I could go to sleep. I’m tired enough. I’m cranky and I got up at 6 am to sell coffee to people who could not care less if I live or die. I could go to sleep, but I won’t. 

I chugged some diet coke and sat down on my perfect, lazy ass to write to you. You’re so lucky, aren’t you? Lucky little reader.  

I took a really nice walk the other day. I did just say “nice walk” and my god I meant it and holy fuck the bar for “nice” is so low. Either way, I just walked around in a big circle and listened to what amounted to one song over and over, interrupted occasionally by a carefully chosen second song for palate cleansing. 

I only got catcalled once (from what I could hear with the volume all the way up) which was nice. Again, notice the bar. 

I just pretended not to hear him and continued to mouth the words to the song (singular) in a way that would make me look as unapproachable and unstable as possible. I’m really very good at this. A natural at instability. 

I think most clearly when I’m moving. It’s something about repetitive motion, sure, but really it’s that I need to be moving at the same rate as I’m thinking. If I stay still for too long, I feel like I’m drowning in static. I drown myself in static, really. But I can’t always help that. 

It’s been hard to adjust to walking in a new city after having figured out the last one so completely. You could drop me anywhere in Boulder and I could find my way home on foot. It would be extraordinarily easy. Don’t get me wrong, East Nashville is very easy to navigate, just not on foot. Which is fine. I needed a push to start driving again, and so I’m shopping for cars and antidepressants strong enough to curb the inevitable OCD spike that’ll come from getting behind the wheel again. 

Walking seems so much better for me, but not driving in a city meant to be driven is incredibly isolating.  “The Art of Driving Home” doesn’t have nearly the same ring, but rest assured. There will still be plenty of walking. There always has been. 

Walking home from school during the Northern New York winter I grew up in was so dangerous that if you did, the school would call CPS and it’d be a whole thing. But spring and early summer? Pshh. Walking home was a glorious fucking treat. 

To get home, I’d have to pass a very old, almost completely dilapidated graveyard. I’d heard once that you were supposed to hold your breath while passing graveyards–I can’t remember if it was a luck thing or out of respect for the dead. Either way, my OCD ass followed directions regardless of personal beliefs. I didn’t believe in luck and I didn’t believe in ghosts, but if there was a directive, I was following it to the goddamn letter. 

I would have to run to make it past the graveyard without breathing, which made the whole ordeal very difficult. I’d gasp like I’d just been held under water, looking like an absolute freak. I’d hold my knees and catch my breath–it didn’t deter my walking home, though. Just seemed like a necessary part of enjoying the sunshine. 

I’m hard pressed to give myself a genuine compliment here, but I will say this for myself: I am exceedingly adaptable. Having childhood OCD sets you up to be able to do just about any uncomfortable or inconvenient thing. Lungs of goddamn steel over here. 

Anyway, that compulsion passed when I didn’t hold my breath while walking past a graveyard, and nobody I loved suffered some kind of disaster. If you get it you get it (I sincerely hope you don’t.)

Graveyards have never scared me. If you’d seen me walking home ages 8-12, you’d believe otherwise, but truly. Never scared me. They devastate me, though. Not because of the dead, but because we insist on visiting them. 

I think the practice of visiting a dead loved one in a graveyard is just about the most primal, devastating act we do innocently. We return to the place where our loved one’s body was buried to feel closer to them. That is some animal shit, and it is also completely and beautifully sad. 

I saw someone eating cake at a gravesite once. There was a second fork laid next to the stone. She was talking between bites, with every courtesy. I tried very hard not to look, and I  didn’t linger. I understood. 

I would and will absolutely do the same, without shame and with complete sincerity. It is the most primal thing we do innocently, grieve. And I will eat cake with corpses and I will not hold my breath waiting for something horrible to happen. 

I think I’d like to be mummified. 

It sounds nice to be all bundled up surrounded by all my favorite things in like, a cool art deco looking pointy house. Fucking hell yeah, dog. 

Also, I’d love to be a nice little treat for a European some thousand years later. I’m getting my ass ate in the afterlife, bitches. 

Was that okay? Man, I really don’t think it was. Good thing nobody reads this. 

I think that all art and artifacts that have been stolen by colonial forces should be returned. Immediately. That shit should go home as soon as possible. I was just making a little booty eating joke, ya know? About my booty getting ate like a corpse cake.

Anyway, don’t hold your breath past graveyards. Cities should be more walkable. Eat cake with corpses and eat ass while you’re alive if that’s your thing. Return the art you colonial fucks, and have a great goddamn day.

Make sure your barista knows you care that she’s alive by tipping generously. Even if you’re just getting drip coffee, okay?

Love you.

