09.05.26 [on the F train]
at the risk of getting so meta that i collapse into myself and turn into a zip drive like scarlett johansson's character at the end of lucy, i transferred three of my very old longhand posts from this notebook to my website last night and realized i have got to stop talking about prospective books to be written and/or published. i mean, i still intend for them to exist and am slithering forward, but i don't think blogging them into existence is a thing. so: for my next two tricks i need to come up with a good ice-cream-related pitch for the indie food zine i wrote for this spring, and a good secondhand-clothing-related pitch for a new-to-me magazine now published by the folks who put out the weed/mushrooms/cats/sound/sun-and-moon magazines i've written for in the past. the latter is much more intuitive, of course, i want to do something with mourning garments, i just have to figure out if it's something they've touched on before without buying every single back issue. the former... i would love to do something about southern california's gothic relationship with frozen yogurt and how i have come to find comfort in both it and carob chips as an adult in a way that represents both evolution beyond and a kind of permanent limbo in late '80s and early '90s diet-and-fitness culture–i also have Big Feelings about diet root beer, which is what the therapist i had as a tween offered me from a minifridge in her office before she'd ask me to describe ink blots to get to the bottom of why i was incapable of sleeping alone–but i don't know if touching on Body Stuff is something they're interested in doing. i mean, they probably are if i can thread the right needle on it, but i have this maybe-memory of reading something in one of their pitch calls about how they weren't interested in diet culture. am i just making it up? i very much enjoyed how my first piece for them ended up being about my family, at least in part, though it ended up being about a family member who's dead, and that's quite unlike talking about people who can still decide to correct or resent you. i checked in with my mom before writing about her father, though, and if i get the chance to go forward with this i'll consult my sister and dad before braiding them in. i'll be seeing both of them soon, on a trip back to northern california to help my mother move and for thanksgiving, respectively. the holiday is a surprise: [as i mentioned a few posts ago, whoops] i haven't spent it with my father since before trump was elected the first time, as my shitbird stepbrother ended up supporting him after rubio dropped out and went on to be a member of both administrations. i think said shitbird has finally given up his apartment here in new york; maybe it's simply that he'll be out of town? could it possibly be that my dad has officially stopped coinciding with him? we only talked about it in person once and i didn't (yet) have the nerve to ask what changed, but i'm curious enough that i'll push it, maybe after i've gotten his blessing to talk in print about how he feels about fat people (spoiler: it's weird).
08.22.26 [on the J train]
at my last clinic-escort shift i suggested to my friends that the anti-abortion protesters who show up once a month to livestream themselves weeping and singing at clients from across the street weren't coming, maybe, since they'd been around pretty recently, but maybe we should check their website just in case? sure enough, they'd scheduled one of their ultra-slow marches, so we stayed around for another hour as their police escort and then they themselves shuffled out to our dirty little block. the cops don't do much when they show up–they stay on our side of the street, checking their phones and chatting with each other, which is how things unfolded that morning as the churchgoers sang off-key and held up signs that became mystical out of order: DADS, COMMUNITY. eventually one of the cops, bored, approached us at our posts near the clinic door, saying that someone was having a "feminine emergency" down the block, maybe someone would want to check it out. nearly out of sight, collapsed and hidden between two cars, a dazed woman sat mid-miscarriage in a pool of blood. someone ran into the clinic to summon a doctor, and eventually, so eventually, they emerged with a wheelchair; before then a friend zeroed in on getting paper towels to clean the woman up while another remarked that her lexapro was working. the doctor needed to come NOW, i muttered, they didn't appreciate the urgency. an ambulance came and whisked her away. i watched the cops continue to chat with each other and the clinic's security guard–they'd never stopped–and the fundies keep singing. my friends said they'd tried to underplay what happened because they hadn't wanted to draw the protesters' attention to the woman. i went down the street to look at the pool of blood, which was–this is my reference–kubrickian in its size, and i took pictures. i thought about the cops shrugging off a complaint from our group when it made its way to them in a few weeks and approached them, cold and calm and a little out of my body. that woman was having a miscarriage, i said, she was sitting in a pool of her own blood and could have died and might still die, and there is no such thing as a gendered emergency, there is only someone dying, and if they ever saw a thing like that ever again they needed to call emergency services immediately. they looked shocked and fearful, and stammered apologies, saying that they thought she had "soiled herself," and i walked back to the door and was glad that i hadn't cried in anger, and sent the photos of the cops' badges and the pool of blood to our leader for inclusion in our complaint. send it to just me, she said, everyone else shouldn't have to see that.
07.18.26 [on the F train]
yesterday i asked my cashier at trader joe's if he was having a lot of danger-lettuce conversations in light of the cyclosporidia situation in the midwest. EVERY OTHER CUSTOMER, said he, but he himself wanted it; how else to lose those last 30 pounds? i told him i preferred victorian tapeworm pills but a staycation is a staycation and we wished each other well on our journeys. it's still canadian-wildfire hazy this morning, though not as peachy-apocalyptic as it's been this week, and i think the AQI is around 170, which my soccer teammates and i would have killed for in southern california in the late '80s and early '90s. i sincerely hope the anti-abortion protesters at the clinic don't bring actual infants as props this morning, as they are wont to do from time to time. i appreciate a good prop, i do, but you don't have to make it so obvious that you don't care about babies once they're born. on journeys, we'll be seeing the odyssey at our favorite indie theater tonight; i saw that it got a rave in the new york times and is nearly three hours long, so i'm both hyped and thinking strategically about my beverage consumption. if memory serves, les misérables remains the only movie i've ever had to dash out of for a bathroom break, and i was only seeing it as part of an oscars-related feat of endurance/completism; little was at stake here, what am i talking about, but even so.
we're leaving for something like two and a half weeks in california and alaska on wednesday and i've bought my first john mcphee for the occasion; i might also take the closet apart for the occasion, as i would like to bring a backpack for hikes and feel sure that i caught a recent glimpse of the one i used to take to volunteer at the wild bird fund. would my smelling like new york city pigeon poop and chicken dander increase the odds of being mauled by a bear? would wearing a WHAT WOULD HERZOG DO? tee? hard to say.
