WHAT I DID
Monday, August 18
Sitting at the dining room table with a breeze coming through the screen door and white hydrangeas all around and I have decided to stay for a while. I may stay here all week. I can control my consciousness. It’s my consciousness after all.
Things feel a bit more tentative and also a bit harsh in the glass sort of way, now. In a wood house by the ocean, I become a bit militant about it. I begin the day - hang by my finger tips from a metal road in the forest. Open the fridge in the moonlight and pull out a brita filter, lemons, orange juice. My dad and I drove down here a few days ago. He cooked dinner on the beach and he was proud to only use wood on the grill, no charcoal, it’s overpriced at Cumberland Farms anyways and a bit of a scam. There were other things, too. The dog bit the neighbor. The quaker church burned down. The cycles repeated and I suppose, I used to prefer to dig my feet into the ground and scream than reckon with any sort of silence.
They brought the boxes over before I left New York City. Omniscent forces. I don’t really know. I wrote a check and left a tip and they gave me high-fives and the new place felt a bit too caged, perfect rectangle, white walls and bright lights before I swapped them out for something warmer. I’d become a bit spoiled at least when it came to living conditions. I’d never lived in a place of my own before. I came back to the ocean because, of course, this is the sort of place where summer storms are nicer. Summer storm of the nicest kind outside. I can’t seem to help it. This repeating of myself.
Well, the news is smaller now. They are selling the mini-van but not until they haul my sister off to Bushwick, and the touch-and-go kind of violent coordination of the summer has finally slowed and now stopped altogether thank god and, I will be in bartending school for the last week of August and I start my mornings now hanging by my finger tips from a metal rod in the forest or, at least I will do this for as long as I stay out of Godforsaken New-York-City. I played these songs on the drive down the coast
Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac
Ventura Highway - America
The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
I’d Love to Change the World - Ten Years After
A Horse with No Name - America
Standing in the Doorway, One of Us Must Know (Sooner of Later) - Bob Dylan
I wished I was somewhere else. I remembered that one must not rush a second. I sat at the dining room table. I will sit here for a while.
Made chocolate chip cookie with blueberry jam and a side of diet coke for breakfast. Walked for a while in hot humid sunlit ocean heat on the road that burned my feet even through J-Crew Flip Flops. Thinking of things in shapes I cannot visualize because I’m kind of stupid in this way - visualization and the like. Can’t rotate a square or a triangle in my mind for example. But thinking of things in swirls more than lines. Voids and repetition and such as opposed to infinity. This is fine. In another life, this probably would have bothered me. Honestly, this is fine.
Tuesday, August 19
There is one road here and it runs about one mile long surrounded by crab apples and ocean and I will walk down it, up and down and up and down a few times this morning. This morning, which starts late, more like afternoon, really, because I cannot stop stewing and being up all night.
Train back to New York tomorrow morning because I still cannot stay put. And all my energy came bursting back. The restless kind. Energy for projects. I must be more consistent here, write some acquaintances inquiring about being my Guests perhaps, finish the whole El Salvador thing which is really closer than ever and then there is the book club and schools of all sorts of kinds and my new small-box-apartment to sort and clean. And so many things came broken, there, so there are people to call about that. It smells like basil in the living room, and it is strange how quickly everything changes. Everyone besides those in my peripheral vision becomes kind of Faceless, now, which is not great and makes me feel vaguely guilty. Unsure how to repay my gratitudes. Very sure of the sort of person I don’t want to be, but now that we have defined good and evil, what gives?
My dad tells me about a man who is an Arrowhead Expert. His dad made him an arrowhead at three years old and from then on he was hooked. Lives in Padanaram Village. Carves arrowheads and bows and arrows like one they found in the walls in a house nearby a while back. A weapon from a couple centuries ago. They killed a man and hid his bow and arrow in the walls and now my father’s friend is carving recreations. I am half listening. We opened a bottle of N/A Wine at dinner on the porch on accident and first everyone was repulsed by the flavor, then a little bit irritable I imagine from lingering inhibition. My dad found a bottle of old port in the drawer of the cabin. Opened for forty years but not yet turned to vinegar or anything sour and so we swapped out the mocktail stuff for this, as well for chenin blanc I think, don’t really remember.
