baby's first rally on the steps of city hall was successful, i hope; i signed up to roll out in support of city legislation that would defund and defang an especially gross portion of the nypd that was created to face domestic terrorism and has become (surprise surprise) a wildly expensive protester-savaging brigade. i learned that standing in the morning sun for an hour is no joke, so i need to stick to a light sleeved shirt if i'm going to hide my tattoos (is that even a thing, since i don't wear a mask and my Resting Progressive Face was absolutely in every photo and video that day?), and downtown in general evokes the mariko aoki phenomenon, so maybe i should skip coffee (joe: "if you'd taken a dump on the steps of city hall you'd definitely be in everyone's facial-recognition system"). i hope the legislation gains sponsors and supporters this year; our councilperson is considered low-hanging fruit, so i'm game to show up at her office and make the ask in person. maybe we could also hype each other up about the virtues of congestion pricing and luring our governor/senators/mayor into a trebuchet? i don't have a lot of spare time on my hands but seem to be in the sweet spot where momentum breeds momentum. that's been true socially, too—i've seen like a dozen friends so far this month, several of whom *hung out in our apartment,* and i don't yet feel like walking into the sea. i even went to a birthday thing where i only knew the host! i realize how mini-golf all of this is, but it's very easy to tuck myself in a demisocial space where i'm pleasant in passing—like, i don't know anyone's name at the library beyond the staffer who showed me how to monitor the quiet study room—so leveling up to, i don't know, brunch and drinks isn't nothing.
joe is in arizona this week, so i made a daunting vat of chili the day he headed out and have been cranking out lifestyle content in silence; once a day i roll out for an hour to thrift shop or wander through an uzbek grocery store, it's all very efficient. even so i'm still unable to file more than one story a day; that's probably a good thing, i should be making steady progress on the longer-form pieces i've been working on for the past six months (mushrooms at the end of the world) and need to hand over before we meet family in portugal (what the cat saw). instead i skitter off and ping editors: wouldn't it be fun to do a little pop culture piece real quick? the uzbek grocery store has wooden barrels of linden honey from russia that are the size of a toddler's head, like something donkey kong would have thrown during the cold war, and my yearning for one very nearly overwhelmed the fact that russian stuff is not the stuff to acquire right now and joe wil straight-up walk out if i buy any more honey (the trove we've got right now is probably our most significant apocalypse accessory). it's harmless to circle back and look at them, though, no? this is the bootleg breakfast at tiffany's remake our moment deserves.
02.25.25 [on the M train]
our apartment has been photographed for a tour, as have i, though joe and the cats will i guess remain unknown to the blogosphere! i wish we'd made an appointment even earlier, since by the time we got down to business the last of the extra-golden light was slinking out of the living room, but at 9 a.m. i was already a scattered babbler, so god knows what would have happened if we'd aimed for some properly rosy-fingered dawn. the photographer spent a full two hours doing her thing, only 15 minutes of which were watching me try to convince maya to let me hold her for more than three seconds (the shape of a proper camera is scary, and it makes such mysterious clicks). i wasn't nervous, but i still can't smile on command, so we'll see what J the blogger and her team think about that.
apparently it could be months or even a year or more before anything is published online, which feels like fair play after all the house tours i've kicked down the calendar as a freelancer. and sometimes tours get killed? though that seems unlikely here, since they shelled out for a proper photographer and i don't plan on becoming a flamboyant public racist or anything? even if i do and it is, the apartment's in the best shape of its nearly 15 years with us: with this shoot hanging over my head i finally got the coat rack installed beside the front door (it had been crouching against the mirror on our dining table for at least six months, which probably means a year), the curtains are up in the bedroom (they'd been in the back of the closet since february of 2020), the bowls of christmas ornaments and lights are out from under the dining table and hidden behind the crazy silk flower garland i created above the kitchen cabinets, and those flowers are all off the dining table. it's all very exciting.
apparently it could be months or even a year or more before anything is published online, which feels like fair play after all the house tours i've kicked down the calendar as a freelancer. and sometimes tours get killed? though that seems unlikely here, since they shelled out for a proper photographer and i don't plan on becoming a flamboyant public racist or anything? even if i do and it is, the apartment's in the best shape of its nearly 15 years with us: with this shoot hanging over my head i finally got the coat rack installed beside the front door (it had been crouching against the mirror on our dining table for at least six months, which probably means a year), the curtains are up in the bedroom (they'd been in the back of the closet since february of 2020), the bowls of christmas ornaments and lights are out from under the dining table and hidden behind the crazy silk flower garland i created above the kitchen cabinets, and those flowers are all off the dining table. it's all very exciting.