The color pink

My grandfather used to call me Pinky Tuscadero–it was my favorite color since before I can remember. Something about how it could be both soft and urgent. I wasn’t thinking that at four, but as an obnoxious writer I’m thinking it now because it sounds good. It’s true too, though. Soft and urgent. I like that combination.

Being a woman has everything to do with my writing. 

My mother was the only daughter of two alcoholics. My grandfather died when I was ten, and my grandmother now lives alone near a river. We played there as kids. We were carefree and showing skin. My mother raised herself. She cared for her two younger brothers, did the family’s laundry–cleaned. My mother needed no one. I need her like my own lungs.

So far, it’s taken me twenty-five years to know my body. It will take twenty-five and twenty-five more. What I am sure of is that I love it–or that I would like to love my body. Because it is soft and urgent.

Public Dream // Frances Leviston 

Her writing found me feral in an empty college dorm room. I was starving and alone–both of my own volition–trying to be a writer, or at the very least someone worth knowing. (I was disgustingly dramatic. Probably still am. Fuck it.) I heard her voice before I read her work–this is important. At the time, the voice in my head was both unkind and unwilling. Hers cut through.

I found recordings of readings given at various Ivy leagues schools that could not have been further from SUNY Potsdam. I always thought I was angry at elitism, but I was probably just jealous. Very glad I got over that.

She was the first poet I fell in love with. I’ll include a link to my favorite recording of hers. I often play it when I’m hurting. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/high-force

To After That (Toaf) // Renee Gladman

This book is a love letter to a novella that was never published called “After That.” Renee Gladman has dubbed Toaf, “a true account of a fictional book” and I fell deeply in love with that sentiment. To write a love letter to something that never existed–a eulogy to something that never lived or died–is punk as hell. 

The reader is thrown into the story of how this novella was written and rewritten, with almost no context. It is through description of place and time that we riddle out where exactly we are, and how we got there. I both love and resent this about writers–we often start in the middle of things. 

I also love and resent our obsession with place. This is probably because I was unable to connect in writing to anything about Boulder until I read Toaf. Renee is deeply rooted in the cities she writes about–so much so that I know the cracks in the sidewalk outside her apartment. She loves the cities where she lives, though she doesn’t always like them. She writes, “That city, that for lack of a better word housed my novella, remained–for the duration of the first draft–faithful to me.” (20)  What does it mean for a city to be faithful?

2007 Youtube

There’s so much sincerity in the videos first posted to Youtube. When the website first emerged in 2007, this new video sharing platform was an opportunity for everyone–there were virtually no barriers to entry.  People would just speak into cameras, without concern as to who was watching, earnestly about their lives. The beginning of Youtube was, in my opinion, magical. I remember watching hour-long videos of people talking–just talking–about their feelings and lives and the events of their days.

This seems dull–it seems boring and useless and self-indulgent–but really, it’s fascinating. It was the most sincere expression of individuality, and the clearest call for connection I’d ever seen. Projecting oneself onto someone else’s computer in the hopes that they’d watch and care feels incredibly human to me. It feels honest to want to be seen and heard–to share oneself in this way. 

I think in a world that asks us to detach, being sincere–channeling the earnestness of 2007 youtube–is absolutely punk. This is what I’m doing here.

The Grand Canyon

When I was in the hospital, I tacked a picture of the Grand Canyon to the wall across from my bed. A very kind nurse printed out an incredibly pixelated, black and white photo of this big hole, and gave it to me. 

Very nice gesture, really depressing gift. Like a bottle of wine. 

I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but I talk about it like an old war buddy. Making plans to go and see it but never really getting there. Thinking of it fondly. Crumpled old picture in a drawer somewhere. 

I like having attainable dreams. Going to the Grand Canyon isn’t surprising or impossible–it’s something a lot of people do. But I know when I get there, it’ll mean something. It has already changed me. I want to look into this giant hole and feel very small and unimportant and in absolute awe. I want to be standing next to the person I love. I want to cry.

I write often about the Grand Canyon–how I want to go, or what it means to me. But more so, it informs the way I write. This attainable dream has kept me going–kept me writing–for longer than I care to admit. It means something to me. It makes me hopeful.

Katie Lee 

There’s a famous environmental activist, writer, and folk singer named Katie Lee who, as a young woman, explored a place named Glen Canyon. 

Katie and two friends, both men–one a photographer, the other a geographer–spent weeks here, having found Glen Canyon on a trip down the Colorado River. Katie describes this time in her life as the most alive she has ever felt–that she had found something worth living for.

I’ve watched recent interviews where she attempts to describe the beauty of this place, and she always ends them in tears. She was in love, absolutely, with this place. With this time in her life.