i just finished janet malcolm's the silent woman, which my past self seems to have added to my library queue so i'd have to think about biography theory (it's about the first half-dozen sylvia plath biographies and assorted plath-adjacent memoirs and, among other things, what it's like to engage with what she left behind when the people she left behind are alive, litigious, and epistolary freaks). the book i want to write about the overlooked aviator won't have the same concerns, exactly–i think most of her children have died and i am in no danger of being a post-structuralist–but i certainly picked things up and have been thinking about how mealy-mouthed i would rather not sound. in malcom's telling, (plath's sister-in-law) olwyn hughes was a hydroelectric dam, ted was a manic pixie dream dude, and everyone else was either attractive or portly. i guess when you don't want to make assumptions about your subjects what you see with your own eyes when you have, like, pizza and olives at their acquaintances' houses becomes extra important? i am also technically reading a book about how to write and sell nonfiction, but the 5%-10% i've gotten through so far leads me to belive that the nonfiction writing i'm already doing is serving me there. part of me is interested in a creative nonfiction MFA, it would be nice to have that community and those contacts, but maybe i should just pitch more and trick myself into picking things up on the job again? it turns out that a lot of being a writer is tricking yourself into doing things; maybe all jobs are like that. the book doesn't recommend an MFA, mind you, it's just a thing that sounds attractive.
we're leaving for something like two and a half weeks in california and alaska on wednesday and i've bought my first john mcphee for the occasion; i might also take the closet apart for the occasion, as i would like to bring a backpack for hikes and feel sure that i caught a recent glimpse of the one i used to take to volunteer at the wild bird fund. would my smelling like new york city pigeon poop and chicken dander increase the odds of being mauled by a bear? would wearing a WHAT WOULD HERZOG DO? tee? hard to say.
i just finished janet malcolm's the silent woman, which my past self seems to have added to my library queue so i'd have to think about biography theory (it's about the first half-dozen sylvia plath biographies and assorted plath-adjacent memoirs and, among other things, what it's like to engage with what she left behind when the people she left behind are alive, litigious, and epistolary freaks). the book i want to write about the overlooked aviator won't have the same concerns, exactly–i think most of her children have died and i am in no danger of being a post-structuralist–but i certainly picked things up and have been thinking about how mealy-mouthed i would rather not sound. in malcom's telling, (plath's sister-in-law) olwyn hughes was a hydroelectric dam, ted was a manic pixie dream dude, and everyone else was either attractive or portly. i guess when you don't want to make assumptions about your subjects what you see with your own eyes when you have, like, pizza and olives at their acquaintances' houses becomes extra important? i am also technically reading a book about how to write and sell nonfiction, but the 5%-10% i've gotten through so far leads me to belive that the nonfiction writing i'm already doing is serving me there. part of me is interested in a creative nonfiction MFA, it would be nice to have that community and those contacts, but maybe i should just pitch more and trick myself into picking things up on the job again? it turns out that a lot of being a writer is tricking yourself into doing things; maybe all jobs are like that. the book doesn't recommend an MFA, mind you, it's just a thing that sounds attractive.
07.11.26 [on the F train]
i'm getting close to accepting that i've established a personal time zone that doesn't match my spouse's or my friends' for any meaningful length of time; over the last month or so i've been up until dawn finishing work at least three times, and while it was a little upsetting at first it's easy enough to nap most of the discomfort away? i have been making weird typos every now and again in emails to my editors, which i don't love, but that might have more to do with transcribing much more than i usually do than with being sleep-deprived most of the time. i imagine i'll reset when we go to alaska with family for a few weeks; we'll be on a boat for half of the trip and i sleep well on the ocean, and i won't be able to eat dinner in the middle of the 'night,' so.
i deleted my garbage stepbrother's number from my phone the other day. it's been in a little digital cyst in my contacts for more than a decade; as i recall his mother gave him my number when his now-wife's dog had cancer and he wanted my advice about specialists and treatment. i haven't had any communication with him since shortly after the 2016 election when it became clear he was going to go work for the president-elect and i sent him a plea to reconsider; we were disinvited from family thanksgiving that year and ever since, and i saw him at his sister's wedding last year and that's it. his mother intuited, correctly, that i would tell him what a sack of shit he is if we coincided. (i did not do that at the wedding, as i am not a monster, but thanksgiving is manifest destiny's special day, not my stepsister's.) i've always figured i had the opportunity to send one salutation before he blocked me and i've written and rewritten it over the years as i watch cable news while running–so much anger when i run!–and i polished that prospect in my head like a worry stone. when he legitimately pulled the same shit as a member of this administration that his mother pulled on his behalf when he got kicked off a team in college and i very nearly sent him an actual message about what a waste of protein he is i finally decided, for no reason that would make a particularly compelling anecdote, that i would choose my own adventure at last and forever. then i sent his mother and my dad a petty text about the world cup anyway.
i've been thinking about ways my sister and i can hype ourselves into progress on our picture book and abruptly wrote to a photographer last night about taking author photos. she is pretty expensive, i gathered when i googled around a bit to try to get a sense of what others charge, but i have a hunch that she could crack my awkwardness in posed shots, and the photo of me that's currently on my professional website is very nearly old enough to join the army, so maybe investing in someone who would do a really fantastic job is the power move? there are plenty of newer photos of me online and i don't feel like i'm putting one over on anybody, but it's probaby time to have something out there that isn't a bathroom selfie. she wrote back like 10 minutes later and i like her, i'm hopeful about this. a little part of me wishes i could ask my ex-friend the publishing juggernaut about her experience prepping for this, she's literally the only person i've ever talked to about head shots, but if we saw things the same way, or in complementary ways, i guess, she wouldn't be my ex-friend, now would she. she donesn't seem to be doing very well, but it's hard to know, and i won't ask.
i deleted my garbage stepbrother's number from my phone the other day. it's been in a little digital cyst in my contacts for more than a decade; as i recall his mother gave him my number when his now-wife's dog had cancer and he wanted my advice about specialists and treatment. i haven't had any communication with him since shortly after the 2016 election when it became clear he was going to go work for the president-elect and i sent him a plea to reconsider; we were disinvited from family thanksgiving that year and ever since, and i saw him at his sister's wedding last year and that's it. his mother intuited, correctly, that i would tell him what a sack of shit he is if we coincided. (i did not do that at the wedding, as i am not a monster, but thanksgiving is manifest destiny's special day, not my stepsister's.) i've always figured i had the opportunity to send one salutation before he blocked me and i've written and rewritten it over the years as i watch cable news while running–so much anger when i run!–and i polished that prospect in my head like a worry stone. when he legitimately pulled the same shit as a member of this administration that his mother pulled on his behalf when he got kicked off a team in college and i very nearly sent him an actual message about what a waste of protein he is i finally decided, for no reason that would make a particularly compelling anecdote, that i would choose my own adventure at last and forever. then i sent his mother and my dad a petty text about the world cup anyway.
i've been thinking about ways my sister and i can hype ourselves into progress on our picture book and abruptly wrote to a photographer last night about taking author photos. she is pretty expensive, i gathered when i googled around a bit to try to get a sense of what others charge, but i have a hunch that she could crack my awkwardness in posed shots, and the photo of me that's currently on my professional website is very nearly old enough to join the army, so maybe investing in someone who would do a really fantastic job is the power move? there are plenty of newer photos of me online and i don't feel like i'm putting one over on anybody, but it's probaby time to have something out there that isn't a bathroom selfie. she wrote back like 10 minutes later and i like her, i'm hopeful about this. a little part of me wishes i could ask my ex-friend the publishing juggernaut about her experience prepping for this, she's literally the only person i've ever talked to about head shots, but if we saw things the same way, or in complementary ways, i guess, she wouldn't be my ex-friend, now would she. she donesn't seem to be doing very well, but it's hard to know, and i won't ask.
