say aahh...

Was eating udon at my favorite restaurant for lunch when my stomach began to hurt. In the past week or so, I've been having moments of extreme nausea and then vomiting only a little, as I'm walking, talking, eating, etc. I also found a lump under my chin that was tender to the touch and hurts when I look to my left. On my walk down from eating, I decided I'd go into my local CityMD and get everything checked out. I waited a long while in the waiting room when finally my name was called. The doc checked my blood pressure but we had to do it three times because I kept crossing my legs. She then gave me a cup and I forgot people still pee in cups so I had to ask her just to be sure that that was what I was supposed to do with it. I came back with the warm and fresh urine and thats when I noticed Friends was playing on the small T.V. next to my chair. She then took my blood and I stared at the fun medical poster instructing CPR or something, I forget, for the entire duration of the blood drawing. I thought about so many things in that period. I thought about going back to school, my friend Bella, about that one time in Montreal where R. and I sat on Mt. Royale and wrote down everyone we've slept with, and  I thought about Friends. Doc put the bandaid where she had stuck the little needle in and I looked at the two vials of blood she had filled. My blood looked so brown and orange like a dirty brick. I was disappointed that I didn't get to have the glamour of fainting while laying at a 45 degree angle with my limp arm out and a needle with a tube of my blood sitting on the metal tray next to me. I love that sort of posture and composition but I unfortunately don't faint when having my blood drawn. Doc then pulled out two chic and thin cotton swabs with pretty blue shafts. You know the procedure now... said Doc. I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out and did not say aahh...

I left and ran into a girl I know who is engaged and moving to L.A. I took a photo of her because I might not see her for a while. I walked to the park and ran into a boy named Alec who has big lips and a voice so stoner-y that you would never believe he doesn't smoke weed. I told him I had just gone to the Doc because there was a literal lump in my throat and I had read online that HPV can turn into throat cancer rather often especially if you are a smoker. Do you have gonorrhea? I had gonorrhea maybe once or twice. As long as it's not hot down there you're good to go baby. I took a photo of him and kept walking to sit with Ethan by the basketball courts.

Loving my new routine of having a cappuccino between 4 and 6pm. It's really a nice way to slip into the evening.

kiss.
m.

mood swings

It's been a very bumpy August thus far but I feel like these lows always end up resulting in some sort of positive change(s).

I feel drastically different now than I did when I woke up. I woke up tired and sore from what I can only prescribe as a terribly slow moving anxiety attack. The things I thought the night before lingered in my head all morning as I got coffee and went to the ATM. I came home from the grocery store around noon and my roommate had asked me if I wanted her bed, which is significantly larger and firmer than the bed I've slept in for the past two years. I was delighted and  right away moved all my furniture around. Once I finished, I realized how within the duration of my rearrangin', I hadn't thought once of anything dreadful or overwhelming. It seems that that was exactly what needed to be done. 2 hours of maneuvering large things back and fourth through my slender door, reorganizing my books and wiping all the dust off of them, finding old photographs under my bed of Tess at NoHo Star (R.I.P.) and coming across a stack of manilla envelopes that have collectible and rare magazines in them. Some of the manilla envelopes also have letters and zines friends have made. One that I am so happy to have found is a little book my friend Sabrina made for my birthday that contains poorly printed photos of Björk and little notes about our friendship in the margins.

Ethan and I had lunch at Nepalese restaurant yesterday and then walked in the rain to McNally Jackson. I wrote in my journal and he read his new book. I left him and went home to watch Jeopardy and drink wine with two other friends of mine. After Jeopardy ended, we skipped around different channels - Reality shows, every variation of Law & Order, Friends, the local news, the world news and what have you. We stopped on Turner Classic Movies to watch the last 15 minutes of some Ingmar Bergman film starring Liv Ullmann. It was in classic Bergman nature that there wasn't much happening other than a clock ticking and Liv Ullmann running up to a house. My friends were bored but I was very comforted watching this. I usually get fidgety in these tedious moments but it felt like I was very little again playing with a string for hours on the living room floor; slightly bored but not bored enough to do much about it.

