WHAT I DID
Sunday, October 26
Pale light through the small glass windows over which I have not bought curtains. Craving solitude and cleanliness and esoteric healing and then I get it; cocoon myself alone with MoonJuice potions and BlueLand Cleaning Supplies and three purple sweaters and four cream sweaters and all the silence in the world, courtyard facing windows, even the fan and the air conditioner are off and so the circumstances are exactly as I said I wanted. Tucked myself away to think about things here, and now the silence is starting to pool around me. Now, I am starting to feel upset. Chronic discontentment. There is really nothing more irredeemable than this. You wake up in a small room with a faux thatched roof and white sheets and a gold cross and minimal art and a sense that there is no air left. This is all right. The streets are still early morning empty. The shower is sparkling clean. You imagine that on the other side of these walls there are infinite other apartments, all better than this. I’ve been remixing the same story for a while now. I’ve been getting worse at writing and better at being by myself. The stranger and I walked through Washington Square Park where the autumn has come and swept the air muted and clean. Red berries crunch underfoot, and the grass has died and dried hazy and the buildings are brick and brown and the puddles are brown, too, though a brown of a brighter kind. The puddles reflect and remember things, the stranger says. The stranger is very dull like this. Like to observe something is to understand it. I’ve been getting better at clarity and worse at avoiding hedonism without being a bore. I sought forgiveness that I’ll never get. Now, it is time to seek other things:
Living in a room that is sparkling clean
Assurance that I came to religion well past childhood because of a real belief in beauty and goodness and not so much because of seeking alleviation from hardship or guilt
Book of prayer
Crest whitening strips
Alice Bailey The Beacon print archives
Los Angeles Apparel blue tights
Pseudonymous writing so I can document more lurid details of my life whilst still maintaining some healthy restraint
Good health
Sobriety
Excursion to swim outdoors once it is cold enough to really make it worth it
Club sandwich in the solarium at The Marlton with Rebecca and Amelia this afternoon
Reading my fucked up little story in a very small very autumnal room in the East Village this early evening.
Smoking one cigarette with my friends outside the Jaws themed bar in Soho this late evening
A good nights sleep
Monday, October 27
I opened the window to let in the eerie and whistling wind after the reading last night and then I stayed up late, fallen leaves and pollen drifting past my headboard. Called Celia to talk about the same things all over again. Called Celia to request that she confirm my fears and delusions and certainties for the million billionth time.
I’m getting a really creepy feeling, Celia said.
Like a horror movie, Celia said.
In my earliest memories, I recall walking around with this very deep self-assuredness. I would wake up everyday feeling so certain and blessed for the absolute pureness of my heart. So when he said he understood me as perfect, it was like oh someone finally understands me the way that I understand myself, Celia said
It is important to always have pure intentions, I told Celia.
I like when people share my aesthetic sensibilities and are unfazed about the things I worry hedge towards evil, I told Celia
I’m starting to feel so creeped out, Celia told me.
Tuesday, October 28
Nothing was so creepy. I was not scared of anything anymore. I could still hear the wind through my open window and in the daylight it was nice. The nicest, really. The nicest thing in the world. I slept through the afternoon half aware of this nice and floating wind and then I donned a black skirt, black top, black Ganni boots and I drifted through orange-hour Washington Square Park and a light fall rain towards the lobby of The Marlton Hotel. Where there was a fire and Celia perched by it, waiting for me. Nothing ever happens. I used to be so arrogant, I told Celia, at The Marlton. Arrogance is a good sort of thing to hold onto, sometimes. Celia told me. Celia said something about our friends being cancelled online, something about moral hierarchies, she was done feeling sorry for herself and love thy god with all thy heart and all thy might and acedia is the only truly mortal sin. The Marlton Hotel and God and Self Indulgence. French fries with garlic aioli and dirty martinis and tuna tartar and writers workshop without too much writing. I was sitting there kicking my feet around and feeling like I might die if I couldn’t break-the-pattern-today-so-the-loop-does-not-repeat-tomorrow. Do you remember what life used to feel like? Do you wish to live forever? Do you wish to never suffer? Do you wish to never suffer, forever? I’m sorry to be cryptic about it.
