A Place Inside the Pines

     I went to a wedding last weekend in my native Ohio. I hardly know the newly-weds (I don't even have either of their phone numbers) but I was invited because the bride and I were childhood friends and our parents have remained very close. 

    I never feel comfortable in Ohio. Overly self-aware. Mainly because anyone I happened to know at this wedding knew me before I was a woman. When I am chatting with people I imagine they think I'm mentally ill and then like magic, I feel mentally ill. I imagine that when our interaction ends and we continue on our millings about, eventually they leave and in the utter most privacy of their home, they talk about that girl-thing. I only think this happens because my family does it, too. It's all anyone in Ohio does anyhow. Gossip, gossip, gossip...and then have a cry. 

    I used to wonder if only my mom did this. But during the reception I ran out of the dance floor area and found a massive pine tree with a sort of low canopy I could hide in. It became my safe haven. I basically spent the entire reception under that tree as girls from childhood came to bum cigarettes and we'd talk about the past. "Does everyone here's mom talk so much shit?" They do. "And then she starts crying," said one of the girls, "and then all the kids have to console her till she falls asleep." "Yep, exactly, mine too." 

    All of the girls who joined me under the pine tree were girls that I always wanted to be when I was younger. Some them have brothers, like I do, but I always wanted to be with the girls and the moms. Dads scared me. I was too attracted to the brothers. Interestingly, having become a woman, being around these girls in adulthood is not what I thought it would feel like. They are all incredibly kind, but I can't help but feel like there's something I'm not in on. Our histories are shared but our projections of who we are and who we have become are totally skewed. A closeness that is almost unbearable even though I have to remind myself their names and where they live every 5 minutes, losing the ability to listen to what they have to say. It feels like an Olympic sport, remembering everything. 

    The girls always treated me nice when we were kids, but I was always other. I was a boy. They were girls. Then I became a girl and I still feel other. Some things really can't change, I guess.

    I did my best to be outgoing, to ask many questions. I nervously went up to the bride at a cocktail party the night before the wedding. Even though I've known her since birth, I felt a bit intimidated. I felt like maybe I shouldn't say anything at all to her, but I knew it was the polite thing to do. "You know what's crazy," I said, "I haven't even met your fiancé yet!" "Uhm, yes you have. You met him last Christmas. He was actually asking this morning if you were still coming. You should go say hi, he's over there." I fell apart inside. I remembered him again once she told me that. I told her I was just drunk. (I wasn't.) 

    On the small airplane to Ohio from New York, I reminded myself in my diary to try and not say a word about myself unless somebody asks. Even then I reminded myself to lie a little, to not give too much away like I always do. 

    Nobody asked me anything about my life. I was relieved. People would ask me where I lived and then they'd move on or walk away entirely. I kept waiting for someone to ask me about my love life but nobody did, at least not till after midnight. By the time anyone asked me about my love life, I was gone. I was in another place. I was listening to music in my mind or something and thinking about him. 

    At one point, this small woman in a cheap dress came stumbling up to the tree. She must've been 35 or so. "Give me a cigarette." She was wasted. "You went to Oakwood right? I remember when you were like 2 years old I would babysit you." She went on and on. "My daughter goes to Oakwoood now. It's changed A LOT." Her drink kept teetering off the branch I was using to hold my cocktail and my belongings. "Do you have any weed? I want to get into this but I need weed." I don't smoke weed. "So, my daughter says that there are trans girls, teenagers, in the girls bathrooms. I got so mad so I called the principle and told him he was a little bitch for letting teenage boys dress up as girls so they can watch my daughter piss and shit." I was astonished but I let her keep going. "Oh! And then my daughter tells me the trans girl is going into the locker room and jacking off onto my daughter's clothes! Oakwood is so messed up now, man. You wouldn't understand it's crazy. Do not make the mistake of letting your kids go there. It's not the same as when we were there. It's awful."  

    The richest man in the world was at the wedding. He started dating someone at the wedding's mom recently. He danced. The small girl in the cheap dress tried to talk to him but she couldn't keep it together and I found her later on under my pine tree looking for cigarettes. 

    The only other real smoker at the wedding was Diane. She must've been 90. She would shuffle her way over to me, in her neon pink satin shaw and a voice as deep as the devil's. She went and found my mom to tell her that I was the only other smoker at the wedding and that she loved me. She became a safe face for me. Every time I felt shy I'd look for Diane across the dining area or from my pine tree. 