Tess and I went up to the Upper West Side the other day and walked up Amsterdam till we reached The Hungarian Pastry Shop. We sat outside and an older man started talking to us about some documentary series he's making about museums around the world. His plan is to have celebrities like Cate Blanchett and Monica Bellucci host different episodes. He left and so did we - making our way down to go take a look at The Dakota. I haven't been in a while and I read a book last month where a large part of it was about the apartments in the famous building. I pointed out to Tess which apartment I believed was Lauren Bacall's and the Bernstein's family. I felt sure in my knowledge but I was probably bullshitting for all I know. We got back downtown and wikipedia reminded me that it was in fact the 5th anniversary of Lauren Bacall's death! Coincidences always come for me.

Keeping busy really does do something to your mood. How do I always forget this?!

intimate portrait

In the past few months, I've adopted a new addiction. It's not a bad one but it can be depressing at times.

I have cable television and an off-brand Apple TV. You can access YouTube on the thing and one night in May, I stumbled across a series of videos called, Intimate Portrait. It's a documentary show that ran from 1990 - 2005 on LifeTime television. Each episode focuses on a single actress and lasts about 1 hour. It's subjects range from Audrey Hepburn to Meryl Streep and have a comforting and sweet messages to each episode. There is gaudy piano music at the beginning with black and white photos of feminine Hollywood icons gliding across the screen. There is a nondescript soft voice saying things like, "It wasn't long till Hollywood came to accept Ms. Hepburn as a major figure in cinema." and, "Shortly after filming, Bacall found she was pregnant, yet on the set of Bogart's new ambitious project, a miscarriage interrupted the serenity of her newfound love." Everything is suddenly important.

The best episode is on Lauren Bacall. I watched it after reading Jamie Bernstein's memoir on her father, Leonard Bernstein. In the book, Jamie Bernstein spends many pages describing what it was like to live one floor below Lauren 'Betty' Bacall at The Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I never paid much attention to Lauren Bacall but after reading the addictive memoir, my interest inflated on Bacall specifically. I searched for some documentaries on Bacall one night and that is how I came across this great series of "Intimate Portraits." I admire the sweetness and unapologetic censorship this sensitive series presents each subject with. It's as if no woman in Hollywood has ever done a thing wrong. I like this because for once I am not looking for something controversial at the end of the night and simply just want to hear about how great Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman were.

Toni Morrison passed away this morning. I've never read any of her work but have known her name for as long as I can remember. I remember my mother reading a few of her books and when I look at them at the bookstore, they summon blurry memories of childhood. In the past month or so, I've picked up a few of her novels and considered buying them but I have yet to follow through. Maybe soon the time will come. I really have a hard time looking at social media when a celebrity, especially one within the hands literature, passes away. The myriad of people who haven't picked up a book since 8th grade post photos plastered with emojis of broken hearts, the fashion people who like the intellectual's iconic sunglasses more than the work they've left behind, and the Bard graduate who thinks it is unexpected for them to show interest in such a mainstream icon - it all instills such a strange anger in me I simply have to exclude myself for the day from looking at Instagram and other platforms. I dread the day Joan Didion dies, dear God.

I'm having a hard time overall with reading and writing in this week. The book I'm reading feels more of a burden than it does a pleasure. I wake up each morning and open it as if someone's holding a gun to my head and I have no other option. I start reading and before I know it I've read 2 words and it's been 1 hour. I don't know what I was looking at or thinking about. Today, while I was reading this terribly boring collection of essays, I was reaching in my bag for a cigarette and stared into nothingness when I noticed beyond my periphery a pair of dirty hands waving to my left. I looked over slowly to find the skater boy that I had slept with not-so-long ago. He himself declared we don't speak anymore to which I agreed but it is clear to me now that he has some desire left within him. I don't. I smiled with my lips tight and he walked off with his strange posse.
Writing has been equally as difficult this week. I meant to dedicate today to writing in my journal but had fallen into a deep sleep around noon. It was a terrible accident, this nap. I woke up on my bed at 5pm and felt as if I had been asleep for many days. I didn't know what time it was and couldn't remember much about my life prior to the deep and accidental sleep. I felt nauseas and fatigued - full of rage and sadness towards myself - a precious day-off spent mindlessly.

