WHAT I DID
Monday, February 10
I woke up in a storm today. Stormed around the apartment a bit, all mad about who knows what, stormed to the gym for self actualization, skipped all the fashion week stuff last night, the show I was so excited for, the after parties too. I was sick, after all, though I didn’t realize it then. You only realize it now, sunroof windows, all this energy, the contrast visible now that you’re flooded with Being Well.
“It’s funny how you live off the provisions David and the world throw at you,” Lara texts me.
“Having a hard time articulating a reason/framework to start taking care of yourself more sometimes that isn’t cheesy,” Lara says.
“It will be good for your writing because you’ll get more information from the environment and have more energy,” Lara determines.
“I actually do care about health, vanity skin etc, I just have cognitive dissonance," I say. And I do. I ordered collagen, after all. This is not so bad. None of it is so bad, really.
I am thinking of joining David in Paris. It's a bit of an act of fleeing, though, and it's no good to leave out of some desire for escapism. I am treading very cautiously this morning. A matcha with almond milk and the oatmeal with apples and cinnamon and raisins. The bright sun is melting all the bright snow. They are talking about Aristotle's Ethos Pathos Logos in class today. The only one that matters to me is the Ethos of it all. I believe everything I’m told if I trust the authority of the person telling it to me. I’m all swallowed up in the undiscerning masses. It would be nice to leave New York, yes, but it will be nice to stay here, too. It'll be nice to come back to life right where I've been sleeping.
In the evening, my friends arrive. They sit at my kitchen table, and they tell me crazy stories about staying up late and everything that happened in between. I was lonely for a moment, or really, I was just struck by the the being alone of it while he is still away, but then my friends arrived, and the stories were all sparkling and shocking.
I know secrets again, now. It's more fun when I have things to hold.
Wrapping my hair twice in towels by the open window before bed. It's too cold to keep the window open, but the space heater was drying everything out. Lara left some cocktail shrimp in the fridge, and I drop the tails into the empty Sephora box on the floor. I'll still take out the trash, I am not more disgusting than average.
Tuesday, February 11
Coconut oil, beef bone broth, muscovado sugar on a silver spoon for breakfast. There is reason to think this kind of thing will make me become better. I would be very easily indoctrinated into a cult based on the certain determining factors, I forget the exact formula of each trait but I know my balance of each fits the bill; agreeability, desire to belong, etc. I have to stay vigilant. Left to my own devices and I’m half asleep and I’m making potions.
I wrote a story in the night. Hologram Girls, I called it. Stupid title but I think this one, yes particularly this one, I imagine I could turn this into a book with just some discipline and a little joie de vivre.
Natasha comes over just as I am starting to lose my mind. Just as the snow is starting, too. Snow in the evening, and Natasha is taking photos of me on film. Usually, I wouldn’t like this. Me, at home, on film. Madelyn would have something to say about Lacan and the image of it all. I would have something to say about; I’ve been addicted to deciphering the angles of my face in my mind until they become shapes and forms and pieces beyond recognition. Vanity is so obviously self indulgent, so blatant in its gluttony that it avoids interpretation, becomes silly to give voice to, turns omnipresent. Out Of Your Mind And Into Your Body. You will walk on the treadmill and you will write this sentence until it becomes true. I don’t function well in my own company. That’s the truth of it. Even the most basic things. On film, I wear a dress from Brandy Melville, black tights, barefoot or, the Prada boots my mother found for me cheap at a vintage store in Vermont.
The snow hasn’t started yet. I like taking photos at home, and I trust Natasha with the camera. I can’t see my own reflection. It’s fading to blue hour in the greenhouse windows. We will see how this turns out.
At drinks, later, with old friends, their Colleague came, and he's talking about how if you are not early you are late. He works in Revenue Recovery, he explains. Like if someone ordered a burger and fries but they forgot to pay for the fries, he would recover that, but for bigger things. For things like a scalpel when they’re doing surgery.
“If they lose the scalpel?” I ask.
“If they lose the revenue,” he says.
I’ve felt very defensive lately. I’ve felt an annoying need to emphasize things like I know what Deloitte is, but barely. I’ve felt an intolerable need to explain things like where a Reading ends and a Party begins. This is the greatest bar in the world, I am told. You can tell, because my vodka soda is actually full of clarified juice. I say something insufferable about how I prefer hotel lobby bars and martinis. We could all go to DCP (Double Chicken Please), someone suggests. Because this, in truth, this DCP is actually the greatest bar in New York. Outside, it’s snowing now. Inside, there are big red orbs on the ceiling and the bartenders keep swinging them around in big sweeping circles. I thought they did it on the hour, I thought they did this like a clock, but the time keeps passing and the orbs keep being set in motion, seemingly at random.
