Hey Loners,
How come it takes death to remind us how precious life is? How come Aesop fables don’t stick? I’m reading about the difference between reach and impression in social media metrics. What matters is engagement— the depth of the connection between influencer and audience. What’s your engagement rate to your community?
I reckon mine is quite low, if I’m honest. I’m somewhere near the rings of Saturn and feeling awful and silly to tell people how much I love them after being shocked by the fear that you may lose again but losing is the game, right? I surrender. I hate games. Soon we will all be on the other side this, too and have passed, you know?
Text: I can’t wait to see you. Text: Just want to let you know. Text: I love you so much. Text: I know it’s impossible. Text: It’s absolutely insane. Text: If I buy you horchata will you drink it? Text: I’ll work through the week. I can focus on work because it’s meaningless. I’ll take off Monday.
Set myself to out-of-office to go buy flowers.
3/3/22 1:20AM
On my way to the airport in February, my uber driver is listening to the radio. In my planner, I write, "my heart feels like an island, am I an island? Why am I alone when I don't want to be? What kinda tectonic force could force an island to become a peninsula? Big bang? Is that love? Collide into me. Or rather is love the canoe built and the person it carries to me? I'd rather not be alone right now."
As we pull up to the airport, there's a jeep unloading camouflage and army green bags. I say, "Oh, I wonder if—" My driver says, "I was in the army, and they ain't sending nobody over there." I say I'm not sure what's going on, and I don't know anymore what's happening.
I'm blurry-eyed in the same airport sometime after twilight. I'm headed to baggage claim a week later, and every other surface is covered in fatigues. A man is sitting upright amongst filled sleeping bags playing his switch. I step over someone, and he excuses himself, "sorry, ma'am." I exit the airport and see people dropping off. There's a kiss and embrace. I have no idea what's going on, and I don't know anymore.
2/16/22
Sitting in the Noguchi Museum in Queens. I had a weird day. I don't live in New York. I'm in New York. I walked to Central Park. Central Park to the Ferry. I sat at the ferry and talked to a woman from the Bronx. I said I don't know what's happening anymore, and she said I'm afraid. A woman died when I woke up in New York City, and I threw up last night's Thai. I walked across Manhattan and took the ferry to Astoria. Never done this before. I'm talking to the woman, and I ask her about her family because she seems to love to tell me about her nephew. He's her buddy; he's her best friend. They walk Manhattan all day. They eat a little spot near the park and then keep walking. It's their favorite thing to do. She leaves me first and says, "you know where to go now, so go as I told you." I get on the ferry. Talked to P. on the phone for the first time. Now I'm sitting here thinking about it. It's so lovely to hear a voice that I had only heard one other time in my life for the second time. Does that make sense?
I could remember what P. sounded like, the rasp and giggle, but it more or less sounded more like the smell of the backyard we met in and the mosquito bites and the perfume of spilled beer. How alive I feel amongst the immutable stone of Noguchi's work. I am standing still next to a piece that makes me think of the last time I was in the desert, the first time. I'm longing to see some rocks. I want to see some exposed Earth. The day before, I saw Lotus at the Met, and we walked and talked about Grecian urns. Two poets amongst death and the act of preservation; it's intoxicating.
What more do I have left now but to see beauty in the hollowed artifices and change the definitions? Even at the end of times, there is a function of art as a war song, funereal hymn, and a dog-eared page holder to remind us that we were here. We seek ourselves in the hideous of now and discard values that don't bring us home. Hand in hand, I'm overwhelmed by the miraculous sensation of surviving lost time. This age of the broken clock and the warm and beloved palm in mine is the only construct I can define: the hearth.
3/11/22
Loners,
I miss you. My hands are damp from washing the rice for tomorrow's breakfast. I wish we could shake hands or maybe hug. It would start as a handshake. It might end as a hug. I don't know the next time I'll see you, and I'm not sure when the last time was because memory is a sieve and what's filtered through the mesh and what lumps perfectly on the top isn't within my grasp.
Sometimes I remember smells before I remember the date. I recall frayed hems of denim and the sound of voices from another room and laughter before I can remember the weather or what season or if it was this year or last. Keep saying something just happened, and I realize I mean two years ago. There's then, and there's post-pandemic. I feel like world history: BCE and ACE. What side of Christ am I on? I'm thinking about how often you cross my mind and perhaps how often I cross yours. Of course, I'm longing for a simpler time— I'm up late watching clips of Jackass, and I've cinched my hoodie close up to my nose.
