supposed to be writing (#27)
...on avocados and audio notes
writing is hard, and people suggested that i try talking to myself, recording it and then seeing where that goes, and this is sort of the result of that.
i hate waiting and yet i am the most patient person i know.
i’ve been trying to write about this experience with an avocado for months at this point, but the problem, maybe, is that it doesn’t start with something seen. it’s a feeling—a waiting—for one of the five to six fruits in the unripe bag to transition from inkgreen to rippled black. there have been many failed avocados & i have only myself to blame, because i am in the habit of buying them. they live under my coffee in a flat fruit bowl (italian lemon painted on the bottom, crack glued together on the side) and i check on them like a houseplant: when it is yours you can be rougher. the avocados are temperamental, taking up residence like punctuation next to the aging box of dates and a cohort of sprouting potatoes. i don’t know if they are too warm in their place, but one morning, i made my coffee and i made something new for breakfast and i checked my avocados like normal people check their email. i knew this one was perfect, i knew immediately this was the moment. then i only wanted half.
to closely paraphrase barthes : “an orange fell in love with a courtesan. “i shall be yours,” she told him, “when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window.” But on the ninety-ninth night, the orange stood up, put his stool under his arm, and rolled away.” i love the commas,
but the problem with waiting is that it surprises you. you practice waiting and think the next time you’ll be prepared. i peeled a persimmon a day or two too soon, and i didn’t want to admit it, that the edges were tinged with unripe acridity. if i had waited, it would have been sweeter,
but perfection’s intimidating, goodness terrifying, and you are always losing the moment to time—you don’t get to linger because each second lasts only and exactly for a second. you’re going along and the scenery sinks, or dissolves, or blurs from photorealism to a brushed out mess. someone told me i am an infinite fishing line, giving and taking. this isn’t my image but it keeps me afloat, washes me out to the edge of the cove, lets me hover in a depth where my feet don’t graze the bottom.
– feed me
soup 1 and soup 2; fried egg and sourdough toast; $12 martinis and happy hour oysters; pantry-staples lunch; travel-to-middle-brooklyn collab donuts, concord grape filling; dr. brown’s (cream and cel-ray), hal’s vc seltzer, diet coke, temporarily; thai noodles, and not having to choose; stella artois in the fridge; free refills of coffee, drip coffee with a double shot; my bagel guy knowing: poppy bagel, toasted, with scallion tofu; clementines are in season.
– read me
a line in the world (i’ve exclusively thought of it as ‘grey Danish book’) : thought this would be a suitable subway read, but it’s either hard to get into, or the wrong non-fiction subgenre to hold my attention (don’t forget about underland: a deep time journey). i stopped carrying it around because it got too heavy
mrs. dalloway, virginia woolf : “Well, I’ve had my fun; I’ve had it, he thought, looking up at the swinging baskets of pale geraniums. And it was smashed to atoms—his fun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, this escapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better part of life, he thought—making oneself up; making her up; creating an exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd it was, and quite true; all this one could never share—it smashed to atoms.”
sylvia plath reading her own poetry
the friend, sigrid nunez : a national book award winner, i’m only partially through this one. but it’s worth mentioning as 1. a book about writing (also grief) and 2. certain passages that are — well the passages aren’t unsuspecting, i am, i get caught up in the protagonist’s book reviews or other brief and minor commentary, and for a moment i’m fully exposed to the writing, fully committed to the suspension of disbelief, my guard down.
i have a few big stacks piling up for the new year, including man booker winners and goncourt short lists
– list me
{for drc + i wanted a shorthand record of this (extremely) long year, but my top reads will probably show up in this format next time.}
reading
asics (luxembourg, riverside)
erykah always
eggs and bread, universally
colors: tinted glass, ceramic blue, tonal patterns, prints, hand painted yellow, old stuff, orange puffer & matching knit balaclava
people: my people, new people, you people. talented, beautiful, wise friends.
public transportation