06.06.26 [on the F train]
it's been so long since my last clinic shift that it's now full-on daytime when i leave my apartment in the morning, a vile scenario that benefits no one. did i fall back asleep after the cats woke me up at 4:45? will i end up cross-eyed because i forgot my readers and am writing this while squinting? will trump's appearance at the next knicks game doom their championship run? no one knows, internets; no one knows.
i actually purchased a basketball-adjacent ZOHRAN shirt from the guys at union square yesterday in a fit of hometown groupthink. when i rolled out at ten thirty last night in a fruitless attempt to score eggs for my half-made lemon bars, like 40 of my neighbors were watching game two at the basketball courts across the street from the grocery store. i was charmed.
my one half marathon of the first half of the year is done and dusted, and i'm thinking i might play it cool until the fall; we're missing a bunch of the cutesy midsummer races when we head to alaska with my family in july and august, and i end up with weird welts when i get athletic outside this time of year anyway. the vendors at the street market we visited years ago in southern india had me pegged: i miss my icy russian homeland. bless, there seems to be a race on this morning; folks in bibs were waiting on the platform at herald square just now.
i filed a second draft of my latest piece on death-positive practices this past thursday and ended up getting lyrical in the final paragraph about how i'd like some of my remains to end up with the raccoons in central park. the first draft had ended with death metal and the idea that my greatest fear is that people will think i'm afraid of dying, which my editor didn't get at all. in these more fanciful, passion-project essays i have like a 50% success rate when i just end a piece abruptly and mysteriously, which is maybe a better reception that i deserve. i was shocked when the team wrote to say they liked my pitch; while i like the subject and think it's a good, weird take on their issue's theme, i had been much more confident about the one i sent them a year or two ago, and also this one had a nine inch nails dad joke at the end, and also also i didn't hear back for a long time. but here we are! i fired up my nearly-cancelled zoom subscription to conduct a couple of interviews, i have now visited a cemetery in a professional capacity, and i'll have one more client to list when the horrible contractor-payment company that processes my invoices for my biggest client demands more proof that i have a nominally diverse income stream. much has been written by folks who know a whole lot more about capitalism than i do about how regulations intended to protect freelancers invariably end up punishing them, so let's simply say that i've started making regular donations to the DSA, which has totally torched my inbox in re: solicitations from everyone imaginable. speaking of, i ran into brad lander at a march in times square a few months ago and told him i was looking forward to voting for him, an interaction that felt like the first step on the path to healing after i spaced out and high fived chuck schumer at a half marathon before the last election. lander was also at this year's half marathon and a second hello would really have been progress, but i managed consistently negative splits and a pace that was more than 30 seconds under what i ran on the same course last year, so i'll settle for those gains, i'm not greedy (about this).
i actually purchased a basketball-adjacent ZOHRAN shirt from the guys at union square yesterday in a fit of hometown groupthink. when i rolled out at ten thirty last night in a fruitless attempt to score eggs for my half-made lemon bars, like 40 of my neighbors were watching game two at the basketball courts across the street from the grocery store. i was charmed.
my one half marathon of the first half of the year is done and dusted, and i'm thinking i might play it cool until the fall; we're missing a bunch of the cutesy midsummer races when we head to alaska with my family in july and august, and i end up with weird welts when i get athletic outside this time of year anyway. the vendors at the street market we visited years ago in southern india had me pegged: i miss my icy russian homeland. bless, there seems to be a race on this morning; folks in bibs were waiting on the platform at herald square just now.
i filed a second draft of my latest piece on death-positive practices this past thursday and ended up getting lyrical in the final paragraph about how i'd like some of my remains to end up with the raccoons in central park. the first draft had ended with death metal and the idea that my greatest fear is that people will think i'm afraid of dying, which my editor didn't get at all. in these more fanciful, passion-project essays i have like a 50% success rate when i just end a piece abruptly and mysteriously, which is maybe a better reception that i deserve. i was shocked when the team wrote to say they liked my pitch; while i like the subject and think it's a good, weird take on their issue's theme, i had been much more confident about the one i sent them a year or two ago, and also this one had a nine inch nails dad joke at the end, and also also i didn't hear back for a long time. but here we are! i fired up my nearly-cancelled zoom subscription to conduct a couple of interviews, i have now visited a cemetery in a professional capacity, and i'll have one more client to list when the horrible contractor-payment company that processes my invoices for my biggest client demands more proof that i have a nominally diverse income stream. much has been written by folks who know a whole lot more about capitalism than i do about how regulations intended to protect freelancers invariably end up punishing them, so let's simply say that i've started making regular donations to the DSA, which has totally torched my inbox in re: solicitations from everyone imaginable. speaking of, i ran into brad lander at a march in times square a few months ago and told him i was looking forward to voting for him, an interaction that felt like the first step on the path to healing after i spaced out and high fived chuck schumer at a half marathon before the last election. lander was also at this year's half marathon and a second hello would really have been progress, but i managed consistently negative splits and a pace that was more than 30 seconds under what i ran on the same course last year, so i'll settle for those gains, i'm not greedy (about this).
