The pet ducks kept on disappearing, usually in the early morning hours. The first time it happened, I was all torn up at the thought of the two male pekin ducks murdered in the early morning hours in the fall. I imagined they must have been at the front of the pack, defending the females, the only evidence left being a few feathers. The Tractor Supply Store sells ducklings in the middle of the sales floor in the springtime, in a pen under red heat lamps, next to the chick pen, only sold in unsexed sets of six. My mother bought a set as soon as she moved into the house in the Berkshire Mountains, marking her transition to a “year-rounder.” The house is on a steep hill, and driving up the driveway feels like navigating a boat to shore.
“No Neighbors!” my mother boasts. She was tired of the city she grew up in. No more “no parking”, no more miserable downstairs apartment neighbors hitting their ceiling with the back of a broom.
I was up there with her, while my dad reluctantly did his pre-retirement in the city. He wasn’t done, but had to figure out how to be. I completed college in video conferences online, and my mother lavished in the pace of her new environment. In her once summer home, she installed WiFi, and together we assembled a prefabricated duck coop behind the house.
The second time a duck perished, a year later, I had graduated college, and moved away, back to the city. This time, it was one of my parent’s large poodles who grabbed one of their brown so-called “Indian Runner” ducks by the neck playfully, or maybe instinctually. My parents didn’t mention it to me until I visited and saw the shallow grave next to the coop, with an epitaph on a rock painted in leftover house paint lamenting, “SHIRLEY - INNOCENT.”
The blood-thirsty poodles were nothing like the small dogs we’d had in dog generations prior, apartment dogs, dogs you walk just around the block in Brooklyn. It only made sense that the next generation of dogs would traverse the mountainside properly, and protect the home, and the ducks. So they got two big poodles, one gorgeous tall “royal standard” from a breeder, the other shorter but hard-muscled, rescued from a condemned hoarder house down the road. I learned that the voraciously clever poodle breed was bred to be waterfowl retrievers at one point in time. Hunters would go out with their guns, and the long nosed poodle would go and get em’.
With dogs in tow, my parents toured me around the slow development of making their woods “lived in”. In the front of the house and down the hillside, my dad cut trails with his leatherman and an electric weed cutter. He marked trees with leftover house paint, put decapitated stuffed animal heads from the dogs’ toys on bare branches to mark the way down the hill, around the stream, or toward the big beaver ponds. He recreated a strict routine of his previous working life with daily laps around the pond, where he regularly kicked pieces of the invasive beaver dams out from the pond’s edges and down the stream. He also picked flat scrap wood from the local garbage transfer station, to put on the back of his newly purchased ATV to drop across the streams.
As we walked down his trails, he highlighted trees interlocking each other where he dreamt of wedging a treehouse. The dogs ran ahead of us, criss-crossing, they disappeared into the thicket off trail, and I called out to them anxiously. They’re not the type of dog to follow commands, or always be anxiously looking up at you for “what’s next”. They did as they pleased, and the sound of angry scolding or desperate calls for them only invigorated them, it pushed them further into the wild. My father assured me they always come back- and they do, eventually, they passed my legs carrying a waterlogged branch, and they nearly knocked me over enthusiastically. A walk like that happens daily, whether I’m there calling out for them or not.
Sometimes I go out alone. I wander out to get out of the house and make my time at my parents home in the woods feel well done, not wasted or ungracious– some real time in nature, with just my phone and often the wrong shoes. I stumble out there a bit listlessly. I don't know the names of the trees, and I keep forgetting the essential details from a very interesting book I read in college on the “cultural history” of mosses. The woods often feel empty, or like I’m the only thing there. There’s just tangle and texture, and brownness and greenness. I feel that I’m just passing through a crowd, getting to somewhere else. In the warm weather on one of these walks I sat along the stream and looked for some odd life to pass by, but it seemed mostly empty in my impatience..
I downloaded an app or two that does picture analysis of plants and fungi. It scours databases and logs photos with its suggested identifications. When I used it for the first time in the summertime I thought, finally, this would make the trails feel worth it, or make me feel connected to this place. With an excess of knowledge I could begin to learn, take advantage of this stuff. I crouched down on the ground on the trail and held my phone out in between myself a little living thing or two. After searching for a data connection, the app told me a few things, the most common results are the easiest to memorize through repetition.
Now I could tell you- This is definitely a deer mushroom on some wood waste, it doesn’t taste very good and it's everywhere, like deer. In the autumn there’s pretty orange ones that could be one of five different species, I’d have to check, if you wanted to know the names.
