I am waiting for something to happen. It’s the time of year that should be a collective exhalation but is more like the uneasy feeling when you can’t get a good breath of air down into the corners of your lungs.
I ride the subway smelling of soup.
Pre-sliced bread is the acceptance of mediocrity. The acceptance that you can have bread that is adequate for a long time rather than bread that is spectacular for one night only. Putting bread in the freezer is an American atrocity. (I do this).
I lost a pair of earrings that were a first stab at independence. Large, red hoops purchased from a hippie lady on Telegraph Avenue. I was short on cash, but she trusted me to return another time with my missing change. It’s special to be trusted by a stranger.
I don’t know whether I left them tucked under my best friend’s pillow or tangled in the sheets of a lover I never planned to text again. Neither confessed to spotting the earrings. Perhaps one of them is harboring them as a trophy.
I’m torn between loving things and wanting to cast them away. My life is filled with tender objects. When my mind has exited the building, I ground myself by interacting with material things. Flipping the coin in my jacket pocket. Rummaging through the sea of napkins and receipts in my purse for gum or headphones or lipstick or a pen. Click-clacking my rings or fingering for the clasp on my necklace to force it back where it belongs. Gathering a bundle of the physical world in my arms reminds me that I’m a real person living in space and time. Probably.
Yet, I’m quick to accept when an object is lost. There’s a certain discomfort in the loving of things. I’m wary of holding anything too dearly. Radix malorum est cupiditas. And all that. I bought a lottery ticket and became convinced I would win. I shopped for properties on Zillow at 4 am, imagining a life of luxury and ease. It’s probably for the best that I continue to forge for my crumpled pittance.
We aren’t meant to have everything forever. Perhaps we’re meant to have nothing always. Entropic beings, scattering our little seeds, our wild oats, our fistfuls of rice, our chewed-up gum, our precious stones, our receipts and love letters and condom wrappers and mood rings and beanie babies and talismen every which way from the moment we are born until the moment we die.
On Tuesday, I left with an umbrella that was worse than the one I came with. It was my turn to get the bad umbrella.
Not long ago, I threw something sentimental into the East River, as a sort of personal spell. It didn’t work. Yet.
Beautiful the sad way: discarded Christmas trees. Tompkins Square smells of pine, due to a mound of wood chips amassed from abandoned evergreens. We laugh, wondering how long the hill will moulder. Who will be responsible for shoveling it all away? I think of Beckett’s “Happy Days.”
Expanse of scorched grass rising centre to low mound. Gentle slopes down to front and either side of stage … Imbedded up to above her waist in exact centre of mound.
Oh this is going to be another happy day!
As I get older, I’m learning: if there is a gun on the table, I will shoot. If there is a boulder at the bottom of a hill, I will sigh, consign myself to pushing it upwards.
Once, I lost a ring in Paris. It was a cheap circle of Francesca’s kitsch. I loved it. Golden-hued with a circle of pearly beads. Somewhere, it must have slipped off my finger. Under raincoats and umbrellas by the Eiffel Tower. Kicked around by Nikes at the Musee d’Orsay. Up and over the edge of an ancient bridge, bloated with modern locks to temporarily symbolize forever love. Drifting to the bottom of the Seine.
I still feel a pang when I think about that ring. I would have rather had it than not. But, if I hadn’t lost it, would I still be wearing it today? Or would it be sitting coldly at the bottom of a dish, discolored, discoloring? Would I have tired of it, and ditched it willingly, in a Goodwill haul? It’s nice to lose something in Paris, because that leaves room for the gorgeous possibility of someone finding something in Paris.
When my mom was nineteen or twenty, she found the perfect red plaid tam o’ shanter at a secondhand store in Stockton. It was unique, she assured me, no one had a hat like this at the time. One day, it was lost. Time passed. Another day, she saw a red plaid head bobbing across the campus of her junior college. It was her hat on the head of a little old man.
When you buy expensive sunglasses, God laughs.
I am an amateur collector of cheap sunglasses that make me look like a bitch. In April 2022, I splurged on a pair that were nice and normal. Large black rectangles. They became my favorite, and I wore them exclusively until January 2, 2023, when they were flushed down the toilet bowl that is the Guggenheim Museum. I never made a phone call to try to retrieve them. Perhaps they are still waiting for me in the lost and found.
1.11.23 Mixtape
Today’s playlist begins with Goodbye Girl by Squeeze. If you can tolerate the general silliness of late 70s/early 80s music production, you will find a lot of truth and heart! I love the stories that Squeeze tells through their music. Goodbye Girl is the story of a woman who vanishes after a one-night stand. 🎶 I’ve lost my blue address book, my club room locker keys, the money in the fur coat. It doesn’t bother me. My wife has moved to Guernsey, so mum is not the word. If you ever see her, say “Hello, Goodbye Girl.” 🎶 // Secondly, I share a song that might be enjoyed by those of us who thought the bathtub drain scene in Saltburn was hot. It’s a drippy, desire-filled song by an artist who looks like he’d have the worst breath in the world, John Cooper Clarke. The song I Wanna Be Yours is delightfully grounded in objects, as the singer lists the things he’d want to be for his lover. 🎶 I wanna be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust. 🎶 // I chose Teenage Girl by Cherry Glazerr because it also lists all sorts of lovely material possessions. It’s a simple song, and ever-so-2013, yet it’s also genius. 🎶 Milkshakes and cat eyes. Lipstick and french fries. Internalize so much but so little. Don't make us feel belittled, world. 🎶 // Courtney Barnett’s 2021 album “Things Take Time, Take Time” is so nostalgic to me because it reminds me so much of my first summer in New York. In Write A List Of Things To Look Forward To, she croons: 🎶 Sit beside me, watch the world burn. We'll never learn we don't deserve nice things. 🎶 // Last, but never least, is a track by an artist who always grounds me. All of Bedouine’s songs are poetry, but Solitary Daughter feels particularly grounded in the rejection of the material world, to embrace something more mystical. 🎶 I don't need the walls to bury my grave. I don't need your company to feel saved. I don't need the sunlight, my curtains don't draw. I don't need objects to keep or to pawn. 🎶 To listen to the mini-mixtape in order, feel free to click the Youtube link below, or like the Spotify playlist and scroll to the bottom. It’s always a pleasure to curate the music that guides my thinking.
🫖 That’s all for today! You can support my writing by liking, commenting or upgrading to a paid subscription. 🫖
really connected with the little vignette about the lost ring...i ascribe so much meaning to physical things / take everything as a sign.
also the arctic monkeys make an even more bathtub-scene version of "I wanna be yours" if you dare! i didn't know theirs was a cover until you mentioned it in this substack
I always knew my Tam would come back to me. It’s like reuniting with an old friend.