Glen Canyon was flooded after the construction of the Glen Canyon dam in 1966, and Katie lost her Canyon under twenty feet of the Colorado river. She has never stopped fighting for its return. I take her determination as inspiration.

I wrote this for me, but I hope it was okay.

I love you so much ya know.

x. Allison

I saw a recent photo of a house I used to live in. The buyers repainted the whole thing, and now it’s a very dark, very loud green. I’d like to say it’s ugly, but it isn’t–it looks great.

But, man. I prefer the chipped, faded, horrifically 70s mint color I remember.

–

I left nothing, as per the lease agreement. 

The carpet was decades old, so it would be impossible to tell that I had cleaned it at all, really. But I did. I vacuumed up every speck of me. I pulled out every one of my hairs from the shower drain–a big, juicy clump of me, discarded. 

I took frames off the walls. I peeled a sticker off the bathroom window. I sprayed everything with a disinfectant so potent that I finally felt high enough to have lived in Boulder in the first place. 

I scrubbed the spot on the wall where I’d propped my feet up to read. I gave away the bamboo plants that I’d been watching sprout for 2 years. I gave away the desk I wrote to you from. I gave away the bed I slept in. I gave away pounds and pounds of clothing, and then I vacuumed up the lint. I swept the stairs–even the spot we always missed because it was in the corner of the landing and just very inconvenient to reach.

I gave away the sheet we projected movies on. I threw away the tacks we used to stick that sheet (against our landlord’s wishes) to the century-old wood molding. 

I gave away the bathing suit I wore to the creek–the one I wore when we stopped everything in the middle of an August Tuesday to sprint down there for some semblance of relief (there was no air conditioner to give away.)

We gave away our porch-couch–something I was far too old for, but something that I could rely on anyway. I’d nap there whenever I was locked out–something else I was too old for, but yeah, I could rely on that too. 

I still have my key–the one that for some reason worked on the deadbolt, but not the handle lock. (I made a fairly illegal copy because I kept getting locked out. Literally 2 bucks at Home Depot. Fuck em.) I still have that, at least. My little felony.

In that house, there were decades of books and art and photos and ephemera left by previous tenants. It was an odd situation–we had some kind of agreement with our landlord that if we kept the house full of tenants, and we always paid our rent on time, we could leave outside the dates specified in the lease. Essentially, if we found someone to take our room, we could leave whenever we wanted. So, we all left on a kind of rotation.

This meant the house was never empty. When one person left, there were five others who stayed–who kept some of their stuff–who would, ultimately, leave that stuff in the house when they left.

The house held on to a bit of whoever lived there. I thought this was very, very cool, and it was! Until I was part of the final few who had to clean it all out. 

We spent weeks going through old books and records and fuckin rocks and dried flowers that were abandoned years before we’d moved in. 

We spent weeks emptying the house of every single person who’d ever rented it. It didn’t seem fair–not just that we were the ones who had to clean their shit, but that we wouldn’t get to leave any of us there at all. 

I wanted to leave something so badly–some kind of recognition that I had, in fact, been there. That I had lived two and a half years of my life there. That I had cried there, in that room, on that carpet. That I had left that stain (and still got my full security deposit. Fuck em.) 

That I had sat on that porch and stared into that dark driveway and thought about serious and very silly shit. I wanted the people who bought the house to know I’d lived my life there. 

I saw the buyer briefly. He came in, snapped a few photos, and left. I don’t know him and I don’t want to. But I want him to know us–that we were here. It’s silly and I know that–renters move out every minute of every day and are contractually obligated to leave nothing behind. But this house was different, man. It was special to me. 

I don’t miss living there. After all this, I know it might seem like I do, but I truly don’t. Living with five people, and in Boulder in general, could be pretty unpleasant. But it was ours, dammit. It was mine. The decades of tenants who lived lives and left their shit there–it was ours. And I want whoever lives there now to know that. 

I love you, dear reader. 

Tons.

I ate too many of those tiny, chocolate peanut butter cups and I miss my friends. Such is the plight of woman. 

I can handle a lot of sadness, dear reader. Like, a fuckton. 

Side note: It was very funny to me while typing this that “fuckton” is not an issue for spell check. No red squiggle–not even a blue. That’s silly to me, and convenient as hell. 

The first google response for “fuckton” is, “fuckton (plural fucktons) (vulgar, slang) A large amount. Synonyms: see Thesaurus: lot.”

“see Thesaurus: lot.”

Nailed it. Semi-official unit of measurement. That makes me stupid happy. Anway-

I can handle a fuckton of sadness. I suppose we all can, right? We have to be able to handle immense amounts of sadness so that we don’t all off ourselves and annihilate the species.  

