no. 8
We are OK, and it matters to me that I know you’re wondering, and it matters to you that we’re OK. I don’t know, but that sounds human to me.
from the after/hours archives: HAHAHACRYCRYCRY. [March 11, 2022]
Some things are true, and we know it because we can feel it in every square inch of our bodies: Oscar Isaac could get it, whales are the most supreme beings, I am my father’s daughter. These are as true and known as the and’d-ness of this whole human thing.
me @ my little jokey-jokes while we keep on keepin' on.
We know to whom and what we belong whether we have words for this attachment or not, and so I don’t know if I bemoan parasocial relationships. I think it may be our most human thing to want to be seen and to see, maybe especially from a distance.
Whatever our relationship, whatever it feels like to you, can I take a moment to say yes to you?
I believe that’s real and true because I believe you are real and true, and so yes. Yes to whatever we are to each other and yes to us wanting to figure that out. Yes to every kind of love, imagined or tangible. Yes to Oscar Isaac and whales and healing and and and and and.
This is as real as it gets. We are as real as it gets.
me @ this week.
Q: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE?
I’ve never particularly liked favorites. I’m always worried I won’t be someone’s or someone won’t understand mine, and I wanna keep them close like a true secret (not a secret like, “I most prefer bitter and tart juices, like grapefruit and cranberry,” which is really just something a limited population of people has any reason to know that). If I let go of my favorites, it’s like losing a loved one – truly. It feels like missing a piece of myself.
I cannot hoard the jewels of this earth.
I would decry the king or president or nation that stole riches away from the deserving many. I must decry the voice in me that begs me to hold all that I love in permanence and immovable presence by my side.
Nothing like not losing someone to remember how much of all this you’d be alright without.
So I’m giving up some faves to those who asked. It’s only polite.
me @ the universe.
Favorite fragrance.
I don’t know who convinced 89% of fourteen-year-old girls that glittery cucumber-scented anything was a productive choice, but there were legions of Bath & Body Works devotees who swore by their color-coordinated lines of products. From lotion to chapstick to body spray, every girl I knew was dripping in strawberry.
In college, folks had upgraded to a trio of Marc Jacobs scents marked for luxury retail. This coincided with my first awareness of Sephora and the concept that perfume, as an industry and accessory, was more varied than I had understood. Indeed, some people purchased the same perfume for 45 years and some designers were making annual new fragrances to delight and beguile. There were notes! Like a symphony! It turned out, fragrance was personal.
In so many ways, those years were a reckoning between what was known and familiar to me.. and what I wanted to make possible. A visit to Edinburgh made possible a trip to Penhaligon’s where I discovered something that is a must in any fragrance I wear:
I like a little stank.
me @ paradox.
I like to smell ‘like last night’: perhaps a lingering scent of fire, or the last notes of a kiss or someone’s cologne caught in my sweater or memory, or the theatre lights. I like to smell like things that have lived: gardenias, tobacco, leather, lavender, jasmine, coffee, milk, sweat, cackling laughter, tears.I like to smell of history: stories, texture, layers, sex.
My favorite fragrance is knowing I’ve been touched by the world and it by me; these days, I’m wearing long afternoons, diligent nights, creative mornings, and Black Orchid.
Favorite breakfast.
Real talk, I don’t eat first thing. It isn’t even a matter of “getting hungry,” which I don’t do until 10 or 11; there is an arousal my body requires to engage with the day. I need to come into the day with a curious, patient start or I’ll never find it as the day wears on. I need to understand what the day wants to be, then we can square.
me @ mortality.
Not to be like a total product of my generation or anything, but I fucking love brunch so hard.
It’s the ideal combination of food offerings: savory and sweet, morning and afternoon; it seems to me a celebratory thing, the midday. We come from our disparate places to join in the middle. The day could begin or end with that brunch, and it is only right we get a little raucous in honor of the chaos of it all.
What says both/and better than brunch?
You’re right: happy hour.
I also like students like this; I like babies on the cusp of one thing or another. I like when it is so palpable that it’s inescapable, the certainty that every single thing is right up against the other. I spend so much of my little penguin life waddling between things and I am a believer in just owning the hinges on which we spin.
My favorite kinda eating day is a big brunch and a charcuterie dinner, most especially when the dear ones around those tables are the kinda stragglers that just hang around all day.
I call them “soulfriends.”
my expectations @ me.
Favorite poetry book last year.
I’m quite fond of the one I wrote and am nearly finished compiling.
me, on my way to do it like it's all a part of the dance.
Love sounds human to me,
I really missed the gif(t)s