02.08.25 [on the J train]
most people probably don't need to hear that naomi novik's temeraire series, an alternate history in which the napoleonic wars are fought with dragons, features Dragon Tribulations, but i was not ready for it and had to fawn over the cats in the wee hours this morning to self-soothe. if the rest of the books are anywhere near as entertaining as the first i will be well pleased; if they are not i will rewarch master and commander and imagine russell crowe as a dragon and be well pleased.
in contemporary fantasy, i'm about to start the follow-up to cadwell turnbull's magnificent no gods, no monsters, and i genuinely can't remember if i've posted about it before; a hazard of writing this stuff out when i'm still more than half-asleep on the train, but one does what one can with what one has. he explores identity, othering, allyship, and intersectionality by working through the idea that "monsters" (anyone who uses magic, from seers and witches to shapeshifters) have always lived among nonmagical humans, various secret societies have tried to protext/exploit/exterminate them, and now everyone knows about them—sort of, as their revelation is suppressed and lots of people don't want to wrap their heads around what it would mean if, say, the cops gunned down a werewolf. several of the principal characters work together at a cooperative bookstore; the title's a riff on "no gods, no monsters," the old anarchist chant. there's a scene of extreme violence near the end (speaking of trigger warnings, my sister pinged me to warn me about that) which comes closer to what i imagine perpetrating or being the victim of a similar act would feel like than anyting i've read before; the whole thing is a magnificent work of empathy, and i kind of want to read it again. (like lincoln in the bardo, its polyphony gets kind of slippery from time to time, especially when characters are time traveling and skittering between multiverses.) but there's no time to reread! there's barely time to read! you'd think joe and i would be barreling through media we'd been neglecting in favor of the 3-4 hours of cable news we were mainlining before the election, but that time seems to have simply disappeared. i'm going on longer walks and spending an extra 15-30 minutes a day at the gym, but that doesn't account for it. i certainly haven't been cleaning, i haven't been writing all that much, and i haven't been napping as frequently, though saturday afternoons are still long-haul adventures. i would love to discover that i've been winking out and fighting crime in another dimension, but aside from some inexplicable thing that's gone down with my left knee and some inconvenient acne, i have no physical evidence of this double life. probably i'm underestimating my fixation on reddit.
in contemporary fantasy, i'm about to start the follow-up to cadwell turnbull's magnificent no gods, no monsters, and i genuinely can't remember if i've posted about it before; a hazard of writing this stuff out when i'm still more than half-asleep on the train, but one does what one can with what one has. he explores identity, othering, allyship, and intersectionality by working through the idea that "monsters" (anyone who uses magic, from seers and witches to shapeshifters) have always lived among nonmagical humans, various secret societies have tried to protext/exploit/exterminate them, and now everyone knows about them—sort of, as their revelation is suppressed and lots of people don't want to wrap their heads around what it would mean if, say, the cops gunned down a werewolf. several of the principal characters work together at a cooperative bookstore; the title's a riff on "no gods, no monsters," the old anarchist chant. there's a scene of extreme violence near the end (speaking of trigger warnings, my sister pinged me to warn me about that) which comes closer to what i imagine perpetrating or being the victim of a similar act would feel like than anyting i've read before; the whole thing is a magnificent work of empathy, and i kind of want to read it again. (like lincoln in the bardo, its polyphony gets kind of slippery from time to time, especially when characters are time traveling and skittering between multiverses.) but there's no time to reread! there's barely time to read! you'd think joe and i would be barreling through media we'd been neglecting in favor of the 3-4 hours of cable news we were mainlining before the election, but that time seems to have simply disappeared. i'm going on longer walks and spending an extra 15-30 minutes a day at the gym, but that doesn't account for it. i certainly haven't been cleaning, i haven't been writing all that much, and i haven't been napping as frequently, though saturday afternoons are still long-haul adventures. i would love to discover that i've been winking out and fighting crime in another dimension, but aside from some inexplicable thing that's gone down with my left knee and some inconvenient acne, i have no physical evidence of this double life. probably i'm underestimating my fixation on reddit.
02.04.25
my protest-monitoring whatsapp group pinged sunday night with an alert about a rally happening on monday: that meant that we were supposed to stay tuned for a signal chat link we would join if we could attend the protest, where we'd meet staffers and other volunteer monitors, then buddy up and spread ourselves out around the action to monitor any police presence and interactions between them and protesters. that link didn't come, though, so while i planned to go and headed uptown with my vest in my bag yesterday afternoon, i didn't know until i got there if i'd be reporting to anyone at all. i didn't report to anyone present, exactly: one other monitor, M, showed up and we were left to ping each other in the chat that had finally fired up a few hours before the rally. we're supposed to begin our work by walking around the perimeter of the event, so i circled the park as groups arrived with flags and signs, massed on corners, and, uh, parked their patrol cars, vans, and schoolbuses; everyone fell silent when i passed through them in my little vest. i'm still not very good at identifying subspecies of authority figures, so i was thrilled to have M. monitoring is a little like storm chasing in that you can't really tell what's coming, especially if you're new to it: protesters don't often announce their intentions ahead of time, we were told, and we weren't supposed to interact with them anyway, so we didn't know if the rally would turn into a march. we certainly weren't supposed to interact with the police, who did approach and ask me questions about the protest a couple of times; i tend to freeze up and fawn when that happens, and am proud that i simply said, as trained, that i wasn't with the protestors. i can smile cryptically for my community! (our signal chat eventually swelled to six, but M and i remained the only members on the ground, unless you count the one who dropped out so they could attend as a protester; i respect that, i wanted to be there as a protester myself).
