Nightcap — Where Have I Been?
On moving and maturing, keeping a newsletter + minor etchings on the heart
I suppose I underestimated just how much emotion I could’ve drawn to write my “Considerations On” series. My intentions for Part III were, and still are, equally ambitious, both conceptually and in length to the first two, though I feel like I’m coaxing myself into writing this one in a way that feels particularly unnatural, hence its obvious delay. I plan to write about my dual homes, New York and Chicago, on growth forecasted, leaving family and friends, on being 25. All of this has felt so heavy and inexplicable as it's happened in real time though, therefore, I’ve decided to place Part III on hold in the hopes that I might return, thoughts unfurled, a more perfect stranger to myself.
The outpouring of responses I received on this series felt validating but distressing. When you’re honest as a writer, people react brazenly and without pretense — telling you that they relate to you, that they want more from you, that they ache for you. In many ways, writing of this sort feels a lot like grieving. You have this series of private, individualized experiences that you work so hard to understand and immortalize and then you have everyone’s reactions to those experiences that somehow manage to conjure up entirely new wounds that you’re forced to reckon with. It’s kind of like processing that someone died and then getting asked six months later how they’re doing.
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“It was really so amazing, like I could feel that hurt while I was reading it and had to just sit and think about it for like 5 minutes after reading.”
“I just wanted to let you know that your substack has left me more reflective than most of the things I've read this year.”
“I could hear your dad’s voice when I was reading it. Knowing you and knowing the type of father he is and what he wants for you, I just really loved it.”
“Loving humans is so excruciatingly hard…and it’s all we have. You are not too much.”
“I’m sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you.”
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I can’t help but wonder how different my life might look had I processed periods of it through longform essay writing. I often leave journal entries and notes app ramblings open-ended. Could I have avoided certain impulse decisions, heartbreak or generally bad calls had I fleshed them out in writing? Might I have grown beyond my 25 year old teenage girl persona, hurt others less, been a better friend, girlfriend, sister, daughter? And if I had somehow been all of those because I’d worked through things in writing, would I ever even know?
In writing a series so deeply intimate, I hoped to establish some sort of trust in my readership and provide “context” for all the writing that’s to come after, but I also think a part of me started writing this way — open-wounded and untethered — because it’s the only way I know how to. I think I’m plagued with having a sort of antiseptic brain — one that’s too grounded in reality, too uninventive for fiction, too bound to my own self-indulgent realm.
In writing personal essays, I don’t necessarily think I want to be relatable or liked so much as to be known — not in a famous way, but in such a way that I’m really broken down, unspooled and sucked dry. I think what I’m really describing is emotional intimacy. I’m still not sure why I want that out of a following of mostly strangers.
There’s also a fucked up little part of me that likes being known through a mostly parasocial lens because no matter how well people think that they know me, there will always be a level of misunderstanding and a facet they simply can’t uncover.
In Marie Solis’ recent New York Times article, “Why ‘Girls’ Rule the Internet” she writes: “If someone can’t penetrate through several layers of irony to determine whether you are merely pretending to be obtuse or are genuinely slow on the uptake, well that’s a good laugh for the girls.”
All this is to say that in writing these 4,000 word essays, I feel I sort of lost sight of the spirit of a newsletter. Not everything can be a histrionic commentary on the mortifying ordeal of being known. Sometimes I want to sit in front of my laptop, write for an hour and hit send — to write about things I’m noticing, feeling, things that I like, flashes of unbridled joy. I’m considering making this a series. In keeping a list of things currently imprinted on my brain, even things fleeting and inconsequential, I’m also hoping to lighten things up in the in-betweens.
Here’s what I’m thinking about tonight:
Last fall I paid $13 for the smallest, greasiest sausage and egg bagel from a Logan Square joint (sorry Reno) and ate it on a bench in the square thinking about all of the late night, cheap bodega bagels I had in college in New York for a whopping $3. Now, it’s one year later and I live here again and I order those sometimes, without sausage but with lots of hot sauce, from men in bodegas who address me with terms of endearment (something you also can’t quite get in Chicago.) Recently, I discovered a local bagel shop that makes giant, doughy bagels with a good chew and they’ve become a mainstay in my diet. I realize that when it comes to cooking, I really only know how to bake and to make things look beautiful. I will mull over a sourdough loaf for hours before I’ll make a mirepoix in advance of a stew or a steak or anything of that nature — that’s what dating men is for.
