Monday
I moved again, and it happened for no reason, like packing boxes and now I’m counting breaths and days and years in this garden letting thoughts float by like clouds, or whatever it is they say to do to fix a closed throat chakra, clogged up mind. Closed throat chakra meaning you talk a lot but about all the wrong things. Barefoot in the garden and gregorian chants because you know when to be quiet and also honest with yourself and others and bring it all together and the like. The move has been strange because it’s for no reason, really, though it’s not the coming and going and staying that creates this crawling-out-of-skin sensation and more so, just; you can have anything you want and it’s worse because you can’t have that one thing. You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. Rose visited me at work last night and she told me that she saw something in the West Village that made her heart stop, and then she asked me if I’ve been happy since it all went down and I said no, a little bit unthinking, but I like it more euphoric than nice so perhaps I’m not being fair. Rose said she gets what I mean and she means it too. Rose said she wants to move to Europe but then she’d just be doing-it-for-no-reason in Berlin or Paris or Oregon, even. Someplace like that. I told Rose that I’d been watching the sun bounce off the Hudson River on the drive uptown and downtown and uptown and downtown and thinking about doing-it-for-no-reason until it became a little like acidy the one-most-deadly-sin and then Rose said she gets what I mean. This guy introduced this other guy to me and Rose then he said Rose and C**** are each others muses and then I said I forgot we told you that and then he said what are you two communicating about telepathically and then Rose said we’re talking in our heads about conversations that we’ve already had out loud.
Ten am and hot and sunny, now. I’m in this fuzzy too-warm sweater with this Alice-Bailey-Esoteric-Health-pin on the chest on this 6-train uptown home, lurching, lurching, lurching. All the way up to the top of the world. All the way up to my new and secret garden.
Six pm and so the day passes like water. A woman appears in the hallway around sunset and says it is so lucky to meet you. I say I like your earrings and I like your bracelet and she says would you believe I bought them both in different markets in Japan? I leave the back door open, to the forest, in the city, and the voices on the calls today feel a little bit disparate and far away. It feels a little bit like a secret, being here. No one knows how far away I am. I read over an old journal entry, the one from this time last year and think; I used to be so indignant. There’s a sweetness to stubbornness, and it makes me a little bit sad. Kicking my feet in the mud and the like.
I bring Eleanor to my backyard-forest-church-and-temple around dusk, and she surveys the heart shaped stones and nice wood and viney starlit ceiling, and says this place is made-for-me. It’s tech week, and the bender will soon be over.
I’m sitting on a bench at the internet art party and it’s a kind of nice vibe. Plenty of light and places to sit. Diet coke in plastic cup and things seem to be wrapping up. I’m glad things are wrapping up, Mira says. Wrapping up?, I say. Mira is wearing a perfect tan slip dress and a little gold belt. She just moved uptown and she doesn’t like to really party. I’ve been so great, Mira says, and I believe her, which, in turn, makes me feel pretty tender, and a tiny bit bittersweet sad. Mira’s boyfriend is on the other side of the bench at the bench, and he is reading Napoleons letters out loud from a big gray book. Mira tells me that her boyfriend likes my last name because it reminds him of birds. Different pronunciation, I say, and Mira says well, I know. Mira tells me that everything is wrapping up. She smiles and she tells me that things seem sweet and almost over, and thank God. I smile and I say something about; I hope so. I hope that things are wrapping up, and I hope that things are sweet.
I’m on the street outside The River with a sparkling water and my o.k. mood. I’m going uptown, soon. I’m going to Paris. I’m going to the Brimfield vintage market in the summer. I’m going to the third celestial ring and when they ask me about final purification in purgatory I’ll say that thing about that time we got that girl an uber when she was lost and crying on the street. I’ll say I pretty much ultimately owned up to it every time I told a lie.
I’m sitting at the bar at The River and Olivia is laughing and wearing two long blonde braids. You are so docile, Olivia tells me. Thanks, I say and mean it. I say thanks and I am flooded with relief. You’re like a deer or a bird, Olivia says. Who me? Olivia and I and her boyfriend walk down the street. Walk all the way towards Congee Village. All the lights are out in all the fifth floor walk up buildings and I’m not feeling all that high-alert. We can’t find the car keys and I can’t spot the moon. Olivia’s boyfriend leans against his car door and laughs. And so it’s all my fault, he says. Olivia tells me to hail a cab. I love it when you hail cabs, she says. I’m hailing a cab. Olivia’s bounding through the streets.