Wednesday, October 29
In my fever dream, I was back on the Amtrak heading towards Florida, Massachusetts and everyone around me was screaming. We were traveling to record something regarding Esoteric Health. It was still October, and I knew the omens we were seeking to be somewhat evil. Everyone was furious at me, and this only bothered me because I did not know why. Woke up in New York City yelling, somewhere between a memory and a fugue state. A recurring dream I used to have where I was driving with my parents over the George Washington Bridge in a winter storm and an old woman was lurching at the vehicle, tugging at the door handles, talking about how it was almost too late. A train ride last winter where everyone was screaming at me because my ex-boyfriend was being abrasive and I was kind of in on the bit. A small faux-thatched-roof apartment in Greenwich Village where no one is angry because no one is here. I paid my dues in apologies and reparations in October, and now God has rewarded me with a real life fever and unpleasant news. A lot of things I loved became shrouded in delusion and vicious self-involvement. A lot of clarity and purity of heart became hard to access because my morning was shrouded in a fever. Kind of wanting to scream. Kind of wanting to take my Brown Prada Boots and Black Fry Boots and Grandmas Suede Ballet Flats to the cobbler. My Blue Pearl Necklace to the jeweler. My Sue Wang Dress and Red Vintage Slip to the tailor. Kind of have been like a bull in a china shop with all my beautiful things, and now there is so much to fix. Kind of feeling indignant. I should really focus on believing in something. I believe in hotel lobbies, superficially. I believe in other things, too, but I am trying to have a bit more discretion about it.
Thursday, October 30
Here is what has happened: I am sitting at The Marlton hotel now where everything is cast in a kind of olive glow and the fire place is roaring and I ordered a cheese board with camembert, comté, manchego, six grapes, two halfs figs, spoon of truffle honey and spoon of jam by myself. Ordered chamomile tea and sat with Rebecca and Dory in the sunroom with my fever, earlier. Now, I am sitting by the fire with my fever by myself. I am not ready to go home. I am not really ready to think or write about the sort of things that have happened. A small beautiful blond child and her brother a bit older just walked in both wearing sweet striped shirts. Their father just finished the marathon. Their mother is all smiles, pulling apples from her canvas bag and polishing them on the hotel napkins before placing the fruit in the beautiful children’s outstretched hand. I am green with envy. I am so overjoyed to be looking in on their Beautiful Life. An insufferable duo on a first date next to me is talking about how much they hate parades and how their work is industry agnostic. Their flirting is so nauseating. Bad voice physiognomy. They are flirting with each other in the most insufferable and sexless way and you can tell, so clearly, that they met on The Internet. I am starting to consider forgoing The Internet. There is a soulless kind of song and dance these people are doing. He is listing out his favorite types of Pasta Shapes and numbering his rankings on his stubby fingers. She is talking about food poisoning. Neither of them are religious. I am trying to stomach my distaste. If you have ugly thoughts they will seep through your skin and stomach and long black sleeves of your long black Brandy Melville dress and they will seep up through your mind and out of your pours and intermingle with the rancid scent of your fever that will become a deeper sort of illness and start to rot and fester in you forever. Your bitter and ugly thoughts will start to turn your face all ugly and ruined. I am trying to wish them grace and good will. I am trying to sip my tea and choke down fruit truffle honey and crackers. Twist my hair into two very tight braids. I want to find myself a little less repulsed. I want to look at these strangers’ pale forms and imagine them replaced by orbs of light. I want to look inside their rich inner worlds. I want to look into strangers’ eyes and not be afraid of staring or back holes. I want to wish them well. I want to hope they find a beautiful life. I want to hope they buy a beautiful life.
Friday, October 31
Here is what has happened. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Once; I lived in a glass apartment in the sky. I am not sure how things can oscillate in extremes, to that degree, with that level of hot and cold and up and down and everything cruel, like it became. I used to lie on the floor to feel close to things. Lie on the floor and dream about it. The past has been orbiting in ways that make me queasy along with the illness in the air, today and yesterday, since the eve of Halloween, really. At the Halloween Party in Chinatown I wore a black hat and milled about amongst red flowers, plum tart, candles and courtyards. Went bolting up the stairs to catch a car. Went walking under the Washington Square Park archway where the air was very crisp and I was very feverish. The park was overwhelming me with street performers and noise and light and stimulation. And then in the shadows and the grass and tucked away beyond the benches there are figures in sweatshirts and denim and long sweeping hair and interlaced hands and fallen leaves and everything sweet all around the edges. I was sitting at the edge of the park in June with my fingers interlaced and the beating sun fading into dusk and the summer stretching kind of hazy and breathless ahead. It is strange to try to remember anything. Strange all the stories I am hearing in the wind and the autumn and the fever dreams and another passing season.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Wednesday, November 5
From 7pm at Night Club 101 — 99 Minutes or Less returns with Maison du Bonheur (2017, 62 minutes). 99 Minutes or Less is a new free film screening showing films that are (you guessed it) 99 minutes or less. This evening’s screening is guest programmed by Elissa Suh of Movie Pudding. After party to follow with sounds by Dj Kyle and Paradise by Replica
From 8pm at Rodeo — Emmeline Clein celebrates the paperback release of Dead Weight. Ft readings by Eliza Barry Callahan, Cat Cohen, Rayne Risher Quann, and Rosa Shipley.
From 10pm at Night Club 101— Stick around after the earlier screening and the party for Body Count.