Side note: Species is correct. But specie? Is “specie” a word? Surely not–that doesn’t seem right. Hold on.

“Specie (noun) Money in the form of coins rather than notes.” 

Everyone but me probably already knew this. Oh well. “Don’t you know there’s a shortage of specie?!” is very funny to me. If I had known that word last year, you bet your ass I would have been using it. Dammit. 

It’s alright. I’m sure there’ll be another specie shortage, and an even greater shortage of species to match. Excellent. I’ll have my chance soon enough.

Okay, so. A fuckton of sadness–I can bear it.

Do you ever think about how fucked up the English language is? Like, supremely fucked. How were we even communicating before written language? Bear and Bare? Like, come ON. 

The verb bare means “to reveal” or “to uncover.” Right? I bare my soul to you here, dear reader. My bare, huge, naturals. You get the idea. 

And the correct expression, “bear with me,” means “be patient with me.” 

What if we didn’t have this written distinction, and I said “Bear with me.” but you heard, “Bare with me.” and just like, started stripping? Naked, impatient people, everywhere.

Jesus Christ. So, I miss my friends, right? They’re in New York and Boulder and Denver and Chicago and fuckin Prauge and I really could just use a cig on the porch with a couple of them. They could bear a fuckton of my soul baring, and I could do the same for them.

Then we’d round up our goddamn specie and buy twizzlers at the gas station across the street and watch some dumb movie until we all got tired of it and went back to chain smoking and laughing until our stomachs hurt. 

I miss my friends, and I ate too many tiny, chocolate peanut butter cups tonight. But, dear reader, I’m happy where I am. I have this cool little life I’m building. What I’m asking is that you bear with me while I figure out exactly how it’s going to look. 

I love you, dear reader. 

A fuckton.

I like the idea of putting my recent, finished stuff in one place. So here it is.

To borrow or to keep, some goddamn poems.

Have at it.

I am not a lawyer, I’m an artist.

Few things are as damaging 
as an insincere expression of faith.

This we have in common. 

This and that distinct, Amtrak smell--that 
same, steril static. We hurry home 

Both of us--hungry. Tired.
Trying to be good for something. 

--

Coordinates 

Silly and sturdy 
Needed for flight paths 
And some kind of sweetness

To which we point and say here	Look here
This is the place that I came from

--

TGIF

Since 1993 the ocean has risen 
3.6 inches. This isn’t a lot, unless you’re 5’ 9” 
or here--on Earth and thank God

It’s Friday. I’m crossing 
Out to-do lists whole.

I do not talk about the future 
In the same way I used to--my mouth is full of water
And it’s awfully rude to spit. 
I do not imagine the future

In the same way I used to--but see, I’ll write it down anyway.
So that in the moments before these words sink
Our future will have existed, somewhere. 

--

Ode To Pubic Hair 


Lovely bush, God save it
To have worked up such a mane
My dear long distance boyfriend
Will never know the same
The work the love--the stories told 
Out from in the land between
An unmatched glory to behold
No other eye has seen. 

--

What I eat to stay in shape 

I had acrylic nails when the world stopped.
It felt good to neglect something without recourse. 

I lived in one room, peed on the hour walked 
in concentric circles fell In love on the internet ate

boxes of cereal dry ate Instant oatmeal dry ate
and wished I had a better excuse. 

so it wouldn’t be my fault. ate glue
to patch the hole ate mycelium to expedite
 
decay ate the things I didn't have time for ate
my childhood stuffed dalmatian ate a phone call 

home ate my grandfather’s funeral ate skin not
worth touching ate gummy vitamins by the handful.

I ate all of the liquor 
I ate 10 lbs then I ate the scale I ate 

styrofoam cups plastic cups compostable 
plastic cups I ate microplastic (fruit flavored)

I ate Boulder Creek I ate the skatepark I ate
The fear I felt walking by the skatepark I ate time



I ate so much time. 

--

Even The Cemeteries 

There was whistling overhead. 
Instead of ducking and covering, as the instructions say, 
She asked, “Huh?” 
Fear didn’t come until later.

I woke up too late to shower.
I put my hair up, brushed my teeth--
Ran down 16th street watching my breath. 
I was late to sell coffee. 

They had been shelling. Even the cemeteries. 

Losing everything cannot happen quickly. 
“Huh?” she said, naturally. 
She did not duck and cover. Fear, she said, came later.
And then? What will come then?

I scrubbed the kitchen drains with bleach.
They found the body of a 17 year old girl today.
Wiped tables, chairs, door handles. 
Bodies are not things we should have to find.
I had a cigarette. Smiled for tips.

