north

 I went north a few weeks ago to see Niagara Falls. That's Canada in the picture taken from the New York side. A ferris wheel, maybe a boat landing for the ferry that takes you through the falls in the Spring. But it was winter so the water fell through enormous blocks of ice covered in snow. Steam rose up up and then disappeared like our breath. I forgot my passport but the lady across the bridge said it was no big deal, please come over. c said it was because I’m pretty. She asked what was in our bags and we opened them up. a took out her bikini to show the lady, who laughed. Won’t be needing that at this time of year. This picture was taken before I knew I could get in. Can you sense the longing? We got across the border and all was well. Well, there was a lot of snow and it was very cold. We went through the McDonald’s drive through, stayed there a while deciding but couldn’t because the screen we were supposed to read kept changing. We parked, decided on the same thing we always get, then went through it again, ordered two quarter pounders with cheese and a diet coke, chicken nuggets, fries. We found our way into the AirBNB, took the scary painting of a woman with big eyes down, ate the McDonald’s and drank wine from bottles we got from one of those reno’d corner stores that feels wrong inside because they’re supposed to be dingy and for truckers but now they’re for girls looking for natural wine and so-called local cuisine on their way upstate. We played cards then decided to try to buy some weed but the store was closed so we went to the bar on our way back in our pjs. We played pool to varying degrees of success. Some Canadian boy came up to me and asked if I was religious because my dress was long and my socks were high. I explained to him that no, we were just going outside to buy weed from the store but when we got there the door was closed. Does everything here close so early? This is my nightgown. We were going to bed before this. We started talking about this and that, he’s a cook and doesn’t mind trump so much, he made me laugh quite hard and bought me a beer, and then he asked again: so you’re not Mormon? I laughed more and wrote my number on his arm with what he had in his pocket, a Sharpie. The next day a l and me got breakfast: some of the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had, all doughy and soft the kind you can taste the batter in, and Canadian bacon, which is Christmas ham—you know that I know that but for breakfast it’s decadent and delicious and we ate it all up. Ava dipped her sausage in the little plastic dipping container of maple syrup and got the peelable lid stuck to her sleeve near her elbow. Our waitress was an angel whom I named Penny, having not been able to ask her her real name. She pointed us to the shop next door where we could dig around and score some trinkets. The shop guy was a sweetheart and said that no one should ever boo a national anthem. The cat in that store was the friendliest cat I’ve ever met, all orange and fluffy and her actual name was penny. We found rings, magnets, records, gifts, pins, charms, books, all to take home. Which we did later that day, through a blizzard and a podcast all about people for whom sex is their sun moon and stars. Specifically the episode with CumGirl47 or something like that. Eventually I asked l to drive the last hour or so, and she brought us all the way home. 

25% gratuity

I am grateful for Arlo Guthrie, roads, trains, gnarled kids and sad parents, weather, laborers, workers, cigarettes, my liberty, New York- its past and its present, beauty, ecstasy, running, pain, my body (wow), the human spirit, consciousness, contrarianism, sensitivity, love, freedom, man, singing, drunkenness, sobriety, the rotten, the ripe, leather, fur, animals, craftsmanship, singularity, a select few restaurants, a select few, relationships in their diversity, my elders, books, handwriting, typing, and a New England sensibility