    There was a mom at the wedding who had a fixation with me. I noticed her at the ceremony. She was 4 rows ahead and she was rubbernecking every chance she could to look at me. It was a look of love and hatred. I couldn't tell. I avoided her the rest of the evening as best I could. During the first dance of the bride and groom, I snuck away up to the old cottage on the hill to use the bathroom. The scary mother was in there, fixing her makeup and texting someone. The tension was palpable, my palms instantly sweaty. In my memory I am looking at her through the mirror like in a movie but I think she turned around to look at me and didn't use the mirror. You could hear a pin drop. I don't know what it was. She was so stoic. The silence between lasted maybe 3 seconds but it felt like an eternity. I was face-to-face with my fear of the day. Suddenly, she smiled so fast. "I love your dress where's it from?" she asked. "Marc Jacobs. I got it on The RealReal for like $60." "Oh my god, I LOVE The RealReal. I need to get back on there." Then she walked out of the bathroom and I wanted to go wherever she went. I misinterpreted her stares. I went into a stall and sat down and smiled as I pissed.

    I got back to my pine tree and slowly all the girls from my childhood were approaching like a swarm. There were only 4 of them but it felt overwhelming because they were seemingly all coming from different directions, alone, at the same time, like I was being guerrilla'd. I gave everyone cigarettes one by one. I began to feel like a witch or something. Like they were all kids still and I somehow aged on to be this lady who hides in the tree and gives all the kids poisonous candies. Innocent yet scandalous at the same time.

    In the car on the way home, I felt very happy. I liked seeing those girls from my past. Being under a pine tree with them felt in many ways the same as when we were children, though this formation was not coherently organized. It was like this tree called for us to go in there and chit chat again. They were all very sweet, much more well-adjusted than I had suspected. I wanted to be friends with them again. Things didn't ever get very deep, we mainly talked about our parent's suffering and not our own. We talked about jobs and cities. Boyfriends. Boys boys boys. I met a girl named Crickett. She was a guest of one of my childhood friends. She would pop in and then leave the tree to go talk to the only single man at the reception. She deserves an entire blog entry of her own, but I'll get there later. 

    For the first time in my adult life, I felt a bit like maybe I wish I'd had an extra day or two to see all these kids from my childhood. I used to avoid them, I'd see them at the grocery store and I'd cover my face or turn around. I one time sprinted away in a parking lot and hid behind a car. They just wanted to say hi but I didn't have the stamina to withstand it because I am a coward when it comes to confronting my past. New York is my real life, I tell myself, and Ohio is a fictional, imagined, and completely hallucinatory part of my story, but that isn't true. It's all very real. Maybe New York is the fictional part. I can't really tell. Lala land. 

    

Prelude: An Introduction to 9 Essays on Mahler's Symphonies

    I have always been obsessive. Since I was little, I have always found things to fall in love with and then have torn them apart to bits and pieces with obsession. I've never loved something only slightly. I don't think my DNA would allow for only slightly loving something.

   I did not grow up in a musical household. My parents liked bands and things, but it wasn't the sort of household where there were instruments and records laying about. My mom was always very proud of her taste in music but it never felt put on to me in the way I read about other musicians or enthusiasts growing up "listening to music on Sunday mornings." Our family listened to the same bands and songs for years and years and years. The playlist never really changed. It was mainly acoustic guitar/singer-songwriter-type music. The only curveball was my dad's bizarre interest with Deee-Lite. But for the most part it was Norah Jones, The Dave Matthews Band, and Ella Fitzgerald over dinner. Music was pleasant noise. 

    When I find something to get obsessed with it's simultaneously exciting and yet also at times nauseating. It can start to feel kind of crazy. If I find a musician I really like, I just about lose my mind going through everything they have to offer. This can last for many years sometimes. The same goes for other things such as authors. From 2018-2020, I could really only read anything written by Siri Hustvedt. I read one good thing she wrote and down the Siri slide I went. I even began to write her letters and attended a book signing of her husband, Paul Auster, in hopes she'd be there. She wasn't. I get obsessed with restaurants and certain cuisines. The only reason I won't eat at the same place 3 times a day is to spare my friend's appetites or the restaurant just simply isn't open. I could eat sashimi for every meal, I think. I got obsessed with the bus recently. Still am. Sometimes when I feel extremely depressed I ride the bus. I ride the bus as much as I can and a lot of my dreams take place there. I talk about the bus so much sometimes I can see my friend's eyes glaze over and they temporarily go somewhere else while I talk about riding the bus. That's where the nauseating aspect of it all comes in. 

