Life before inositol

Collected Agenda #26

WHAT I DID

Monday, January 6

The day opens with an alarm on the roof - one of that variety that marks “intruder”, not “fire”. I’ve been easily frightened lately. David likes to play with flames. He likes to ignite the matchbooks I get at restaurants in one stroke and then shake the charring cardboard until the flames swell with air and then burn out. I live in a greenhouse. Sometimes, I mistake the planes overhead for a meteor or a falling star, the revving of an engine outside as a sign that it’s all coming crashing down, through the glass overhead, it’s all going to explode soon and I’ll half know what hit me because I’ve been expecting it for so long, but there still will remain a deeply unpleasant element of surprise. There are things that breed pure terror - usually things like these, usually things in the mundane. You’re zero to eleven lately, David tells me and he isn’t wrong, but I suspect my neurosis to be a product born more of boredom than of anything else. The intruder on the roof doesn’t really scare me. The alarm goes on for a while, but the shadow of a figure over the greenhouse ceiling dissipates quickly. The roof has been caving in. This is something I know to be true. The landlord has told me so. I’ve seen the falling plaster in the living room. The intruder is probably just there to help.

I eat wild herring for breakfast. I get the one from Bar Harbor online, preserved in salt water with lots of pepper. If I eat breakfast, it’s always something strange. Sometimes, David makes me a french omelette. If David makes me a french omelet, then I eat that.

I’ve been sleeping better. Eating better, too. The two are very connected for me. Ruby recommends inositol. It arrives today. If it can cure me, that’s a miracle, but I’ve been getting a little better on my own, anyways.

A walk to the gym through SoHo - it begins to snow. Blizzard, almost. They're sprinkling salt in big clumps all over the sidewalk by Corner Bar. This is the first winter I can recall since childhood where there's been snow and lots of it. It's nice. There's whimsy in the air.

I could stay here for hours. I’ve been praying for the calm, and now it is here. Sterility is nice in few regards - an empty and cavernous gym being one of them.

I go to see Babygirl with Natasha and some of her friends at Angelika East in the evening. It’s a nice evening of cinema, but sometimes a theater can enclose you, and this is not one of those times. We’re too close to the screen, everyone around us keeps squealing, the movie is just really pretty overall bad. It’s like Nicole Kidman’s second Eyes Wide Shut, I keep on hearing people say but it’s not, really, at all actually. Perhaps thematically - both delving into female sexuality and desire - but you can like the topics a film explores and still sense that there is absolutely no coherence to the plot, nor to the flailing illogical actions of the characters - actions of which at no point are genuinely sold as being driven by desire.

Tuesday, January 7

After briefly losing one's mind, simple tendrils of thought that gesture towards sanity become disproportionately lovely. I’m reading Kafka, still - my godforsaken piece on Kafka coming out next week and then I can abandon these stories for good. It’s been nice to delve deeply into a topic, nice to hate everything I have to say so much that I rephrase it over and over again, nice to consider language with an eye towards cognizance, towards if it actually makes any sense. Most of the time, I write and speak out of necessity, or even, desperation. Clearing the mind. Purging the soul. I am a diarist - self indulgent. Or perhaps, it’s just something else entirely. It’s something different than an artistic practice. Criticism and fiction necessitate at least grasping towards some idealized form of clarity.

Writing about writing - awful, boring, should never be done. For now, it’s like I'm in highschool. Reading “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” under the comforter with a reading lamp turned all the way up. It’s still early afternoon but it’s too cold, too windy, the draft is vicious through the greenhouse roof. I have my head under the blankets and so it’s like a simulation of evening. David keeps the reading lamp set to soft orange light, and so it’s like a simulation of candlelight, too. I’m exhausted and so I’m stretching reality. I’m stretching a story out of thin air. Now, I’ll go to pilates and stretch on an empty floor. I’ll go get nail polish remover from the boxes on the highest shelf or, if missing, from the CVS next door.