The app issues warnings against using its technology to figure out if something in the woods is edible. I snapped a few pictures of a wide patch of curling fern sprouts, their spiral growth pattern so relatable and easily poetic. One of the poodles heard or smelled me on the paths alone and came to find me, and anxiously herded me back to the house, as if I was lost. I go back and take a nap, under a window with no coverings, only exposed to the exuberant green of familiar birch trees behind the house.
In that direction is a steep uphill incline, in the winter, the birch tree trunks blur together into gray matter as they get further back from my sight. I don’t know what’s in the brambles, beyond the brambles, or over the horizon of the mountainside, but sometimes you can maybe hear the whirring of car engines and trains, the sound streaming its way down the mountainside from a Massachusetts state route. It is the stage direction I imagined the ducks’ predators would enter from. I pictured them picking up speed galloping down the hillside, sliding on patches of ice towards the duck coop in the back of the house. Or maybe stalking down, balancing paws on boulders, crinkling the leaves. In the summer it was too easy to slip in and out of the thicket. My parents installed red blinking lights to mimic the eyes of predators on the fence posts around the coop. Later, after another attack, they include bright motion-activated lights, and a siren. There were only 2 ducks left to defend.
“You’ll hear it in the night, it's only 30 seconds long so don’t worry,” my dad said over coffee upon my next visit after the siren installation. It was after that comment that he hinted that my mom wanted to get alpacas; that they had seen a couple own some on a small hilly ranch in one of the sprawling towns in the county. They were so soft and so chill.
“But you don’t have a ranch, or a field! Just a tiny backyard with some ducks. That can’t be a good idea,” I complained anxiously.
“They’d like to climb the trails,” He laughs and my mother changes the subject. I looked at them in shocked half breath, and decided I will just have to suggest slowly over text, phone calls, and visits, the ways that might not be a good idea. I would probably use endless online research, the excesses of information available to convince someone that what they’re thinking may not be a good plan, or how to make it a better one. Sometimes there's too much information, or you realize that doing something the correct way is often the least-cost effective, the most effort would be put into force the right conditions, to try and get the best expected outcomes, based on the majority of online users' experiences with the real world.
From my bedroom window, each morning I hear the ducks waking up, quacking, waiting for the automatic door to trigger at 6 A.M. to let them out into their fenced in wet dirt and their plastic pool of hose water. In the night, from my room, I press an ear against the screen in the window, then play audio clips off my phone of different animals to match up what I hear. A few times I identified packs of coyotes in the distance, like disembodied human-like whines and screams. I most often identified the barred owl’s call, common in the Northeast. When a friend or a boyfriend visits me with my family, I teach them to listen for it too. The barred owl is repetitive and unexpectedly loud, its rhythm mnemonically described by naturalists as sounding like the phrase: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?
I have a Whatsapp call scheduled and I’m meeting up at a friend’s house who speaks Spanish so they can translate between me and Yanza Tormenta, the witch who is phoning in from outside Mexico City. It feels like incredibly dire times and when we get on the call, Yanza Tormenta confirms just as much.
There is a man in the life of my best friend who, without intervention, is sucking the life out of her, and without intervention, her life will end. He has been playing with dark energy. There are drugs involved. He has identified me as a threat to his plan, and is trying to make me lose my mind so I am institutionalized. I am incredibly rational and have always been the stable one. I agree wholeheartedly that this is all true, and I have deeply felt the disorientation. Worry for my friend has turned into strange thoughts and a collapsing sense of self. I arrived here because I awoke one morning with a strong inclination that I needed spiritual help.
We were both raised Catholic. We made all our sacraments together. I’ve always had a sense that she was more spiritual than I. When we were 11, sitting on a bench in a concrete playground, my best friend asked me if we should take a vow and get purity rings, before going into 6th grade. Her older brother told her that girls he knew who went to our specific middle school became sluts. I expressed some apprehension, I kinda just wanted to see how things would play out in middle school, and I was also going through a short phase where discussion of sex, even about avoiding it, was mortifying. I also realized the motivation for this question was probably a recent South Park episode we had watched, mocking the Jonas Brothers. We had never discussed chastity at our generally liberal Catholic Church. However, it was vaguely worrying me, that detail about those mysterious older girls, now sluts. We made an informal virginity pact and left it there.