Tuesday
Alone again after all those sounds. I can fill the silence. Blue by Anais Setarah and New Tank Playboi Carti and Reckless Crystal Castles and Never Feel Again. I can fill a room. Making turkey sausage from amish market and eating melting oreo popsicle from seven-eleven on the fire escape in morning light. Texting the event girl for events. Dreading party-photography-film. We got to Dr Clarke last night and Romy was like ohhh, here comes the twitterinas. Once a gallerina always a gallerina. The internet is mostly just embarrassing if it’s mimicry. If you do it first it’s fine. It’s embarrassing when it’s copying. I’m not copying you. I’m not losing my mind. I say I’m not copying you three-times-fast. On the street outside last night, Romy said that all the girls are wasting-away. She said it with her nose scrunched up in distaste because Romy has a strong sense of God, His will, who was it who said all that stuff about natural law? Romy has better proof of concept for this stuff. Christopher stood on the street and he said you gotta stay a little bit hungry for it. He said you should always be a little bit hungry and feeling like you could take a nap but won’t. I got home late and it’s warm in my room. I miss Miami. I miss hot humid heat and city beaches full moon night swim central air conditioning that makes you cough and empty and sick. I always miss the end of things so much that I could die. I miss Costa Rica and El Salvador, France and Miami black sand beaches, languid heat, and leaving. I miss surfing the-ultimate-form-of-anti-intellectualism. I miss sleeping, honestly. I miss when it was winter; dark and cold and easy like a cloud. I used to give a lot of thought to the seven deadly sins. It helped when they would spell it out for me. Gluttony and rage, etc etc etc. We identified my weak points, and we really thought them through.
This guy gave me his business card on the street and he was like what do you write about and Jack answered for me like: twenty-thousand-words-per-week about herself. I said hey kind of indignant and Jack said something about drunken rampage and I said hey again and Jack said sorry you’re a friend I can talk to like a boy and I said thanks and really meant it.
Hazy and cold in the morning. Noon. I am feeling like it is time for everything to give. I call my father and I say just so you know I decided that it’s time for everything to give. My father says how was your night and I stretch my fingers wide across the glass table and say; beautiful.
Aria’s dance is kind of about growing and shedding hair and fur and a little bit about Artemis, and we meet at The Marlton Hotel to discuss. One spicy margarita and one lychee martini and we split french fries and then it’s afternoon. I like the way she talks about her craft. She’s connected by all this aligned and spiraling thread, so she knows things like the emotional cords that will end in an injured ankle. She knows when someone is in a prison of their own psychosomatic making, and when one becomes lucky to have escaped or to have never been imprisoned in the first place. Aria leaves and I eat salmon tartare at The Marlton Hotel and think about what I could make that’s kind of outside of myself, too. The waiter waits till I’m alone to tell me welcome back, and I wait till I’m alone to order soda water and crusty bread. I tell him I’m working on the same story I’ve been working on for a while, neglecting for a while. I like writing about cults and maybe someday about this guy who stalked me after he robbed a Jimmy John’s and then became subsumed by subcultures. Subculture psychosis. Aria found the whole tale to be vaguely Lynchian. I hold court at The Marlton Hotel and I call my dad just to say I’m happy. I drink diet coke with this other girl whose star is ascendant and she’s going to be famous in two weeks and I say I’ll try to make the parts I can happen and then I call my dad again to say I hope my star’s ascendant too.
I haven’t been home in what feels like days but I’m not in the mood to go counting. Celia meets me in the dusky evening in a patterned colored slip dress, and she veers away somewhere before Avenue A on account of my bad vibes and bodyweight psychosis. At the fashion fiction reading I admire Lily’s social graces. Like she’s the center of every room but she’s always listening more than she speaks. I call Christopher just to say hi. To say I was just at this party where I was feeling a little bit more off-putting than generatively shy. Once there was this girl who lived in a yellow house in a very green forest. A stone house of an oasis in Manhattan. A glass apartment in the sky. I had this stalker and he robbed a Jimmy John’s and I moved in with this boyfriend and I had this stint in Serbia. I don’t consider things in third person, it’s not like I imagine myself being watched or something.