    The first time I noticed I liked classical music I was in my mom's brand new car that had all these fancy features such as showing on a dashboard what song was playing on the radio. Her dad had just died and she got a new car because when she was driving to his house as he was dying in his living room she had been t-boned by a drunk driver and her car was totaled. We were listening to the classical station in the new car cause that's what my grandfather would have listened to and my mom was missing him. Erik Satie's Gymnopedies were playing and it was early Spring. I made note of the title and downloaded it. I would listen to it on my iPod all of that Spring from then on. I would listen to it on repeat in the hallways between classes and ride my bike around and I would listen to it in the bathtub and in bed and I would listen to it at the grocery store and in my headphones around the house but I never told anyone. I listened to it till I couldn't anymore and yet I still have a hard time listening to it without feeling bothered. 

    3 years later I am 16 years old and living in a village in Hungary feeling terribly lonely. Every day after school I'd walk home and listen to some piece of music I had found that I thought was titled, Adagietto by some guy named Gustav Mahler (the 4th movement from his 5th symphony, but I didn't know that at the time). The word 'adagietto' just means for the music to be performed "slightly slow". I thought it was somebody's name or meant something deep in Italian. I didn't give a rats ass who made it I just thought it sounded romantic and pretty and lonely. I didn't talk to anyone at school because I didn't speak Hungarian and most people didn't like me or try to speak English with me. I'd just read books my mom had sent me in care packages and listen to this song called Adagietto by some old European guy named Mahler. His name mattered nothing to me. It was just the sound of the music I was interested in. But just that one movement, nothing else. The fastest 11 minutes of my life! I wanted it to be longer. I wanted it to go on forever. I'd go to the bar after school with my friend Diana and I'd go into the bathroom and listen to it and hide from her.

    Years went by and when I moved to New York at 18 I listened to pop, techno, shoe gaze, Joanna Newsom, Björk, Fiona Apple, Chairlift, etc. I liked all kinds of music and classical was more of an ambiance than it was an interest. I'd play it at the cafe sometimes as a way of setting a tone on a rainy morning but I didn't give a damn what was playing on the radio. Then something switched. 

    Classical music became this ray of light in my mind that just sort of lit everything up. All of the dark corners and shadows were suddenly in the light. It was like this bright flash of a camera that still has not gone away. What I thought was just a corner is now a very long hallway. It's like those videos you see online of someone finding a staircase behind drywall that leads to somewhere they didn't know about upon purchasing their home. I can recall many things with clarity in my life but that light turning on is not one of them. 

    So one day that Adagietto by that guy Gustav Mahler came back around in my orbit. I fell back into it and thought "Wow I've been listening to this for 9 years! I wonder what else this Mahler guy has to show me". It was all gibberish noise of what I found in his oeuvre. It was just more classical music but nothing really struck a chord like that Adagietto I was so in love with in high school did. It sounded like all the other classical music. I wondered how anyone could distinguish all of it. It just sounded like a genre and not an artist.

    It is now I can remember what really started this all. I became obsessed with buying my ex-boyfriend gifts because I was making lots of money working as a consultant for a branding office and it was a new found freedom for me to buy things. I was really bad at the consulting job but they paid me $1000 a week anyhow. I shopped all the time. I was swimming in money. I went to the fancy poster store and found a pretty poster for some Godard movie called, Hail Mary. I hadn't seen it and neither had my boyfriend. But the poster was really pretty and in great condition and extremely large so I thought it would fill the empty walls of his new apartment quite nicely. I gave it to him for Christmas that year and he hung it up all crooked (he never leveled it and it still is crooked). It was only about one month after I gave him that poster I thought "What even is this movie I got him a poster of? Why did I buy that for him? Neither of us have even seen it yet whenever someone comes over they think we are big Godard fans. The least I could do is watch the trailer" The trailer features a piece of music I fell in love with. It's the 4th movement of Mahler's 9th Symphony. This changed my life. That movement was the fuse of firework that has now completely altered my life. I listened to that movement over and over for about 6 months straight. Ever since that movement came into my life everything is different and I am so happy for it. 

    Mahler's impact on my life over the past couple of years has been undeniably transformative and inspiring. His music has opened doors to many passageways and corners of the classical music world but his music alone has been the centerpiece of my intrigue and obsession to classical music. It feels genuine. It has been such a joy getting to have his music soar through my life and there doesn't seem to be an end to this intrigue. It still feels new. As I write this I am listening to Mahler's 5th Symphony. The 4th movement just began some 29 seconds ago. This is the same movement I found one day in high school over a decade ago. This is the same movement that just 7 months ago I found myself in Berlin hearing live for the first time next to a man who became the center of my world for a brief yet beautiful little period. It was then and there in Berlin, amongst the still and focused audience, that I decided I'd write about this all. I decided then and there that I will see all of Mahler's 9 symphonies live, with no intention of order. The only rule was that I'd only see it if it felt right in that time. For example if the 8th Symphony was playing tomorrow, I wouldn't have it in me to see it because the 8th Symphony is not something I am interested in right now. The concert would have to happen in line with my interest in that particular symphony. 