04.18.26 [on the F train]
i have a final stanza! a final stanza has been written by me! (passive voice feels important there, since i've been hanging around like a chump waiting for something to occur to me and only managed to toothpaste something out in utter desperation at a library shift this week because i had absolutely nothing else to do instead.) i think it's pretty good; maybe a little treacly, but this is a book for young children and the editor asked for something explicit, and joe says it feels like an ending, and so. i think my sister has been waiting for me to get this out to make her own final push with our illustrations, and i'm hoping i can focus this lovely having-written energy on infusing her with confidence even though we could easily go back and forth even more with the editor, in theory, it feels like something is coming to a head here. surely she too wants to see if something tangible can come out of all of this time and talk–even at the glacial pace that that these things happen, as i've come to understand, who wants to take zoom meetings for a year with someone who won't make them any money?
as if something had actually shaken loose, i then immediately heard back with a yes from a new-to-me print magazine i'd been hoping but not expecting to write for this spring. i haven't pitched a passion project in a really long time, one half-baked idea to a local newspaper notwithstanding, and knowing i'll be part of this weird ambitious collective, a bit like the one for which i've been writing cat and mushroom and bird stories for the last couple of years, feels wonderful. now i have to line up interviews with some old friends and unfamiliar cemeteries before pauline and i head down to puerto rico next month. did i mention this? we have lodging, a car, and a ferry to vieques and back booked, but otherwise–oh, and an evening on a bioluminescent bay, which is my big activity priority for the whole trip, other than figuring out how pauline and i can save the world–we're just going to walk the earth and deepen our respective relationships with bad bunny? consume at least one beverage apiece (one has to pay to bring things on the ferry, and i got round-trip fares for our totes but one-way tickets for drinks)? i was hoping for some inside dope from my therapist, who revealed in our second-to-last call that she lived there for two years, but in our call this week she mostly went on about how misogynistic puerto rican men are. it sounds like she got a pretty extreme experience of that, as she lived there with her husband who was researching schistosomiasis on the naval base during the vietnam war and, in addition to teaching history classes, she spent a lot of time horseback riding in the mountains by herself, but i concede that there's a part of me that's been expecting some kind of weirdness re: two women traveling together. i could draw a little pocket knife in one of my owl tattoo's talons? i wondered if we should look into something like a casual guide for exploring the rain forest, as i have a dreadful sense of direction and utilities on the island are notoriously inconsistent, so leaning on my phone will likely not be a thing, but pauline feels pretty good about catching as catch can, it seems, and if our three-decade friendship culminated in being mugged and eaten by a golden mongoose, that feels pretty good to me.
as if something had actually shaken loose, i then immediately heard back with a yes from a new-to-me print magazine i'd been hoping but not expecting to write for this spring. i haven't pitched a passion project in a really long time, one half-baked idea to a local newspaper notwithstanding, and knowing i'll be part of this weird ambitious collective, a bit like the one for which i've been writing cat and mushroom and bird stories for the last couple of years, feels wonderful. now i have to line up interviews with some old friends and unfamiliar cemeteries before pauline and i head down to puerto rico next month. did i mention this? we have lodging, a car, and a ferry to vieques and back booked, but otherwise–oh, and an evening on a bioluminescent bay, which is my big activity priority for the whole trip, other than figuring out how pauline and i can save the world–we're just going to walk the earth and deepen our respective relationships with bad bunny? consume at least one beverage apiece (one has to pay to bring things on the ferry, and i got round-trip fares for our totes but one-way tickets for drinks)? i was hoping for some inside dope from my therapist, who revealed in our second-to-last call that she lived there for two years, but in our call this week she mostly went on about how misogynistic puerto rican men are. it sounds like she got a pretty extreme experience of that, as she lived there with her husband who was researching schistosomiasis on the naval base during the vietnam war and, in addition to teaching history classes, she spent a lot of time horseback riding in the mountains by herself, but i concede that there's a part of me that's been expecting some kind of weirdness re: two women traveling together. i could draw a little pocket knife in one of my owl tattoo's talons? i wondered if we should look into something like a casual guide for exploring the rain forest, as i have a dreadful sense of direction and utilities on the island are notoriously inconsistent, so leaning on my phone will likely not be a thing, but pauline feels pretty good about catching as catch can, it seems, and if our three-decade friendship culminated in being mugged and eaten by a golden mongoose, that feels pretty good to me.
03.21.26 [on a train i forgot to ID]
I HAVE FOUND IT! the ratty old notebook in which i wrote a couple of my posts from last year IS REGAINED and you will know of, probably, some more excuses for why i haven't pitched my rambling creative nonfiction book yet! very exciting stuff.
yesterday was the first day of spring, and i have a gentle hope that the absolute mountains of shit that have accumulated outside the clinic have melted back into the universe. this week i set off for the farmers' market in head-to-toe malachite to signal that i was in a good mood and was open to longer days, the circle of life, etc, and was asked if i'm irish. it's just the best color, clipboard guy.
the self-imposed deadline of the end of march draws nigh for me and my sister and our goosebook, and i still haven't figured out what the devastating final section will sound like. we have the visual and i know what i want to say, but the part where the actual poetry comes up and out of me in the middle of the night is yet to come. i don't mean to abdicate responsibility for it, i don't think the muse is rooting around in the bottom of her tote bag for me, but there is an extent to which trying to force it just...i mean, you see what i sound like when i'm forcing myself to put pen to paper.
i have a truly massive stack of aviation-related books next to my bed. their titles are all combinations of like a dozen words, the muse is not speaking through whoever is finishing these things up, but i'd like to think i can do better with my own version (even though it's entirely possible it won't be my call). joe and i went to a new friend's birthday on the upper west side a few weekends ago and i met a woman who publishes nonfiction with a big old entity down in DC after years of being in magazines up here (we had several colleagues in common from my days at the ladymag), and in attaching myself to a wall and nattering at her for what felt like an hour about the size of early planes' fuel tanks (she just published a book about another luminary from the same time period) i think i might have accidentally networked? she offered at the beginning of our interlude to hook me up with her entity's magazine, and it's a great one, i'd love to write for them, and maybe i should be trying to do it now. i've mostly been treading water with day-job clients as we wrap the big goosebook pitch, though i did realize yesterday that i very much want to write for an indie mag that almost bit on a pitch of mine last year(?) and it's about time to do another piece about death...that they might want? some interesting legislation has come through recently and local corpses are doing spicy new things, surely that's something i need to cold-call people about.
i have finally been allowed to go back to the blood bank after three months in the wilderness, and they have made up for lost time. at my appointment this past tuesday the gal who stuck me hit the one part of my vein that isn't prolific and it was clear that hijinks would ensue; a more senior tech was hyping her up as she worked, she was new and looked nervous, and when the apheresis machine started whistling and singing about how my pressure was too low she panicked and mashed its buttons until it was barely running at all. the run time recalculated and i was going to be there for...145 minutes. i tried asking, gently, if the pressure might be revisited, but i think the system locks after it's been adjusted a few times, and it's not like i didn't have a good book with me. i was sitting in front of the center's biggest TV and caught two segments of syfy's st. patrick's day leprechaun marathon (bewilderingly, not called LEPRETHON), including leprechaun in space, my franchise favorite. trying to explain '90s horror boobs and the cronenberg and dune jokes to the bewildered gen z techs wasn't especially successful, but i was where i was supposed to be, probably.