This guy from the internet whose real name I can never remember stops me at the doors when I roll up to this tech week party, it was supposed to be something about robots and defense surveillance. Come to this party at Adam’s instead, he says. Who’s Adam? Political operative. Ok, I say. The stairs are long and narrow and green at Adam’s apartment. The loft is huge and the floors are lined with pillows and stackable blocks like these tetris-piece self-inflating couches that Christopher keeps showing me on tiktok shop, though I bet these ones are more expensive. They are playing The Knicks on projectors first, and if you asked me what I thought about the state of affairs in New York I would not-say-tired, and if you asked me if I thought it was too late I would say probably-not-yet, and if you asked me about convictions I would say they’re a necessary evil to conjure up before you die. Later they are playing avatar-ai-animations on the tv and Jared says look away it’s mind control and I can’t look away, can’t stop being all transfixed. There’s a fort in one of the corners of this loft, and alien sculptures and colored lights and my friends keep walking in the door, waving hi, all these friends from all these different social worlds. Liv takes me to the bathroom to give me research-chemicals and make-me-live-forever, and I hold this needle over my stomach and I say ok go and she says you have to do it yourself and I say I can’t and she says well I can’t and I say I really can’t and so she injects me with peptides and I say look, now I’m immortal. I meet Christopher back on the tetris couch and I say I like this party because it’s lots of lying down. I tell him about my newfound immortality and I say I made Liv inject me with these research chemicals because I was too scared to do it myself and Christopher shrugs and says that was a weird thing to make her do, hopefully now you two will be very good friends.
It’s four am and I’m trying to write and I’m not yet immortal and I don’t want to be. Everything I’ve ever wanted is obfuscated under a really good stack: cerebrolysin or beta blockers or inositol, I don’t really know the words for these things. Christopher plays this song by Belle and Sebastian and then he starts to laugh hard. What? I say. This is what music sounded like in two-thousand-eight, he replies. I’m lying on the couch and the sun will come up soon. I wasn’t there, I say. You missed it, he says. You were busy being born or something. He plays Indie Rokkers by MGMT and I think that this will be a song I will listen to for a while now. He plays Future Games by Fleetwood Mac and I shut my eyes on this couch. You can have everything you want if you don’t want anything at all.
Wednesday
Seven-thirty-am awake again after all that light. I think it will be better once I get away from it, honestly. I can’t write about my dreams anymore because of evil eye and psychic warfare. And here is what happens after that: evening time and when Jennifer says we will both take the smoked salmon at The Marlton Hotel I say kind of quiet, no I will take an apricot crepe and also celery soda. Apricot crepe all folded up and tastes like sponge just-the-way-I-like-it. Fire still on at The Marlton Hotel which is making spring time feel kind of enflamed and stifling and bloated just like I expected it. Not to be a complainer or anything. Jennifer says thirty minutes of sleep! Thirty minutes! Must be like-a-zombie-or-something. And then she tells me this story about highway-hypnosis. Her trouble is highway-hypnosis. My trouble is: no trouble at all. My trouble is all this light, AI psychosis, too many events and not enough inositol and no-research lately, none-at-all. Olivia is at Tatiana in Brighton Beach. My apartment is kind of like a zoo, and so this is the part that I think that I will miss. Blue bird out the window and the cat that eats the mice and doesn’t really like pets at least from me and the turtles are in the courtyard.
Nine-pm alone again in my room for old times sake, windows open looking out over my zoo; blue bird, turtles, cat that doesn’t like pets etc. Christopher texts and says you should go to the party. My phone subsumes me. It’s phone by day event by night. I would like it to be story by day, and something different by night. I play Fishtails by Lana del Rey and Some Things Seem to Never Work by Solange. The first song says You wanted me sadder and the second song says I’ve seen you with the lights off and also: remember when you kissed me at Jimmy Johns when I was seventeen???? And then it’s later, open window, self indulgent and sweet summer breeze and so I play on Forget Her. Tell yourself over and over….
