it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous

In Favor of One's Time 
                          Frank O'Hara 

The spent purpose of a perfectly marvellous
life suddenly glimmers and leaps into flame
it's more difficult than you think to make charcoal
it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring
in the mirrored room of this consciousness
it's practically a blaze of pure sensibility
and however exaggerated at least somethings going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected
will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat

an angel flying slowly, curiously singes its wings
and you diminish for a moment out of respect
for beauty then flare up after all that's the angel
that wrestled with Jacob and loves conflict
as an athlete loves the tape, and we're off into
an immortal contest of actuality and pride
which is love assuming the consciousness of itself
as sky over all, medium of finding and founding
not just resemblance but the magnetic otherness
that that that stands erect in the the spirit's glare
and waits for the joining of an opposite force's breath

so come the winds into our lives and last
longer than despair's sharp snake, crushed before it conquered
so marvellous is not just a poet's greenish namesake
and we live outside his garden in pure tempestuous rights


(hbd, frankie.)

truth

It's amazing that I ever forget how good it feels to write.

that ain't all sam'll do for you

random act of bravery

I threw myself a birthday party.

My iPhone shattered and I locked myself out of my apartment. I wore silk on silk and rocked it like a grandma in lounge pyjamas. The icing got all over everything. The next day my head felt like it might explode from cheap tequila, my weapon of choice. What I remember: the door continuing to open, and people I love flooding in. The friend who asked me to close my eyes and then placed the flower crown he had made for me on my head - all because I dreamt it, and told him. I remember a moment I stole for myself in the bathroom, when I realized my cat-eyes had smudged across my brow and nose and I thought seriously about hiding in the shower for the rest of the night, arrested by panic and anxiety, knowing in that moment I would probably never throw myself a party again. But then everyone sang my name.

I turned 29 years old. You made me a cake. It's time to stop being so afraid that everyone will leave and never come back.

things you don't know about me (yet)

1. I have this sleep app on my iPhone. I have it set to a mixture of 2 parts "Beach (small waves)" and 1 part "Heavy Rain."
2. I am happy with my appearance maybe 1% of the time, and all of those times occur when I accidentally catch myself in a mirror or the glass of an elevator, something in reflection where I think, "Oh, she's pretty," before my brain hiccups and I realize I'm staring at myself. I would say 99% of that 1% happens because I'm wearing bright lipstick.
3. Sometimes I go searching for you late at night.
4. When I was maybe 13 I was playing with a baby and I lifted her up too high and smacked her head against the door frame. We both went wide-eyed with shock and I could swear that she looked at me like, "I know what you just did." She cried and I handed her back to her mom and I never told anyone about it. I don't even know who that baby belonged to.

hopeful

via even cleveland 

random act of this thing i did that was stupid and hateful

Last night I went to Anthropologie with the express purpose of buying a blazer with which to increase my professionalism, productivity, and general sense of self (didn't work; see aforementioned boobs), but instead I fell for this super awesome and frivolous beaded clutch.

I hemmed and hawed and finally, bolstered by the thought of how adorable said clutch would look against my summer skin (same as my winter skin, maybe slightly more red), decided to buy it. I was in line to check out when I literally thought, "You don't deserve this." Then I turned around, climbed over the rope line, and left the store.

I don't DESERVE a $40 beaded clutch? What kind of bullshit self-hatred is that? It's International Women's Day, for fuck's sake. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually babysitting my 15-year-old self, all Fiona Apple and body dysmorphia, scrubbing her spit-covered thumb against the pen lines someone drew between the freckles on her legs, terrified to the point of inner collapse before she even made it down the stairs for breakfast.

Have some champagne, kid. We're gonna go buy you that clutch. And a new bright pink lipstick. 13 years from now you'll even be bold enough to wear it.

things i wish were better than they are

- The Mindy Project
- hummus
- the ending of Ali Smith's There but for the
- my wardrobe

we strive towards the higher we

George: The one sort of obvious thing is that there’s a big gulf between all of those thousands of in-the-moment typing bursts and what I would consider “the literary” - and that is revision. For me, that process of taking a first draft and working with it over a period of months is EVERYTHING. That’s where a person finds out what he really means and (you could argue) who he really IS. So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, “to blurt, is to be.” The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realizes - well, that neither one is “really” you, but that the considered version might represent a “higher” you - brighter, less willing to coast or condescend, funnier, and (mysteriously) also, I think, kinder.

 - A George Saunders gchat in the Paris Review.

so show me where you fit

So here are some things that happened this week.

The new James Blake single has been on serious rotation.

Someone over at Pitchfork compared his vocals to D'Angelo, which I love, because who doesn't love D'Angelo? I want you to show me the human being who doesn't love D'Angelo, and I will show you - I don't know, I don't even want to think about it. I love D'Angelo in a very passive way, but every now and then (not often enough), "Untitled" will be playing somewhere, and that thing happens where the world melts a little and everyone around you suddenly seems fascinating and sexy and wild and alive. Also that profile on ?uestlove in the New Yorker was really great, and D'Angelo seemed very difficult, which weirdly endears me to him even more, like he's actually this deeply shy man who just wants to sit at home and read scholarly articles on post-war American architecture, but there's this fire burning in him and he has to do something about it or die.

That was a tangent. James Blake sings, "we're alone now / we're alone now / we're alone now / I'll wait." He gets it.

I had two short pieces in The Billfold this week. The friend I interviewed for the first made the observation that the commenters over there are some of the most astute, most kind, most generous he's ever encountered, and it's true. They offer incisive, thoughtful feedback, almost unheard of in the world of internet commenters. Never change, Billfold. I feel really lucky to be part of that community.

I monetized my feelings about Valentine's Day in the second, maybe my own attempt to diffuse a day that remains fairly loaded despite all efforts to shrug it off. I was unhelpfully reminded of last year, when I was lucky enough to spend the evening with someone extremely dear to me, someone with whom I no longer have a relationship. The day has the unfortunate effect of highlighting absence rather than wealth, which is honestly what I have - a wealth of love. I shoved some of that love onto my coworkers and then took my friend out for dinner and a play. The timing was awkward: someone he loves is slipping from him, and he looked me in the eye and said, firmly, "I will never love again." It's not true - he will, he is too full of love not to - but goodness. It's hard, isn't it? I wanted to put my hands against his cheek.

It's hard. It is hard. All of it. Having been back in the dating game for a few weeks now, I'm starting to feel the inevitable fatigue. I tried to explain this with as much earnestness as I could muster after two pitchers of margaritas on Friday. "I want to be seen," I think I said, by which I meant that I want to be judged not on what I am or am not saying, my actions or lack thereof, all of the negotiation and game-playing that feels fundamental and inherent to dating, but rather just - I just want to be seen. That's really it. Even sober, it's the same sentiment: I would like someone to see me for my wholeness, and not as the sum of these carefully plotted behaviors. This is what exhausts me most about dating - not the endless parade of messages and drinks and the hope and the resignation, but the behind-the-curtain-ness of it all, the smoke screen, the haze. If there's an upside, it's that it makes me that much more grateful for my friends, the ones with whom I can drink two pitches of margaritas and then say things like, "I WANT TO BE SEEN."

This tribute to David Rakoff is beautiful, and offers a lesson I'm trying to appropriate and remember: Don't trade up. "Don’t grade friendships on a hierarchical scale. Don’t value people based on some external indicator of status. Don’t take a competitive view of your social life." Here, here.

Also, go get 'em, Connie Britton.