. Later, I'll go later. David sends me an X Post: “Wish we lived in 1970s media economy so esquire or playboy could fly me to El Salvador and publish my 10,000-word marginally-coherent slice-of-life coverage of the crypto convention that ends with a guy in a hot tub saying something accidentally zeitgeisty.” Ruby and I go to Forgetmenot. There’s a dog behind me, a big white husky, I hold out my hand to pet him and he gives me his paw. He does this a few times. He’s trained, I’m sure, to expect a reward in response but we’ve ordered a grill plate, there’s only halloumi left, I don’t want to poison the poor thing. Ruby posts a picture of me with the dog, but I’m in my big puffy jacket, and it mostly becomes just a picture of the dog. She tags my name on the screen. David sends me a screenshot of the picture. “DID YOU TURN INTO A DOG???” he asks. I order David ice cream from Figo when I get home. I ate half his bread and butter even though I've been so Ray Peat and even though after, I’ve been so Keto. I've been drinking again, hence the bread. Not a lot, but I was sober for a week, and the three drinks feel jarring. I've decided to stop causing problems. I've decided to get a job at a restaurant. I like the service industry, because the job is intensely exterior. There are many things so close to me of true significance, and I'm sick of ignoring them in favor of acting like a grasping freak. Monday, January 13 And so, you decide to redecorate again. Look at the layout of this place. There’s so much potential. There’s a big marble table and it’s cramping every corner. It’s cramping the light from the window. It’s cramping the yellow golden light that is framing our mirror. I go downstairs quickly, the light will be gone soon. I want to get a flight tomorrow, leave with my friends and find clarity in the hot humid heat, but it doesn’t feel like I'll be absorbing myself in something more - it feels like escape, and I haven’t earned this decadence. I’ve been deliberating all day. I’ve been clutching my evil eye in case I do decide to travel. All my friends wear evil eyes, too. It’s a strange coincidence - something most people I'm drawn to share, not intentional. I'm not religious, but this is different. Adele keeps a drawer in her apartment full of evil eyes, stocked to the brim in case one charm coincidently shatters. She'll never have to go unprepared. I take a test today. Sent, received, complete, returned. It’s so thrilling to do something I’m supposed to do. If we got rid of the marble table…. If we lined the walls with floor pillows below the windows, their tufted fabric landing well lower than the horizon line even when stacked…. I can imagine the furniture gone. Me, staring clearly across the room, one wall to another. I'm imagining all the clutter dissipated. I imagine it would erase some sense of static. I can imagine my hypothetical week in El Salvador, but I need to learn how to think about something outside of myself, even when I’m here. It would be better there. I can picture the airbnb in San Benito, the eight or so bedrooms, the open air layout that big homes in warm climates often share, arches bleeding into courtyards, steps built into hills, unclear where one room becomes another, wind and heat lightning swirling around you and raising your hair as your walking, even through the kitchen, even ostensibly inside. I want to swim in a big clear pool over a city that is now vaguely familiar but still, not really mine. I want to finish the story I started. New England Winter. I need to learn how to sort things through while staying put. David and I go to Estela for dinner. It’s our anniversary. He tells me not to say anything online about it. Private life should stay private, he says, but I’m writing it anyway. Estela is nice. It’s the sister restaurant of Altro Paradiso. My friend, Madelyn works there. Estela is smaller, cozier, you have to buzz to get into the building and then it’s up some steps, it feels like you’re in an apartment, it feels like you’re in Berlin. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but I imagine it feels a bit like Copenhagen, too. “I like more old timey restaurants,” David says. “Me too,” I say. “But sometimes isn’t it nice to be in a restaurant that feels like Copenhagen? David agrees. He’s never been to Copenhagen either. Altro Paradiso is brightly lit, whereas Estela is dim. Stella - Latin for Star. Etc. The distinction feels a little obvious, but then, I’m being a little particular. Estela is small plates. Romantic. You can tell because you have to buzz the door to get in, and because the lighting is really dark. They put us in a little alcove by the shelves and shelves of wine. We order iberico ham, bread and butter, endive salad, crab with celery root (the best dish), squid ink fried rice with little bits of squid, steak with elderberry sauce. I order a Tito's martini, but I’m told they don’t serve Titos here. I’m told they have one martini with vodka that “tastes like smirnoff” ($22) and another with vodka that’s way better and far preferable (paraphrased) ($30). Our waitress is peppy. “We’ll take the Smirnoff,” David says. “She’s nice,” I say, later. “Domineering,” David says. Later, the waitress rolls her eyes a little when she asks me how my martini is. She smiles when I say good. I believe she is sincere in her hope that I’m happy as I guzzle up the fruits of my lowbrow taste. It really is a lovely meal. I don’t mean to be cynical. I tell David he should tell them it’s our anniversary so we can have something free, and he tells them “it’s our anniversary, can we have dessert on the