Autumn comes to town soon and it's all I can look forward to. My romantic life has plateaued into a rather dry and silly place. The only person I have true feelings for is miserably misguided and just as lost as I am, it seems. My attempts at moving forward are not so strong but I'm starting somewhere and that's enough to make me feel fine about myself. I'm just about over my job at the movie theater but I at the same time don't mind it all that much. These feelings are all too familiar as this becomes my life with each and every August. Come mid-October, my life seems to always take a wild and drastic change. I wonder what will come within October? 8 more weeks - I question how I'll fare!

kiss
m.

pretending to sleep,,,

I heard an old man talking on the phone say, in a thick Jersey accent, "If you wanna read the most disturbing thing this week, go pick up NEW YORK MAGAZINE. Ya' know, at a bodega or somethin'!" I walked across the street and looked for it in a deli - I flipped through the pages and found nothing too scary. I still find myself wondering what article he was talking about! If you think you know, let me know. 

On the train back from Montreal on tuesday, my friend and I sat in the dining car for 6 hours. We were laughing a lot and being rather loud. There was an unattended 11 year old boy sitting behind me, playing videogames on an Ipad or something. He kept looking at us and I said to my friend that we were probably annoying him. The kid took off his large headphones and turned around to say, "YOU'RE NOT ANNOYING ME!" He then kept repeating himself. "Seriously, you're not annoying." "No, I don't CARE." 

My friend Ethan asked me if I ever pretend to sleep and I said no. He said he pretends to sleep when other people are milling about the room or apartment. I think I've probably done this only to avoid something. I do remember pretending to sleep one time when I was mad at a boy and I wanted to see how far he'd go believing I was asleep. He didn't try very long to "wake me up" but I was relieved he didn't get a smirk out of me. I'm usually very bad at acting. I forget why I was mad at him and why I thought pretending to be in a deep sleep at 4pm would solve anything. With the same boy, I fell asleep on his sofa watching a boring movie. I was genuinely asleep but I woke up as he carried me to bed. I pretended to sleep then, I think, but he could tell I had woken up. 

I don't know why I told Ethan I don't pretend to sleep but as I remember more and more occasions where I have pretended to sleep, I realize thatI do it quite often but usually in spite of someone. It sounds to me that his version of pretending to sleep is much more meditative and relaxing. That he just lies there to hear doors open and close, toilets flushing, sinks running, and the normal little noises of the morning. He says he even pretends to sleep when he's alone which is just weird to me. I couldn't give myself a reason to do this. I usually just wake up and don't acknowledge the bridge between asleep and awake that precisely. I wake up like people in antidepressant commercials. 

I decided to read fiction finally. I counted and read 24 nonfiction books in a row. Ethan had convinced me to buy Birds of America by Lorrie Moore.I've known her name since I was a kid. I can picture her books in my living room growing up or in the back of my mom's car. I read the first two stories and I don't know what to think. I'm just having a hard time reading fiction in general. 

I was walking home from the grocery store today when a skater boy I slept with rode his board in front of me, cutting me off. We walked and talked. He invited me for a beer but I declined because I wanted to make sandwiches with the meat I brought back from Montreal. I sat on my living room floor with my food and watched Home Alone 2 and texted the skater boy asking him to throw a beer into my window. He said I don't drink beer, which is true, but it sounded really really good with my salami and sour cream sandwich. 

-m

in montreal

Arrived in Montreal Thursday evening after a long 12 hour train ride from New York. The journey went by quickly as I spent most of my time in the food car eating hot dogs and staring out the window at the  Adirondack mountains. I fell asleep with my face on the table listening to the only other two people in the dining car talk about the housing market. I had predicted that I'd spend all 12 hours reading but the truth came to be that I read only 10 pages. I even tried to do the crossword but my focus only extended so far.

My friend and I arrived in Montreal and immediately began to analyze the city as if we had been here for years. Comparing and contrasting it to other places we have been. The first thing that bothered me, which for some reason didn't bother me 5 years ago, was Montreal's clear attachment to France, especially Paris. It smells strongly of desperation here, a desperation to be magnificently and culturally different from its neighbors. For example, Starbucks is called, "Café Starbucks" in Paris, it's just called "Starbucks". There seems to be a dire need to flaunt the city's European culture but there is a strong lack of evidence to prove the city's case. The mom n' pop shops are designed to look like Sweetgreens and no one seems to enjoy having a glass of wine and a cigarette. Not that those things make or break a city but if Montreal has such a strong sense of cultural sisterhood with Paris, or even France as a whole, they have a lot of work to do. Or undo. 