I walked home slow, 
I let my hair down and it touched my waist. 

They were shelling, 
“Huh?”
Even the cemeteries. 

That’s all for now.

I love you. Please take care.

x. Al

More than five years ago now, when I lived in Elmira (a very poor, very strange city in south-western New York) I thought I had figured it out. I thought I had figured out what it was that I wanted. 

What I learned from living in Elmira shaped my beliefs surrounding the feminine experience. What it is to be a young woman–etc. etc. I’ve been reworking a piece I wrote about this time, and found that, to me,  it reflects the place we currently find ourselves in.

We have to find each other, dear reader. We have to do something. We cannot afford to press our ears to the grass. This’ll make more sense soon.

Mark Twain is buried in Elmira. Nearby remains of a woman are marked with these words: “After life’s fitful fever, she sleeps well.”

Here’s some weird horror–to borrow, or to keep. 

Elmira, New York

–After Life’s Fitful Fever, She Sleeps Well

Mark Twain was buried here, but nobody really asks why. The hills, maybe–they seem close enough to pyramids. He sleeps in the center of Woodlawn Cemetery, under a simple stone with a simple inscription–somehow anonymous despite the signs and advertisements made for his big, bright name. Staked into the ground between the other, less important bodies. This way to Mark Twain.

Twain’s ashes are buried with his wife’s, mixed and without distinction. Hopefully they were in love, otherwise what grows here in two thousand years may be some insidious poison. Dead-eyed dreams say–something like cyanide. 

Stretched and distorted by time, the landscape is just an illusion. The hills in Elmira don’t roll, they bend. It is not a definitive Here, but a kind of graveyard–one with big, iron gates where no one rests. Instead, we lay our ears to the grass and hear our own beating hearts. We call this God, and maybe this is why he stayed. 

It’s romantic so long as one doesn’t think about it. So long as one holds her breath. And she did. 

She wanted to fill the cracks of her body with them–to attach herself as if tethered to death by these words. She wanted to be held. It didn’t much matter by whom or with whose hands–just held here. Filled in and whole. 

Every night, she placed her ear to the grass, and asked to be filled with a ghost–to let them find her, somehow. And every night they came, as young men always do. They ran their fingers through the grooves of her collar bone–carving her skin like water until her edges ran smooth. Feeding on tissue and the notion of staying awake behind her eyes. 

They had names, of course–placeholders for the missing things. She didn’t much mind, having begun to forget her own inside this bended time. 

They would pull her through the bended hills and highways–through doors and up stairs–always to a single, red light. There hung a bulb suspended by something impossibly fragile. She wanted, at once and always, to touch it. She thought maybe Twain had felt this way–that he eased into death like a lover, here, night after night. That the ghosts of this place had shown him how. 

She felt something close to contentment when he sat beside her. He began to speak without sense, and she felt only artificial, red light and the droning from his mouth. He leaned closer, humming in dissonance with the walls. 

His breath in her ear felt like God, but warmer, somehow. More comforting. She no longer cared to keep her eyes open. Tumbling forward off the edge of her body, she took another breath, listening. Sweet and steady. Less of a buzz, now, more like remembering. 

She answered back in his voice. Slow, and though now barely eager, consistent in her wanting. She felt it was okay, here. Twain must’ve felt this way.  

With her ear pressed flat against his chest, taking big gulps of bright red air, she could no longer hear it. She could no longer hear own heart beating. 

I’ve published and deleted two essays this week. Neither sounded like me–they sounded like a girl sitting in her bedroom trying to be a writer. And reader, we all know that trying is deeply uncool, and I apologize to all three of you for these mistakes. 

So I’m nursing a headache born of an emotion I’m not sure I can name (something like insecurity but way cooler and sexier of course) by holding a bag of frozen peppers to my forehead. They are starting to thaw, my face smells like a ripe fajita, and I am in that really lovely space between laughing and crying–the one that feels a lot like scraping your knee but being really really tough about it. 

My room is a mess and this doesn’t help. If my room is a reflection of me–I am bits and pieces of cut up paper and old makeup brushes covered in glue. There’s a metaphor in there I can’t be fucked to find because, dear reader, I refuse to try. 

Don’t worry though, I’ve cleared an Allison sized space on the floor. I’ve gotten right on down there. I’ve laid my little head against the wall. All to write to you, my dear, sweet, singular reader. Just for you. 

I’ve returned to the floor to share with you, if you’re there at all, my most prolific twitter drafts. Why I write them here instead of there where instability is marketing and sickness is sexy–why I write them at all, actually–I really do not know. But again, not trying to understand. Not tonight. 