i tootled past the SRGs with their beltfuls of zip ties, posting updates; i noted when a surveillance drone went up, filmed a uniformed officer filming the protest with his personal phone, logged estimates (a thousand protesters and a few hundred cops, maybe? more?) and shows of force, traded commanding officer ID information with the staffers in the chat. (five minutes after i stonewalled a cop and sent in his photo, the chat supplied me with a full record of civilian complaints of excessive force against him. he was the one who'd spearhead the arrests, i was advised.) i followed along when the rally became a march and everyone headed south, where M and i were chided for not staying in sight of one another (but there were only two of us!). marchers began thanking us, cops pulled out barriers, one protester was arrested in the middle of the action where we couldn't see them (just two of us!), with a fluorescent-hatted NLG team at their side (the NLG gets right in there to assist people as they're taken, and are brave and wonderful). after about three hours and a zigzagging march southwest the remaining protesters gathered one last time at another park, then melted back into the city; the cops did whatever cops do, and M and i smiled at each other and bid the chat a good night. i unzipped my little vest, folded it into my tote bag, and looked for the F train, lightning in my veins.
i tootled past the SRGs with their beltfuls of zip ties, posting updates; i noted when a surveillance drone went up, filmed a uniformed officer filming the protest with his personal phone, logged estimates (a thousand protesters and a few hundred cops, maybe? more?) and shows of force, traded commanding officer ID information with the staffers in the chat. (five minutes after i stonewalled a cop and sent in his photo, the chat supplied me with a full record of civilian complaints of excessive force against him. he was the one who'd spearhead the arrests, i was advised.) i followed along when the rally became a march and everyone headed south, where M and i were chided for not staying in sight of one another (but there were only two of us!). marchers began thanking us, cops pulled out barriers, one protester was arrested in the middle of the action where we couldn't see them (just two of us!), with a fluorescent-hatted NLG team at their side (the NLG gets right in there to assist people as they're taken, and are brave and wonderful). after about three hours and a zigzagging march southwest the remaining protesters gathered one last time at another park, then melted back into the city; the cops did whatever cops do, and M and i smiled at each other and bid the chat a good night. i unzipped my little vest, folded it into my tote bag, and looked for the F train, lightning in my veins.
01.25.25
my aunt and uncle evacuated from pacific palisades, from the house i never did manage to visit for one of their legendary halloween parties but did stop by in the fall when my dad and i made a susan-orlean-inspired pilgrimage to the los angeles central library, two weeks ago, and have been having a septuagenarian sleepover at dad's place in newport beach ever since. i know a little about unexpected time in someone else's space, given the week joe and i spent on the upper east side at my stepmother's apartment when the lower east side lost power during superstorm sandy, but we had the place to ourselves and the ability to hike home and visit our cats; there was no chance of that home blinking into nothing. i thought of how meticulously my aunt made up the guest bedroom for my one night in the palisades, complete with faceouts on her bookshelves on intrepid women, of the backyard mini-canyon my uncle named the valley of fear where joe and i once thought of having a wedding reception, then think of their creaking up dad's stairs to the bedroom where my stepsister once left a half-eaten postcoital lollipop stuck to the nightstand. my aunt's a retired judge and my uncle's a retired lawyer; as i imagined, they've been eavesdropping in the background as dad leads mediations via zoom. have they finished all of his partial bags of spicy potato chips? are they watching the senate vote on cabinet appointments? they are the lucky ones, of course, and friends of friends all over the city have no homes to revisit. fire has been a dirty word since long before i was a little girl; i remember a soccer teammate losing her home to the mudslides after the laguna fires, and practices during those same fires when we could see flames on a distant ridge and the smoke cover was so low you could kick a ball and lose track of it before it came to earth—what, exactly, were we thinking about how lungs worked in the mid-'90s? but that wouldn't be the apocalypse, everyone knew southern california would conclude with the big one. an eight point three, all the kids were familiar with that. the science piece i've now been writing for six months is in part about fire; yesterday my editor asked if one of my experts' pilot study fields had, er, burned up this month, and i asked if i should reinterview everyone to bring the piece up to date with the latest catastrophe cycle. no need, he said, and he's right, it's all evergreen. the internet reminded me this morning that executive orders can't actually defund anything, congress has the power of the purse, but i stil think about the president treating gavin newsom like volodymyr zelenskyy. what does outrage extinguish?