Thursday
I used to walk for one hour every morning and write out all-the-things-not-fit-for-print, and this was what I called my semblance-of-routine. The momentum has been slower lately. An object in motion, or whatever that cliche and/or rule is. I used to be opaque about it, and then I decided I wanted clarity. It’s good to let things go in waves. The current wave is pro-opaque, I think.
I’m lying on [redacted’s] couch on a transient and too hot morning and I’m saying that I feel so transient. Feel so laid-out-like-in-psychoanalysis. Type of couch they’d lay you out on and preform analysis, I say, and then [redacted] tells me that it’s probably more the empty room than the couch that is contributing to this clinical-vibe. Ever since he put his H.P. Lovecraft Halloween and Remilia Rave and Spy Magazine posters under the bed and now the floors are clean. Ever since they resurrected this concrete wall out the window that stretches up and down so high that the eye can’t see where it starts and where it ends. If the curious mind did not know how these things tend to go, well then the curious mind might be tempted to lean too far outside the window and fuck around and find out. Not in a death drive way. More so, just, inquiring mind would like to know what they do with the starts and the ends of all this concrete wall. I am lying supine on [redacted’s] concrete couch and I am telling [redacted] that there is nothing clinical about it all. The couch or analysis or certainly this heat. Too hot for anything but linen in New York. Cotton shorts and white sheer curtains. I think I’d like to pick a topic and explore it deeply every week, and then the stories will start to take more shape.
I’m at the Posterati Museum with Christopher and the mood is great. Too hot outside for anything but Brandy Melville black skirt sticking to red-leather couch. We took a slow and metal elevator up four stories beyond a non descript door to get here and when I said it feels like Los Angeles, Christopher said because of day-time-activities? No. Because it’s all about the movies. I am sitting on a red-brown leather couch and there is a book titled Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde in my lap. Russia! I say. I like when it’s more classical than Avant Garde. Christopher has already discovered a computer archive and so I am saying the-things-out-loud, no reply, speaking like the words are all still-in-my-head. It’s a little eerie and pretty cheerful in here. Pride by Grace Jones is playing on repeat, and the elevator opens up into an empty room. All that music, no attendants. All that cheerful sound in empty space. As you examine the film posters in this book, try to imagine Moscow or Leningrad in the 1920s, the streets filled with people attending to their daily affairs, the book says. Imagine workers leaving their jobs at the end of the day, running to catch their streetcars. They would glance up and be confronted by these startling posters looming overhead. It has been quiet for a few minutes save for Pride by Grace Jones, but now Christopher looks up and looks at me and says You don’t like the Avant Garde??? Yeah, yeah you prefer that socialist realism.
I’m at lunch at Sunday to Sunday, and the cokes and diet cokes and french fries are coming out free. Christopher holds a glass bottle of soda to his face to cool down, no central AC and I say ew at all that perspiration. I eat the french fries slowly and one by one and then they are all gone. Christopher squints at the empty cone and then back at me and he says: where did they go?
We go to this apartment on Allen Street. All roads lead to Allen Street. Christopher walks with me to tour the spot and when I see the realtor on the steps I say sorry I brought my manager. We’re sitting on the steps of this apartment on Allen Street, and the realtor is talking about UFOs. The realtor is like you know the UFOs are actually just people. Something about The Epstein Files. Something about how whales (apex predator of the sea) view air as a mystical-life-force and humans on ships as the aliens and angels and demons of this surface-realm. There’s this AI competition to learn the language of whales, he is saying. No one has ever heard whale translated before. Inside the apartment, the hallway walls are clinical for-real. White flashing lights and red buttons in this elevator. Space is so liminal. I manifested my dream life. I imagined getting into this red elevator and pressing number five. I asked for this apartment, and you said yes. I imagine some morning in some autumn getting into this elevator alone and I start to feel a little bit queasy. I imagine every day in this elevator, and a lot of them all alone. Some girl walks by through the hallway in a little red dress with a little brown dog. Christopher shrugs. If it’s good enough for her then it’s good enough for you.