pauline and i are meeting up in puerto rico at the beginning of may; i've booked us a rooftop in old san juan and a secret jungle fort near el yunque, as well as an evening of kayaking around in bioluminescent plankton. i have leaned into assembling the wardrobe of a monied septuagenarian widow for this trip and am soliciting tips from both a mexico-based guide i befriended in yucatan a few years ago and, apparently, my therapist, who lived there for a while. i don't trust most people's travel observations, but they're both real ones and i feel the island has plans for us. i am your tool, puerto rico! if your vengeance could involve a golden mongoose that would be especially grand.
yesterday was the first day of spring, and i have a gentle hope that the absolute mountains of shit that have accumulated outside the clinic have melted back into the universe. this week i set off for the farmers' market in head-to-toe malachite to signal that i was in a good mood and was open to longer days, the circle of life, etc, and was asked if i'm irish. it's just the best color, clipboard guy.
the self-imposed deadline of the end of march draws nigh for me and my sister and our goosebook, and i still haven't figured out what the devastating final section will sound like. we have the visual and i know what i want to say, but the part where the actual poetry comes up and out of me in the middle of the night is yet to come. i don't mean to abdicate responsibility for it, i don't think the muse is rooting around in the bottom of her tote bag for me, but there is an extent to which trying to force it just...i mean, you see what i sound like when i'm forcing myself to put pen to paper.
i have a truly massive stack of aviation-related books next to my bed. their titles are all combinations of like a dozen words, the muse is not speaking through whoever is finishing these things up, but i'd like to think i can do better with my own version (even though it's entirely possible it won't be my call). joe and i went to a new friend's birthday on the upper west side a few weekends ago and i met a woman who publishes nonfiction with a big old entity down in DC after years of being in magazines up here (we had several colleagues in common from my days at the ladymag), and in attaching myself to a wall and nattering at her for what felt like an hour about the size of early planes' fuel tanks (she just published a book about another luminary from the same time period) i think i might have accidentally networked? she offered at the beginning of our interlude to hook me up with her entity's magazine, and it's a great one, i'd love to write for them, and maybe i should be trying to do it now. i've mostly been treading water with day-job clients as we wrap the big goosebook pitch, though i did realize yesterday that i very much want to write for an indie mag that almost bit on a pitch of mine last year(?) and it's about time to do another piece about death...that they might want? some interesting legislation has come through recently and local corpses are doing spicy new things, surely that's something i need to cold-call people about.
i have finally been allowed to go back to the blood bank after three months in the wilderness, and they have made up for lost time. at my appointment this past tuesday the gal who stuck me hit the one part of my vein that isn't prolific and it was clear that hijinks would ensue; a more senior tech was hyping her up as she worked, she was new and looked nervous, and when the apheresis machine started whistling and singing about how my pressure was too low she panicked and mashed its buttons until it was barely running at all. the run time recalculated and i was going to be there for...145 minutes. i tried asking, gently, if the pressure might be revisited, but i think the system locks after it's been adjusted a few times, and it's not like i didn't have a good book with me. i was sitting in front of the center's biggest TV and caught two segments of syfy's st. patrick's day leprechaun marathon (bewilderingly, not called LEPRETHON), including leprechaun in space, my franchise favorite. trying to explain '90s horror boobs and the cronenberg and dune jokes to the bewildered gen z techs wasn't especially successful, but i was where i was supposed to be, probably.
pauline and i are meeting up in puerto rico at the beginning of may; i've booked us a rooftop in old san juan and a secret jungle fort near el yunque, as well as an evening of kayaking around in bioluminescent plankton. i have leaned into assembling the wardrobe of a monied septuagenarian widow for this trip and am soliciting tips from both a mexico-based guide i befriended in yucatan a few years ago and, apparently, my therapist, who lived there for a while. i don't trust most people's travel observations, but they're both real ones and i feel the island has plans for us. i am your tool, puerto rico! if your vengeance could involve a golden mongoose that would be especially grand.
11.01.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
with fall travel and work soup mostly over, it's time to take a crack at finishing moves for ye goosebook. i have yet to pop out of bed in the middle of the night to jot down couplets, which is frustrating, but i do think i get what needs to happen even if i can't make it happen just yet. i wrote the maybe-editor this week to schedule our next meeting and she hates my face and/or got laid off and hasn't written back, or it was the week of halloween and she works with children's books and has a young daughter. that came out as "week of thanksgiving"–my sleep has not been consistent! on our five-day lightning cruise to canada and back, i slept so poorly that on our last night when i was rushing to pack my suitcase and fling it in the hallway for pickup i missed a whole dresser's worth of clothes, which left new york harbor a few hours later and have been sailing around the canadian maritimes ever since. i wrote out and submitted an intricate description of said dresser in the stateroom and the sweatshirts, celine dion concert tee, and black underwear it contained, and after a fortnight or so i got a letter congratulating me on the 73% accuracy with which i told the story of my shit (the percentage!) and offering me the opportunity to pay a $150 idiot tax to get it back. i have tender feelings about that shit (which might even be worth more than $150!), i paid, and now i wait. i hope celine has been enjoying the impromptu repatriation.
i've trained and signed up to protect the election on thursday, which feels pretty unnecessary–probably no one is out to terrorize or benight lower east side voters, and i've been an actual poll worker a few times so i already know how it works–but it's a charm that's easy to perform, not unlike this morning's shift. a call for more volunteer clinic escorts went out earlier this week on the last-call channel, but by the time i accessed signup there were already 8 participants. if my last shift and what the group leaders said of the weeks since are seasonal indicators, though, there will be several squirrelly groups of antis there this morning, and we'll need all the bodies we can get. this group does clinic escorting rather than defense, which means we focus on the patients and don't engage with protesters–in the years i've done this i've never spoken to a protester, and i've gotten better at not wanting to over time–but they clearly feel emboldened to harass patients and break laws when their numbers exceed ours. there were probably six mornings earlier this year where they didn't show up at all and i got to go home relatively early, though the hour i spend on the train each way makes that kind of a wash, i guess. i pre-partied for what i'm paying now. i appreciate the nonengagement policy, both because i'd rather not incur the psychic damage, dungeons and dragons style, of arguing with evangelical bigots and because from what i've seen of clinic defense at planned parenthood's facility in nolita it's all too easy to develop a spy vs. spy, neverending escalation loop with an actual two-way scream tunnel. no one could have frightened or wheedled me out of my procedure when i was 22 in san francisco, but i appreciated the empty hospital i found all those years ago; i was fairly vulnerable to psychic damage then as well, though i didn't really know that.
