Hey Loners,
I write to you as my neurotransmitters plummet like Gamestop stocks.
Perhaps serotonin is the OG cryptocurrency and I wish to God someone had told me to cash in on those chemical coins long ago.
Feeling like the inner tube of your beloved fixed gear bicycle with a pinprick hole in my belly button and you won’t know until it’s time to go that I’ve deflated. I had a beloved bicycle once. It was an old thing I found on craigslist that had a gorgeous metallic violet frame and I named it Apollonia. She was a hip taller than me and it was thrilling to ride her but I couldn’t handle it. I wanted to be tall enough to ride her beautiful frame. Our first ride together I took her down a hill and I used to live somewhere where at night the roads were filled with fog, foxes, and furry woodland critters.
Landed in a thicket of thorns with a scream relatively unscathed. I can’t believe it now. I could’ve broken my neck at midnight and no one would’ve known I had ever left the house. Apollonia belongs to someone else now. To go back to the image of the inner tube I want to say that I feel empty but that concept isn’t quite true. There’s something remaining, the reminisce of a vibe, the story of how we were together and now it’s just verbs changing tense like the gears my bike didn’t have.
Thought I’d write to you tonight about New York City, about hot wax and wine spilling on the back of my calf or quietly eating a burrito barefoot in Williamsburg but I’ll admit I’m exhausted. This week I can’t quite seem to do anything right and I’m feeling a bit like Jude Law in the movie Gattaca. There’s this feeling like maybe I got so close to be the best but now I’m broken beyond repair and no ambition. I thought I’d write to you about how I can see the glitter of my silver shoes and the tears that fell in the Bowery Ballroom because upon being asked how do you know your friend is your best friend and I said “they feel like home.” It’s true but in that way I hated going home after school because it sucked. I wanted to stay where everyone else was, I wanted to stay in the light and be seen and not left alone.
In the sixth grade I was tested for reading comprehension and given the short story about the little girl left in the closet on Venus. I began to cry. The proctor of the exam asked if I was okay and I said “I’m on Venus and I can’t see the sun. My friends often feel like the homes I dreamed of as a kid and the homes I cannot afford. My friend bends to smell roses, explaining they’ve been eager to see the autumnal blooms and I’ve been wondering why it’s only now I can appreciate these this view. A simple curve of spine and bliss. I have a photograph from four years ago of this very view but it was summer. I’m delighted but scared because I can hear the flute again, I can hear the blast beats of how much I want this to last.
Hear the wind howl tonight and I feel the sound inside of my chest.
I’m trying to make sense of the last few weeks and also just aging irrelevant. I think about how hard we’ve made aging as I age and I hate it. I don’t recall any whimsy of growing up because everything is harder. Sometimes I am at a party and I have no idea what anyone is talking about and it feels like paradise and armageddon all at once. Someone explains that “no bones” tiktok to me and it feels nice to listen and be stupid. Sometimes I can hear that flute from Death Of Salesman. You know? The one that Willy Loman hears? What’s that flute playing? Would you give Arthur Miller the aux? For me the death rattle is the dance beat from the 2006 eurodance techno hit “Every time We Touch” by Cascada.
I hear it all the time. I’m looking at dead president mausoleums and I hear a body rolling grind. I look around and it’s just the last person of my class rounding the corner leaving me behind. I am stocking the canned tomato aisle at work and I see that the label say “and every time we kiss, I reach for the sky” Sometimes I’m just doing my laundry and I hear the pulse and warm breeze of the bubblegum track wafting from the oxyclean.
I look around and see nothing. I left my headphone in the house and my phone is in my pocket and still.
I am on hold with Amtrak outside of the bathrooms of a department store in Soho. I’m one of those people that says Houston like the Texan city and not Houston like there’s a housing crisis. I’m sitting on the hold when I swear I hear that unmistakeable beat. I whisper to myself “can’t you feel my heart beat fast, I want this to last” and I look up and a woman is staring at me. I’m pacing back and forth in from to measuring cups for pets. I feign an interest in the devices to avoid her gaze. There are many different measuring cups and they range in portability. Some of them look kinda cool. I began wondering if I’m allowed to have measuring cups made for dogs and if anyone would notice. I suspect I’d be wildly embarrassed if someone came into my home and pointed out that I was scooping rice with a dog-damn cup. A cup for dogs.
Come home to things pickled, to thicc mothers forming on amber liquids as wine ferments and also the smell of cold. Left the window open before I left and now everything smells like autumn, dirt. Pickled mustard greens, tomatillos, dandelion greens.
1 cup of water
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1 star of anise
1 bay leaf
4-5 cloves
1-12 (lol) clove garlic gently crushed
Cup of vegetables.
Combin water, vinegar and spices in a sauce pan over a flame. Heat until the sugar dissolves. When warm pour over your vegetables. Let it cool to room temperature before covering and putting in the fridge. I usually wait a day or two before trying.
Made the brine and then added in different herbs and spices. Sometimes I used chilis, sometimes I used coriander seeds, sometimes I used dill. In the last batches I used cane sugar vinegar because it was all I had last. That created one of the most caustic brines in my opinion but it’s a work in progress.
A month or so ago I peeled several lbs of apples and made apple butter and apple cider vinegar. I was in New York City and upon being asked what’s new, I began talking about my new mother. I can’t remember if I explained but I’m sure I told anyone I could about my ferments. I need more jars, I need better tongs, it’s cold out now, I hope my mother isn’t too cold.
Soon I’ll write to you and say maman died today and you’ll send condolences in the form of probiotic capsules and kombucha.
Drink something warm tonight. I am boiling cloves, lemon rinds, ginger that I will pour into a cup of honey. I await its warmth.
I want it to last.
Godspeed loners,
KX