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).
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.
12.27.25 [on the J train]
our first proper snow of the year, and it's still coming down; the only folks on the sidewalk at a quarter to seven were me and a guy in one of the amazon tuk-tuks. i left the christmas tree lights on so joe will wake up to the cats basking under it like sea lions at the wharf. i have at long last transitioned to reading the new jessica mitford biography, and while it's not especially difficult to tell an interesting story about mitfords it's a relief to be out of the land of shaggy memoir. memoir is hard, turns out! (every version of the nonfiction book i plan and re-plan in my head has a little less of me on the page; it's not that i don't think there are worthwhile braided narratives out there, it's that voice tells a better story than anecdotes do, i think. is this a story, or even a voice? i think it's a ritual.) chances are good, though i shouldn't talk about it, that the anti-abortiion protesters won't be at the reproductive health clinic this morning and we can all go home after chatting about sci fi and knitting in the basement for a while. i have missed that over the past few months; trying to fall asleep in time to get proper rest before one of these shifts is stressful, but it does me good to share space with these people. my social life as a volunteer has contracted since i stopped working at the bird hospital and the bookstore; i spend plenty of time at the library uptown and the atmosphere is wonderful, but i'm mostly in charge of a quiet study room, so i'm not talking to anyone. i get little concentrated bursts of company when i head out to monitor police at protests, but the experience of interacting with that crowd is, weirdly, overwhelmingly negative; as a rule, they're absolutely terrible at following directions or staying on topic (when we're chatting on signal about upcoming trainings or actions, not actually showing up for them). ditto the folks in charge of election protection that i met before monitoring a poll site this november. discouraging if not a little terrifying! but if widespread meaningful change is going to happen, maybe the incompetent need to be part of it as well? i'll be going for an early-to-me walk with my dad tomorrow, our equivalent of a holiday get-together since he's usually spoken for on christmas itself with my stepfamily. i suspect that this year they went down to virginia, where my garbage stepbrother has relocated to better terrify athletes and international fans as a member of the administration. i was too surprised this summer when his mother bragged about the work he was doing to make any kind of meaningful response, and maybe that's for the best, much as i've never decided which one poisonous text i'll send him before he blocks my number and/or changes his own. you'd think that since i now run so often and for so long i'd eventually get to the end of my grievances, but there are so many things to stew about, internets!
i think i've actually found a podcast i can put on instead of cable news as i finish my quilt after joe's gone to bed. i'm a little reluctant to look into how many episodes there are total because it's going to be like five, but what a quintet! it's a former coast guard helicopter pilot speaking with other pilots and authors about women in aviation. everyone is almost painfully competent, and there are no commercials. it's possible that in making my way through these stories i'll find that i don't need to tell one myself after all, but that wouldn't actually be a bad thing, if your point in making things part of the world is that they aren't yet. what isn't yet?
i think i've actually found a podcast i can put on instead of cable news as i finish my quilt after joe's gone to bed. i'm a little reluctant to look into how many episodes there are total because it's going to be like five, but what a quintet! it's a former coast guard helicopter pilot speaking with other pilots and authors about women in aviation. everyone is almost painfully competent, and there are no commercials. it's possible that in making my way through these stories i'll find that i don't need to tell one myself after all, but that wouldn't actually be a bad thing, if your point in making things part of the world is that they aren't yet. what isn't yet?
12.22.25
ah, nothing beats the feeling of sitting down to finally type out the four last posts you first wrote longhand on various early-morning trains and discovering your notebook has been decluttered into functional nonexistence. (it's very likely still in the apartment somewhere, but i'd have to tear at least one and realistically like two and a half closets to know for sure.) and i was feeling so smug about technically blogging once a month all year! i will dig for the notebook, obviously posterity can't be expected to face the future without access to whatever i rambled en route to my volunteer gig, but i probably need to accept that i might not find it for a while. it's okay; i'm okay.
i ran my five half marathons (halves marathon) for the year, and i think i clocked a personal record on the last one; satisfying, that, and i've already booked my first for the new year, which not so coincidentally is the same course. my last 2025 writing deadline was friday, so i'll spend the next week digging around for that fucking notebook, getting ahead for the few pieces i have on the books for next year, and jolting out of bed in the middle of the night to write a heart-wringer of a final stanza for ye children's book. (we're still going back and forth with the prospective editor; she's accepted that jo and i are a package deal and now needs us to submit a few full illustrations and a whomper of a draft that tears her feelings limb from limb.) i've finally started hand-quilting the quilt i started piecing circa lockdown in 2020, and it's not at all what i imagined and very cool, if painful; i need to develop a system that doesn't involving stabbing my leg with each stitch to be sure i've gotten through the top, batting and backing. i'm nearly 200 pages into margaret atwood's memoir and as of today have the prospect of a new jessica mitford biography that just erupted from my holds list at the library to carry me through the remaining, oh god, 300 pages or so; there's a lot of midcentury canada out there. my reading for the second half of the year has been much more enthusiastic, as i realized at a fateful visit to nordstrom rack with my mom that i desperately need readers; in addition to the pair i bought on the spot, i now have a big-ass pair of progressive aviators that i know i need to start wearing but currently fear and try to ignore. the cats are parked under the christmas tree like fruitcakes. i'm forty-seven. there's a breeze.
i ran my five half marathons (halves marathon) for the year, and i think i clocked a personal record on the last one; satisfying, that, and i've already booked my first for the new year, which not so coincidentally is the same course. my last 2025 writing deadline was friday, so i'll spend the next week digging around for that fucking notebook, getting ahead for the few pieces i have on the books for next year, and jolting out of bed in the middle of the night to write a heart-wringer of a final stanza for ye children's book. (we're still going back and forth with the prospective editor; she's accepted that jo and i are a package deal and now needs us to submit a few full illustrations and a whomper of a draft that tears her feelings limb from limb.) i've finally started hand-quilting the quilt i started piecing circa lockdown in 2020, and it's not at all what i imagined and very cool, if painful; i need to develop a system that doesn't involving stabbing my leg with each stitch to be sure i've gotten through the top, batting and backing. i'm nearly 200 pages into margaret atwood's memoir and as of today have the prospect of a new jessica mitford biography that just erupted from my holds list at the library to carry me through the remaining, oh god, 300 pages or so; there's a lot of midcentury canada out there. my reading for the second half of the year has been much more enthusiastic, as i realized at a fateful visit to nordstrom rack with my mom that i desperately need readers; in addition to the pair i bought on the spot, i now have a big-ass pair of progressive aviators that i know i need to start wearing but currently fear and try to ignore. the cats are parked under the christmas tree like fruitcakes. i'm forty-seven. there's a breeze.
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