Anna Karenina
I haven’t finished Anna Karenina but I like the experience of reading Anna Karenina. I declared it the summer of Anna Karenina which ended up not coming to pass, but this creates a wonderful opportunity for the winter of Anna Karenina. My issue is that it is a big book and rather unwieldy, which makes me reluctant to bring it on the train. At some point, I started listening to the audiobook on Youtube as I fell asleep, but the issue with this method is that you’re always falling asleep.
Going to the Ocean Alone for 2 Weeks
I have gone to the ocean alone for 2 weeks 2 times now, and I am about to go for a third. If you ever need to figure anything out or consider a particular issue of great scale, you should go to the ocean alone for 2 weeks. I find that it helps to walk the beach in a fur coat (in the winter) or a silk scarf (in the summer) and indulge yourself in a slice of melancholia.
Seafood Tower at Balthazar
I like to go to Balthazar on a whim, maybe on a Wednesday or a Thursday. It feels like a decadent, left-field venture but makes your evening much more extravagant and important. The last time I went, Chloe Sevigny walked by with her son. He was riding a little toy scooter.
Crush Psychosis
I’ve had Crush Psychosis twice this year, which is exhilarating for a few days then quickly spoils then curdles then boils up too hot and fast and starts to feel like a burning on your insides that you desperately want to extinguish. It is all well and good up until the spoiling and the curdling and the boiling and the burning. I’ve maintained that having a crush mostly has to do with you and very little to do with whoever you have a crush on. Crush Psychosis gives you something to do—it gives you something to think about at night, something to hope for. It opens up a space for you to transcend yourself and aspire to something beyond the conditions of your current circumstance.
Sometimes I am deep enough in the happy state of my psychosis that I think it is a good idea to love openly and shamelessly, to announce to everyone that I have a crush, only to be faced later with the embarrassment of having gone around and tattled to everyone about my private infatuation with someone who hardly ever thinks about me. This becomes even worse when they follow up on how your crush is progressing (which they never are), and you are reminded of your folly—that happy fugue state when everything was possible, when you were enraptured by the prospect of a romantic potentiality before the awful realization that what you were imagining was not waiting for you around the corner.
Crush Psychosis is the dizzying euphoria of standing on a precipice, gazing into a horizon of possibility, the landscape of it all blush and tangerine, situated in an atmosphere of perfect weather. To have a crush is to hover between the sublime expanse of love and the vertiginous chasm of disappointment.
Crush Psychosis is a concept stolen from Sigh Swoon, discussed in detail in this podcast episode. The psychosis part refers to the yearning, particularly the kind that takes place in the digital sphere. When we yearn for another, but cannot have them in proximity (whether that’s because they’re busy, they’re far away from us, they don’t want to be around us, they don’t know that we want to be around them, or maybe even because they don’t know us at all), we fill that void via proxy. Most easily, that proxy is their digital presence. When we yearn for the other, we can access some virtual projection of their likeness on demand. This messes with our motivation/reward cognitive behaviour system—when I want to see the other, I can stare at their face on Instagram. The imitation of closeness is enough to feed my longing, to silence it temporarily, until you start to feel like an obsessive freak.
Living Out of a Suitcase
I’ve been living out of a suitcase since April. I have two suitcases, but since I took a trip home mid-October, I’ve been living out of my carry-on and have barely noticed. In 2018, I had a 7 month séjour in Austria. I came home with my two suitcases and was aghast at the amount of things awaiting me in my childhood bedroom. If you haven’t wanted or needed something in 6 months, it seems entirely unnecessary to own. What’s more, this way of living reframes your idea of what you “need.” I am exhausted at the frequency with which people announce that they need a certain thing. I find it freeing to experience the urge to acquire a new item but suspend that impulse, allowing it to stretch itself out. It is like a contest of restraint. I am a natural minimalist, not by way of any philosophical virtue, but because buying things stresses me out, and choosing what thing to buy stresses me even more.
The majority of my belongings are in a storage unit, none of which I need and all of which I will get rid of when the time comes (the time is now, but I simply can’t be bothered). I’ve moved 7 times since April, and can often be seen rolling my suitcase through Ridgewood while hauling four tote bags, two on each arm.
Feeling Popular
In the darkest times, feeling like I have a lot of friends becomes my sole lifeline. Acknowledging this reality renders me acutely aware of my own vapidity and lameness, while simultaneously quite exhilarated that Real People make my life worth living and I love to go out and see Others and talk to them about all of the many things that are going on. My life feels much the adage “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it” in the respect that nothing really counts if no one is there to bear witness to it.
My inner monologue is a never-ending conversation with a shapeshifting interlocutor—I am talking to my friends in my head all day. This year I’ve really started texting. I text with such veracity that it is very obvious how much I yearn for connection at every moment. I hope that this makes people feel special, and that it makes them like me more, because it is always nice to know that someone is thinking about you and wants to talk to you. I think about my friends always all of the time and want to be hanging out with them constantly. I also think that it’s nice to call everyone your best friend and mean it.
The downside of this is the brute melancholy of Having A Night to Oneself—the fear of walking home and having to be alone in one’s mind. When you become too accustomed to the highs of Hanging Out, the treachery and tremulation in the infinite void of your own consciousness sometimes feels like a bad hangover. And of course, you must confront the hard reality that things do in fact matter when no one else is there to witness them, because you yourself are a person, a perfect spectator, who is burdened not only with the endless task of bearing witness to your own life, but also with the full time roles of manager, curator, strategist, and judge. What daunting responsibility! For which there is no overtime pay.
Listening to The Smiths in a Way That is Far Deeper and More Intellectual Than Ever Done Before
A 19 year old twink was telling me how I absolutely must go see Morrissey live and I’ve listened to enough Red Scare to know that I am part of his target demographic. I’ve of course listened to the Smiths in my youth, but now I am doing it in a way that is much more interesting and intentional than ever before. I like that all of the song titles feel as though they are speaking to me directly (I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (I really did, I had a dream that I had a boyfriend who was so nice to me in a way that I never thought possible and awoke with a renewed perspective on what is possible in love and in life. I can’t remember his name or his face but I loved him), Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, I Know It’s Over, I Want the One I Can’t Have). I like to walk the streets and think about how I’ve Seen This Happen in Other People’s Lives and Now It’s Happening In Mine and I really like that Morrissey repeats that line for 2 minutes because it’s rare that people repeat lines for that long, especially lines that bear repeating. I like how The Smiths do this thing where they fade out the music completely just to bring it right back, like there’s someone fiddling with the knobs on the sound mixer. I also like the way that Morrissey moves his body in this performance, and I like his strange coiffure:
<3 the smiths