Oh, before we get started, I fully moved across the country. I’m in Nashville now, which is very cool and very hot and very exciting and a little terrifying. I wanted to get out of Boulder, and I did. And I’m proud of that. More than this though, I’m close to the dude I love. He’s so cool, dear reader. He’s so cool.

I also started two new jobs, which are okay I think? We’ll see. I’ll keep you updated. More writing and more coffee slinging, which is honestly pretty dope. I’m happy here, dear reader. I really really am. 

Thing about happiness is that sometimes I don’t know what to do with it. I wanna hold it so tightly that I don’t have to worry about the eventual fall–but of course that ruins the whole point of the whole deal, right? That ruins everything. I’m happy and sometimes I take to the floor and stay there. It’s really all okay. 

Some days I hate my body and believe with every hair on my knees that I am worthless and unlovable. Some days I eat cake and a cat falls asleep on my chest and I feel like an absolute smoke. It’s whatever. It’s all there is. It’s the point. 

Speaking of my point, here it is. Collage of drafts meant for a cesspool of comparison, horniness, piping cold, faux-divisive takes, and idiocy which, as you know, I just never seem to get enough of. 

 To borrow or to keep.

Have fun. 

–

–

“I’m not here to judge.” — Judge to herself in the mirror on her wedding day. 

Yeah, I’m dating the QB. Cute Boy. 

Applying to be the hot young mailman your dog loves and your husband hates. 

Blaming my overwhelming failure on the fact that I have not eaten a little something sweet.

Tits out for Jesus we call that Thots For Prayers 

I’m not depressed, I’m at the laundromat vending machine. Want anything?

Hey I’m outside the laundromat where are you?

My favorite part of television is when someone dials 911 then  immediately says, “hello, 911?”

Moving across the country to be closer to a specific Walgreens I have fond memories of. 

Love bombing but its watching a Beatles documentary and being sneak attacked by Eric Clapton’s face. 

Chain smoking with same song on repeat for planning to enter nirvana      (Allison, what?)

Help neighbors don’t know their music is keeping me from essential third nap of day. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how nobody is “good at lying.” You’re just good at finding people who want to believe you. Not something to be proud of.

I can get through this. It is just that I simply do not wanna.

I think, never mind when I said I quit smoking. Never mind, this evening. 

I am a writer the way that no worries if not. 

Stoked to be in the same city as my bf, but sad I’m not West of him anymore. I used to spit into the rain just for him. 

Therapy is not enough I need to tie a bandana around a baguette and hop on a moving train. 

Guys I got burgled lol.

Happy Birthday I’m sorry I burned your breakfast.

Rehearsing a Satanic dirge for my 6 am flight tomorrow. 

Cover letters: WAY less sexy than you’d think!

I have a Pavlovian response to train sounds (horny)

No therapist has ever told me, “and that’s all the time we have for today.” And that, kids, is because my problems are much more interesting than yours. 

I can imagine today being hard for some people. But not me, suckers. I’m in love! Sucks to suck!

Cyber Bully is a dope name if you really think about it. 

OCD is cute because I’ve had the phrase “gefilte fish lemonade” stuck in my head for 12 hours. 

–

–

–

That’s all for now. Take excellent care, okay? No floor laying for you–only I can be sad and floor-ridden. 

Love u.

I got the flu at the Phoebe Bridgers show–don’t ask me if it was worth it because you won’t like my answer.

And don’t take your mask off, not even for pictures. You’ll get the flu and all the work you’ve done to combat your depression will feel like a waste of time. No, it wasn’t worth coughing up my entire stomach to see Funeral live. But, it was still pretty great. 

I love Phoebe. She writes songs for girls with daddy issues who date men from Hollywood who feel like revenge is a slow burn to greatness.

I love Phoebe because she reminds me that there is still a dream left. 

I think a lot about dreams–the aspirational kind. I wonder if they have any value anymore, or if they ever did. I wonder if there is anything to dream about at all when the future seems bleak because, well, it is. 

I’ve decided, ever the unlikely optimist, that I’m pro-dreaming anyway. See, there’s still things that I want. There’s a person who I love and who I want to be enough for. There’s a life that I want in the city that I want and there’s a stretch of road that I want to walk home on. There’s stories that I want to write down.

What’s the use in dreaming all that up if it’s just going to be taken again and again by a future that seems bleak because it will be? Because no matter how bleak the future, those are the things that I want. No matter how difficult it becomes to find them, those are the things I’m looking for. 

That dream we all used to have–and I mean “we” in the macro–the house and the spouse and the kids and the lawn, whatever–that hasn’t been viable for a long time. And we all know why–the near impossibility of home ownership etc. But guys, if we’re picking a dream, any dream, why would we waste one on that? Who cares that we can’t own a house. I wanna be a weird artist.

