🫖 November cometh, and fall we back. If you are someone who finds the passage of time predictable and the changing of seasons odious, might I plug Evana’s delightfully nuanced forecast, In bad taste? She nails it every month, but this one hit especially hard. It’s paid content, but well worth the subscription, if you have the means. Wit and wisdom pervades. 🫖
To Kansas
Mrs. Seth, my fifth-grade teacher, was from Kansas. She told us that her home state was so flat that if your dog ran away on Tuesday, you could still see it running on Friday. It broke my heart to think of losing your dog at all, much less being able to see it so deliberately escaping into the distance. Not a lost dog, but a dog that chose to ditch you. An animal so desperate for freedom that it will sprint day and night to escape you until disappearing under the horizon like the setting sun.
I called my brother and told him about my upcoming Kansas trip. Off the cuff, he recited the state motto: ad astra per aspera. To the stars through difficulties. I have no idea how he knows things like this. It could be that he’s a Classical scholar, or because Mrs. Seth was also his fifth-grade teacher.
The stars. I wonder if I even want to reach them. Sometimes, I suspect that I crave difficulty. Good lives make bad stories. In a middle school religion class, we discussed the difference between Heaven and Earth. I raised my hand and suggested that maybe suffering in life was important because it gave us something to look forward to in the afterlife. It struck me that I didn’t want a life devoid of difficulty because that would impoverish the meaning of perfection.
Mrs. Henderson played God’s advocate. Wrong. As Catholics, we do want life on Earth to resemble Heaven. The most famous prayer humbly supplicates:
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
I had no response and felt a little stupid. Give up on celestial thoughts. Turn, instead, to the poets.
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything in it.
On Wednesday, I ran a circuit that I often walk. Running is a rare release from my unforgiving thoughts. Sometimes on walks, I catch myself thinking in full sentences. Pithy phrases. Insecure brain. Tea brain.
The terror of cannibalizing my life experiences for my goddamn blog. Mining for content. Am I using people? Am I using myself? At night, I’m a drunken bigmouth about my newsletter. People subscribe and I feel embarrassed about my wretched hustling in the light of day. I wonder about the point of constantly exposing myself on the internet. I remember that it makes me money, but I suspect I should try a little harder to find external subject matter. But, I’m late for my arbitrary deadlines week after week. And my unsubstantiated opinions are the easiest content at my disposal.
I post every funny thought I have to my Instagram stories. I wonder if everyone finds me insufferable. I thank the stars that my stories disappear after 24 hours. Good stories make bad lives.
If a dog can escape its unforgiving life
With ninety-six hours’ distance run…
To New York
On the airplane, I am full of coffee and almonds. Ordinarily, I am full of coffee and peanuts. I think about all the peanut butter I ate the day before kissing someone with a peanut allergy. What’s life without a little danger? Nothing bad happened, chillaxxxx.
It was a business trip, but I felt like the little cousin that the big kids were forced to invite. I was training, but training looked a lot like tagging along and talking to people and testing how close I could edge to my $65 per diem. I spent $6 on a bottle of Fiji water and wondered if I will get a talking to from the staff accountant.
Before leaving, I spread my enthusiasm for the trip far and wide. I asked the barista if he had ever been to Kansas. He said he’d been to every state BUT Kansas and Nebraska. What a coastal elite, I thought. I had plans to experience the real Lawrence. My job was all about human connection, empathy, live storytelling, blah.
But, then on my only full day on the ground, it poured. I worked on my laptop under the covers of my bed in the Holiday Inn Express & Suites and ordered Chipotle for delivery. A woman in the elevator cheerily remarked that Kansas needed the rain. I was happy for Kansas but sad for myself.
Sitting in the lobby, I watched a young employee mop the floor with lemony liquid. Well, mostly I smelled it. I took a picture of a sign that said “Must. Have. Coffee.” I watched an advertisement funded by a local politician that warned about the dangers of banning abortion. Lawrence, Kansas. A blue dot in a sea of red, as Carolyn put it.
Carolyn. Perhaps the most fantastic person I met on the trip. 87 years old, with 60 books, 3-4 husbands, and God knows what else under her L.L. Bean belt. She went to Bucknell with Philip Roth. He was a senior when she was a freshman and she had quite the crush. At the show, she told a story about joining a dating app at 80 and nearly getting catfished out of $50,000. She fucking crushed it and had a line of fans pushing to talk to her afterwards.
People will say the darndest things. Michael told a devastating story about lying about his health to go on medical trips during his two years of incarceration, just to capture a few moments of humanity and physical touch. At the afterparty, a woman approached our table, making a beeline for Michael. She said that she knew how he felt: during the pandemic, she missed physical touch so much that she would book extra appointments at the hair salon.
He was a good sport, but Jesus Christ. There’s something about performing vulnerability on stage that makes people think they can and should say the craziest things. I’m so reserved about approaching people that it surprises me when folks are so determined to say something to an absolute stranger. Much less something so unhinged.