By the end of the next school year, I found out a lot about what my best friend was going through by scrolling her tumblr page, and reading her personal text posts. She was an incredible poet of angst, and it was all conveniently private. I saw her every day but would never directly bring up those thoughts. She would bring up mine openly and curiously, to where it almost felt diminishing, like my private tumblr thoughts were less ominous and mysterious, and more generally approachable to the IRL. One day she posted that she met and spoke to Jesus in a moment of crisis. I had to Google whether these were lyrics from a likely midwestern Christian screamo band. I confirmed they were her words and I was shocked. We were from Brooklyn, New York and went to public school. You meet Jesus in the Church, not your neon green bedroom. Despite this, I wholeheartedly believed her.
Yanza Tormenta has me and my translator get out a paper and a pen for a shopping list. I nod along eagerly. I didn’t know too much about what this tradition was about before arriving, I knew it was a “last resort” type of situation. I also knew I was going to be spending a lot of money on supplies, as well as the services of Yanza Tormenta.
“She wants you to know she’s a real witch.” My friend translates. Her tone is sing-songy and humorous. Before giving us the ritual shopping list, she shows us around her apartment through the video call, filled with varying sized statues of deities from different global traditions of home made magic. Giant platters of fruit and alcohol on fold out tables lined the perimeter of every room. Each deity is decorated with stacks of gold jewelry. Outside her home, there is a courtyard with a totem pole in the center, which looks scorched. I express being highly impressed. Yanza Tormenta directs my friend to translate that I would look good with bangs and highlights in my hair.
At this point in the WhatsApp consultation session I put together all the pieces to my whole life leading to this moment. Even the YouTube algorithm felt fated in our direction, which had brought my translator friend a low-views video of Yanza Tormenta. I had received that scholarship to college so I could have autonomy over money, just enough that I could do whatever it takes to free my best friend. The Westchester town outside my college just happened to be majority Spanish-speaking. It would have a botanica, where I could get the type of candles I needed to do this ritual.
I also learn from this call, and the next few days of emotionally intense preparations and a series of guided whatsapp rituals that this tradition is a “come as you are” situation. I could pray the prayers I had learned in Sunday school to access whatever spirituality I had been raised with. I could substitute certain bush flowers native to central Mexico for a flower I could find near the checkout at Stop & Shop. I could enter and sit in the only clean, fast running “river” in the NYC metro area to complete the ritual, through a housing complex in Greenwich, Connecticut, where we tell local police officers we are doing a video art project for the nearby college. I don’t burn the tall candles down to the bottoms, because I’m fearful of setting my shared college house on fire if I leave them burning overnight.
All of this “works'' either immediately or eventually. I don’t see the work I did as an act of saving my best friend’s life, even though it is an attractive narrative. My best friend will bring it up casually to strangers, to brag about me, and how much I care. It’s just an odd thing that happened, or a *random* time where I followed an esoteric thought to its logical conclusion- where I went all in on something.
I distance myself from my translator friend who keeps some contact with the witch we worked with. I feel awkwardly self aware of my emotionality, and looseness with money I had during that contact. I started avoiding tarot, and astrology. Both my best friend and I try out Catholicism again even though everyone starts admonishing it as a meme. I go to Church for the first time since our confirmation 10 years ago. I got a cross from Etsy, and had it blessed by a priest. I feel cowardly about confession, where I used to make up lies for fun. I sometimes get the Eucharist anyway.
first post, trying not to mull it over too much. a quieter space, i keep getting lost on the other sites, its like every major social media company is slowly making its user interface more junked, like maximal, like overload! like ! !!!!! like a hoarders house of strangers images and words. "suggestions" so you never run out of things to sort through. classic complaint. enough with the obligatory complaining, i just miss boredom, and controlled boundaries.
a few months ago i kept having this fantasy that my boyfriend would leave me, devastating, we are in love, i just was afraid for no discernible reason. i plotted out what i would do in that case. i would move all of my things out of our apartment--very unladylike. it would be in the early morning hours. i would throw out most things i own. i would rent an apartment or an airbnb in montreal for exactly 30 days. i would delete all of my social media. i would drive up there alone. i would wear only athleisure- tennis skirts, yoga pants, soft and basics and all brand new and often monochromatic. i would eat clean and meditate, and cry. i would do pilates and watch foreign language movies. when i returned the assumption is that i would be healed. i feel sick thinking back on it, theres too many loopholes, and what type of consumption has entered my brain creases to fantasize about los angeles apparel, airbnb, and yoga with adrienne with connection to solving my worst fears?