i completed the first round of training to begin observing and documenting protests here in the city—specifically, the way authorities overstep at protests. this is the phase in which i soak up savory terms and anecdotes illustrating those authorities' crookedness and cowardice; there was a similar phase as i first prepared to become an abortion clinic escort, and it's a comfortable time, one when i can relax into having allocated emotional resources constructively. the last big phase of my life was a very manual-labor-oriented one—cleaning cages and tending to individual birds, reorganizing and stocking bookshelves, ferrying indie films across town and handing out ballots. this one seems to be about holding space and bearing witness to minimize vulnerability—the antis outside the clinic toe the invisible lines outside its doors when we outnumber them, my subterranean study room is only open at the library when someone like me is supervising it, the videos i record and data i log via signal will perhaps become part of civil rights cases. this is all appropriate, i think, i am where i should be in my arc as a volunteer, but one does miss the, uh, more aerobic community service? hence all this compulsive running, maybe? i might skip the gym today—but one never knows, now does one now does one now does one.
i completed the first round of training to begin observing and documenting protests here in the city—specifically, the way authorities overstep at protests. this is the phase in which i soak up savory terms and anecdotes illustrating those authorities' crookedness and cowardice; there was a similar phase as i first prepared to become an abortion clinic escort, and it's a comfortable time, one when i can relax into having allocated emotional resources constructively. the last big phase of my life was a very manual-labor-oriented one—cleaning cages and tending to individual birds, reorganizing and stocking bookshelves, ferrying indie films across town and handing out ballots. this one seems to be about holding space and bearing witness to minimize vulnerability—the antis outside the clinic toe the invisible lines outside its doors when we outnumber them, my subterranean study room is only open at the library when someone like me is supervising it, the videos i record and data i log via signal will perhaps become part of civil rights cases. this is all appropriate, i think, i am where i should be in my arc as a volunteer, but one does miss the, uh, more aerobic community service? hence all this compulsive running, maybe? i might skip the gym today—but one never knows, now does one now does one now does one.
01.20.25
the feeling i've had most consistently of late is that it is time to run again; i need to run some more. my system needs to digest the things i've shoveled into it, my knees need to forget themselves anew, the last few nalgenes of water need to get wherever it is they go when i manage to stave off headaches. it's not that running is especially pleasurable, it's that it's so quantifiable. this distance at that pace for those hours, and a symbolic penny in the container in my closet for every mile behind me. before the election i'd watch cable news as i ran, but i've been doing less and less of that this winter. our building's exercise room was packed this afternoon, and it was impossible to feign ignorance of the woman in a designer museum sweatshirt waiting to swoop on a treadmill, so i ceded mine after four miles and a few primetime suggestions of the inauguration. i read all about the executive orders after a bath, though, and now it is time to run again! pokémon go pairs well with restlessness like mine; all these steps help me hatch eggs and evolve buddies. i really went bananas with runs and walks this week (which is fine when you're sick as long as your symptoms are above the neck, the internet says) to try and collect eggs that might yield a new-to-the-game species; no successful hatches so far, but my little digital incubator has miles to go before we sleep.
my partner says that providing the amount of support i need, which i am to understand is a great deal of support, can be difficult for him. it doesn't really matter if that's more or less support than anyone else needs, i reason, since he is the only person who lives with me, has been for a quarter of a century now, and if he feels it is a daunting amount of support to give then that assessment is the one that matters. the idea of my needing a great deal of support isn't shameful to me, but it is surprising. how much work should a writer show their spouse? how often can one solicit shoe feedback? at what point have you shared so many Fun Facts from the book you're reading that you might want to think about auditioning a new prescription? my therapist seems to believe that i'm doing my best, and i would like to carry that around like proof of vaccination. i would like that vaccination, to be Doing My Best.
my partner says that providing the amount of support i need, which i am to understand is a great deal of support, can be difficult for him. it doesn't really matter if that's more or less support than anyone else needs, i reason, since he is the only person who lives with me, has been for a quarter of a century now, and if he feels it is a daunting amount of support to give then that assessment is the one that matters. the idea of my needing a great deal of support isn't shameful to me, but it is surprising. how much work should a writer show their spouse? how often can one solicit shoe feedback? at what point have you shared so many Fun Facts from the book you're reading that you might want to think about auditioning a new prescription? my therapist seems to believe that i'm doing my best, and i would like to carry that around like proof of vaccination. i would like that vaccination, to be Doing My Best.
