Collected Agenda Scene Wiki

Florida, Massachusetts (03)

17 min read

Florida, Massachusetts (03)

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 en

Metadata

Category Map

Books

Brands

Events

Films

Music

Organizations

People

Places

Publications

Venues

Full Primary Source Text

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. - After that, I read an evangelical Christian self help book that I found at the free library and picked out blind. Read while lying by the fire and talking with my father, who was reading an article about Greenland. This is about how Greenland was totally destroyed , he is saying. This is about people who hunt whales and polar bears and lived untouched by other cultures for many many many years. - After that, I made breakfast of granola and cereal and cut up fruit and I cleaned it up and then after that I practiced twirls and dances and I texted my friends and I looked at photos on The Internet and did not feel even one bit like I was about to scream. I did not feel like I was going to scream, because I was sitting by the fire with my family and things are better and sweet here. - I have begun to build myself a beautiful life, starting mostly today. - After that, dad suggested that we drive to Florida, Massachusetts, and so we did. We got in the car and we drove through Williamstown and the Purple Valley where the skeletons of the trees were bare and bright and lovely and up towards Florida, Massachusetts. - In Florida, Ma, in 1982, there was a disappearance and perhaps a serial killer or at least girls vanishing into the forests like Shirley Jackson wrote about in 1960. My dad was getting very into investigating the true crime of it all. We drove past the Maple Terrace Motel and the Williamstown Motel and then onto a long stretch of road that shoots straight into the slant of the mountain and straight around the hairpin-turn. I had told my father about my story idea investigating the creepy sort of aura in the collective consciousness of places like these, and he had told me not to talk about it too much because it did freak everyone else out. And then he’d got to researching. - It’s a very sad story and so I don’t want to be glib. My dad had mapped it all out for me like a detective. - Florida, Massachusetts is very small and beautiful in its way. We drove past the house where there was a disappearance in the eighties. Number 23, my dad said. And then we found the fire station and the gravestones and a town hall where we counted the cars parked out front one through twenty-two. The town borders are marked with a sign of a snowman saying Welcome to Florida, and the town’s one store was closed though possibly under construction. My dad rolled down the windows and asked a fireman what the store was going to become. The fireman smiled and shrugged and said I am not so sure. Then we drove through more empty birch forests and past hunters in big colored jeeps and we drove to the Blue Vista Motel. - There was not one thing I missed in the whole world, as I became very consumed in the sadness of thinking about things like disappearances and evil and the happiness of watching Davey-the-dog eat biscuits in the backseat as the purple sunset stretched over hazy and fading and empty empty empty mountains and and sky and streets. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO If you’re in Miami, Sam Falb has you covered with Your Miami Art Week Social Calendar . For everyone else… Tuesday, December 2 - From 6pm - 10pm at Racket NYC — La WATCHPARTY hosts a viewing of the Chanel show. First free cig and free drink. A nice place to be as the snow storm begins. - From 6pm - 7:30pm at P&T Knitwear — Daniel Temkin celebrates the release of his book Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code . Tickets here . - From 6:30pm at Scandinavia House — a special screening featuring three eligible films for the 98th Academy Awards: the tender relationship drama The Love That Remains , and shorts O (Iceland) and On Weary Wings Go By (Estonia). Tickets here - From 7pm - late at TJ Byrnes — Montez Press and Perfectly Imperfect host the NYC launch of Dorian Electra’s new book ART . Readings and performances by Dorian Electra, Jane Balfus, Sam Rolfes, Corriane Ciani, Julian Stephan Ribeiro, Andrea Mauri, FKA Prince, Ruby Justice, Nicholas Christensen, Lulu West, Izzy Casey, Lewis Grant, and Count Baldor. - From 10pm at Night Club 101 — Ruby Joan , Veronica , and November Girl perform. This will be a great show. Tickets here . - LOS ANGELES : From 7:30pm at Airliner — Johnny St Grace performs. If I was in LA, this is where I would be. Wednesday, December 3 - From 7pm - 9pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — MESSAGES by Matthew Gasda returns - “A work that reflects on the importance of human relationships in our lives, asking us “who would you get on the ark with?” | Tickets here . Additional shows: December 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - From 7pm - late at The Monroe — Nick Dove hosts The Whole Sick Reading , ft Audrey Snow Matzke, Drew Rivera, Guy Dess, Justin amp, Matilda Lin Berke, and Tom Watters. - From 7:30pm at Night Club 101 — The Besnard Lakes and Military Genius are live. | Tickets here . - From 10pm - 4am at Paul’s Baby Grand — Our Wedding returns. A new and fun party! - From 11:30pm at Nublu Classic — New Legacy presents After Party. Sounds by Kamaal Idji & New Legacy. Special Guest DJ Cautious Clay. Thursday, December 4 - From 5:30pm (RSVP for location) — First Things celebrates St Nicholas Day. RSVP here . - From 8:30pm at Night Club 101 — The Aleph throws a party. Music by August Lamm, Andy Henley, and Katja. Readings by Genevieve Goffman, Peter Vack, Jesse Singal and Madeline Cash. Dance by Beatriz Castro. DJs Emma X, Starlotte, Lee Cash, and Nina Tarr. Hosted by Cassidy Grady, Juliette Jeffers, Julia Cooke, and Patricia Torvalds. - From 8:55 - 11:15pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Watch the playwriting process in motion and listen to a live reading of the FIFTH draft of “The Last Days of Downtown” by Matthew Gasda. Tickets here . Friday, December 5 - From 7pm at 94 St Marks Place — HOT WORLD reading, ft Peter BD, Em Brill, Rebecca Warlick Cooke, Sam Cooke, David Fishkind, Genevieve Goffman, Jack Ludkey, Alma Pannier, Ryan Peterson and Arjuun Srivtasa. - From 8pm at Bowery Ballroom — Sorry Band performs. | Tickets here - From 8pm - midnight at 53 Scott Ave — New Inc and Jaboukie Young-White host a following party, continuing in their tradition of inviting a comedian to invent a fictional business and throw their staff a holiday party. Saturday, December 6 - From 10am - 4pm at Goose Garage — There’s a holiday market , ft Vagante Coffee Bar, Pretty Baked Sourdough Microbakery, pastries, Bloody Mary Bar by Quincy, SOUR MILK yoghurt. The market continues Sunday. - 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 . - From 10pm - 1am at Jade Bar — God Loves Party Girls turns one. Ft Kyle Whiting, Your Friend, and Elle Xoxo

Graph View

Backlinks