lately on youtube ive been watching southeast asian teenagers redecorate their rooms. they all seem to have the same brand sponsership- shopee, one of those dirt cheap every item online marketplaces but it only ships to a select few countries in asia- namely the phillipines where a lot of them seem to live. they also seem to all have the same vision- "korean" style, minimal, white, ikea, lite k-pop, led keyboards that look like a typerwriter, tablet pens and plastic bins, washi tape and flannel curtains. always the same! i love trends like that. remember tumblr room decor? i love watching these videos because i can feel relieved when it turns out how i expect it to. structural integrity and loyalty to a shared vision of success. kind of like heavily structured neolib reality tv. "the makeover", i read foucault's "the care of the self" on that a few semesters ago, and i still think about it. cheers to those girlies, i hope they enjoy their new rooms.
one day i might come around to labelling your house. id put a picture but i cant even stand to look at it sitting on my blog. think homegoods and what the girls are calling 'modern farmhouse'. maybe if they didnt have such hideous fonts- the fake calligraphy and rae dunn shaky capitals. maybe if the words were incorporated into the design somehow, like embossed or stamped or branded, i could get down, in moderation. im often a harsh critic and i care too much about things i dont like to look at, it is a good practice to try and force yourself to like things, or at least always assume people are onto something.
is it normal to think this much about items? call it assemblage and continue on.
movies ive watched recently:
salt of the earth
this retrospection on sebastaiao salgado was pretty run of the mill rhetorically, and deeply reminded both me and ivan of our respective photographer relatives' big photo books gifted and stored in basements. It was like reading the tiny text in these books that i always skipped. i really like wim wenders i suppose though, so i gave this film a lot of attention i wouldnt have otherwise.
hooligan sparrow
its important to watch things by people more brave than yourself. it is also important, not just for arguments sake, to really remind yourself of the struggles of sex workers and women globally, and take your head out of the bubble of hulu onlyfans documentaries and mess of discourse and mediocre queer cinema projects. a part that stuck out to me was the art exhibit in America where Ye Haiyan's actual evicted belongings are put in the center of a museum. I thought about the ways struggle in China is translated in the US, and i felt sick and confused. Her activism and performance art, entwined, needs to be heard, but what ears does it fall on in this country?
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i become friends with emrata and kylie jenner
we hit it off
i ask them which one of us has more "real" conversations
they get offended briefly and think im talking about class
nonono, im talking just about varying degrees of fame, not wealth.
they dont know,
later they become faker as i wave hello, locking eyes with each other in some shared sensation of
oh, she thinks we really connected that time
a vagrant with rotted pickles,
a mansion with a whole trailer as its front day room, built into the side of a mountain
kris jenner checking under my fingernails for dirt
picking apart the rotted pickles for clean eats,
eating pickle parts dirtied with the vagrant finger's out of politeness
a vigorous high school gym class, and the logistics of changing into clean clothes afterwards for class
disfigured coal miners breaking in and bleeding
murphy beds and couch cushions turning into gym mats
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im in facebook groups for many things: entymology, engagement ring shaming, tattoo criticism, landlord and property owners, catskills bungalow 1970's reminiscing, neighborhood groups, linguistics, multi level marketing complaining, sketchy sales, and apartment hunting. its called internet research! im collecting from nyc apartment rentals pages some of the most, what theyre calling these days "liminal spaces", I just wanna make them into sets or something, maybe like those dollhouses made in old tissue boxes, shadowboxes. with the sublet safe place rooms as the backdrop, and do some sort of teleplay with dolls.
i ate a pomelo for the first time a couple months ago and its really the ideal fruit! i love eating things that require some type of handiwork, ripping, peeling, shredding up pulp, sucking..... i also love things that have layers of changing flavor---- dynamic! like eating the white rind part of the watermelon is always the best part. pomelo's bitter inside pulp, even the pesticides burning my tongue when i eat lemon slices. eating lemon slices is reminding me of needing to go to the dentist.
i recently saw an ad for a dentist office thats like millennial aestheticized, Tend. its like youre on the inside of a monthly subscription box for organic tampons. i wonder if they only hire beautiful dentists, or if they let ugly dentists work there, like my orthodontist who was so fat he had to sit down while working on my teeth and would put my head between his pillowy knees and lean over me, i dont think that would happen at Tend. Tend dentist offices have a screen facing you laying in the dentist chair and in the promotional photos there is the Netflix logo. thats truly sick, it was so important to stare at the ceiling tiles and count the popcorn ceiling flakes while my braces were being adjusted, or just meditate on nothingness and noise.