01.01.25
2025: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i sprayed rubbing alcohol on a tree.
i cut the sleeves and hem off of a tee shirt.
i ran five miles.
i texted my college roommates.
i refilled my water bottle.
i sang to the cats.
i set an alarm for 6:45 pm.
i sent an email to myself.
i rinsed out a plastic container.
i watched death bed: the bed that eats.
i sprayed rubbing alcohol on a tree.
i cut the sleeves and hem off of a tee shirt.
i ran five miles.
i texted my college roommates.
i refilled my water bottle.
i sang to the cats.
i set an alarm for 6:45 pm.
i sent an email to myself.
i rinsed out a plastic container.
i watched death bed: the bed that eats.
12.31.24
hey hey, a non-train post! i hoped to write a post while donating platelets today, but it seems that downing extra multivitamins last night wasn't enough to summon The Good Blood; my iron was lower than it's been in ages. i ran instead, a satisfying-enough physical feat for the last day of the year, though it is a bit awkward that i didn't return the free socks they passed around before medical intake. in 2025 i'll snort caterpillar-fat rails of lentils and be an absolutely incomparable donor-diarist, david cronenberg wishes he had characters like next-year me at his fingertips. maybe i'll also lean into writing-writing?
we have new year's eve Outside Plans for the first time in many years, and tickets to something for the first time ever, i think: we attended and loved a night of yo la tengo's annual hanukkah residency at bowery ballroom a year or two ago, and the venue is close enough that we can walk there and back without soul-kissing THE LOWER EAST SIDE AFTER HOURS ON A HOLIDAY!!! for too long (i cherish our neighborhood, but its late-night chaos is uncompromising). yo la tengo won't play any of the songs they've played on nights 1-6 and they'll have mystery guests who won't be most of the soft boys (sigh, night four) or david sedaris (last night's opening humorist), and it's all very exciting. i actually found my old Dissipated Disco Mermaid sequined dress in the hall closet last night, so i will wear that and try to manifest a year of art and action.
we have new year's eve Outside Plans for the first time in many years, and tickets to something for the first time ever, i think: we attended and loved a night of yo la tengo's annual hanukkah residency at bowery ballroom a year or two ago, and the venue is close enough that we can walk there and back without soul-kissing THE LOWER EAST SIDE AFTER HOURS ON A HOLIDAY!!! for too long (i cherish our neighborhood, but its late-night chaos is uncompromising). yo la tengo won't play any of the songs they've played on nights 1-6 and they'll have mystery guests who won't be most of the soft boys (sigh, night four) or david sedaris (last night's opening humorist), and it's all very exciting. i actually found my old Dissipated Disco Mermaid sequined dress in the hall closet last night, so i will wear that and try to manifest a year of art and action.
12.28.24 [on the F train]
this could be the weekend i finally get around to arranging the heap of silk flowers i've been saving up to create a european-ish sidewalk-boutique arch to hide all the crap we've piled on top of our kitchen cabinets. i still don't really know how i'll anchor them so that they look dimensional and fabulous without making it virtually impossible to access the crap they'll be obscuring, but that's something i can't really know until i haul out the ladder and packing tape and get going. (there's a version of this DIY in which i make, i don't know, a wall-spanning little roll of chicken wire or floral foam or something to serve as that base, but i think at the end of the day i'll be coming back to packing tape.) i swooped by michaels the other day to feast on heavily-discounted seasonal flowers and wired ribbon and found neither; most of the christmas-ish stuff on clearance was stocking-stuffer trinkety business, and who wants that? i dropped off a print i've been meaning to frame for several months and got a dopamine hit that felt a little like finishing an apartment-wide dusting jag. i'm puttering thus now because i was teasing a blogger about how she should feature a tour of our place—who else has so many copies of nineteen eighty-four, a rhinoceros head made of cargo pants, and an unflattering michel gondry portrait?—and she said yes, let's do it, so at some point in the new year a photographer will come over and memorialize all the weird little crafts i've made instead of progress on paying work. my motivation here is something like my friend abbe's when she and her now-husband were moving from brooklyn to philly, though we aren't going anywhere in a literal sense: she wanted to suspend the place she loved in amber, to leave a little fossil record of what she'd assembled around her over the years. she first contacted an interior photographer she found through another online tour, and that person said her rates were high but if she pitched the project to a site, said site would pay for her work, and lo! a tour came together. in our case there is, of course, a little of my look-at-me-don't-look-at-me craving for strangers' no-stakes approval, which is...pretty harmless, i guess? and i get to talk about my mom and sisters and friends? i am strongly tempted to stage our bedroom with the still-unfinished english paper piecing quilt i assembled in the first years of the pandemic, and just admit that even though it's not quite done i want people to see it; it feels like transparency is the best approach to whatever this is, though i will also be jamming a lot of stuff in our closets and have already lugged home a bunch of those vacuum storage bags people use to minimize their linens.