saltines and soup

At square in tribeca with the lentil soup. The boys in the booth in front of me get a tuna melt and start going on about the pickle. “So what’s with it? When do you eat it, do you just take bites, do you eat it all at once? Well at what point of the sandwich?” I crush one packet of saltines and pour it into the soup in a heap. Eat it in spoonfuls. New York is at its best- dark, cold, not exactly frozen. Yesterday it was—I will stop saying right and wrong, there is no such thing when it comes to places; they cannot achieve rightness or wrongness and sureness is a fraud. Still, it was the most beautiful, completely buzzing, and I loved every person I laid eyes on, even the working women in trench coats, Romaine with his crazy eyes, the men singing on the streets, cracked and on the edge of sanity. I hadn’t felt so affectionately about the city in months. The only place that holds the future and the past and rolls it all into one, a big bursting burrito dripping with juice. I have a roll of cash in my pocket that I will pay for my soup with, that I bought beer with last night, that I hope to buy a pack of nails, a new sink plug, and fly traps with later, but ultimately expect to lose. Yesterday I walked and walked. I walked from bushwick to greenpoint and then my phone died. I sat down at a bar to charge it, drank, and read a book through to the end of lost men wandering in search of God In America, in women, in experience, of hunger and thirst and eating and drinking to no avail. And so I thought of my father and walked all the way to astoria... I crush another bag of crackers, pour it into the soup, eat more spoonfuls. Now the boys are going through their letterboxds, sorted by date released, oldest to newest. Today I transcribed an interview, a grand one. The subject went on and on about wonderful far out ideas. One of them being about how men, between their adolescent relationship with their mother and romantic or spousal relationships with women (who inspire the same kind of feeling, relationship, love?), are lost. Doomed forever to debate the pickle on the side of their plate. Who knows, really, but I dig it. Especially after reading Kerouac. Men roam and roam and latch onto the recognizable boob, something that comforts, quells. But women do the same, of course. In that quelling though are we not further lost? In reversion we are surely not found… is that where searching leads, back where you started? I guess a relationship in theory, by providing what men seek (comfort, security, warmth), frees its members to do more, but that is far too healthy a model for most people... My mother kept a journal when she found out she was pregnant. She was 23 years old and was told to keep track of what she ate. She gave it to me last weekend and I read it in front of her. Most of it was her apologizing for not eating better, for her anger and bouts of depression, when she threw water at “your father, papa, etc,” and telling me that she feared passing it all on. She spoke of how in love she was, though, and how afraid she was of everything falling apart, especially due to her habit of throwing things. And of course a year after I was born, it did. I thanked her and went into my room. We hadn’t seen each other in awhile, but I’m trying to be a better daughter. I finish the four packets of saltines with some soup left to go. The waiter asks if I want more. No, I say. Thanks. The boys in front of me have left. I leave cash under the plastic water glass and go.

Gaping

Fiction drop: https://nomoreprostitutes.com/Althea-Champion

settling - good

For a week or so I was taking big bites and eating fast. I wrapped my mouth around danishes and sandwiches and pieces of chicken and filled it completely, gnawing and gnashing. The week after I was plumper than before, because I had swallowed everything without thinking at all. I ate less then and had headaches, from screens or dehydration, fatigue or my food embargo. I suspected my vision was going slightly also - I was straining to see in a way I hadn't before. I also found it very hard to focus - my brain felt weak, and I vulnerable to temptation. I wanted very much to buy things and indulge… I craved new things: clothes, decor, hobbies, knowledge. but all I felt capable of was aimless thought. The next day I was getting dinner and I though that would be good. I had also lacked a good book for a while. Still I subsist off of scrawny books we have around the house, which I read and reread. I want a large juicy delicious one very bad. (Won’t you send me one?)

The day after that I bought clothes, envelopes, mascara, a pastry, dinner, and an Uber home. My credit card bill shot through the roof.

I felt like flesh and wondered separately if everyone’s flesh felt like mine? so prone to bursts of flame and fits of constriction.

Now I have calmed a bit. I feel quite beautiful actually. settled in my body, at least for the time being, and true to my presentation. 

Settling is aspirational, when you consider it really. peace. 

I had a story published, and I did a lot of thinking about it after the fact, where it deserved more attention, etc. But I’m content with it as is, as it is, in its way, like yesterday was: simple and stunning. I got off work and circled the same few blocks. I spoke to my mother for the first time in months, and then my dad. d, too - I’m getting better at contact. Then I went home, invited w for dinner, and helped c salvage her cod and potatoes. We drank wine and debated the death of New York. Probed each other's relationships to love, sex, and gender. It was entirely unselfconscious; we buzzed, with ecstasy! somewhat inappropriate for such a simple meal on an ordinary Wednesday guided by routine impulses toward food, wine, friendship...(...another example of aspirational settlement.) Will said his goodbyes, give me a few book recommendations, and left. I put Girls on the tv, Cynthia went to bed, and I followed shortly after - we dreamed.

terminal

 All of my socks have holes in them. I am out of almost every product. I know, I know… but I did order a new calendar! I have many plans… And the calendar’s theme is hope. Funny, because that was front of mind this year. Keep the faith, I said. And the faith I kept. 