From 9pm - late at Home Sweet Home — Spielzeug NYC hosts the Opening Gala Afterparty to celebrate The End; an unnatural history museum of apocalyptic peculiarities.
LOS ANGELES - From 8pm at Earth — Muscle Man event. A reading, conversation, and live scroll with Jordan Castro and Tao Lin. Music by Ross Simonini.
Thursday, November 6
From 6pm (cocktails) 7:15pm (show) at 555 Greenwich Ave — Alyssa Vingan and The New Garde unpack The Year In Fashion with special guests Nicolaia Rips, Taylor Scarabelli, and Emily Kirkpatrick. | Tickets here
From 6pm - 8pm — It’s a big night of openings in Chelsea. Joan Mitchell works on paper from 1960 - 1965 at David Zwirner, Richard Prince never-before-seen recent works at Gagosian, Alex Da Corte new sculptures at Matthew Marks.
From 6pm - 8pm at Blade Study — “Treading Water” by Jiwoong opens - the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, having previously shown in “Epiphany”, 2023.
From 7pm - 9pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Another preformance of Little Murders opens - “Talks of dead son’s, fecal photography, Vogue, and the “Breather” are just a taste of what happens in this Norman Rockwell-painting-gone-awry.” | Additional showtimes 11/7, 11/8, 11/14, 11/15
From 7pm - 10pm at The Bench — Partiful is throwing a party to celebrate the inaugural launch of new blog ‘The Guest List.” On principle, I’m opposed to brand-hosted-parties, but this one does admittedly look fun. - “the citizens of New York are hereby called to assemble and address urgent matters of social life.” Opening remarks from Matt Starr and Halle Robbe. Partiful Town Hall dresscode.
From 9:30pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Chill Mag hosts their Issue 5 Launch Party with editors Finn DeNeuf and Mira IRL, along with Chill contributors past and present.
From 10pm - 1:30pm at Gitano NYC — Club Bohemia returns with The Muses. Dress for tropic noir. | RSVP here
From 10:30pm - late at Clara’s — Karaoke with Meg returns. Meg Spectre is a star! Will you sing songs?
LOS ANGELES - From 8pm - midnight at Earth — Jordan Castro and Cluny Journal present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.
Friday, November 7
From 7pm - 10pm at KGB — Cracks In Pomo presents The Applesauce Ball. Celebrating three camp icons; Gaga, Warhol, and Ratzinger. I’ll be reading, along with others <3 | tickets here
From 7pm - 11pm at Tawny — Petal Books hosts a book release and art show, ft Ayana Iyer, Ciff Gant, Cole Smith, Jackson Ebbin, Jacob Ortega, Matt Bvoinms, Nathan Fayyazuddin, Nico Jones, Poppy Silvermen, Romi Marckx, Stella Jarvis. Food by Roan Hutner. Piano by Jonah Trudeau.
From 10pm - 1am at Jean’s — Alex Delany and Constantine Giavos return with Love Club. - “Righteous disco. Dance floor anthems. Diabolical bass. Beautiful people.” No RSVP necessary, but admission is at the discretion of the door.
LONDON - From 6:30 - 9:30pm at The Royal Academy of Arts — Soho Reading Series presents an evening of reading, art, and music in the rooms of the Royal Academy. Hosted by Olivia Allen. Readings by Jaya Twill, Jane Debate, Lydia Eliza Trail, and Clara Wade. Tickets include entry to the Kerry James Marshall exhibition. | Tickets here
Saturday, November 8
From 8pm - late at 220 Bogart St — Notch Magazine celebrates the release of Issue 003: CURRENTS. The evening will feature readings by Magdalene Kennedy and Quinn Adikes, an artist talk by Diego León, video installation, dj sets, and good conversation. | tickets here.
LOS ANGELES - From 7pm at Earth — Viscose Journal x Montez Press Radio x Earth present FASHION AND SOUND. Ft reading by Ana Howe Bukowski, performance by Slipper, and DJs Jasmine Johnson & Avalon. Hosted by Jeppe Ugelvig.
LONDON - From 7:30pm - 11:00pm— Soho Reading Series presents The Flat Earth Gala, celebrating Anika Jade Levy’s perfect debut novel. Hosted by Tom Willis. Readings by Madeline Cash, Dakotah Weeks Murphree, Andrew Durbin, Emily Bauer, Sophie Mackintosh, and Olive Parker.
Sunday, November 9
LOS ANGELES - From 1pm at The Aster — Artillery Art Debates will get heated over topics including “Should we bring back gatekeeping” and “Does art have to look good?” Moderated by Sammy Loren.
LOS ANGELES - From 7pm at Earth — Jordan Castro and Cluny Journal present a screening of Ordet (1955) - a film about faith.
As always, Confessions at KGB.
Um so good