what dad and i had planned as a post-holiday central park walk turned into a manhattan-spanning trek yesterday; we met at columbus circle and wandered up the western side of the paths, then cut into the upper west side in search of bulk holiday cards he could use for gifting at his office. i promised he'd find a bunch at my old nonprofit bookstore (not so!), so we took the subway down to soho and wandered uptown again after failing. he said i'd never brought him to the bookstore before? that feels wrong, but i can't prove otherwise, and since he clearly doesn't remember it in its glory, which is why i'd hope he's mistaken, it doesn't matter. i guided him to a beloved taqueria on st. mark's and a bakery i frequent in cooper square, and he will remember those. after walking all the way back up to the east 90s and meeting up with our spouses for dinner i abruptly ran out of gas, which hopefully didn't read as intensely as it felt; surely it was an okay night, even if my face lost the ability to do pleasant face-things. i am not expecting to change significantly in the new year, but maybe we'll all have a bit more energy and a rising tide will lift all butts? this is my wish for the people. i really don't want to fall asleep on this train.
what dad and i had planned as a post-holiday central park walk turned into a manhattan-spanning trek yesterday; we met at columbus circle and wandered up the western side of the paths, then cut into the upper west side in search of bulk holiday cards he could use for gifting at his office. i promised he'd find a bunch at my old nonprofit bookstore (not so!), so we took the subway down to soho and wandered uptown again after failing. he said i'd never brought him to the bookstore before? that feels wrong, but i can't prove otherwise, and since he clearly doesn't remember it in its glory, which is why i'd hope he's mistaken, it doesn't matter. i guided him to a beloved taqueria on st. mark's and a bakery i frequent in cooper square, and he will remember those. after walking all the way back up to the east 90s and meeting up with our spouses for dinner i abruptly ran out of gas, which hopefully didn't read as intensely as it felt; surely it was an okay night, even if my face lost the ability to do pleasant face-things. i am not expecting to change significantly in the new year, but maybe we'll all have a bit more energy and a rising tide will lift all butts? this is my wish for the people. i really don't want to fall asleep on this train.
12.21.24 [on the F train]
i've been pingponging between books that carry me down history's lazy river like the life preserver i was instructed to turn upside down and step into like a diaper when i was in a biosphere in mexico this past spring (laura maiklem's mudlark, a wonderful long view) and bleeding-edge ones that make me feel abruptly and specifically like shit (paul lynch's prophet song), and that has been a good-enough way to move through the world. (a panhandler on the train is chatting with a woman a few seats down who just gave him some change: "i feel lucky to be in new york, it could be worse: i could be in a different city, in a different state, in a third world country. i could be in detroit." in ian frazier's paradise bronx i just learned new york is only city to adopt constitutional language obliging it to address inhabitants' right to shelter.) i have not been doing a very good job of catching up on the work that piled up before the election; when i get tired of being in my skin i go running or go up to grand central station to donate platelets, which you can do pretty often, since they give you most of your blood back and i have a lot of platelets (i am unironically proud of this). the first time i got settled in my pleather lab-recliner and the tech could see the needle mark from the last time i was there i was a little embarrassed, but now i don't care. i got an email from the volunteer coordinator at the library saying that the guy who'd been flaking out of his shifts after mine had officially flaked off for good (which i thought we'd talked about and determined long ago, but i respect her system), and so now i'm The Study Room Monitor for all of wednesday afternoons if i want. i told her i would rule with an iron fist and am unironically proud of that, also.
i think the work buildup is under control now, or at least the parts of it that call for acute creativity and can't unspool while i'm on something like autopilot. i had an unsettling afternoon about a month ago when i spent an hour working on research for a design story, tried to save the word file, and was informed by my own laptop that i already had something by that name. turns out i'd spent an afternoon at the library the day after the election doing the same work—taking many if not all of the same notes, even—and completely forgotten about it. when i turned in revisions for a big, earnest science piece earlier this week my editor thanked me for taking my time with it, which read not as a passive-aggressive dig but as actual appreciation for not having to deal with it earlier on his end. my other essay editor has made analogous noises hinting at her own lack of peace. i am not glad for that, i want all of us to be living our best and most effective lives, but since the feeling of being a little less alone is going to be there whether or not i acknowledge it i might as well be grateful.
i think the work buildup is under control now, or at least the parts of it that call for acute creativity and can't unspool while i'm on something like autopilot. i had an unsettling afternoon about a month ago when i spent an hour working on research for a design story, tried to save the word file, and was informed by my own laptop that i already had something by that name. turns out i'd spent an afternoon at the library the day after the election doing the same work—taking many if not all of the same notes, even—and completely forgotten about it. when i turned in revisions for a big, earnest science piece earlier this week my editor thanked me for taking my time with it, which read not as a passive-aggressive dig but as actual appreciation for not having to deal with it earlier on his end. my other essay editor has made analogous noises hinting at her own lack of peace. i am not glad for that, i want all of us to be living our best and most effective lives, but since the feeling of being a little less alone is going to be there whether or not i acknowledge it i might as well be grateful.