A mole on my arm scabbed over and for a few days I thought I had cancer—the doctor at Urgent Care said I didn’t (♱). But naturally I started planning: I considered potential subletters and figured I’d move in with my grandparents and then start treatment —that is if my prognosis was the manageable sort. If it wasn’t, and I had months or a year to go, then I would be challenged in a much different way. My first thought, in that case: kermit. 

I am a person deeply tied to the future—it is in many ways my lifeline. I do hardly anything without thinking about it, not so much in a responsible way. Moreso along the line of, how nice it will be. But I do consider it very much, and am highly responsible. While this was borne out of necessity—I have been in sole charge of myself for a long time now—I quite enjoy responsibility. I look forward to owning a house very much (it’s my one real goal). I relish in saving and planning. Etc. A future is the greatest gift, and to not have one would depress me endlessly. A future, actually, is the one true salve of my sadness. I do not take it for granted. Everything I do, quite literally, is for it.

But if I were to resist the reaper, which I likely would because I’m not one to really give up anything (ie. my holy socks and dried up mascara tubes), I would like to live my life quite similarly to how I do now—isn’t that sweet. I would give up my ---, surely. I would write during the day and work at the restaurant at night. I would stop saving, obviously, and eat at my favorite places, plus a few more I want to try, with my beautiful beautiful friends. I’d order the freshest thing on the menu. Drink lots of wine and coffee. Buy the best olives, cheese, and tinned fish. With my meager savings I would buy a car and take long drives alone to the woods, listen to music sometimes, sit in the sun, and stay in motels. I would use my new car to visit g in Philly, m in Boston, i in Florida, and my cousins in Maine and Sacramento. Hopefully I would make it to London to see e, who I would then grab and take to Mexico City. But mostly I would enjoy my days. 

The rest are things I already plan to do, but if I was terminal and money thus ceased to be an issue, and my pride in making it expired, I would do them all in quick succession. How lovely, though, really, to be so close to this ultimate life. How lovely to live so close to my desire. What a gift 𒀬 After all, this life is made of days. The end lends importance to the means, but the means are all we have. Enjoy, please, enjoy! And if you focus each day on the how, I believe the what will become a much richer thing.

the dream

 Yesterday was the equinox, and today is cold. Equinoxes are important to me and many of my friends, so we tend to celebrate them. That, full moons, new moons, many moon phases in general. I feel the need to acknowledge the seasons and the moon. Not woo woo. the moon and the seasons are just important, some of the most beautiful things in the universe. The moon literally. Seasons more symbolically. Though we didn’t do anything big* 

*I am unbearably exhausted. My heel is bleeding, but my burn has healed and the scab fell off. I was wrapping it in a pair of silk underwear because gauze stuck to it and stung when I peeled it off. And then n told me her French grandmother said to sleep with a silk handkerchief around her neck when you feel a sore throat coming. It will ward it off, or help it heal. And I thought, in retrospect, silk heals all things. Doctors, take note, for your sake and mine. The day before I pulled glass out of my mouth while eating a heaping bowl of rice and wilted spinach dressed with lots of soy sauce. I had already been feeling like something was wrong, but this solidified it. Though little has changed… there’s not much I can do at the moment but wait. My feet feel like only bone. And my future is very hard to imagine, though I’m trying. See:

I did rearrange my apartment with c. But I was very anxious afterward… I felt that I had disrupted our Spot. Before it was very, very beautiful. Shells were everywhere and light bounced in and out. The space was open, light, and largely impractical, ie. We had a tv that sat probably 10 feet away from the couch. For the first few months we lived there, a white metal bed frame sat there without a mattress. But still I laid a quite pretty, little, silk kind of baby sleeping bag on it. (Ah, silk again)

I have always been precious, but especially lately. I feel very sensitive to magic, that charmful quality native to beauty. Call it divinity, that’s what I’ve begun to do. Not necessarily God, but I say that too.

The space is much different now. Still lovely and special, with shells and lace hung from nails left behind by dozens of past tenants, though indefinitely divided and far more practical, and I find something about that a bit boring and sad. It’s the same way I feel when I ride the subway with corporates. How sad to know the rest of your life. I’ve always considered resignation a tragedy, even if it’s not a bad thing. I am so attached to not-knowing. I find that life lacks when it is made up. It is so much more when it unfolds like this and oh! that! But I also struggle because I cannot imagine a future… it is one big hazy cloud in which figures occasionally take form and then blow away. But it is all one big dream! Oh just let me be (free)