And so I look at Phoebe, right? And I realize that she is living a version of this–a kind of new(ish) collective dream. And by this I don’t mean celebrity–there’s nothing noble in dreaming for celebrity. You may as well be dreaming of the lawn and the wife and the hot neighbor and the riding lawnmower because one, you aren’t gonna get it and two, if you do it’ll probably suck anyway. 

No, not celebrity. Phoebe is singing about her dad. About ex boyfriends. How they make her sick. She’s singing in front of 10,000 people on a stage made out of a canyon wall. To be able to tell stories to people who want to hear them and for that to be the art that makes 10,000 voices raw at the end of the night. Yeah, that’s really something. The dream is to be an artist, now. And I guess it always has been. The dream is to use the pain we’ve felt–that’s been inflicted on us by ourselves or by assholes–to make something. And for that to be enough to live off of. 

I don’t want a lawn. And I don’t ever want to feel like I have nothing left to say.

But, thing is, I don’t need 10,000 heavy-breathing spectators. I’m happy too, to be a spectator. Other people’s dreams are worth watching, ya know. They’re worth rooting for–they’re beautiful. That’s why we fall in love, dear reader. That’s why we have best friends. 

We can get so caught up in the pursuit of our own dreams that we forget there are people right beside us with stories too. Beautiful ones. Yeah, I wanna tell my own stories and I want them to matter somehow, but I want to hear yours, too. I want that new, collective dream to be all of us facing each other. Not all of us facing a stage. 

I had a dream last night (the unconscious, I-have-a-fever kind) that I was alone in a strange city without directions or a clue. In the dream, I started walking. I seemed to be going home, without knowing where exactly that meant. I kept stopping to pick up things I had dropped from my arms, and so getting anywhere was taking a damn long time. I realized after while, that all the things I was carrying (that I hadn’t taken note of till I dropped them) were somehow enough to make sense of where I was.

We don’t want the same things we used to–we can’t want the same things we used to. It seems to be a huge ask to hope we’re still around–to grow old in a world that isn’t trying to kill us.

Luckily, I’m still getting older. I’ve had a birthday since last we spoke. I’m not sad, I’m not worried or concerned. I don’t feel like I haven’t accomplished enough. I don’t feel jealous of other brunettes with bangs my age who’ve “accomplished” more than I have. Our dreams aren’t the same, you see–they’re relative to places we’ve been.

My dreams are small sometimes. And I think that’s fine.

I graduated college since last we spoke. I feel like it’s important for me to tell you that it isn’t college that’s important–it’s doing the thing you wanted to do, but were told that you couldn’t. It’s being in recovery from anorexia for nearly 4 years and not allowing the lowest lows you’ve ever felt to starve you again.

I know I am exceptional, even if only because I have dreams I won’t give up on. There are so many things that I want.

I wanted this essay to be “Phoebe Bridgers and the American Dream: How making millions of dollars from trashing your ex on stage in front of 10,000 people is about as cool as it gets.” Thing is, I couldn’t write that because it’s so insincere.

I want to write, and smoke cigarettes on porches. And I wanna grow old, ya know? I wanna grow old and be happy.

I love you.

Take care. 

I cannot say everything will be okay, dear reader, because I do not like to lie to you. I am also an incredibly bad liar. Not in the cute, quirky (mostly insufferable) way–I don’t look down through my eyelashes and giggle–no no. I lie like a 5 year old with chocolate chip mouth. Humiliated.

Like the “fake it till you make it” bullshit doesn’t work for me. I’ve never been able to “fake it”–which is both a sincere compliment to my boyfriend and a bummer for my job prospects.

In conversation, if someone makes a reference I don’t understand, I give myself away immediately. I have a very expressive face, see–huge eyes–very mobile eyebrows. And god forbid someone sees my mouth. After two years of masks it’s about to give away a secret I didn’t even know I had. 

Like now, see. My roommate is “jamming” with their “homies”. They are playing no less than a djembe (it’s a drum–sounds like a bongo) with a guitar, and a keyboard. I’m in my room with headphones on, and if they dare ask me (when I’m brave or perhaps hungry enough to leave my room) how they sound, I will be forced to say something like, “That is for sure a djembe.”

There’s no possible way I can “fake it till I make it”. I will one hundred percent have to “make it” first. What exactly I’m making remains to be seen, but lying to you is not happening. And that’s okay–it is. Because now we can talk candidly, dear sweet baby reader, about what the hell is going on. 