Peering out into dumbass media of my youth when it meant something to hurt yourself for views, now we do it all the time and call it e-commerce. Can you imagine being the girl boss of pain? What essential oil blend would fill the bottle that's labeled cruelty?
My back hurts, and I keep saying I'll get a massage or go to a chiropractor, and yet. I want to hear my bones shake and rattle with furloughed intimacy. Hard times are present and ahead. Often think of doomsday peppers these days and what it'd feel like to prepare for the end. I buy a 25lb bag of rice, which lasts me through the winter. I suppose that's how it goes. I know I can eat rice. Sometimes I buy a bag of beans. These are my doomsday rituals. I'll film what I ate during the apocalypse video. Why I Wake Up At 430AM During The End Of Times (Sponsored By Squarespace.)
2/14/22
My brain broke, and I kept sighing and whispering, "how do I live like this? Damn, you live like this, oh, like the meme, do you live like this? Is this enough?" I'm on a train to New York. My brain broke, and I woke up crying, "why do I live like this, is this living if it's like this? How can I live like this, and am I enough?" I'm walking through Times Square, and it feels like the first time. It's cold out. I'm looking for the Empire State building. I always say I'll know when I see it and then walk past it. I'm rarely looking up. I love Valentine's day. Not being I love-love but I love 2 for $5 deals on symphony chocolate bars.
Buy a pair of underwear in times square, and the lace is cheap but sincere. I let myself in a room that isn't my own. The room owner isn't a hotelier but leaves me a clean towel and a small bar of soup: Eucalyptus and lavender. Reese sends me a text that says "live for me + eat for me" and $25. I buy jasmine tea, coconut ice cream, and bok choy in garlic sauce from a Thai spot on the upper east side. I sit alone in someone else's room. I can see the boxes that are for packing. I can feel the transition that's coming. I'm sitting on the floor, and I'm damp in new underwear. I don't love-love. I love martyrs. It's in my birth chart.
Somewhere In The Sky - United Airlines 3/2/22
I visited the desert and saw some faces I love and met some rocks that made me feel tough and touched the Earth and remembered how great it is to be alive. I asked E. & J. what they wanted to eat, and E.'s eyes lit up. She said, "Jook! No, risotto! Oh, I love risotto." It doesn't escape me that both are dishes of comfort. Soul warming and delicious. Rich but simple. It's cold in the desert, and it was cold at home, but I was alone there, and here I'm waking up to the soft scratches of a dog at 6:30 AM. I like how light folds the valley. It's so bright. I like how the dry air didn't cling to me but stung in memory. I often feel prickly at home, and it's weird how being in the sun and shadow of the desert, the howl of wind and cry of coyotes— I felt softened. I felt comforted. It had been a long time since I shared space, but I felt possessed by memory like last October when it was up the stairs and go, goes, go and take the L and dance all night.
J. is giving me advice, and we're walking up a hill. It stings a bit—the hill. I'm out of breathing. It seems when it comes to living— I'm out of shape.
03/09/22
Hey Loners,
Thanks for reaching out. I've gotten your texts, I've seen your emails, and I appreciate them. I used to think flat-earthers were absurd, but the way I be falling off the Earth— I'm open to arguments. I'm sorry, Galileo, I love you, but I've chosen the place where the sidewalk ends as my hometown.
There's so much going on, and I find myself stuck in news loops and workgroup chats, and I'm waxing, and I'm waning as I hold on for dear life. I'm doing my best. I'm pickling, poaching, and preserving every bit of joy I come across. I'm finding faith again. I told you in December that I do believe in angels, and I want to know what that means. It's cheap and sincere like the underwear I bought in Times Square.
I'm in the blue light of a bedroom, and it's morning. I've been places, and I'll be back soon— to you, to me, to my room and all things holy and lonely.
Life is wild. I don't know how to describe it. I've linked WCK for you to donate to in the past because what they do is nothing short of astounding. What’s happening is profoundly unreal and lately I keep thinking of what it means to prepare and after this lost time embracing loved ones…it means so much.
It became too much for me. I’m always in a machine, always in a grind and it’s harder to find courage. I felt like the falcon getting away from the falconer. I couldn't see myself anymore, and it became too much. I paused and found the only answer was to see myself not in my work or in the reflection of what I can make but in the eyes of those who love me.
What does it matter what these hands can do if miss the change to hold tightly to those I love—
Thank you, Loners.
Hold on.
Godspeed,
Kx
alone in my room is a weekly dispatch sometimes.