There is talk of vulgarity in comedy at our table. There is talk of a probiotic soda brands marketing scandal and the colleague hates influencer marketing, he thinks its immoral, and I’m asking things like the dumbest questions in the whole world like oh but do you think that any marketing really is moral though, and oh but do you think that brands are people, though, and oh my god you can hear your own echos sometimes and you can just want to scream. Outside, the snow is making the street and all its lights become dizzy-like. They pulled the shades down behind me in the window in the restaurant due to the draft, and I wished they hadn’t, but I like it better coming out into this quiet night covered in snow like a quiet surprise. Yellow cab fringed with ice. This will always be lovely.
I’ve felt a little more lyrical in my writing lately, and there is nothing wrong with this at times, only at times. Except, the repetition I think, feigns a kind of spirituality I don’t actually have when I am doing things like being on my phone and eating protein heavy processed snacks.
Later, returning home, reading more of Augustine’s Confessions to penetrate these skin deep musings. I put the space heater on the floor and I do feel sad now, overwhelmingly so, when I think about how terrible things could come to pass so quickly and how I could just be caught off guard, somewhere on a long walk, somewhere being vain. I sleep downstairs tonight, because I do feel very small, and because there are no shades upstairs to cover all that glass. Lying under all that night sky, you begin to think that it might suck you right in.
Wednesday, February 12
After I walk outside this morning, where the thin branches of the trees are still coated in these thin smooth layers of snow even in this early morning sun, and after I go to The Standard for the latte with almond milk, after Libra for the small cookie with tahini and chocolate chips, after class and then the walk home and then the dropping off of laundry and the grocery store and the run in the cold sun, after all of this; David returns from Paris bringing a hairbrush and perfume from Officine Universelle Buly. We are going to go out, but then there's ginger beer and vodka on the kitchen table and the caesar salad pizza from La Vera and then, it's nicer to just stay here.
Thursday, February 13
I’m back to listening to the interviews today. I’m not sure what these will become, but there’s a lot of wisdom in other people's words, and a lot of hesitation in my own voice when recorded.
There is some existential dread these days, but David says it’s all just math I don’t understand at all, and the apocalypse is not imminent. I disagree sometimes, but I am trying to worry more about things like the State Of My Soul.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Friday, February 14
If I was looking for a last minute dinner reservation tonight, here is where I would go…
Knickerbocker Bar and Grill is my favorite restaurant in New York and I’ve lauded it many times before. Classic, old school, not too many frills but still feels tasteful and nice, great t-bone, liquor on the grand piano, jazz on the weekends, etc etc etc. I like this description best - Beckett Rosset on his father dining here: “My father went here for lunch for god knows how many years. He probably consumed hundreds of gin martinis and rum and cokes there. When he died, after the memorial at Cooper Union, the family and close friends, a good thirty or forty people, went there. The owner comped everything. I thought it would not survive covid but clearly it has. Glad to know a new generation has taken to it.”
Island (uptown) has pretty waspy food, which is to say - not great. The lychee martinis are good (strong) and the people watching is excellent insofar as, this is not a spot to see and be seen, but rather a place where Upper East Side ladies gather by habit for a daily casual lunch. The interior is nautical, but it avoids being kitschy (we’re on an ocean liner, not a cruise ship). Most patrons here are between middle and elder age, which bodes well to a certain kind of restaurant experience, and one I find myself often seeking, particularly within the confines of a holiday as annoying as Valentine’s Day.
Villa Mosconi: My boyfriend pointed this spot out to me on a walk a few weeks ago, absolutely thrilled by its run down exterior, cozy bar, and Soprano’s-Style dining room visible through slightly dirty windows. Also thrilling is its proximity to Tiro A Segno - the mysterious Italian sportsman club with a basement shooting range. “The club did not provide details on how it obtained the firearm permit,” says New York Post, alongside an image of said basement shooting range, appearing to be decked in the colors of the Italian flag.
Your weekend New York itinerary is here, updated today with some new additions.
Thank you. Quite so.
Ok you've sold me on Knickerbocker