To the Stars
I watched a woman cry softly at the airport. A rim of soft pink set a striking contrast around her blue eyes. It’s a look I often emulate with makeup. There is beauty in sadness, and I, the sad clown, flock to pink and red eyeshadows. She laughed and I sighed with relief. She was crying again a little later.
Everything goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.
Life continues to astonish. In the past two weeks, I’ve received an astonishing phone call and an astonishing email that astonished me so astonishingly to renew faith that those two things can even astonish.
What if difficulty is neither admirable nor necessary? How much of its value can be tiresomely traced to my religious upbringing? I’m reading a book that proposes a life of abundance. It suggests that there might be more than enough love and friendship and sex to go around. My starving heart struggles to believe this. My inner voice tells me that it’s wrong to want this. When I do what I want to do, my anxiety tells me I’m bad.
I talk myself off the ledge. I meditate before bed a few nights in a row. One morning, I woke up early to do yoga before work. Cross-legged, I shut my eyes on the floor of my living room. I felt something stir and looked down. It was a cockroach on my bare ankle. Was God or Beelzebub to blame? I screamed, cried, killed it violently with a saucepan before retiring to the radiator box to shake like a leaf. All the while, Adrienne’s calm voice instructed me when to breathe and where to place my hands and hips and feet. I tersely turned the television off to address the mountain of dishes in the sink. My roommate cleaned up the detritus beneath the murderous pot. Must have been attracted to all the standing water, I concluded.
I should be grateful that my adversity is cockroach-sized. My life is filled with comfort and I don’t use pain to cope. I don’t have any tattoos and can see perfectly without glasses.
As Flavia handed me a stack of sticky traps, she imparted some advice. How you spend your days is how you spend your life. This struck me as wise and true. Back in my apartment, I peeled off the protective paper and it smelled like vanilla. Max-Catch. I housed traps behind the toilet, under the shelf in the kitchen, in the corner of the living room. I know they’ll never catch anything. Sometimes it’s nice to pretend we have agency.
I’m in a phase of meeting people, meeting people. Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen. My old therapist called me an ambivert, somewhere between worlds on the spectrum of social needs. A little shy and a little loud. I probably should have recharged when I got home from Kansas, but instead I found 2-3 parties to go to with Evana that evening.
I don’t know what I want from people, but I’m attempting to embrace ambiguity. Complicated over simple. Busy over quiet. Out over in. Full over empty. Evade my urge to quickly understand, classify and archive every feeling. I can temper my flight instincts. I can have patience. I can be the dog that didn’t run away.
5 songs for difficulty
“Untitled Melody,” Orange Juice
A simple song with fantastic lyrics. I relate so deeply to having such a transparent face that you need to cover it up somehow to keep people from seeing exactly what’s going on. We could all use a little more mystery—go buy some sunspecs! Also, shoutout to a song from 1982 using the word “hipster.” I certainly assumed it was a much more recent neologism.
🎶 You're so transparent I can guess without question.
You need something or other to cover your expression.
I bought you some sunspecs from the local hipsters store.
I need you more or less, you need me more and more. 🎶
“Cool Dry Place,” Katy Kirby
A fantastic build from quiet to loud on the title track of the Nashville artist’s debut album. Total introvert rock. It starts so softly that you may find yourself turning up the volume. By the third repetition of the chorus, you’ll be begging her to scream for release.
🎶 With my head on your shoulders, not too much weight.
Would you keep me, keep me in a cool, dry place? 🎶
“Slip Away,” Clarence Carter
This is a song that’s less about what he’s saying, and more about how he’s saying it. It’s so raw and broken and desperate and beautiful.
🎶 What would I give for just a few moments.
What would I give just to have you near. 🎶
“try again tomorrow,” Liana Flores
Liana Flores: algorithm darling. I definitely discovered her through Spotify machinations, and her song “rises the moon” is painted all over cottagecore TikTok. This song has a sweetness and frustration that comes through with quiet strength.
🎶 Tired as the pavements underfoot.
Water never stays where it is put. 🎶
“Sons Of,” Judy Collins
This ballad may come across as schmaltzy to some, but it gives me the chills. A devastating war song. I only just found out that the original version is by Jacques Brel. Here it is in its original French: “Fils De.” Though, nothing compares to Judy’s bell-clear voice, in my humble opinion.
🎶 Sons of tycoons, or sons from the farms
All of the children ran from your arms.
Through fields of gold, through fields of ruin
All of the children vanished too soon. 🎶
🫖 Have a nice day. Hope you’re feeling gorgeous and well-rested after Daylight Savings. Meet you at 16:45 for the sunset. 🫖
No dog worth his salt would run away from the delightful Mrs. Seth....
Good news! The youtube account is back up and running, so I've updated the mini-playlist here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhBwiNbGqRWELoiqjJOTCszHAWReSH4cY
Cheers!