When i was little i had a tooth grow on top of one of my front teeth, like a conjoined twin tooth. i had to go to a specialist and they had to shave it down, the most horrible sensation. I think I misunderstood my mom saying something in the lobby on the phone and I believed the tooth specialist was famous and had a reality tv show about his life and his family on E! Network. I felt blessed to be in his presence while he grinded down my teeth.
movies:
safe
carol is sick and its because of her, no one hurt her as much as she hurt herself, and she has to love herself anyway and make peace with her environmental disease. i love you, i really do! im getting sicker and i love you! fragile film for me and all the rest of the sick white bitches out there.
inland empire
neverending nightmare, watched without captions for the polish parts, but like the rest of lynchs movies always lost in translation. i loved the girl gang of past lovers and the iconic scary laura dern face. I would like to dress up as the Rabbits for halloween.
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in my classes i feel so odd because theres so many people complaining openly about wanting to die, adhd, depression, diagnoses, pain, stress, being behind, etc. Ive never felt comfortable in a space like that, i feel so compelled, even if i agree and relate, to distance myself from such open shows of vulnerability. intellectualizing my own struggles, optimism as a shield. IM SUCH AN OPTIMIST! MAYBE IM JUST A KISS UP!
"are you already sharing space with your mother? i just want to be very wary that the vaccine isn't 100% effective"
sometimes i feel so traditional, weirdly so. maybe im a capitalist......... no lol. i remember reading cat marnell's book, how to murder your life, and she distinctly identifies a respect she has, an admiration for her mentors, an admiration for those who nurture her and are above her. I feel that about my professors a lot of the time. cat marnell also identifies this disgust she has with the body positivity movement specifically in magazine culture in the early 2010s, not in a body shaming way, but the feeling of being raised with ideals that are suddenly betrayed. its whiplashing, discomforting. i feel that way about people in my classes sharing their mental health diagnoses unprompted in an unrelated class.
its also funny to see people misuse the word "quarantine" pretty much constantly. it feels like an open denial of reality. "Since we've been in quarantine...." to describe a period of disease proliferation. I haven't been in quarantine. I have a lot of thoughts on this that I can't describe yet.
the medication im taking has been making me wake up every single morning at about 8 am, wide awake, not being able to go back to sleep until 9 am. Waking up Hot, ALIVE, and half there.
im going to make an appointment to get some moles removed
im going to make an appointment to get my big back teeth mined, crushed and collected.
im going to make an appointment to go food shopping with my roommates
grocery list:
eggs
pasta
frozen corn
fruit snacks
red bell pepper
italian bread
ricotta pie
struffoli (honey balls)
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happy easter! I follow a bunch of "mormons" on instagram. its really the only reason i still go on instagram. I think only 40% of them are actually mormons, but i refer to them as such to my boyfriend out of a lack of a better generalizing term. almost all are religious. some sling youngliving thieves essential oils, most have affiliate links for everything they just happen to be wearing, and every piece of furniture they buy for their new texas ranch homes, and sell photoshop presets.
few speak on politics, with exception of @itsbrittanydawn, a non-denominational christian who believes marina abramovic is a satanic witch and putting holy oil on your doorframes.
@turtlecreeklane is my favorite, the middle aged matriarch of a big mormon family (of which I follow every member, including 12 year old mckenna kate) who do things like wear the same shirts to the airport for their family vacations, dont eat refined carbs, and enthusiastically decorate every corner of their home with massive tackiness for every. single. holiday.
needless to say, im obsessed. i followed at first out of hate, but overtime, i started answering their instagram polls for which wayfair wallpaper would fit best in the nursery and which concrete finish they should landscape their driveway with.
many are pregnant, and i cant help but feel excited for them... Two of the mommies just gave birth. stevie kate, the daughter of kimmy, and first granddaughter of jen @turtlecreeklane, and tatum ann marie, daughter of a tara, a mommy i didnt realize i followed until her labor stories. little newborn shut eyes, tiny feet, funny outfits, baby closet organization, bows bows bows bows of every color.
some live in hawaii, and have squads of all white people also in hawaii, breeding and surfing, and praying to the church of jesus christ.
is it ethical to use your kids to sell hair care products?
is it ethical to post your children at all?