10.26.24 [on the F train]
it's hard not to slip into the dire belief that if i'm not going to pennsylvania and canvassing or spending all spare time phone banking or both that the country will slide into fascism and it will be all my fault. i sent 300 letters to georgia and feel good about them, and i know that we're all trying to correct for what we now think of as complacency leading up to hillary clinton's loss in 2016, but i should not have pitched a big story that's coming due on 11/7, or pushed another big story's deadline to 11/4, or both, right? i've been making little swiftie-style beaded bracelets and sending them around the country to friends and family—PGH FOR HARRIS WALZ, WHEN WE FIGHT / WE WIN, WRONG RALLY—which doesn't make a lot of sense, but here we are.
the half marathon last weekend was surprisingly okay! mysterious things happened to the ball and toes of my right foot around mile 11, so i started folding in a bit of walking at that point, but my average pace ended up being around a minute slower than what i ran in the NYRR's new york half in 2015, which is not so terrible. i wasn't going to undertake another half until this one again next year, maybe, but i got an email about entering the lottery for that NYRR race, which isn't until march and is so popular that my chances of a spot are slim—i don't think i've ever made it through that lottery, i've had to fundraise my way in with charity slots—so eh, why not? i'll have enough time to train properly for it, and i've enjoyed creeping back up into running more than 5K at a stretch. my body doesn't love those long runs, not that it ever did, really, but their utility for smoothing out my nerves in the years since i stopped drinking has been undeniable.
to my great surprise, i got a shoutout in the annual nature and science writing anthology i've been courting for the last couple of years. my philip k. dick joke title, out there in bookstores forever! i actually updated my website bio to include the longlisting and wondered if i'm any more likely to score an agent for the book i'm hoping to write; dare to dream, or something. i revisited the exchange i had with an agent a decade ago after an editor connected us and he maintained that i should have a proper proposal, which would include a couple of completed chapters, before shopping myself around for representation. so what i'm currently doing—slowly picking up secondhand paperback copies of related nonfiction and working my way through them with dogearing because i keep forgetting i have sticky notes next to my bed, makes sense? i would like to apply for a writing residence to work on part of this, that was always one of the sub-projects that attracted me to a longer project, but i'm still unclear on where i'm supposed to be in the book process when i do. maybe it's time to actually start asking friends with longform credits about that?
these overlapping big stories standing in the way of my saving democracy have netted me more practice with interviews than i've had in a long time. they're exhausting, first dates and blue-book final exams all at once, but they're also satisfying in the way that Having Written is satisfying. maybe they will generate the momentum that will tow me through a massive manuscript, though i really need to jump on that if so, since my principal subject's surviving children are quite old. i rationalize my shyness in relation to them by telling myself that the book is and isn't about her, it's really about all the things she touched and, you know, the real book is the friends you make along the way, but that's not really so. i need to hitch up my big-girl pants and talk to her kids while there's still a chance they'll talk to me. if i can make myself vulnerable to astrophysicists and entomologists, surely i can make myself vulnerable to them.
the half marathon last weekend was surprisingly okay! mysterious things happened to the ball and toes of my right foot around mile 11, so i started folding in a bit of walking at that point, but my average pace ended up being around a minute slower than what i ran in the NYRR's new york half in 2015, which is not so terrible. i wasn't going to undertake another half until this one again next year, maybe, but i got an email about entering the lottery for that NYRR race, which isn't until march and is so popular that my chances of a spot are slim—i don't think i've ever made it through that lottery, i've had to fundraise my way in with charity slots—so eh, why not? i'll have enough time to train properly for it, and i've enjoyed creeping back up into running more than 5K at a stretch. my body doesn't love those long runs, not that it ever did, really, but their utility for smoothing out my nerves in the years since i stopped drinking has been undeniable.
to my great surprise, i got a shoutout in the annual nature and science writing anthology i've been courting for the last couple of years. my philip k. dick joke title, out there in bookstores forever! i actually updated my website bio to include the longlisting and wondered if i'm any more likely to score an agent for the book i'm hoping to write; dare to dream, or something. i revisited the exchange i had with an agent a decade ago after an editor connected us and he maintained that i should have a proper proposal, which would include a couple of completed chapters, before shopping myself around for representation. so what i'm currently doing—slowly picking up secondhand paperback copies of related nonfiction and working my way through them with dogearing because i keep forgetting i have sticky notes next to my bed, makes sense? i would like to apply for a writing residence to work on part of this, that was always one of the sub-projects that attracted me to a longer project, but i'm still unclear on where i'm supposed to be in the book process when i do. maybe it's time to actually start asking friends with longform credits about that?