Nobody has come here for my political take, and I am fully aware of that. Instead, then, I’ll tell you that numbers online–number of casualties number of troops number of ways things can go wrong–distill beyond recognition so much complexity.

We see a problem and we want a solution, right? That’s human. Say, a house–you want to build a house. This is a complicated endeavor–complicated meaning that it may be difficult, but with the right plan and the right resources, there is a straightforward solution. Foundation, walls, roof, etc.

Take a city–take a country. You want to build one. There are so many moving parts–so many actors–so much that is ethically gray–that there cannot be a single, straightforward solution. This is complex. Complex meaning that any potential solution is multifaceted, and changing all the time. It means that the success of any attempted solution relies on the actors’ participation–and further, their participation in the same direction. 

The horrific violence taking place in Ukraine is a complex issue, and its solution is, of course, beyond my understanding. I do think, however, that really acknowledging the importance of every single actor–every person fighting or fleeing or pulling the strings–is absolutely the only way for us to view this atrocity. These are people, dear reader, before they make a country. 

Reading stats may feel productive–to know as much as you can gives a fleeting and false sense of control. But dear reader, we don’t have control. And with this realization comes the herculean task of trusting.

We read people’s stories–see their lives and struggles truly—as messily complex as they are. We listen. We do what we can.

I love you so much. Take excellent care of yourself, please. 

X. Al

To start somewhere in the middle, writing is a big fat joke. We build to such a great height, and hope that whoever’s reading will fall at exactly the right time. Like an orgasm, or a fucking pickup line. It can be incredible, and it can be disgusting. The joke–the radical shift in perspective–comes somewhere between sincerity and manipulation. 

Writing my story, on its own, is catharsis–but put it in a mask and it’s art (maybe.) Put vulnerability in a mask and you’re able to make it a story that people might listen to.

I think about this a lot–how people tend to only say things they truly mean when their words are cloaked in a kind of separation. I do this too–here. I have a screen and anonymity between us, dear reader. It doesn’t make what I write any less true, it just makes it easier for me to get the words out. 

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Right? Oscar Wilde, man. Total smart guy. I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot this week.

This week has been difficult for me–staring in the mirror for extended periods of time is not new to me. I have dissected myself–my body my face my skin–every day for the past twenty years (I assume before 5 I was somewhat more carefree.)

I have analyzed every part of my face and body thousands of times, so looking in the mirror doesn’t feel powerful in the way that I would like it to–it always feels familiar. In an eerie way. 

I think about closing my eyes–about imagining that I am someone else, somewhere else, in order to get through big feeling moments. I separate myself from myself, because looking at who I am with no distance can be too much. Overwhelming.

This doesn’t work as a mask, though–this doesn’t help me tell the truth. When I’m hiding in this way, I’m not really there at all.

I think the necessary distinction is that in these moments, I am hiding from myself. Telling the truth while hiding from yourself is impossible. It just is. You won’t be able to find it.

We could talk about masks literally. We could talk about the impact that wearing masks for the past two years has had on us. And yes, absolutely, of course I think that masks are necessary and important and I don’t plan to stop wearing one. I have noticed, though, that I am better able to interact with the world when half my face is covered. 

I am absolutely less afraid to be seen when there’s less of me to see. 

Now for me, this definitely has to do with insecurity. But it also has to do with what Wilde is saying–give me a mask and I’ll tell you the truth. 

I am afraid once I take the mask off, everything will change. Ridiculous though it sounds, covering half my face has been a huge part of my recovery. Being mostly hidden has been oddly powerful for me.

I know I cannot hide behind a mask forever, and I don’t intend to, I promise. But it taught me that my inability or unwillingness to interact with the world around me was founded entirely on the belief that I should not and do not deserve to be seen. That I should not be looked at. 

It’s ridiculous to think about, but my God is it true. 

Have you ever worn a wig? Have you ever tried on a wig and felt powerful and new and really fucking weird? I once wore a wig to the grocery store, just because I liked it and was having a bad day. I felt stupid, of course–it was a silly thing to do. But it was interesting to look entirely different for that supremely strange 20 minutes. Good interesting, except I felt like a pathetic celebrity walking her dog or something. 

And in fact, musicians (non-pathetic ones) wear masks too–they adopt personas and embody them. Through this change in identity they tell their own story. We see it all the time–masks make for great fucking music.

Writers do this–to some extent all fiction is one’s own story, masked. C.A. Conrad wrote Amanda Paradise as Amanda Paradise. And it is the most gorgeous collection of poetry I have read in a good, long while. 

I don’t think there’s a black and white answer to this, dear reader. I don’t think it is good or bad to need a mask in order to tell the truth. I just think it’s true sometimes.  

And I think learning why is important to me.

I love you.

Al