these questions are asked ad nauseum, and never fulfilling or honest to vehemently scold family careerists. we project, we live vicariously through them, we establish our ambition, we are reinforced to heteronormativity. these are the conclusions often reached, and ive become quite bored. right now im more interested in aesthetics of these pages. the presets, the eyes edited bluer, the skin tanner, the murky sky replaced with a brilliant sunset, blue, green, pink, orange. crisp, bright, it goes beyond content into a otherworldly space in the grid. it isn't an illusion, as much as it is creative play. norman rockwell. i want to move beyond the basic notions of "they lie about how perfect their life is online" into "they are creating their family through a digital world of lore and design". the family is completed, not damaged, with this space. the family photo doesn't exist without the onlooker.
i bare no want for their life. i seek no low rate mortgage and high HOA fee, no wayfair deals and nordstrom sales. i relate little, i pray, but only in private. i tie myself back to them not as a means of degradation of their lifestyle, but as unfamiliar travel routes through their curated worlds of family wonder.
easter essentials list:
ricotta pie, struffoli, cadbury cream eggs, jesus christ superstar, plastic grass in baskets, vegetable dye and white vinegar, chilly weather, mary janes with frilly white socks, bonnets or berets, peacoats, mailbox danglers, plastic blow up bunny rabbit, plastic table cloth, manicotti, doughy bread, diet coke, wicker chairs, milky coffee, cheap wine, piety
i have the worst to do list for tomorrow/whenever:
• call cts and reschedule equipment rental
• contact great aunt and ask for interview
• pick up walgreens prescriptions
• call hsbc to reset debit pin
• cancel subscription to audible
• call man at the chase bank to ask about my account
i walked around white plains aimlessly yesterday waiting for my covid test. i walked to barnes and nobles because that the place ive always went in brooklyn when i was waiting. i was waiting all the time as a teenager with a boyfriend who would leave me waiting, sometimes for hours. no wonder this was my favorite band as a teen:
Im not the biggest reader, i can count my yearly book count on less than one hand. i remember going into the barnes and nobles to pee, one of the only public bathrooms in the area, always a life saver. i remember being stoned as hell and feeling safe in the barnes and noble. i remember reading all of scott pilgrim on the floor in the back once. i always wanted to sit on the floor, and would do it every time until an employee asked me to get up. i used to lay on the floor with a friend, and i remember we spilled five guys soda all over the floor, we were hysterical laughing trying to sop it up with bottom of the bag napkins. years after i would pass by the stain on the carpet, after i was no longer friends with that person. i remember sitting at the starbucks with one of those gross green frappe drinks, with that friend, she explained the plot of attack on titan to me as i spaced out into the pile of tumblr-ifed books that i would never finish reading at the edge of the table- lolita, the bell jar, etc.
i remember sitting in those wooden seats and looking through the secret language of relationships astrology book, and looking at my newest relationship expectantly, and seeing information that didn't make sense at the time.
yesterday when i went in during my covid test waiting time, i quickly realized what i should have assumed before going in, there was no seats. i paced the aisles, and grabbed a joan didion book impulsively, and paced the aisles at snail speed reading it. it felt really malicious for some reason, like they were forcing me out of a place that felt like mine. i kneeled down but my out of shape knees got tired quickly and i don't have the same teenager-y carefree-ness that used to make me lay on the ground until i got kicked out. i angrily bought the $16 book and left.
i love public bathrooms and benches and quiet pop music, walking on soft carpet in a basement, and those soft pretzels that only the barnes & noble starbucks have that have spinach and artichoke in them.
it might be sad that i have such affection for a place that put so many small bookstores out of business. theres a completely different appeal to a small bookstore, the smells, the community, the rareity, OBVIOUSLY! but it was never my place to wait.
its been 20 days since my last blog post, 3 drafts later, countless bruh moments later. i don't even feel like getting into it!
they gave me a notification saying that the widget for email subscribing is dissappearing, theyre getting rid of it, whihc was like, my favorite part of this site even though no one probably put their email in like i told them to.
too much pressure on composition. i think i might just make a list. 6 things for blog post 6!