The people in Montreal are all incredibly kind. There is a warm sensation interacting with the people here. It reminds me of Chicago in the way that the midwestern identity humbles the metropolitan culture. There is something strangely rural about Montreal that makes me homesick for the cornfields and eccentricities of southern Ohio. Montreal is not too dissimilar from Chicago and Ohio...it may even have an essence of Grand Rapids. 

I've been sad here. I feel unamused and deflatedby this city. I feel frustrated by the things that are on pause back in New York but also frustrated by the way Montreal functions. I think I need to take a vacation that is either in a more bustling, stimulating, culturally sensational in comparison to New York type city, or, go to a rural, isolating, meditative sort of environment. The original plan was to go to Iceland for a week but my finances escaped me. 

I can't wait to be back in NY. It truly does feel like home. I never get this homesick - usually not even at all. I spent a month alone in Tokyo and not an ounce of homesickness ran through me. I went to Europe for a month and the most homesick I felt was when I heard my neighbor playing piano in Berlin and then I too so badly wanted to play piano. Homesickness for me usually comes about in the senses and I don't really ever miss people. When I was maybe 9 years old at a summer camp in northern Michigan, nestled into the sand dunes and on the shore of a silent lake, I distinctively remember only ever feeling homesickness when Dave Matthews Band came out from the camp counselors private cabin. My mom loved DMB.

 Overall, I am having a good time here. I'm laughing a lot and indulging in things I don't normally. Eating out for breakfast and what have you. 

I went to a thrift store to find my friend a sweater or a t-shirt but I realized I'm terrible at buying people clothes. I ended up buying a lavender turtleneck, for myself. I bought two packs of cigarettes and flirted with the waiter at the pizza restaurant. He flirted back but once someone starts flirting with me I become a mute. 

-m

screaming woman, good luck charm, autumn running

My dear friend Violet called me the other evening to let me know she was in the park across the street from my apartment. She asked if I'd join her and I said no, that I was comfortable on my couch, drinking wine, watching the news. She decided that sounded nice too. When she walked in, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a little yellow plastic creature and tossed it across my living room. Here, take this she said. A bunch of people have been passing it around, it's a good luck charm. I put it in my pocket, excited for its  powers.

I had heard through the grapevine that an Italian man I have known for a few years is now single and interested in me. I got his phone number and texted him. He responded some hours later and we planned to have a drink the following evening. It just so happened to be his birthday the day I reached out. The evening of our planned meeting, I texted him around 6pm and he never texted back. I wasn't hurt more than I was annoyed.
I decided that I'd go see Midsommar, the movie that literally everyone is talking about this week. "How are you?" has been replaced by, "Have you seen Midsommar?" All that I've been saying to people regarding the film is that it's not a good movie but that they should go see it.

Going to Montreal a week from today for a long weekend. My friend R. and I are visiting her friend, H. We don't really have much of a plan other than to just relax, maybe find a place to swim. I'm secretly most excited about the train ride there and back. I heard online that it's a very beautiful ride. I went to Montreal once in high school with my friend Sophie. We went for our senior year spring break while the rest of the class went to Florida. We drove from Ohio to New York so we could see Bjork play at Carnegie Hall. We then drove up to Maine to drink coffee and look at the ocean. The water was much too cold to swim. Our last big stop was in Montreal, where we visited my friend Kathryn, who was studying at McGill. I don't remember much of what the city looked like. It was snowy and I got pulled over for turning right on a red light. We ate sushi, I think. One night, in Kathryn's large and charming apartment, we fell asleep with the windows open. The sounds of yelling college students and drunk escapades lulled me to sleep in the living room. Between asleep and awake, a scream had caught my attention and gradually lifted me into awareness. Kathryn came out of her bedroom and she looked at me with an intense silence. The scream wasn't outside, it was in fact in her stairwell. An unforgettable, paralyzing scream. A scream I had in that moment realized I had never heard. A horror movie-in-real-life scream. The screaming woman was yelling at someone but we heard no other voice. Fists banging on a glass paned door, screaming, screaming screaming. Kathryn called the cops and in the meantime, the screaming kept up. 2 minutes later - dead silence. We looked out Kathryn's window which faced the street. The cop car was empty and into our frame of view came the woman, shaking, talking to a police officer. One of the two cops opened the car door and the screaming woman who was no longer screaming gently entered the car, hands free with her head up. That's most of what I remember of Montreal.