    I don't know how long this whole project will take but the first piece will be published here on May 18th. I am very excited about it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy talking about it. I don't know who it is for but I trust it will find its right audience the way most anything does. 

xx 

      

so fine

   I've always been very fine. So fine. So fine so fine so fine. I often make do with what has been dealt. I try not to resent, or lament, or wish. I just try to try. But ever so often am I so thrown off by my own complacency with life that I can only wish for an alternative. I cry. 

    

    

taking a shot

Every morning when I sit in the park, I plan out my day in my head. Sometimes the day is full of errands, I route them out. I take into account if and when I'll become hungry and what neighborhood I will be in when that hunger comes about. When I do everything in my mental checklist, the day leaves me feeling satisfied and with a purpose no matter how mundane the tasks of that day were.

Lately however, I sit in the park and I can't think of anything I ought to do. There's nothing I 'need' nor anything I would want. I dig and dig and dig for things. I scroll on my phone and look at cleaning supplies I might want to try. I try and think of what I might want to write. I think maybe I'll want to write at a coffee shop but all of the coffee shops I usually like to write at have begun to bother me. Should I start writing at a bar at 1 in the afternoon somewhere far uptown? I talk myself out of it because I don't want to take the train downtown at rush hour. I tell myself I'll try a new restaurant but I always talk myself out of that too because I worry I won't like it. 

I thought for a moment that this weird phase I am in is because I'm losing my spirit in daily living. Not in a way that a doctor would prescribe as depression but that maybe it's all simply getting old to me. As a creature of habit this is a startling place to come to. I tell myself over and over again that change is good, that transitions in life are some of the most poignant times for growth but I always lose sight of that ladder. I want to stay right where I am! But I hate where I am. 

Of course I don't hate where I am in my life, in fact I am rather satisfied with my work life, my home, and my social life. I've spent hours wondering where this nameless and invisible void came from and when. 

Around a year ago, my camera broke. I wasn't too torn about it. These things happen. Film cameras are especially fragile and like a everything, they may die without any warning. I saw that death as a great time to try something new. I bought a camera on Ebay that broke within a week and I hated the way the photos looked despite it being $600 and every photographer told me they loved it. Now I had no money and no camera. I was mad! Fast forward to July, a friend sold me his $2,500 camera for $500! What a steal I thought! But that camera hasn't felt like mine and I don't think it ever will. The photos just aren't me.

So on it's way from Japan as I write is the camera that I hope will bring me closer to normalcy. The camera that died about a year ago, not the same one but one that it's now previous owner claims was only used a few times. Just thinking about it being on it's way is making me smile. It's the perfect camera for me. I have missed it so much and I wonder if I'm putting too much weight on the thing but I am getting fidgety just thinking about it.   

dusted

 The other day I decided it was finally time to go through my things and either dust them or ditch them. 

I began with my junk drawer, which in the beginning was difficult. To throw out something innately referred to as 'junk' is hard to justify throwing out at all. Why would one keep something they would call 'junk' in the first place? And if one would keep it why throw it out at all? In my junk drawer I found old ID's, lighters without any fuel, pens from Croatia, perfume samples, someone else's adderall, and empty envelopes with my name on them. I told myself to just throw it all away. I went into my kitchen and grabbed a trash bag and tore the drawer out of my dresser and turned it upside down across my bed. I sifted through everything with haste and kept only the old ID's and any lighters I got on vacation. There were some spare keys I threw into a Gucci bag along with an expensive perfume I was gifted last Christmas. 

I dusted some books. I can't throw away or get rid of any books. There doesn't seem to be a reason to. I am always perplexed when I see on Instagram that people are selling their copy of Bluets by Maggie Nelson. Just give it away! Books like that are meant to live in charity. There are expensive books that I could sell but I am too broke to sell them. I will only sell my expensive books when I have children and they can't eat. 

In my underwear drawer I went through about 15 bras that I have never worn. Two of them were bras that didn't fit and I only kept them for so long because they were once Bella Hadid's. It was clear the whole time that she had never in fact worn them and they were just donation. I threw those out with the lighters and empty envelopes. 

In my drawer of sweaters I had a particularly difficult time. For every sweater there is a perfect moment. I looked at all 30 of them and really looked hard. Most of them I was never going to wear so they went in the garbage with Bella Hadid's bras and the lighters and the empty envelopes.

