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)

flushhhhh

I burned myself on a motorcycle. The exhaust pipe bit me, but it’s my fault. I was wearing ballet flats—I know, but I was on my way to a wedding. 

I wrote in August: My pack of cigarettes is flattened like a piece of bread. Some are crooked, half smoked, broke. I don't smoke unless I truly need. I’m being taught what need means. I'm not pleasant on the brink, but I'm happy because I impress myself (hard). Every week is a challenge, but the game excites me. I eat after I starve, sleep on my feet, use every second. and not just to work, but to write, sit as I am now in thought, and socialize. And it's all put to use. Ah, to make a machine out of my brain and body! (and heart?) very satisfying. A man is playing his clarinet on the train. It is a perfect, playful tune. I'm grateful for him and his instrument. Thank you, Man with your Clarinet! I am at once satisfied, delighted, relaxed, and heartened because of you!    Now I sit outside the laundromat, under the cover of the awning. It's raining a bit. It's getting dark as it nears 8 o’clock—the days are getting shorter. Thunder crackles a bit, or cars drive over metal panels that create a road. August lightning strobes. The shop opposite me is called Lantigua Deli. Its red awning casts aglow the wall that suspends it. It's such an old image: The corner store, fluorescent lights, two guys—one big, one small—leaning against a red wall. Thunder splits the sky open. Now rain pours, when before it drizzled. I'm sheltered now inside the laundromat. 30 minutes to go. Lights flicker here, too. I'm happy to be here. My life is good, better because it's hard. I am up for the challenge, it's quite amazing. I ran outside, was instantly devoured, completely chilled. I'm so awake, completely tight.

I took a week off and now I am confused. I almost regret it, but I don’t. The wedding was beautiful. l and I met at the restaurant where we met and became its centerpiece, both dressed in blue and brushed, blonde hair. We danced and talked and I felt so happy, a happiness that was manifold: 1) We were drinking quite heavily. At points I felt dizzy and maybe about to be sick, but l steadied me. So, I'd eat a bit of cake, take a sip of water, maybe freshen up in the bathroom or smoke a cigarette, and then I was ready to continue. 2) We were surrounded by an incredible beauty. The wedding was at the couple's home. It overlooks the mountains and the land surrounds the house like a horseshoe. A white tent rose over tables decorated with candles, hand-picked arrangements, garlands of perhaps grapes or some orb-shaped fruit or vegetable. In the right corner a rustic lemon cake sprawled, which the bride took a bite of just as we arrived. To the left was a sloping dance floor—which no one slipped on, mind you—that faced a band of rotating players, which sometimes ft. the groom himself. Random groups of chairs peppered the property, each marked by a canopy of lights that seemed to float higher as dark set in. And down the hill Prosecco flowed from a tap and batched cocktails could be scooped out of tin wells—a drinking station fit for Puck and the rest of a midsummer’s night dream. And 3) l is a wondrous person who makes me, in turn, feel wondrous. He drove us in his old Saab, which he started down by his thigh. He lit my cigarette with its lighter. And even called me a talker.

I’m still nursing my burn, but it's started to harden. Before, it was red and raw and fleshy, so vulnerable it hurt to look at. In jersey I ate too much red meat and drank too much coffee, so much red meat and coffee that I began to think differently. Other people's thoughts swirled. they have no place in my brain. I’ve just about managed to get them out.  It was cold in jersey. Wind blew newspapers off the coffee table and onto the floor, where they squirmed.

I do often wish that I was riding backward on the train, straight through New York, onto Raleigh, Florida, New Orleans. I’m flushing the summer away

Roxy

 I sat across a young man at a table a week or so ago. I was with d and we ran into a group of his friends outside a restaurant. We sat there and smoked a couple cigarettes. The young man was very tall and thin. He was already drunk. The blazer he wore swung back and forth from his shoulders. We walked to the bar and he walked either very far ahead or behind us. When he noticed he fell behind, he would shoot up again, though shot after shot he would miss. He didn’t seem to know how to work this long body of his yet. 

He ordered one or two drinks at the bar and talked to just about anyone. People approached him and he approached others. He smiled and laughed easily and his long hair flapped in the stale bar breeze. He sat back down with us, a table made up of the boys he went to prep school with— and me.

He sat cross-legged and called himself a poet, but other than that said nothing else. Around his friends, he seemed depressed. He crumbled inside the costume, Slouched over, the blazer looked hopelessly bigger than him. He began to fall asleep on himself. 

If I were to tap him with a spoon, I thought to myself, he would crack, maybe shatter. If he were older, I would wonder. But he was my age, so I pitied.

I asked him what he was drinking.

He said whiskey.

Straight? I asked.

I dated a gurl named Roxy, he said. When we broke up, I stopped taking it on the rocks...

How to beat the heat... sip sip sip

 Summer is a vulgar season, and that redeems it. Bride and groom sit at the end of the bar. They sip their drinks sullenly through straws. They stare down at the oak. Occasionally they look up and smile into her phone camera. 