i've trained and signed up to protect the election on thursday, which feels pretty unnecessary–probably no one is out to terrorize or benight lower east side voters, and i've been an actual poll worker a few times so i already know how it works–but it's a charm that's easy to perform, not unlike this morning's shift. a call for more volunteer clinic escorts went out earlier this week on the last-call channel, but by the time i accessed signup there were already 8 participants. if my last shift and what the group leaders said of the weeks since are seasonal indicators, though, there will be several squirrelly groups of antis there this morning, and we'll need all the bodies we can get. this group does clinic escorting rather than defense, which means we focus on the patients and don't engage with protesters–in the years i've done this i've never spoken to a protester, and i've gotten better at not wanting to over time–but they clearly feel emboldened to harass patients and break laws when their numbers exceed ours. there were probably six mornings earlier this year where they didn't show up at all and i got to go home relatively early, though the hour i spend on the train each way makes that kind of a wash, i guess. i pre-partied for what i'm paying now. i appreciate the nonengagement policy, both because i'd rather not incur the psychic damage, dungeons and dragons style, of arguing with evangelical bigots and because from what i've seen of clinic defense at planned parenthood's facility in nolita it's all too easy to develop a spy vs. spy, neverending escalation loop with an actual two-way scream tunnel. no one could have frightened or wheedled me out of my procedure when i was 22 in san francisco, but i appreciated the empty hospital i found all those years ago; i was fairly vulnerable to psychic damage then as well, though i didn't really know that.
09.20.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
i strongly considered using this hour on the dawn train to scare up a first draft of the essay about shoes i told a dear colleague i'd write before labor day, but this whole-blogging-when-i'm-taking-the-train-out-to- clinic-escorting is all i got for the 'champ right now, so i can't hamstring it like that. i was talking to a friend yesterday about wanting to persist and make arm-waves at mental health as we ride this rockslide into authoritarianism, and informal personal writing could be a way to do that, though my tendency of late is to write strident essays about nature that end on elegiac/ambiguous notes. i will tell you how that feels when i get a hard copy of the next one, written last year when this administration was just a twinkle in russell vought's eye, in a few weeks. i think the main way to move forward or at least tread harder is going to be plugging away at the book's foundation. i still haven't found an agent–i haven't queried anyone other than the woman i met at one of these escorting shifts a couple of years ago–and i need to revisit the notes i took on my last feedback call with the prospective editor before they squirt out of my head. a translator friend has been lovely about suggesting jo and i apply to residencies as an author-illustrator team, not unlike how she's done some with poet-partners, and i think something like that would be magnificent momentum. it helped her to think of herself as an artist, she said, she is an artist, she is an artist, and i could use some of that. on persisting, this is also part of it, as are the relatively frequent blood donations i've been making. they're still attractive for all the reasons they always were–an excuse to sit still for a few hours, snacks, community service with minimal conversation–but it also just feels nice to give something intimate away, and to have your humors in someone else's custody for a little while. (i'm still doing platelet donations, since my blood isn't fancy otherwise, so an apheresis machine separates them out and then deposits everything else back in my arm commingled with a bit of anticoagulant, except last time when they took plasma also and i didn't feel the typical lip-buzziness upon return, so maybe the cocktail was a little different?)
i'm headed to mississippi next week for my first press trip in a year and my first visit to the state in a decade. i requested an extra day there and then spaced out and accepted the extra programming they offered me for that day, so i will be lurching groggily between local cafes instead of exploring graveyards, at least unless i pull up my big-girl pants and tell the organizers i've changed my mind. (but what if they booked their flights the way they did because they're showing me around that day? what if i hurt someone's feelings?!) the timing in general is not great, as i'll be home for like a day and then am getting on a boat to canada, but i had been thinking about how i'd like to get back to mississippi, as it happens, and though i have stepped back from most travel writing, i have a feeling i'll want to write out there. emma straub anounced her new novel yesterday and talked about how she saw it coming in the form of a particular trip–that was her next novel, waiting for her. maybe my next elegiac essay about birds is in the south; maybe i can fit in a trip to some extra graveyards after the cafes. i don't know that i'm ready for the next thing to happen to all of us, but i'm ready to talk about it.
i'm headed to mississippi next week for my first press trip in a year and my first visit to the state in a decade. i requested an extra day there and then spaced out and accepted the extra programming they offered me for that day, so i will be lurching groggily between local cafes instead of exploring graveyards, at least unless i pull up my big-girl pants and tell the organizers i've changed my mind. (but what if they booked their flights the way they did because they're showing me around that day? what if i hurt someone's feelings?!) the timing in general is not great, as i'll be home for like a day and then am getting on a boat to canada, but i had been thinking about how i'd like to get back to mississippi, as it happens, and though i have stepped back from most travel writing, i have a feeling i'll want to write out there. emma straub anounced her new novel yesterday and talked about how she saw it coming in the form of a particular trip–that was her next novel, waiting for her. maybe my next elegiac essay about birds is in the south; maybe i can fit in a trip to some extra graveyards after the cafes. i don't know that i'm ready for the next thing to happen to all of us, but i'm ready to talk about it.
09.13.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
i have gotten out from under the absolutely unstoppable avalanche of library holds that all turned up at the same time with an unexpected assist from nordstrom rack; when i was in california with my mom earlier this month i tried on some readers in the sunglasses display and lo, the fine print on the other glasses' tags leapt into almost aggressively sharp focus. turns out my book light wasn't on the fritz and i wasn't dying, or dying significantly faster than most of us are, anyway; i just can't see for shit now. i've kind of been waiting to wear glasses all my life, and i certainly spent enough time wearing clear ones recreationally to deserve this; it's fine. in the zombie apocalypse i would run out of blood pressure pills and go down even if presbyopia didn't lead me to miss a telltale lurch behind a burned-out car, so it's not like my long-term outcomes are super different now anyway. it is a little creepy that text without glasses now looks like pure fuzz–i was compensating enough to be none the wiser until that fateful day at The Rack–but we fall apart very slowly and then all at once, i guess.
it's time to revisit ye children's book draft and come up with a deal-sealing version that will win hearts and minds in the publishing industry and put jo and me on the path to creative nirvana. i have continued to keep my work calendar mostly free of more-creative projects to leave mental room for this, though i'm tired and scattered enough that i don't have much to fill that room with just yet. it's a little scary that i saw my family in california mere hours after my most recent call with maybe-editor (who has also seen the pee-wee documentary and knew what i was talking about when i brought it up!) and had difficulty describing her feedback in detail–but i took notes, so maybe it doesn't matter?
i had my yearly physical last month and received a handy-dandy little chart of how my humors have performed over the last decade or so. i can't say i was surprised, but it was still sobering (no pun intended) to see the dips and spikes in 2021, my first checkup after lockdown, like a tree's ring after drought or wildfire. i now enjoy something like consistent health, the fact that i'm becoming a mole person notwithstanding. i have three more half marathons and a five-miler before the end of the year; i have a novel i don't remember requesting waiting for me at seward park. it's the most wonderful time of the year.