these overlapping big stories standing in the way of my saving democracy have netted me more practice with interviews than i've had in a long time. they're exhausting, first dates and blue-book final exams all at once, but they're also satisfying in the way that Having Written is satisfying. maybe they will generate the momentum that will tow me through a massive manuscript, though i really need to jump on that if so, since my principal subject's surviving children are quite old. i rationalize my shyness in relation to them by telling myself that the book is and isn't about her, it's really about all the things she touched and, you know, the real book is the friends you make along the way, but that's not really so. i need to hitch up my big-girl pants and talk to her kids while there's still a chance they'll talk to me. if i can make myself vulnerable to astrophysicists and entomologists, surely i can make myself vulnerable to them.
10.12.24 [on the F train]
my therapist seems confident that the harris-walz campaign will bring it home next month, though a bit of me wonders if it just makes sense to project that when you're a therapist. i was thinking about managing expectations when i talked to the guy who irradiated our cat this week (said cat has early-stage hyperthyroidism, which can be managed with a specialized diet and daily oral or otic meds forever or cured by paying someone to inject radioiodine into him and then keep him in a "cat spa" on the upper west side until the geiger counter hollers a bit less lustily, the option we chose—who needs a fall trip abroad, anyway?): this specialist is absolutely the dude you want doing this to your cat pal, manhattan prices aside, as he helped develop the treatment decades ago and has apparently cured tens of thousands of patients with it. (see also: take your pet to a spay/neuter clinic at your local shelter if you can, since they perform way, way more of those surgeries than your regular vet does.) but he is also very much a vet specialist, with the kind of firm boundaries that make sense when you're working with the kind of people who can afford medical staycations for their companion animals: he does not answer his phone, he calls precisely when he says he will, and he does not speculate about effects and results that are not directly related to what he's measured and observed in clinical practice. i am used, for better or for worse, to doctors' reactions to the charm offensive i release like cuttlefish ink when we interact, so the fact that he chose not to reassure me with optimistic bromides when i hoped the cat wouldn't develop renal issues after we knocked out his thyroid was...surprising but not unwelcome? in other news, we completely ignored the clinic's diligent instructions about how to manage matty's atomic breath after i brought him home yesterday morning. part of that is pragmatism—we have a one-bedroom apartment, and herding and isolating a still-radioactive cat are orders of magnitude more difficult than trying not to share or catch COVID—and part of it is wishful risk-taking after reading up on how specialists in other parts of the state and country tell their clients to minimize harm. in some places cats are inpatients for 10 days, and in others it's just two! some docs say you can open the bedroom door after a week, others talk up lead underpants! i did not want to limit myself to a few minutes of contact a day for any length of time and am also still vulnerable to the magical thinking that if i intentionally experience some sort of hardship for the cat it will improve his health outcome, so kind-of exposing myself to radiation it is. i understand that this is superstitious and childish, but i'm clear-eyed about choosing it as a stress response.
i have settled into what looks like a regular weekly shift monitoring the garden-adjacent quiet study room at an uptown branch of the NYPL, and i love it; it's not really a swap-in for my old afternoons at the nonprofit bookstore, since it involves almost no talking or physical work at all, but it's an anchor in my week that i'd missed terribly. the atmosphere in there is wonderful, and it's been incredibly conducive to work so far; i think i've written a hundred get-out-the-vote letters on recent afternoons, and i've finally managed to dig into all the research i need to do for a pair of assignments coming due around the end of the month. speaking of stress responses, i've been napping and running hard when i should be writing; childish procrastination and i know it, but i have my first half-marathon in years next weekend, and all things being equal, i would rather not have my internet pal who works with the raccoons and swans in prospect park end up finding me insensible in a thicket somewhere, which is definitely what happens when you arrange interviews and hit deadlines at the expense of long sessions on the treadmill.
i have settled into what looks like a regular weekly shift monitoring the garden-adjacent quiet study room at an uptown branch of the NYPL, and i love it; it's not really a swap-in for my old afternoons at the nonprofit bookstore, since it involves almost no talking or physical work at all, but it's an anchor in my week that i'd missed terribly. the atmosphere in there is wonderful, and it's been incredibly conducive to work so far; i think i've written a hundred get-out-the-vote letters on recent afternoons, and i've finally managed to dig into all the research i need to do for a pair of assignments coming due around the end of the month. speaking of stress responses, i've been napping and running hard when i should be writing; childish procrastination and i know it, but i have my first half-marathon in years next weekend, and all things being equal, i would rather not have my internet pal who works with the raccoons and swans in prospect park end up finding me insensible in a thicket somewhere, which is definitely what happens when you arrange interviews and hit deadlines at the expense of long sessions on the treadmill.
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