After all was said and done, I vacuumed my carpet and fluffed my comforter. My room felt lighter. I took the three trash bags out and smoked a cigarette at my desk as I looked at all my hard work. I turned on NPR and Brian Lehrer was talking to those calling in about costume ideas for Halloween. There were only a few minutes left to call in. I was about to call and tell him about my chainmail when a woman called in and said "The best way to make a costume is to take all of the clothes you're about to throw out and really get creative with it! It's a win-win and its great for environment and your wallet!" 

hellppppppp!

 I feel as though I have lost things to say, though I know that isn't true.

Going through my old journals the other morning, I would write pages and pages about everybody's problems. Moira's dying mother, the way I loved walking by hospitals, how much I hated walking down certain avenues, avenues that reminded me of people I had big crushes on. 

Now when I write in my journal, I haven't a clue what to write. I sit down and think maybe I will document what happened last night, or this morning. But there isn't anything I want to say. It bothers me and makes my skin crawl. 

So then I try to read. I read a page and suddenly find a way to convince myself that there is no point in reading. 

Then I go for a walk and think too hard about what I want to write about. Everything I want to say feels weightless and meaningless. The second my mind goes elsewhere I start talking to myself about all of the things I've been trying to say and so I go find a place to write it all down and it all disappears by the time I pull my pen out. 

I am so bored of reading and writing but maybe it will come back. 

a weekend in the smallest world: 2 ballets

I've seen 3 ballets in my adult life. The first time was maybe 4 years ago at the Lincoln Center, and the other 2 times were this past weekend. 

    I'm not a connoisseur of ballet, nor am I a regular though by the second evening I felt like I was. The first evening was 4 short ballets with an intermission right in the middle, and I was only somewhat into the performances themselves. They were contemporary, experimental, and at times dull. The most exciting of the 4 acts was the final one. My friend having done the set design stage piece holds no weight in my bias, but the music did. Caroline Shaw's Partita, which won the Pulitzer Prize some years ago, has always snuck into my life in odd ways and finding something recognizable in a setting you don't find yourself in often is always a good way to be swayed. 

    The second evening was a much more classical lineup, also in 4 parts though this time with 2 intermissions. Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and some other heavy hitters that I can't recall off the top of my head. To be entirely honest I was not dreading the second evening but I felt a bit 'ballet-ed out'. I was hoping it would be quick but when we sat down in the Orchestra left seats, I noticed in the Playbill that it was going to be a long evening. The orchestra tuned and the curtain rose to unveil a large blue screen, facing the audience. It was a mystifyingly deep shade of royal blue, illuminated at just the most comfortable level for the human eyes. The second act had me crying, a riveting duet by two of the company's biggest stars, the stage set to look like a dance studio made of linens, with the blue screen still behind it. The two dancers were in love and for some reason that made me cry. Debussy blaring. It was pure magic! I was moved, you could say. 

    I got to the Whiskey Tavern down by the jail just 30 minutes after the performances had ended. It was a startling change of scenery after 3 hours of classical hypnosis. I ordered a gin and tonic that was served in a tall heavy pint glass. The Whiskey Tavern wasn't nice at all but somehow they have nicer glassware than The Met. I used to order champagne at intermission when I would go to opera with my best friend but the plastic champagne flute was too bruising to my vision of a glamorous night uptown. 

    I don't remember the first opera I saw at The Met but me and the man I loved most at the time left at intermission to have a drink somewhere else. On the way down the winding red steps, we saw Joan Didion inching her frail way down heading towards the ladies room.

    In December of 2019 me and my friend saw the final matinée performance of Phillip Glass' Akhnaten. It was horribly boring and tediously long, so we left at the 2nd intermission and got drunk at the diner behind Juilliard. We ate burgers and cursed that opera like it had personally done something deplorable to us. Later that week, on Christmas Eve, we ended up meeting the actor who played Akhnaten (the lead and pretty much only person in the 4 hour slo-motion string heavy bore). Ethan had told him we watched the whole thing and later on I told him we left at intermission and that it was boring, but that was an accident. 

    This past weekend though, on Friday, I did see Mikhail Baryshnikov in the lobby. He was stunningly old. I couldn't believe it! Most people know him as "the Russian" Carrie Bradshaw, of Sex and the City, dates in the series' final seasons. Weirdly, I met his ex-wife's daughter a month ago at a bar somewhere upstate. The world is so small. 

    As I sat through these performances, I was thinking so many things. I always drift off mentally at operas, symphonies, and ballets! It's a wonderful way to go about things. I always think about how lucky I am to not be anxious at a ballet, opera, or symphony. Nicole Kidman in Johnathan Glazer's Birth, cries in one scene while attending the symphony. Her character is so terribly anxious. Her dead husband is in the body of a 10 year old boy and she just came to terms with the fact that she wants to fuck him. It's crazy. 