this video is genius and it made me go to the croc outlet store in western massachusetts and buy a pair of purple platform crocs. i love the surveillance art parts of it, and the blatant disregard for the restrictions of monetization. smoking skinny cigarettes on camera and listening to a very curated playlist in between rants about her nail technician. only a handful of edits, clips of her ignoring us on her phone, having a full phone conversation with a mechanic representative for her brand new car that went awry quickly. She mentions either here or in another video that she wishes she could take her tits out on camera and have it be casual, like her showing us her boob implant scars from when she got them done and then promptly took them out and got it lifted. i love how she loves her tits. this all makes sense when you consider (and this i believe) that she has very few if any real friends, except the camera and the imagined viewer, looking to her for tips, or "lessons" school is in session. Dont eat another bite, fatso. and that theres no product that can magically fix your ugly, and that she alone has a nuanced, complicated, postmodern litany of influences that the general "basic" public is not privy to. If you get it you get it if you don't you don't. WELCOME TO MY VIBE! She is me at my worst, or my best, depending on who you ask. I have to remind myself sometimes that she is just another miserable woman hawking alieexpress products. But i think shes actively reimagining the youtube platform, a place where ive long thought that creativity goes to die.
trisha paytas is less interesting now that shes well liked and has been emboldened on a moral basis. alex hrhcollection still exists in the liminal space of universal hatred, of the affect of anger and alienation at the outskirts within wealth and notoriety, embodying the angst of culture war with the discourse nonstop screaming back at her within her own mind. we all make enemies of ourselves at the same time that we ground our righteousness and faux individualism. culture war is schizophrenic. "get out of my god damn house" answering the hate we imagine to be receiving before it is received. Beyond ignorance into new territories of paranoid awareness and spite. alex hrh collection embodies whiteness in the trenches of its dismantling, or so i think optimistically at least.
2)
This part in a NYT article about a mommy blogger and motivational novelist of books such as "Girl, Stop Apologizing" ive never heard of her before seeing a link to this article on the side of my twit feed.
3) things ive ordered in the mail that which i am waiting patiently for:
4) I cleaned the house yesterday, literally my favorite activity! I went to the corner store and i got the purple fabuloso and a can of comet bleach powder. NO MORE ORGANIC CLEANING SUPPLIES!
I want to feel dizzy while im scrubbing the sink and bathtub. I want to walk into the room the next morning and be greeted with the probably false sense of sterilization. I don't want natural lemon fleeting scent that vanishes within seconds, i want preservatives and noxious-ness!
5) I just became a receipent for an award and my mom texted me "You can walk your wya into any graduate school/job with this pedigree" I feel guilty for affording her this hope and optimism with regards to the job market I am fast approaching. I'm probably just gonna start an etsy small business and get pregnant rather than score some sort of fellowship or teaching position post-grad with any sort of stability unfortunately (or fortunately). My only ambitions as of now are to decorate a house and cook dinner regularly and have good conversations over entenmann's cake. can i get paid for that??????
6)
I am utterly obsessed with this picture of my nana in the early 70's. Morose and glamorous, gothic almost. bensonhurst kitchen. she raised me many years later and in a neighborhood a few subway routes away. her husband took the picture, he passed away a few years later. note the entenmenns cake in the back. Im so obsessed with it that i want to do something with it. I don't know what. Tattoo? print? paint it? what way to honor a picture?
flowers in two shades, candles, pumpkins, honey, oranges, fresh tilapia, a whole pineapple, dark liquor, tobacco, towels and old clothing, white outfits, a river and a shower, shoelaces and printer paper.
I am transforming objects into futures, stop&shop runs into pilgrimages and foraging expeditions, pouring out liters of liquid on me and my lovers toes and pushing to see how far my faith goes, the limits of my love, and the limits of my spiritual stamina, i swing wildly between cynicism and mind-blowing connectivity and earnestness, when i speak out loud i worry those around me, i assure my mother that she can trust me. i avoid burning candles and then get worried ill be asked to produce them burned down the shaft. i drive my car and change all the lanes to get from westchester to brooklyn and around brooklyn traffic and back up to westchester. we stop for sweets on mcdonald and church and i shove bits of bright orange jalebi and balls of wet rasgulla in my mouth as i steer around ocean parkway.
it sucks to give too optimistic of advice. the placemats im sewing for my mother are extremely flawed. my whole face itches from hay fever. i cant breathe well, ivan took a video of me making perfectly in tune hums between breaths while asleep.
me and my friends are contemplating baby names, if i give birth to a daughter on a sunday her name will be domenica, named after my great grandmother. if she comes out on any day and shes blonde her name will be flavia. mischa, giacomo, gita, simone, alba, harmony, alessia, massimo are others on the list. dont steal any of these once youve read this. i think everyone must have a list (see my favorite sex and the city clip) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s27NprKWiYw it will be quite a few years until this is seriously relevant. a true modern young woman activity is making a nursery themed pinterest board and considering deleting it out of guilt and fear every few days.