Christopher tells me to tell your dad you have to go to the photobooth museum. Christopher takes me to Economy Candy and then he points to a bubble-gum-blue-raspberry plastic-bottle soda and says: watch you track down some poor clerk here and ask if they have the blue-raz-bubble-gum soda in diet. Pacific Aquarium on Delancey is a pretty one-of-one and great vibe. All the best finds are unexpected. I tell Christopher that Pacific Aquarium has a pretty good grift going on. Same as the Posterati Movie Poster Gallery when you think about it. Call your store a show. Come in and see. Like what you see? Come back and make a purchase. They’re selling tanks and electric wires inside Pacific Aquarium. I’m buying what they’re selling. The plant section is towards the back of the aquarium, through a corridor of four-by-one tanks full of golden barba, male fancy guppy, a rope fish (long), cat fish, honey gourami (very nice). The plant tanks look kind of terrestrial. And then beyond that is the section of the aquarium where everything is blue. Man on the moon and cold air. The fishes are neon and turquoise and spooky and otherworldly and my favorite fishes are over here. Terrestrial. The fishes that look kind of like space plants. You think they are plants and then you see them move. Fish like the purple sea anemone. You are going to become Fish Girl, Christopher says. And then he takes me over to another aisle, this place way in the back, and he points at a stack of plastic square fishtanks full of water and pebbles and plants and a little bit of grime. Look, he says. This is where they keep all the fish who are dead.
APPENDIX: Places The Bench, The River, Brimfield Vintage Market, Dr Clark, The Marlton Hotel, Sunday to Sunday, Congee Village, Posteratati Museum, Photo Booth Museum, Economy Candy, Pacific Aquarium, Potions Gregorian chants, turkey sausage, oreo popsicle, spicy margarita, french fries, salmon tartare, cerebrolysin, beta blockers, inositol, avatar-ai-animations, AI whale song competition Wear Alice Bailey Esoteric Health Pin Music Blue by Anais Setarah New Tank by Playboi Carti, Reckless by Crystal Castles, Never Feel Again by Edward Skeletrix, Sleep the Clock Around by Belle and Sebastian, Indie Rokkers by MGMT, Future Games by Fleetwood Mac, Fishtails by Lana del Rey, Some Things Seem to Never Work by Solange, Pride by Grace Jones Read Fashion Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft Halloween, Spy Magazine, Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde
CALENDER:
Friday, June 26
From 6pm - 8pm at Alex Berns Gallery —Ben Brock: Lightening Bolts of Love opens.
From 7pm at Night Club 101 — Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation hosts a reading celebrating the spring residents, ft Maeve Barry, Jimmy Cajoleas, Izzy Casey, Aziz Kasumov, Stacy Skolnik, and Thomas Thatcher. Copies of VICES edited by Jonathan Smith will be on sale.
From 8pm - close at Pubkey — Farthest Heaven Presents Rhymes with Tom Will, ft Tom Will, Dustin Cole, Calvin Atwood, Garth Miro, and Will Ballard. Reading, book sales, book signing, Q&A, meet & greet, general partying and carousing.
From 11pm - 4am at Baby’s All Right — Silknode presents Blog Hause; the official start of summer! Ft Deer Park, B7lanket, Massi, Cicada. Cohosts: Lola Dement Myers, Sexemo, Julian Ribeiro, Myles Underwood, Biz Sherbet, K, Kendricky. Photos, Djs, more. This is not one to miss. | Tickets here
Saturday, June 27
From 6pm - 8pm at 504 Grand St — David Lindsay presents Satydrat Nite Live, ft Fiona Alison Duncan, Gia Gonzales, and Noa Wesley.
Sunday, June 28
From 5pm - 7pm at 1832 West Sunset Blvd — Angel Moon is having a closing party. I love this brand. Hand dyed fabrics meant to be worn over and over again, and a really witchy and special vibe. They also recently had a summer solstice rave, and clothing is available in store at Retail Pharmacy.
The fucking detail.
I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.
I'm glad you exist. And you're living a life some people I know would envy - full of busyness and surrounded by people who are trying big things.
I hated your piece in Hobart at first, but I was intrigued enough to check out your substack. Now I get it. You're a good writer.