little purpose

Right now I'm taking care of a big empty house. It’s only this light, cool blue color, and to walk from one end to the other takes a whole minute. The man who owns this big blue empty house broke his neck awhile ago and had no one to take care of him. Now he’s in Florida to see his elderly mother.

The big blue empty house looks out past a clear-cut meadow onto the West. Today the clouds are lined with red, like a jam-butter seeping out of a pastry fold. Sun shines and dims on sections of land one at a time. The wind is strong, very strong, way stronger than most wind in this area. Because the forest around it was clear-cut, there’s nothing for the wind to bristle against. All it does now is sweep hard and fast. The houses on this road are Designed, especially with the view in mind, and Privacy. They are Large and Spacious, Sturdy. They don’t whistle like houses here tend to. Everything is quiet, most dogs don’t even bark. The only exception is an old brown farmhouse—correction: two, across the road from each other. Cars are everywhere around the two brown farmhouses, old beaters. And their beef cows stand on a mound of dirt. Their dogs are the ones that bark. They've been on this road longer than anyone, digging their heels in. 

This is one of the few places in the area with a view—the land is usually so clouded by trees and dense forest, all closed in on. It feels open in an unusual way out here, like you can breathe. But then the wind makes you all cold and sends a chill up your spine. Go inside.

Marcus A said everything ought to be directed toward a goal—even the smallest things. The goal of rational beings is to follow the rule and law of the most ancient of communities and states. He said the human soul degrades itself when it allows its action and impulse to be without purpose, to be random and disconnected. I got to thinking, maybe marrying the old man who lives here would give me some of that. He broke his neck awhile ago and had no one to take care of him. His children live far away, they're older than me. And he had this house built with all of these double features, a double sink, double garage, lots of seating. maybe I could help these features, see they have no use without someone, we could do each other this favor. The man is nice enough, somewhat boring, apparently Jewish. I could spend the rest of his days here, all peaceful, taking care, in our fortress. Listening to the wind. 

This morning I took the dog out into the meadow. The wind was blowing real strong but the sun was out so I laid down on the grass. First on my back but then I rolled onto my side so the sun didn’t shine so directly into my eyes. I laid there for a while, looking at the grass through a few strands of blonde hair that fell over my eyes. I wove a few blades in between my fingers. I lifted my head up to check on the dog, but I couldn’t see her. I walked over to look across the meadow and then around the whole house. I found her with a bone in her mouth and love in her eyes. I walked with her a bit as she shopped around for a good place to lay it down. It was a slow process, she tends to meander a bit. Finally, with the little bone in her mouth, she dug a little hole at the base of a baby douglas fir in the old man’s garden, real shallow. She let it down into the hole, and then used her nose to push the dirt back over it, all slow and methodical. It took her a few minutes, but when she had finally moved all the dirt in a way she deemed satisfactory she patted it a few times with her paw. I told her that was a very nice place for it and a very good thing she just did, making sure it’s all safe and everything. C’mon now, it’s time to go back inside. She wagged her tail and followed close behind me.

so long

It's raining and gloomy in New York and I'm staying in bed today - it's ridiculous how easy my life can be sometimes. I was once so obsessed with the movies, especially the realist ones on film, with beautiful boyish girls who moved through the world all quiet and doe-eyed. And the girls who were disruptive and antagonistic and rebellious. But my tastes have shifted. Now I don’t watch as many movies, but when I do they are probably animated or campy fantastical ones, like The NeverEnding Story. I cycle through the likes of Ghibli, The Last Unicorn, Shrek. and then TV. perhaps because I realized all of my previous tastes. I cut my hair short and was a boyish doe-eyed 19-year-old. A disillusioned talk-backing teen. An aimless New Yorker. Now I want to be free, young, light, magic. misery wastes time

Leaving this room is sad, seeing it all empty. I can hardly hear the buzz of the fish tank. It has sunk into the bed's fabric and disappeared. Birds chirp outside, spring? Yesterday it was nearly 80° and everyone went outside to do probably many things but all I saw with an apron on was them sipping on spritzes. 

Two tables say I look like Elle Fanning, which is nice because I usually get Dakota. 

European models talk about a problematic health minister, who is “obviously so obese.” 

I work and work, make more than a thousand dollars and then say my goodbyes because I won't be returning. 

I am sad to leave but happy to go (yes). 

I sit back for a moment with f at the bar, and thanks to his romantic eye, I too look toward my coworkers and watch them do their dance, measuring ounces, pouring, shaking, flirting, rejecting. I love them very much then, and see the magic that everyone talks about - it's so important in this industry to sit back and watch, but the trouble is finding time. Despite love and romance, I stand by my conclusions: Restaurants become toxic entities all their own, and they suck from those who give, as much as whomever allows. If you are not careful, you will wake up all withered and without x amount of years. f, though, is in love with it all and it seems good for him. 

He is the exception, there are those, maybe many of them too. 

He once wanted to act, but now thinks that maybe that desire led him to another. 

This is the path, he says, smiling. 

I order a burger, medium rare.

Re: this room, I hate to leave (l,g,a,a,r,f,n,on,on,on). So many moves have been so hasty, all in a hurry. This one is slower, more methodical, more sad. I am sad but so happy that I am so sad, so lucky. I worry, too. Not for me either. I want everything to be okay (magic).

On my last day in Brooklyn we all sit on the porch. g reads. l draws the yards around us, most filled with planks of wood and brush. But here and there, something: a wire strung around a pole, a planter made out of a basketball, and other examples of recycling taken too far. Mostly her notebook contains renditions of album art or things from our table: a beer bottle, a hand made out of clay with its thumb cut off (broken, a very bad accident, don’t ask). I mend a hat that I found weeks ago for a few dollars, string thread through loops and tie it tight so it all comes together again. We sit and lay for hours, bring snacks and pillows out to sustain us, chain smoke cigarettes, layer up as the sun passes to the other side of the sky. Our neighbors must think we're bums, I think. Lazy sugar babies who work at night and laze all morning. You see we lay like this most days, with a calm about us, a certain self-possession. Hardly a word is spoken and music plays softly until it, too, fades into the background. Our heads sink into our novels and our notebooks. And nothing is left of our breath but the smoke that wafts from what hangs, lodged between our teeth and our lips. 

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.