Speaking of food, some things that are having a moment for me: olive oil cake (specifically the one from Abraço in the East Village), homemade matcha lattes, grilled octopus, greek pastries, raw garlic, cornmeal-based desserts, affogato, tomato sandwiches, sesame anything but specifically giuggiulena cookies, oishi green tea, maple syrup, pork. Ray Peat carrot salad, seed cycling, eating “for fertility” and all tradquack medicine is declared out.
I’m having a revival with indie sleaze again, particularly LCD Soundsystem and the Girls soundtrack, since moving to New York. There’s a picture of me at Sovereign House holding up a book about terrorism with “Dance Yrself Clean” playing in the background. We took pictures with books that night and Matthew Donovan said, “We’re creating culture.” Everyone was incredibly nice to me and I had a bad hangover the next day.
I feel myself slowly incorporating more street style into my wardrobe. It’s difficult to be so coquette when traveling from borough-to-borough. People also look so much nicer here on the whole than in Chicago which is such a t-shirt and shorts city. I’m also trying to dress a bit more my age as of late. Act? That I don’t know. It’s hard to justify wearing head-to-toe Brandy to wine bars that always have like…sourdough miche and pate.
I’m in a long term, not so long distance, committed relationship with Chickee’s Vintage that I’m really trying to shake (replace with shopping vintage on ebay.) The first time I went to Chickee’s since moving back, the store smelled strongly of the Santa Maria Novella Carta d'Armenia strips which felt like a good omen. I texted Reilly some options from the dressing room. “Don’t get the Pleats Please pants,” he remarked.
August’s humidity really forced me into a new beauty routine that required me to forgo my relationship with heavy black eyeliner and straightened hair. I loved the Ouai Wave Spray on the hottest days, which I used on damp hair, fresh out of the shower. The other day, I wore nothing but a bit of face makeup and a red lip to jaunt around the East Village and I felt beautiful. I like a little winged liner as much as the next girl, but less really has proven to be more as I get older. It’s an inexplicable feeling, as a young woman, to begin to feel truly comfortable with yourself. I’ve been sporting pimple patches in places you couldn’t even imagine.
I’m looking to get back into movies in a big way. I flirted heavily with the Criterion Channel in the pandemic, but watching films sort of lost their luster for me once the world began to open up again. I recently added Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” to my list. I wonder if I will ever fully get through “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty.” I need to watch “A Room with a View” for DDL if anything. I never saw Barbie and never really cared about the discourse surrounding it. Pick me pick me pick me.
Speaking of discourse, the Twitter threads surrounding this article in the New Statesman troubled me. I tweeted that I’m tired of reading about the same protagonist — a woman too smart for her own good who skin picks and reckons with life under capitalism. While I agree that a piece of lit shouldn’t be judged based on its characters’ likability, I think this same archetype has sort of ruined the contemporary bildungsroman novel for me. The problem for me with these novels lies largely in the fact that they’re bound to a certain kind of modern-day pessimism that leftists love, but one I’ve personally grown tired of. Good art facilitates a level of wonder and escapism and if it can’t provide that, I’d rather it reckon with issues head-on, than be revealed through the lens of the same hopeless voice that, in an attempt at saying a lot, mostly says nothing.
I moved into an apartment with a roommate who has two cats and it’s been a love affair from the start. They’re 15 and one. Whenever I feed them, I really feel like I’m not the mother, but the stepmother who stepped up.
I’ve been really into ignoring my direct messages lately. I was even toying with the idea of a mysterious era, but have inevitably decided that part of my charm is being a bit of an open faucet. I doxxed this past weekend which is deeper for me than what can be covered in a listicle-type newsletter so I’ll save unpacking this for later. Back to ignoring my DMs though…everyone hates when there’s a “he” in my tweets (except for my Twitter circle — I like to think that they love my lore.) Now that there’s a chill in the air, I want to see you all comparing hand sizes across small tables at the tinned fish restaurant. Romance is back in a big way.
I keep thinking about how cutting fruit for another person is one of the simplest, but most effective, ways of saying I love you. I think I could probably write a micro essay on this. I miss home. I’m thinking about my dad and his cooking and the way he always cuts apples and persimmons after dinner for the family with a small paring knife and how that looks like love.
Hm..that’s all for now. If you like Considerations On, think about becoming a paid subscriber. <3 I promise to be here more regularly and with varied content. It can’t be all Sylvia Plath all of the time. Goodnight.