it's time to revisit ye children's book draft and come up with a deal-sealing version that will win hearts and minds in the publishing industry and put jo and me on the path to creative nirvana. i have continued to keep my work calendar mostly free of more-creative projects to leave mental room for this, though i'm tired and scattered enough that i don't have much to fill that room with just yet. it's a little scary that i saw my family in california mere hours after my most recent call with maybe-editor (who has also seen the pee-wee documentary and knew what i was talking about when i brought it up!) and had difficulty describing her feedback in detail–but i took notes, so maybe it doesn't matter?
i had my yearly physical last month and received a handy-dandy little chart of how my humors have performed over the last decade or so. i can't say i was surprised, but it was still sobering (no pun intended) to see the dips and spikes in 2021, my first checkup after lockdown, like a tree's ring after drought or wildfire. i now enjoy something like consistent health, the fact that i'm becoming a mole person notwithstanding. i have three more half marathons and a five-miler before the end of the year; i have a novel i don't remember requesting waiting for me at seward park. it's the most wonderful time of the year.
08.16.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
what i'd hoped would be a neurotic account of yesterday's long-awaited meeting wtih my (and my sister's?!) maybe-editor must instead simply be a neurotic account of more waiting; she had a plausible kid-emergency yesterday morning (and probably the night before) that led her to ask for a bump to this coming friday instead. and that should be great, my sister and i can be more prepared! hell, we're so prepared it might even make strategic sense for me to mention our non-negotiable partnership and send over proof that it's undeniable (i.e. some character sketches to show range and a well-considered mockup of the page-by-page illustrations with my text) before we talk! that's my new hunch, but i'm still so nervous about spooking this editor before she's all in on the project. there's so much i don't know–like, i thought it was a selling point that i wrote the thing in verse (what she'd said in her original note to me was that "it doesn't even have to rhyme," which, since the catchphrase that inspired her reaching out does indeed rhyme, meant that i assumed it was a plus). now as i'm looking up potential agents a bunch of them note up front that they don't want rhyming picture books, and that led me to a bunch of articles about how resistant gatekeepers like agents and editors are to verse. this seems to be because most of it is shitty, but i have a real knack for assuming my own stuff is shitty until i have incontrovertible proof otherwise. oh god, what if it is shitty! but maybe-editor seemed to really like the first draft, and the second is much stronger, and i know i need to push. my sister had a crisis of confidence a week ago when she realized this maybe-editor is with a big-deal publisher and then she checked out a bunch of illustrators' portfolios as linked from their book agents' pages–a classic way to psych yourself out, comparing your nascent stuff to stuff that beat the odds and worked after lots of folks polished it–and i tried to hype her back up with perspective, which she turned around and did for me when i freaked the fuck out yesterday. another reason it's wonderful to work with someone i trust completely!
bearing in mind that this will make me sound like a maniac, i was thinking about our project as i watched pee-wee as himself this week. paul reubens came around to realizing performance art for children was exactly what he was meant to be doing, presenting them with infinite possibilities and influencing how they would grow up and express themselves was everything, and he was unapologetically odd and uncompromising as he made that happen. and he was (apparently incredibly difficult to work with and) right! he had grace fucking jones in issey miyake on his christmas special! (not totally synonymous with anarchic childhood but god i love her.) and the verse is good, it's serious and affectionate and the kind of thing that's a pleasure to read and hear, and this illustrated place that so few people (and pretty much no kids) get to see is so singular in the world we're trying so hard to join...i really hope it's as special as i think it is, on my best days. i really thought my piece about black magic performed with trader joe's products was undeniable as well, though, and it fell completely flat. not the same thing, i know, but i sure do love to revisit my failures. poking old scabs! all the old scabs!
bearing in mind that this will make me sound like a maniac, i was thinking about our project as i watched pee-wee as himself this week. paul reubens came around to realizing performance art for children was exactly what he was meant to be doing, presenting them with infinite possibilities and influencing how they would grow up and express themselves was everything, and he was unapologetically odd and uncompromising as he made that happen. and he was (apparently incredibly difficult to work with and) right! he had grace fucking jones in issey miyake on his christmas special! (not totally synonymous with anarchic childhood but god i love her.) and the verse is good, it's serious and affectionate and the kind of thing that's a pleasure to read and hear, and this illustrated place that so few people (and pretty much no kids) get to see is so singular in the world we're trying so hard to join...i really hope it's as special as i think it is, on my best days. i really thought my piece about black magic performed with trader joe's products was undeniable as well, though, and it fell completely flat. not the same thing, i know, but i sure do love to revisit my failures. poking old scabs! all the old scabs!
01.31.26 [on the J train]
if it would bother you to know about the most notable dream-logic elements of the secret agent, the very good brazilian 2026 oscar contender about dictatorship, stop reading now; if that doesn't feel deal-breaky and/or your memory is bald-tired like mine, know that i woke up thinking about the two-faced cat (conjoined cats?) that move/s through its recife apartment building/hideout. for the most part the filmmakers went with practical effects – there's another sequence where a severed leg reanimates, saint's-limb-performing-a-miracle-style, and kicks a bunch of people cruising for sex in a public park, and that's all stop-motion animation – but the cat/s is/are CGI, i think? there's a blur to its/their face that i associate with the progressive lenses i got a couple months ago and still haven't worn enough to see through without a bit of vertigo. as i was trying and failing to get a good night's sleep before this morning's train ride to clinic escorting, i mused that i'm pretty okay with a bit of dream logic in most movies now; half the time the news reads like something my brain riffed as i nodded off anyway.
i'm starting to wonder if i need to pick a role and stick to it when it comes to...the news? i rolled out for protest monitoring three times this month and feel like i'm finally settling into meaningful contributions; i know what to film and how to make my observations useful, i can be conspicuous in a way that feels like it deters institutional overreach, and i can recognize and work with cops' and protesters' behavior patterns. but i'm also scheduled to train up with a nascent neighborhood rapid-response patrol today, to be more like the observers deterring federal agents in minnesota, and i don't know that i should do both. does it matter that local law enforcement and i recognize each other now, as the anti-abortion haranguers i might or might not see on the sidewalk in 15 minutes and i do? it's way too late for me to wear a mask, and i'm sure i'm on plenty of lists. but i am relatively safe and it's my responsibility to spend down as much of that privilege as i can, right? in any case, more training is always a good idea; i would be the hypercompetent elinor smith of this moment, not the amelia earhart whose bravery and luck become a fatal talisman. that's what elinor seemed to conclude about amelia, anyway. she didn't go so far as to call her intentionally underprepared, but she did seem to think she was performing courage for herself. no, i still don't know if i'm going to write a book about that.