Anywho, hope you all have a wonderful weekend and make sure to go to the ballet, but only if you are not anxious. 

sent from my desktop

 It is almost 7pm and I am at home. I don't know the last time I was home between the hours of 4-7pm. I am typing this on my brand new desktop. I got it at the apple store in soho 3 hours ago and I am incredibly obsessed with it. Everyone said to get a laptop so I can write at a coffee shop or something if need be but I can assure you I had a laptop for 6 years and it seldom left my apartment. its so cool to have a computer tethered to my desk which is tethered to my home. This man I know who is currently in Paris is going to give to me his MacBook Air so so I can write out of my home if I there is an emergency, or say, a job I have to do.

I've been hungover all day and buying this computer in such state was not the most sobering. I was out till 7 am and woke up at my friends house about 20 doors down from mine at around 11 am. I took a long shower and shaved my legs and remembered that today I had to buy a computer. So I went and I walked my broken self to soho and said "I'm buying that computer." I thought this would be easy but it wasn't. I paid with my phone and the transaction took roughly 15 minutes but I had to lie a whole lot. The guy selling me this beautiful piece of technology asked me if I'm a student. I lied and said I was. Then he asked "What are you studying?" I lied and told him I was an aspiring news journalist, studying political journalism. He asked me where I studied and I didn't know what to say, so we moved on and he told me about his brother's dream of making music for museum lobbies. I lied a third time and said that I would love to hear it one day. I told the guy I was really hungover. I told him about how I was at a bar till 7am. I told him about how I was going to faint if I don't get fresh air soon. I walked across the street with my huge box, scared I'd get murdered, jumped, robbed, and raped on my way to Fanelli. Aaron and Lucas were drinking beers and eating onion rings. I had a Coca Cola because I was still suffering. I hailed a cab on Broadway like a rockstar, with my giant desktop for everyone too see. I only had to pay $130.00! Now I will pay that every month for a year. 

Anywho, I hope that having this desktop will allow me to write more, as it is in front of my bed (my bed is my chair) unlike my laptop which lived under my couch or under a giant stack of photo albums. I forgot to mention that this computer is also for making music. So more writing and more music! This is great. I love this thing. I'ts so beautiful. 

Sincerely, 

Meetka. 

Sent from my iMac. 

Waiting for my Career

6 years ago this week, I walked in a Hood By Air show. I had just moved to New York to do whatever. I can't really recall why I had moved here or what ambitious idea I had for myself, though I do remember that after that show I thought I'd be the biggest thing in the world. That it was the beginning of a lifelong career in fashion...all because some guy named Walter had plucked me out of the instagram masses and asked me to do it. I thought I had found my calling. I started working for stylists, casting directors, and modeling once a month for magazines no one had heard of. I never got paid, and I never really had fun. The degree of broke I was led me to do bad things. I lived in a studio in Bushwick with 2 other girls. One of my roommates at the time was a grifter and taught me how to dine and dash the polite way. We would go to restaurants, get wasted, and then leave. I'd find some money and go back the next day and offer to pay. They never made me so I'd give them a $20 as a tip to the poor waitress who had to serve us. We would do this at the same restaurant almost weekly. It got to the point where they just stopped charging us in general and we didn't have to sneak out. I still feel bad especially because that restaurant closed. (R.I.P. Jules Jazz Bar)

Anywho, I started interning at Eckhaus Latta. I had no business being there. I asked for the job and when they asked what I wanted to do, I said, "I don't know. paperwork?" I couldn't sew, knit, clean, or even use Excel so for four whole months I would just sit at my computer and pretend to type things into a spreadsheet and call it research. They would give me meaningless errands such as washing one piece of cloth to see how it faired in a washing machine or get sheers sharpened just to keep me out of their hair. I one time fell asleep while smoking in the backyard and I'm still in awe that they didn't fire me after I decided that I'd drive to Maine to get a tattoo of a lobster. When they called asking where I was I said, "Vacation! I thought you had to pay people in order to implement rules. I'm so sorry I didn't know you needed me." Much to my surprise, I ended up walking in that season's show. I thought them asking me to be in the show was a good thing but it turned out it was a really nice way of letting me know I was too stupid to do anything useful. That was the very end of my internship so I walked across the street and asked for a job at Dimes. I loved it from the beginning but I genuinely felt worried that working in a restaurant would hinder my 'career' in fashion. I really thought that my life was falling apart because I wasn't typing gibberish into Excel for $0.00 an hour. I wanted to keep trying so I could one day get the free flights to Paris that all of my friends were enjoying. I kept up some of the modeling gigs and assisting jobs but I was losing steam on the opportunities due to my being insufferable. Getting booted from the fashion world was quick and painless however, out of the blue, I would get asked to do these big jobs and I would unconsciously destroy them. I was supposed to walk in Hood By Air again but I slept through it. I was supposed to interview with the casting directors at Gucci but when I arrived I showed them my diary and they asked me to leave. I was supposed to be on the cover of National Geographic but I slept through that, also. I decided in 2017 to stop saying yes to modeling. I then quit Dimes to try and do other things that felt more 'real'.