Kafka’s Josephine is a wretched character. She possesses a firm belief in her own entitlement to a life of leisure on account of her artistic talents, but of course she lives in a time where wretched conditions have rendered real artistic talents inconceivable. She is not only un-talented, but also a fraud. There are notes that could be made about self-recognition in this spoiled, awful, regrettable character, but I’m sparing myself.

We go to Big Bar in the evening. I've never been before, but it seems to be a spot that people know about. I knew it would be these people here, my friend says when we walk in. I don’t really recognize anyone, but that's often how these things go. The bit with Big Bar is that it's actually an extremely small bar. It's all drenched in red light and there’s a tiny DJ booth by the front window and it's cash only, the drinks are not terribly strong, but they are cheap. Someone has a small dog in a carrier in their arms, but no one seems to notice aside from us. This seems like a spot for old heads - of which I am not, but I enjoy the company of.

Wednesday, January 8

Meeting with Beckett and Jonah this morning at Caffe Reggio to discuss Tense - Reggio is full and so Beckett suggests Dante. It’s not like he remembered it, now. It’s a coffee shop, he says, but it’s a cocktail bar now. Expensive green and red martinis in thin glasses whirling through the room even now, at two pm. They still let us sit for coffee. I have an interview after. Madelyn texts me.

At Altro Paradiso at 3pm, they are saying goodbye to the head chef. I’ve gone to Altro Paradiso a few times recently, because Madelyn works there mostly, although even independent of that it’s the best food I’ve had in New York in a while. Today, I was in a rush, the plans were last minute. I'm still wearing my workout clothes and their ‘archival lululemon’ - hand-me-downs from a closet of a friend of my mothers when I was about thirteen years old. The shirt is striped and black and white and a small band bearing slogans like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” folds up or down at the hem, depending on how flagrantly antisocial you feel like being on that particular day. I’m keeping the band folded under today. I’m wildly underdressed but it’s afternoon, the restaurant isn’t even technically open yet.

There’s a toast to the chef and I’m the only outsider in attendance and so I stay at the bar while the group of staff and friends and family assemble. It’s very special, even to bear witness to as someone uninvolved. There’s a heart and soul to food and drink and service that other industries, even creative industries, really don’t have in the same way. I’m a tiny bit tipsy, now. I need to start hostessing again. I make this note on my phone: “NEED TO START HOSTESSING AGAIN!!!!”

We stay at Altro Paradiso til dinner starts, and we continue to stay till it feels like dinner is about to end. Everything is magical - the alla prima cocktail, wine, dirty martini, pane e ricotta, salad with figs and dates, octopus, olives, oysters under beds of thinly sliced veggies, malfatti (which is pasta that is like little pillows), linguine al nero (which is pasta with squid ink and cuttlefish and basil), a few deserts - pistachio ice cream and the pear cake. The afternoon turns to a sparkling evening.

I walk home. I go elsewhere, after - fun too, but I probably shouldn’t have. I should probably learn when to call an evening. Decadence in excess, turns all that sparkles sour.

Thursday, January 9

It's been the same day on repeat so far this year. The same three days, really. Rinse and do it again. The year has only held nine days. I can't view my stagnation with too much harshness. Decadence, in contrast, should be viewed with harshness.

Los Angeles is burning up and it feels uncouth to talk about this here as this tragedy is not my life, but I can't stop watching. Most emotions are triggered through all five senses - it's a strange feeling of muted horror to see destruction of places and lives you know on a screen, detached from your physical experience but visible in real time in your cognizant mind - peripheral vision.

I accidentally get stuck in the Louis Vuitton x Murakami line in SoHo. I accidentally steal a pair of Split sweatpants from the gym. I accidentally read all the books on the 4chan 2024 Top 100 Lit Board list. I'm on tiktok watching videos of the apocalypse overlaid with Lana del Rey audio. I’m browsing r/lainfluencersnark and they have a lot to say about the way their parasocial relationships are handling the apocalypse.

I tried to write something about phones and chaos and end times but it was silly. These are resources / writing from people in LA.