my favorite instagram page ^ obtuse and absurd "natural world" adventures where reality and myth of biodiversity and unimaginable physiology coalesce and their delineations of "fact" cease to matter. true ecology includes storytelling, includes mythical projections and computer video editing, and absurd and horrifying material tech and tiktok songs that repeat themself and add meaning, and cross cultural fascinations- arabic devotional music and panicked and untranslated dialogue.hundreds of new fruits to cut into and squirmy slimey critters to slip between fingers. the intersection of satisfaction and shock and disgust.
i love crossing the connecticut border and walking to citarella gourmet and taking note of endives and parsnips and leeks and daikon and all the other ingredients they don't sell at stop & shop. i love parusing and poking the soft cheeses, the house smoked mozzerella and the triple cream bries.
food packaging increasingly trendily is taking on this type of look where they just really tightly vaccum "skin" seal the food so you can really see the knitty gritty bumps, caress the black pepper flakes through the clear sanitary condom while choosing your dinner. reminds me of dog treats.
MY MUST HAVE BEAUTY PRODUCTS SPILL FROM MY PURSE ALL OVER THE BLOG:
hurraw earl grey lip balm $4
smells divine, tea lovers wanted! i hate a fruity product on my lips so this does the charm. the first time i got this it was a gift from bambi when we were in middle school, but i think they stole it back, so they got it for me again when i recalled that years later.
milani color statement lipstick in teddy bare $9
ive been using this since high school- cue photobooth video of myself applying this in 2017 while listening to bull in the heather. this is a great product for someone who hates matte lip products. i especially hate the cakey look of liquid lipstick, a la kylie jenner. this goes on with a beautiful smooth color that isn't TOO pigmented, but needs to be reapplied often, which is a great reason to excuse yourself from a party a few times to refresh this lipstick AND your mind in the bathroom.
lush cosmetics solid perfume in karma scent $14.95 someone got this for me years ago, maybe my mother? and im still on the first little plastic tin of it, because very little is needed to apply. perfect for the nape of your neck. i get so many compliments on this scent. citrus lovers welcome! i haven't been to a lush store in years, is lush out? i remember really loving their solid shampoos as well.
dessert essence throughly clean face wash with sea kelp $10
i picked this up at an h-mart and the smell is really something to get used to. but once you do, i don't feel clean unless i smell vaguely kelp-like.
glossier skywash matte eyeshadow in pool (cornflower blue)
this product is so flattering, makes me feel like a southern debutante. the texture is so cool, it goes on liquid and dries powdery! the science these days amazes me. this is one of the first batch of glossier products i owned, and is definitely a rebuy in the future.
NUTSO SONGS OF THE MOMENT FOR ME
goatmeal - lustsickpuppy the loan -lip critic vamp fangs - bbygoyard imovie 180 - MiMiDEATH abusive - MiMiDEATH sweet potato pie - dj assault
We watched Four Weddings and What Not to Wear on TLC together most Saturday mornings. I overheard episode recaps of Real Housewives of New Jersey from my mothers phone conversations with her cousin. We had a signed picture of the late great bloated and beaming Big Ang from VH1's "Mob Wives" on our refrigerator door. When I started watching a few different geographic franchises of The Real Housewives last year, my mother thought it was funny and strange.
who passed down a shared fascination with people who are naturally "characters".
When I consider The Real Housewives of New York I think of tiny dog shit on wood floors, and a flippant cynicism where deep insults only sometimes require deep apologies. The contrast between cramped Upper East Side kitchens made smaller by film crews and the swallowing anxious expanses of East Hamptons great rooms under permanently delayed construction.
just act like this is a continuation : some lists to recount
things you think more about as a child than as an adult: inspired by apparently a john mulaney bit about quicksand that was recounted to me and i subconsciously absorbed and forgot about and then made this list awhile later:
dinosaurs
train conductors
bermuda triangle
construction vehicles
mummies
elephant & mouse dynamics
in order best to worst paul thomas anderson films except inherant vice which i did not watch. ranked on my genuine enjoyment so smd if you disagree
boogie nights
licorice pizza
phantom thread
the master
there will be blood
punch drunk love
magnolia
things im disturbed by:
hedonism in myself and others
when i chain smoke cigarettes
noticing micro-interactions
negative conversation filler
waiting for someone to speak to me
more crap:
quilt on wall
knife magnet
reusable paper towels
diy concoctions
cutting my thumb open with a knife while extracting aloe vera gel