 I started assisting Amber Heard but by assisting I mean picking things up for her. It was the best job in the world. I would wake up, she'd tell me what she wanted, I'd go buy them and bring them to her hotel in Gramercy, and she would PayPal me $400. Or more. Sometimes the job involved more emotional things and I'd occasionally fill her in on my intensely delusional love life. She was always the sweetest to me. She was like a mom who didn't have to do much more than give me money and tell me I was pretty if I went to CVS and bought her falsies. :) Once upon a time she lived in the pink Schnabel building with her boyfriend, Vito Schnabel. I became quite close with the door men who would let me know all that was going on. I would go into the apartment and look through the junk drawers and imagine living there. I never found anything interesting because the man was never there. It was a sad sad place with horrible energy. It was all for nothing but doing coke and sitting on the toilet. I would imagine the incredible parties one could throw there but they didn't seem to happen. Everything was dusty and the apartment smelled like a college dorm. The dining table was an open air file cabinet. Everything was broken. Nothing worked as intended. The refrigerator was a crime scene and don't get me started on the bathrooms. I was very happy when Amber moved out and went back to the hotel life. I loved the bellhops at the Gramercy Park Hotel and writing this makes me want to go visit them but it just simply isn't the same if I don't have a case of wine and false eyelashes to deliver to Amber.

I ended up back at Dimes two years ago and I'm still there. My career as a waitress is the only constant in my life. I don't love it but I certainly don't hate it. I've travelled the world being a waitress. When I was 20, I took a month long trip to Tokyo by myself, for fun. I promised myself I'd do it again but in Europe. So when I was 23, I packed my bags and went to Paris and Berlin for a month to do some sightseeing. Everyone I knew had been to Paris. They all got flown out there and put up in hotels, went out to nice restaurants, and did the whole fashion week thing. I was always butthurt I was never invited or asked to work in Europe so I took it upon myself to go alone with my waitressing money. It was horrible. Paris sucked. I had gotten there at the bitter end of Fashion Week and kept running into all the people who had no money to pay me back when I was trying to make it in the fashion world 4 years prior. Everyone was mean but not in the nice way. They were mean in the dumb way. I walked into a bar one night and walked out being pointed and laughed at by the other patrons. I tried to buy a baguette one time and the lady wouldn't let me and she too could not stop laughing at me. Every time I'd ask for water they'd bring me an egg. I developed a weird, short-lived masturbation addiction. It was a horrible horrible trip. I would go back to the maid's quarters I was staying in and watch porn at 8pm and try to talk to people on the phone. After two weeks of this, it dawned on me that I didn't have to stay there so I prematurely went to Berlin via train. It was instantly better. Everyone was hot, nice, and the sky was gray. I made friends 20 minutes after being there and I even fell in love with a law student and we took care of a baby together. I cried when I had to go back to Paris. My flight was out of Charles De Gaulle and I thought maybe I'd regret it if I didn't try a little harder to like it. I took the train back and by the time I arrived, I had gotten an email saying that I was needed in Berlin to model for a German magazine. I swore off modeling but I needed out of Paris and was running out of money so I said yes. The shoot was excruciating. I cried 4 times in privacy because I simply hated being looked at. When I got back to New York, I was so relieved to not be living in Paris and will only go back if I am payed.

I was a host at Metrograph for 2 years. The private parties were ridiculous but deeply entertaining at times. Jennifer Lawrence was extremely nice and thought I was one of her friend's friends quietly stalking her but I was actually just her personal waitress and she had no idea. Michael Imperioli loved talking to me about whatever book I was reading at the host stand. He loves Rachel Cusk. The girls from Broad City are mean as all hell, Uma Thurman almost spit on my face when I asked her who the birthday cake she had in purse was for, Quentin Tarantino was nice but I felt bad for him because no one came to his party except for Harvey Keitel and Uma. Kristen Wiig's agent and his lawyer husband asked me to go upstate and work at their orgy, Greta Gerwig had a panic attack Christmas morning and asked if she could sit next to the host stand and stare at the wall. There are plenty more celebrity anecdotes but writing about it reminds me why I had no desire to go back after the pandemic.