I just finished reading Joan Didion's White Album. Many people over the years have persisted that I read it. I didn't like Slouching Towards Bethlehem all that much but I would consider The Year of Magical Thinking one of the best books I've read. I didn't care much for White Album once it was over. I don't care much for the 60's or the 70's. People back then, especially men, seemed really stupid based on the little I have read and watched and learned. It really bothers me. I also hate the imagery of that time. I had a brief moment where the clothing was inspiring to me but now that regurgitated fad is irrelevant and it repulses me. While reading White Album, I found myself squirming a lot. I liked the last essay, however, about the orchids and Malibu.

This Summer is not so good so far. It feels as though the energy has been sucked out of just about everyone that I know. Not in the usual post-beach exhausted-ness that is actually rather comforting, but as if everyone's motivation and excitement has been sucked out of them entirely. There is a dull-ness to this Summer that I don't think has much potential to shift or change or evolve before Autumn comes. My friends are blue, the air is thick, no one seems to want to eat. The parties feel more like chores and doing laundry feels like a punishment. It's simply this Summer's mood. This Summer's identity. It's the theme that when remembered will be the antithesis of the decade's final Summer: Dead.

That being said, there is one thing I do like about this Summer. I like the way that everyone seems the be extremely sick of one another. It's in many ways entertaining compared the companionship and  camaraderie I witnessed last Summer. The dreadfulness of everyone's presence is actually keeping drama at bay because no one wants to even sour their time interacting with one another. I can only imagine how things will look when Autumn comes around. I'm daydreaming of putting on my coat and stockings, reading outside without beads of sweat dripping onto the pages. Food tasting good again and hangovers not being as bad. I can't wait for the sun to go down at a reasonable hour and for it to rise when I like to wake up. To walk into my living room in the morning and not be hit by a wave of heat from keeping the air conditioners off. To take warm baths again and for my skin to be cleared of all the humid dirt that rests on my face. I long for the not-so-far days of normalcy. Summer feels like one long weekend.

The party ended this year before it started.

Need to get ready for work tonight at the movie theater. I hope my crush comes in and says hi. I tried to convince him the other night to go watch Takashi Miike's, Audition but I don't believe he did.

-m.

foggy open mouthed

Been going out a lot lately and unraveling more and more. Saying too much or saying too little. No drama but lots of strong reactions from me and those around me. Was walking home with two bottles of wine when a skater hollered at me from the park benches across from my apartment. It took me a moment to find him in my memory but I found him. I met him with another skater who I had a short affair with. What a silly time. I should've kept it to myself but after sitting on my roof for an hour, I slipped that secret out about his friend and I. My friends who were all there on my roof with us seemed ambivalent about my open mouth - which I am sure they are used to. 

I did, however, refuse to indulge in heavy emotions earlier in the night amongst a vulnerable and weary crowd. There was some fog in the air that some wanted cleared - to know how I felt about a certain relationship in the room. But I kept my mouth closed and just pretended it was all rainbows and daisies like the midwestern housewife I can be sometimes. I then actually began to feel fine about the whole thing and the fog cleared. Now I know what to do ! :)

femme ou homme?