house.” Then, I’m embarrassed, but they bring us dessert (with a price) and champagne (on the house). Tuesday, January 14 I’ve been working on maintaining constant motion. “An object in motion will stay in motion,” I’ve been telling anyone that will listen. I walk in place all day, and then I walk through Washington Square Park at night, freezing. I make sure to do an extra lap to circle under the arch, all sparkling and illuminated and icy. I’m thirty minutes late to the Post-Doomerism talk at Gonzo’s, and this feels like an important one to me because I used to base my entire framework of thought around mitigating dread through a surrender to the inevitability of fates worse than death. It’s a terrible way to view the world - juvenile if nothing else, but also aesthetically and morally barren, limiting, a nihilistic obsession with the present does lead to destruction (yourself and others), no matter how many delusions you harbor about enlightenment, and about time and therefore preservation as false constructs. You can’t be nihilistic if you believe in good and evil, and I do believe in good and evil, so it was never going to hold up. Post Doomerism The lecture is just starting when I exit the elevator. The talk is between Chris Small (founder of Amazon Labor Union), PradaHorseShoe (founder of Russian Cosmism Circle NYC), Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll Podcast), and Geo Yankey (Comedian) “Russian Cosmists think that Marx doesn't take it far enough,” Amana explains. “Marxism wants to abolish capitalism, religion, the family…. but what about abolishing the OG bummer - death.” The point of the talk seems to be to present a sort of leftist vision of tech accelerationism. Capitalist Realism, the parts of the industrial revolution deemed actually good, nuclear fusion (clean and limitless energy which imitates the sun) instead of nuclear fission, fossil fuels , etc etc etc. The audience, on the other hand, is mostly composed of people I recognize from other downtown events - this one taking on an uncharacteristic and somewhat academic sincerity. “Hypothetically, heat death could occur before we run out of fuel,” a girl sitting next to me murmurs at one point, evidently at least somewhat convinced by technology’s capacity for limitless good. I try to conjure a sense of what she’s imagining in my mind's eye - create enough clean energy, and you could be driving your car one day when the whole universe just implodes. This isn’t aspirational to me. Longevity even, has never been particularly aspirational to me, although increasingly moreso, I’m increasingly less cynical. I appreciate the sincerity of the lecture. I appreciate some of the ideas they put forward, too. It’s an irony-pilled audience and they're sitting in a deeply earnest room. I slip out during the Q&A - overwhelmed, honestly, and I’m late to another function. I’m handed a gin and tonic in the Lower East Side. I’m talking about the Russian Cosmism lecture. “Lenin tried that and 20 million people died,” I am told. “I don’t really know enough,” I say. I’m sent a documentary about The Tyranny of Scientism. I order some things like the books by Nick Zurnig and Mark Fisher. It’s good to be objective. The night slips onward. It’s rude to talk about accelerationism at a party. Wednesday, January 16 It's slightly warmer in New York today. It's still cold, but it's less frigid, I'm walking through Soho typing, I'm walking to Equinox, I'll finish writing this on the treadmill, I had such a fun night last night although I do feel terribly guilty about squandering my health and my beauty and my soul every time I get drunk. I was such a good drunk, though. I adore my friends so deeply. I adore my new friends. I think they are my best friends. I’m trying not to quantify everything. There are names of people I love spinning through my mind, now. Why order things. Some people exhaust me, and then there are other people who don’t. I’ve found new friends who live artfully while occupying a natural state that is absorbed with the physical world, recently. How lucky for me. I don’t want to use my volatility as a bludgeon with which to bend people to my whims. Good thing I don’t feel particularly volatile this week. It’s best to consider these while outside of them. Objective introspection: am I doing a good job? WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Gofundme + LA Fire Resources here. Sunday, January 19 From 6pm - midnight at EARTH — Jordan Castro and Cluny present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.
Inline links: X Post, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!C7a6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5b47129c-0bc4-49be-9951-68a8a3f58ac6_1179x1372.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RkCJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb4a64bf-f664-428e-854a-221b40a26109_1536x2048.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XxFb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59a8c887-c1bc-4090-9568-92185cc4e0c1_1412x1420.png, Amazon Labor Union, PradaHorseShoe, Russian Cosmism Circle NYC, Doomscroll Podcast, Geo Yankey, Capitalist Realism, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kDE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7220533-39ee-4944-a185-b7983b1500e9_1600x1066.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!abSY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb12cd88-f058-4032-ba7f-a91514034d33_1600x1066.jpeg, here, EARTH, Jordan Castro, Cluny
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

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