After many years of staying out of the fashion orbit, I walked in a show again this past Monday. It was fun and I didn't feel ugly for once. I'm glad I did it but being back in that environment brought back many memories of sitting around waiting all day. When you model all you do is wait wait wait. Sit in foldable chairs and twiddle your thumbs. Maybe if you are lucky, a stock model from Russia will ask you a question. There is sometimes free bagels but usually they are old. When the food arrives, it is fun to go sift through the salad and pick out the sandwich no one wants because you want to seem greedy. You will wait for 4 hours doing absolutely nothing but if you get up to go smoke, you could be in trouble for potentially wasting time so you smoke it as quickly as you can and get back to the foldable chair and wait another hour or two. I definitely do not miss all that waiting and wasting the day away so for now I will keep my job waiting tables and having no obligations the second I clock out.

CD ?

I had to revert two entries to draft. I re-read them both the day after I had written them and realized they were not at all me. I was feeling weird when I wrote them. The entries were by no means displays of disingenuous writing or personality hopping, but they were written in a way that was uncontrollably unfamiliar to me and in turn made me ultimately uncomfortable. They may come back but I'm not so sure, so the numerical order of future entries is to be determined. For now it is a ?.



This past week was such a whirlwind. I read a book a day for 7 days. The first 4 days were nice and I was very much enjoying myself. I had no intention of stopping until I reached day 6 I was about losing my mind just sitting there reading reading reading. It led me to try and quit smoking which was also a failure. The morning I decided I'd quit, I told myself, "After this pack, no more cigarettes!" but by the end of the pack, I decided I'd cut down from 25 cigarettes a day to just 5. I have cut back quite a bit but I'm still in the teens. Yesterday was 13, the day before 14. Hopefully today I can achieve my new goal of 10. I watched a bunch of videos on youtube, vloggers primarily, who talked about quitting smoking. They weren't so good at convincing me but I did enjoy watching them for some reason.

Talking on the phone with Ethan last night, he told me about how his first cigarette was when he was 13 on Avenue A and he was drunk or something. He said he could remember how bad he thought it had tasted. This too was a trend with the Youtube vloggers...about how their first cigarettes were disgusting. I remember my first cigarette was outside the school in Hungary. I was sitting with a girl named Bárbörá who told me that I would have a difficult time making friends if I didn't smoke and of course my 15 year old self wanted so badly to have a few more friends then just being glued to Bárbie. Now as I write this I realize that maybe she wanted me to go make different friends, too. She gave me one of her Marlboro menthols and I have smoked a pack a day till now. Now I am trying for half a pack. I was telling Tess that I want to be able to not have them on me and feel fine...that instead of anxiously worrying about when I run out, I simply just wait till its most convenient for me to go buy some. I count my cigarettes like they are the last thing I have. I hate sharing them. I hate sharing them especially with people who don't smoke. The people you see every single night at the bar who ask you for cigarettes and all the while sitting there continue on about how they quit smoking two years ago. I am vowing now to not become one of those people but I wouldn't be surprised if I did.

I was looking out my stairwell window again but this time it was night and I could see directly into my friend Silvia's apartment. Well, it used to be her apartment up until December that is. Someone bought the building and kicked everyone out. It was the best building. It was like a mansion with a few friends living in it. For some reason though, looking out the stairwell window into what will always be to me, Silvia's kitchen, I didn't feel all that sad or mournful like I usually do about these kind of things. It was actually rather peaceful and those few minutes of staring gave me that painful feeling of wishing everyone could see what I was seeing. Of course it's mundane, two apartment windows, looking into a kitchen. The oven's green clock illegible from my distance but very much there, the round kitchen table by the window with a box of some kind sitting on it, the lamp on the countertop and it's light painting everything in the room gold and yellow...the outside of the building is an alcove of other buildings including mine and 2 others allowing it to resemble at times a sort of European gamut of architecture. Silvia's is Italian with its gray and yellow walls, the apartment between ours is British with it's deep red brick and shutters at each window, my building is more French, and the building across from the British one, between Silvia and I's, is much more Germanic.  And to top it all off, the post rain dewey smell was so refreshing, especially now. It was so calming it made me a bit sad, it was like I couldn't see it all well enough because it was so pleasant. It all looked like a Gail Albert Halaban photograph after post-production. I turned my back for maybe one minute and when I turned back around, the lights were off. It's not as sentimental as I'm making it seem to be but it was just something that I really enjoyed. Maybe the best part of my day. I've attached below some good Gail Albert Halaban photos below... :)

The sun is shining so bright this morning so I will try and get my groceries early rather than wait all day as I have been in the habit of postponing anything that requires labor of any kind...Warmth to u all!

-m.