• The Angel - L.A. Fires — How to Help

• Delicious Tacos - The Fire

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO

January 12 - January 16 from 10am - 6pm at 265 Canal Street #313 — LA Fire donations are being accepted. New and used clothing, new socks, new toiletries, feminine hygiene products, blankets, towels, and phone chargers. Donations will be shipped to The Y North Hollywood + Altadena Girls

Monday, January 13

• From 7pm at Heart House — Wonder presents New Books by Zoe Brezsny and Precious Okoyom, plus Maya Martinez’s Hole Play. Tickets $15 at the door — no one turned away for lack of funds.

Tuesday, January 14

• Afternoon — Chelsea Walls hosts a participatory reading celebrating the final days of group show Every Driven Leaf. I can’t find an actual time for this, so consider milling about from about noon to dusk if you want to catch the show.

• From 7pm at Gonzo’s — The Russian Cosmism Circle of New York presents POST-DOOMERISM; a talk with labor leader Chris Smalls, featuring artist and podcast Joshua Citarella, comedian Geo Yankey, and Prada Horse Shoe. Dope afters lineup to follow.

• From 7pm at Film Forum — BOMB & Film Forum present BOMB’s Winter 2025 Issue Party and a special screening of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy. An afterparty following the screening will be open to all ticket holders.

• From 7pm at TJ Byrnes — PATIO is back for the fifth time. An evening of reading featuring Sophia June, Saoirse Bertram, Sophie Kemp, and more.

• From 7pm at Sovereign House — One Man Army presents an exclusive first look screening of BIRD BOY, a comedy documentary from Daniel Robbins.

• From 10pm at Paul’s Cocktail Lounge — Kiki Kramer is hosting.

Wednesday, January 15

• From 6pm - 8pm at Management — Tim Brawner’s second solo show ‘Last Caress” opens — “there will be no emotional support this time”.

• From 10pm at Paul’s Baby Disco — Cassidy Grady, Sophia Lamar, and Lolita Lupita are hosting. Music by Orson + Harkness.

Thursday, January 16

• From 6pm - 9pm at Market Gallery — Zora Sicher ‘Futurephobia’ opens – “This body of work and its accompanying booklet serve as a meditation on obsolescence, a call on photography to not yet disappear from its tactile and primordial nature.”

• From 7pm at Public Records — Rebounder is live with JW Francis. I’ve heard rumblings of complaints about a lack of a live music scene downtown recently, but Rebounder is one band filling any potential gaps and dispelling these rumors. Very cool sounds and vibes. This one is not to be missed.

• From 7pm at EARTH — BONZO presents Fernette, Anastasia Coope, Corp, Damon Sfetsios (DJ set). Visuals by Thinh Le.

Friday, January 17

• From 10pm at Public Hotel — Donna Francesca is headlining a night of all female DJs at downstairs club ‘Public Arts’. A portion of bar proceeds will be donated to LAFDF and Pasadena Humane.

Saturday, January 18

• From 5pm - 7pm at Below Grand — ‘Love How Your Windows Glisten’ opens - a group show curated by Nakai Falcón.

• From 8pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Dimes Square Returns. Limited tickets remain.

• From 10pm at Roxy Cinema — WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM screens – “Rachel doesn't realize she has grown up in captivity working for an advertising agency where her job is to assess Mommy 6.0, her favorite pop star in the whole entire world.”

Sunday, January 19

• Save The Date — Casual Encounters and On The Rag are hosting a fundraiser to save helLa

• From 6pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Another performance of Dimes Square. This is one of the last performances ever, so if you haven’t seen this play yet, now is your chance.

• From 6pm - midnight at EARTH — Jordan Castro and Cluny present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.

• From 7pm at Pangea — Penny Arcade presents ‘The Art of Becoming’ – a performance and reading. I heard Penny perform at Beckett’s TENSE, and she is really wonderful. A force worth seeing live.

• From 7pm at KGB — Confessions is back, New Regime addition. The night before inauguration, your hosts will be Honest about Politics sans Irony.