i'm starting to wonder if i need to pick a role and stick to it when it comes to...the news? i rolled out for protest monitoring three times this month and feel like i'm finally settling into meaningful contributions; i know what to film and how to make my observations useful, i can be conspicuous in a way that feels like it deters institutional overreach, and i can recognize and work with cops' and protesters' behavior patterns. but i'm also scheduled to train up with a nascent neighborhood rapid-response patrol today, to be more like the observers deterring federal agents in minnesota, and i don't know that i should do both. does it matter that local law enforcement and i recognize each other now, as the anti-abortion haranguers i might or might not see on the sidewalk in 15 minutes and i do? it's way too late for me to wear a mask, and i'm sure i'm on plenty of lists. but i am relatively safe and it's my responsibility to spend down as much of that privilege as i can, right? in any case, more training is always a good idea; i would be the hypercompetent elinor smith of this moment, not the amelia earhart whose bravery and luck become a fatal talisman. that's what elinor seemed to conclude about amelia, anyway. she didn't go so far as to call her intentionally underprepared, but she did seem to think she was performing courage for herself. no, i still don't know if i'm going to write a book about that.
01.24.26 [on the J train]
i left the apartment with an extra giddy-up in my step to make it to the library before heading out to queens this morning, as i was not interested in having the shards in my life for another day or two. i don't remember bret easton ellis being that bad — i don't remember much about rules of engagement, honestly, though i know i preferred donna tartt's the secret history if we're ranking fictionalized-bennington novels — but hoo, friends. it did entertain me that a key scene went down at crystal cove, the park/beach due west of my dad's place to which i repair when visiting the OC, and his fixation on ultravox's "vienna" did inspire me to watch the banger of a video and then pick up the demonic lafufu i found on the giveaway heap in our laundry room, which i steeped in boiling water and woolite and have added to the rotation of creatures that join me via my tote bag for protest monitoring and reproductive health clinic escorting, and that's not nothing. do i need to read less than zero or, like, american psycho? my library-holds queue threw a four-book clot last week, so i won't be doing it any time soon, at least.
i got a bitchy letter from the blood bank saying that, per the FDA, i was nearing the limit of what one can safely donate over the course of a year and won't be allowed back until mid-march, maybe i could do them a favor and be a little more mindful of my schedule in the future? i called to contest that, as i was/am way under the max of 24 platelet draws at least a week apart that their literature mentions. as the aggrieved gal at their call center explained, my donations had all been triples, as the techs are directed to optimize donors' visits. "and your platelet count has been going up over time," she said in an accusatory way. are you blood-shaming me, lady?! i tried to suggest, respectfully, that the letter's patronizing wording and tone were perhaps at cross-purposes with their center's aims, and that it was challenging to keep pacing in mind when i received weekly texts about critical platelet shortages i alone could resolve and also wasn't informed that i was up in Ye Threefold Bloodlettings, but i don't think she was interested in being receptive to me, and that was not a me problem.
on bloodlettings, luc besson made a dracula! i don't know much yet, but the romantic trappings and mars attacks!-adjacent vamp-coiffing suggest it'll be francis-ford-coppola-ish, and more of that energy in 2026, please. in other news of the not-traditionally-alive, we saw 28 years later: the bone temple despite my worry that it would hurt my feelings (a fear i also had and was later sheepish about with the first 28 years later movie) and holy shit, that's the most fortifying business i've seen in ages. absolutely everything about ralph fiennes's character was delightful (inspired, i dug around this week for iron maiden 50th-anniversary tour tickets and would have planned a trip around a show, were they not some $400 and up per seat), and i burst into tears at the last line. it's fortifying to watch the zombie metaphor evolve past capitalism and fascism to whatever this is; i'm really hoping danny boyle can land the plane with the final movie in the cycle. i was reminded of the harbinger, the COVID-in-new-york-city movie that unpicked experiencing the pandemic here for me, and i dearly love to see genre films meeting their moments. i'm almost tempted to hang around and try to talk the local horror folks into letting me volunteer for their film festival again this year (they absolutely didn't need the extra hands and were humoring me last year, the softies).
i got a bitchy letter from the blood bank saying that, per the FDA, i was nearing the limit of what one can safely donate over the course of a year and won't be allowed back until mid-march, maybe i could do them a favor and be a little more mindful of my schedule in the future? i called to contest that, as i was/am way under the max of 24 platelet draws at least a week apart that their literature mentions. as the aggrieved gal at their call center explained, my donations had all been triples, as the techs are directed to optimize donors' visits. "and your platelet count has been going up over time," she said in an accusatory way. are you blood-shaming me, lady?! i tried to suggest, respectfully, that the letter's patronizing wording and tone were perhaps at cross-purposes with their center's aims, and that it was challenging to keep pacing in mind when i received weekly texts about critical platelet shortages i alone could resolve and also wasn't informed that i was up in Ye Threefold Bloodlettings, but i don't think she was interested in being receptive to me, and that was not a me problem.
on bloodlettings, luc besson made a dracula! i don't know much yet, but the romantic trappings and mars attacks!-adjacent vamp-coiffing suggest it'll be francis-ford-coppola-ish, and more of that energy in 2026, please. in other news of the not-traditionally-alive, we saw 28 years later: the bone temple despite my worry that it would hurt my feelings (a fear i also had and was later sheepish about with the first 28 years later movie) and holy shit, that's the most fortifying business i've seen in ages. absolutely everything about ralph fiennes's character was delightful (inspired, i dug around this week for iron maiden 50th-anniversary tour tickets and would have planned a trip around a show, were they not some $400 and up per seat), and i burst into tears at the last line. it's fortifying to watch the zombie metaphor evolve past capitalism and fascism to whatever this is; i'm really hoping danny boyle can land the plane with the final movie in the cycle. i was reminded of the harbinger, the COVID-in-new-york-city movie that unpicked experiencing the pandemic here for me, and i dearly love to see genre films meeting their moments. i'm almost tempted to hang around and try to talk the local horror folks into letting me volunteer for their film festival again this year (they absolutely didn't need the extra hands and were humoring me last year, the softies).
01.01.26
2026: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i ran six miles.
i watched part of mamdani's public inauguration.
i ate half a burrito.
i took a nap.
i found a hole in my sweater.
i wore fingerless gloves.
i walked across the williamsburg bridge.
i ordered leeks vinaigrette.
i loaded three washing machines.
i emptied the dishwasher.
i ran six miles.
i watched part of mamdani's public inauguration.
i ate half a burrito.
i took a nap.
i found a hole in my sweater.
i wore fingerless gloves.
i walked across the williamsburg bridge.
i ordered leeks vinaigrette.
i loaded three washing machines.
i emptied the dishwasher.
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