Got off work last night and went to the bar with some friends. Was standing outside smoking when this semi-attractive, tall cartoon of a French man came up to me. He asked me for a dollar to give to a homeless man, a homeless man I know and have seen for years who is always high. He said the dollar was for some kind of medicine or something, I don't remember. I didn't have a dollar on me but even if I did, my answer still would have been "No." The Frenchman then began to tumble down a verble decline of a rant about Americans and greediness, rudeness, and unawareness. Halfway through his short episode, he paused and gave me a look I have seen many times in my life. It's usually always a look given from men - attractive men, ugly men, short men, tall men, left men, right men, artist men, and banker men. It's a look of confusion mixed with attraction and then like quicksand, turns into anger and frustration. The world's volume dials down and my hearing focuses solely on the words that are about to come out of the man's mouth. The man holds my attention hostage and I want to run away but also know that he should be the one running. He looks me in my eyes and his mouth begins to open, and this particular man looked to his otherFrench atrocities and he says, in English, Are yew boy or girl?  My brain snapped and suddenly my anger quickly becomes fear and then into sadness and back to anger in a matter of seconds.Why must I answer these questions? I don't remember what I said in return, it wasn't an answer but it definately did not make him happy. So then he proceeded to say, Euu, come on man, why do you half tew be sew boring? I walked away and let the words boil inside for a moment and then the fever passed but his words echoed many times in my head making it hard for me to engage in conversation. I sat inside, talking to some friends and not really listening. Just his entitled lips, spewing words I have heard too many times. A question I am tired of answering. A question I get thrown at me when I least expect it. At the grocery store, at the bar, by customers at work, always in airport security where I'll then be pulled aside and touched till they find the "truth". In bathrooms, the worst place of all to be asked this question, is especially a strife. I've been catapulted by strangers between bathrooms to the point where I just hold it in and try and find the "family restroom". 

I went back outside for a cigarette and he was outside still with his French exhibitionists, and when he saw me, he taps one of his friends on the shoulder and then folded his arms and nodded his head upward in my direction like a lizard. I was close enough to hear them, speaking in French about me. I don't speak French but I understand the gist of most sentences. I understood that he thought I was a bitch, that I was rude not to answer his invasive questions. When I went inside, I grabbed him on the shoulder as if I were his uncle, squeezing very hard, which is likely laughably weak, but I hope the effect was just the same. I got nervous for a moment. Whenever I am about to say something confrontational, I get dizzy and my vision falls apart, but I knew that even attempting was entertaining enough. I said, in the bestdramatized  French accent I could muster,  Euu, excusez - moi. Je te comprends et je suis un femme. His face lost it's macho-ness and he just stared at me for what felt like 5 seconds but it was likely just 1. He then said, as the door was on its own way to closing, Euu, I em sew sorry! Yew are just very attactive, I wasn't to offend yew. 

elderly tourist photo fascination

I'd love to go through an old person's computer. To see all the photos they've taken on their last vacation. Whenever I see elderly tourists in New York, they seem interested in most everything. Taking photos of restaurant signs, mailboxes, doors, crosswalks, candy cases at bodegas, their spouse squinting at a restaurant menu, the line outside the Supreme store on a Thursday, the subway entrance, the turnstile, the train, the advertisements inside the train, their destination. It's only a matter of time before some downtown guy makes a book of his grandparents travel photos and releases it at Mast or something.

Also - to Zoe D., FUCK U! Didn't buy the Rachel Cusk book you said - or the octopus book. Went with Jamie Bernstein's memoir, Famous Father Girl. It's about her father, Leonard Bernstein. I was hesitant to buy it because your commentary on my book choices was lingering in my mind. Lady working at McNally Jackson said it was "Divine." 

sour

A lot of my friends seem to be struggling with a lot and I feel like I'm incapable if helping them. Dating patterns coming to a frustrating surface, job searching, seas of depression leaving one home ridden for days. The list goes on. I'm notoriously bad at giving advice but I think I'm good company in bad times. Its reached a point however where I'm bored of other's perils and especially my own. Tired of thinking about the same, repetitive issues plagueing everyone around me !! I need, and my friends need, new problems for someone to solve. Writing hasn't felt all that great to me lately, neither has reading. This is probably an issue to do with the hot and humid weather. The blazing sun is a problem and unfortunately thats one problem I cannot solve. This happens to me at the beginning of every Summer I have spent in the city, though, and I expect it at this point; to feel unenthused by most things, to feel unattractive, to lose my appetite and to lose my somewhat good routine of practicing good health.

Yesterday, on a whim, I went and saw Booksmart, Olivia Wilde's directorial debut. It was a refreshing movie to watch compared to the films I normally see. I laughed a lot and then cried for a brief moment towards the end and that was enough emotion for this week.