She is Korean. Her white dress is short and her veil made of nylon. He is Italian. His tuxedo is traditional. I watch them and feel sorry, because they seem unhappy on their wedding day. But people in New York become not so much people, but impressions of them… so I’m only a little sorry. Heat is a confusing sedative. People cannot think or speak properly, so they scream out loud or in their melting subconscious. Bodies burst out of clothes. People don’t bother to wrestle them back in. Man and woman are sweating at the end of the bar. But yes, stay just as you are. sip sip sip

This week my emotions were like bombs. I saw them in front of me, popped them in my mouth, swallowed them naively, and they burst inside of me. I rode the N from les to the edge of astoria, drawing a horse, and then back to les and into Brooklyn, drawing a lady. I got off and took buses back to queens, smoking cigarettes at transfers and crying uncontrollably behind big sunglasses. sip sip sip

While cold makes me sink deeper into my body, heat makes me want to escape it. Summer heat makes me feel as if I’m on the brink. My skin feels too tight, my hair too thick, my time too long

Sometimes New York gets me in a tizzy. I can find the people in it bleak and belonging to a world that is offensively small. And I don’t mean small, like, the barrier of entry is too high, or exclusive, or impenetrable. I actually think it would be somewhat easy to penetrate; so many of those inside want so badly for love by someone halfway attractive, talented, or with some professional potential. I mean small as in spoiled, unimaginative, repetitive, and predictable. It happens. I understand. I’m sure it’s livable from the inside. But watching it has depressed me. As has the heat. sip sip sip

lamb

 I roasted a leg of lamb because I felt like I needed to. I lived with my grandparents on their sheep farm when I was growing up, twice. First for three years when I was a child, then for a few when I was a teenager. Every spring lambs would be born. Some ewes birthed three or four, others only one, a few lambs were born still. My pépère showed me how to clip their tails off with a contraption that looked like a nutcracker. You insert their tails into the slot and squeeze the handles closed. The tail falls to the ground and you plunge the nub into a chemical that sterilizes the wound. As a child I preferred to just hold the lambs in my arms as he did the chopping. I squeezed them very tight and they became still. I nuzzled them against my cheek and whispered to them so they’d be calm. When the cleaver closed, they jolted and mewed and often writhed out of my small arms. I played with them afterward.

My pepere sheared sheep expertly. He has since he was 16. He wrestled them into a position in which their shoulders were against his knees, and their back hooves and legs perpendicular to his legs. In this position they fell limp, like dummies. Their bellies fell over their thighs. They understood now was not the time to fight, but be taken. He sheared up and down with a razor, until their wool was short and groovy. Fluffs fell on the cement slab that was at the entrance of the barn. I would play with them in my hands, stretching them apart, padding them together, pulling them into shapes. The rest he swept up into a pile.
The lambs would stand close to their mothers in the field. They’d play, kick their legs up. They’d also lay and nuzzle against their mums’ new haircuts. The girls would grow up and most boys would be picked up and brought to slaughter. We would get some of the meat back and eat it for supper. Lots of stews and curries. On more celebratory occasions, my mémère would cook a roast.
I'd never cooked one myself. My birthday is near and I deeply wanted to cook a hunk of meat and serve it to people I love in a beautiful way. Providing in this way is very romantic to me.
I bought 6.5 pounds from Akropolis Meat Market. They weighed it in front of me, and I asked them to keep the bone in. I brought it home and dropped it on the counter and unwrapped the paper. It looked very much like a muscle. Pale ligaments stretched beyond its deep redness. Snow white fat fell in thick lines. 

I made a dozen incisions in the meat. 

I ground up anchovies, garlic, and rosemary and 

I stuffed it inside them with my fingers, heavily dosing the little cavities. 

I squeezed anchovies into butter with my hands and 

I smeared the paste atop the whole surface, covering it completely. 

I licked off every remnant left on me. 

I placed it on the oven rack at 325° for 20 minutes per pound, per memere’s instruction—

she likes it bloody and so, 

I like it bloody. 

I put a pyrex pan underneath it to catch excess drippings, and 

I used that to season the potatoes I roasted afterward, along with olive oil, salt, pepper, and more rosemary. (Next time, 

I will roast the potatoes underneath the lamb simultaneously.) 

The lamb is such an innocent thing, a famous beacon of purity. But there is something so vulgar about the act of cooking it. What a delicious contradiction I served on a silver platter

sophomore

a and I likened our twenties to high school. 20-22 is freshman year. 23 and 24 is sophomore, 25-27 junior, 28 and 29 senior. As a freshman you try and flail. I flailed up right center. We were babies, learning how to walk, and still we feel like crying. I tried a lot on and most nothing fit, but that which did: delicious, really [New York, writing fiction]. Now we’re rising sophomores. 

Summers have always been hard for me. I am and have always been with Lana. Summertime sadness is the greatest one. I reread blog entries from last year; it’s all there. [I can get so tired of reading writing. Voice, style, it can all be so embarrassing. Clarice stands above all in her deployment of style, but it’s the absence of Voice in her work that makes it great. She writes automatically (a method I am partial to), one can tell. Can someone send me My first book. I’m curious.] 

All I want to do is take a roadtrip, though not now.

Sometimes I think I’m running in circles, sometimes in an upside down cone and that's terrifying: the thought of running in circles, lap after lap after lap after lap, at a downward tilt. Not spiraling, I must make that clear. My fear is that it’s gradual. It's far harder to correct that way.

I’m not sure yet what sophomore year is about. Digging your heals in? Realizing the path? My prediction:

filtration

Clarity

Greater quality (minor but meaningful)

Probably more flailing

 

Ah, another year. I’m pretty tired, excited for my birthday to be over, but desperate to be loved on it in all the familiar ways. I will cook a leg of lamb in celebration. Renewal, redemption!!!!!!!!!!!!