I like dinners like this, where I sit on a porch that I have always known and look out at purple skies, once-in-a-lifetime-skies, they wrote an article in the News about the skies, today. What do I like? Well, I like beautiful things. I like blueberries in a big jar and ham with tarragon aioli for lunch and I like botanical gin at dinner and strange characters and the things in myself I am prideful of like; an eye for beauty and generally boundless optimism, though I am trying to be less prideful. Trying to be less slothful. Really got a handle on the whole thing of rage, but that doesn’t mean that other problems don’t remain. I like when it is cold and August is over. I like it here. I like that I cannot quite tell the pace of time here; fast or slow, that is. I wish I could stay here forever. I’m not sure why I can’t. False consciousness, I guess. And; you can have anything you want but you can’t have everything you want. Amelia told me that. Amelia told me that over and over and over again.
Wednesday, August 20
What do I like here? That it is finally cold, and I remember almost nothing. That I put warm bulbs in the new apartment and there is not too much glass in the windows and I can take out the trash, wake up early, turn off the air conditioner here in formally-broiling-New-York-City. I like to take a kind of mathematical approach to things. An out of character yet fun sort of game-theory method. Thinking about things like physical form and machine-learning. Niocimanide and Voss Water. A very clean apartment. A very clean studio apartment with criss-crossed white and wood ceilings that are fine to wake up early under. The night terrors totally went away this summer. Like a switch, they are gone. This is a relief, but also; I hope I am still in touch with other realms.
Thursday, August 21
Back in reality, where things are about fifty-fifty good and bad. Back at Caffe Reggio where the iced tea and caprese salad are nice even if the rest of the menu items aren’t. And the music is not too loud and the art is old and lovely and autumn is rearing its ugly head with events, events, events. I am here to tell you all about events. I am here to tell you What You Should Do.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Thursday, August 28
From 6pm - 9pm at Yve Yang — Art in General Benefit Auction celebrates its return. Bid on works from nearly 50 artists from around the world, including Marin Abramovic x Kreemart, Josh Kline, Isaac Chong Wai, and more.
From 7pm - 9pm at ArtXnyc — Over the Moon opens - a play by Matthew Gasda about “ about the fear of being seen, the seduction of detachment, and the ache for a love that might actually undo you.” Party to follow at Funny Bar.
From 7:30pm - 11pm at Nightclub 101 — Fight Club returns with a reading and party. Ft reading of Off The Rails - a new pilot by Lukas Battle, followed by music by Julian La Madrid.
From 10pm at Club Bohemia — Tour de LES returns. Four djs, zero bikes. Ft Callie Reiff, Raquel Michel, Kelsey, and fifi.
Friday, August 29
From 7pm - 9pm at ArtXnyc — Another performance of Over the Moon
From 7:30pm at Baker Falls — A Night of Male Readings, ft Mike Crumplar, Sam Venis, Ross Barkan, Jonah Howell, Chris Jesu Lee, David Polonoff, and Nick Dove.
From 10pm - late at Club Bohemia — Label presents MoMA PS5 and friends.
From 11pm - 4am at Studio — Donna Francesca and Tim Lucent host a party. This is a cool new club under Maison Nur that I’m excited about. - “dress the part. no effort, no entry.”
LONDON - From 7:30pm at Rose Lipman Building — Soho Reading Series returns with The Lonely Crowd Gala, ft readings from Stephanie Wambugu, Andrew Durbin, Susie Boyet, John-Baptiste Oduor, Francesca Wade, and Orlando Reade.
Saturday, August 30
From 5pm at Dear Friends Books — Wind Up Mice presents an evening of poetry, in celebration of issue 03. Hosted by Ashley Escobar. Featuring Matt Proctor, Max Hamilton, Mirana Gershoni, Phoebe Brown, Sachi Parish, Yesol Kim, and James Quigley.
From 7pm - 9:30pm at ArtXnyc — Another performance of Over the Moon
From 10pm - late at Berlin — Kettle (Stop1) and Paganelli (Village Radio) present Village Radio - “decades of basement, house, techno, whatever moves you.”
From 10pm - late at Laissez Fair — Donna Franesca is joined by Callie Reiff and Ella Rose for Labor Day Wknd With The Girls.
Sunday, August 31
LONDON - From 7:30pm at Beasy Soho — Casual Encounters presents On The Rag London Launch Party. Ft Super Short Readings, and copies of “America’s second greatest tabloid” for sale. | RSVP mandatory: http://www.casualencountersz.com/rsvp.html
From 8pm at KGB — Cassidy and Chloe host Confessions.
Great playlist
#59!!! <3