Easter Journal

fiction again obviously, and poems at the end

How is it possible not to present yourself as a rather contemptible figure? It isn’t.

A sharp ache radiated from within my abdomen, near the back though, and it hurt as I inhaled slowly. I wondered if my appendix or spleen or something burstable might be bursting, but I thought probably not, and wondered why I felt excited by the idea.

Target was closed for Easter, oddly, so I aimlessly walked into the bodega next door. The shrink-wrapped meatballs in the little tub in the deli case were compelling.

“Just the meatballs?”

“Yeah, no, I mean the Meatball Parmesan. So whatever comes with it”

“Okay, make yourself comfortable.”

“Okay?”

“Every day is blessing brother. Every day you are alive is blessing. There is beauty everywhere. Everything is shit but God is good and life is beautiful. Everything is shit but you have -”

“Could I get some yellow peppers on it too?”

“You got it boss.”

“Are you always so wise?”

“You have to know that every day is blessing.”

He gives me my sandwich which I walk back up 6 flights of stairs to eat at the little table with one chair besides the window facing the brick wall. We are on the top floor so you can sort of see some sky over the wall.

I thought about the play I saw last night and the methods of projecting cultural capital, primarily accomplished through setting, referentiality, and fernet, and considered how I will eventually transition my writing from the populist substack diary to an elitist, autofictional journal. I have already planned to change my substack pseudonym from Fred to Friedrich, once the time is right. I will begin to sprinkle in, gratuitously, references to Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Flaubert. The longer I am in New York the more I realize this is all it takes to join the petit bougousie. The most prestigious of Bourdieu’s aesthetic fields is mere pastiche and performativity.

Then I went to the library and read Their Eyes Were Watching God. I think I made eye contact with one girl a couple times who I have seen around. We read on the same floor. The book described the first free mule of the town, liberated from its negligent owner by the mayor. It soon dies beneath a pear tree and is given two funerals, one by man and a second by vulture. Maybe I will introduce myself next time I see her. Probably not though. The paper birch look exceptionally white from above, tic-tac-toeing over the empty square.

At the play I did meet a Russian tattoo artist. Her teeth were a little crooked but I found it attractive. I think she is older than me but that’s fine for now. She snowboards and reads Heidegger and has tattoos so she is probably not the one. But then again, I don’t really know what the one looks like.

During the intermission Nino and I talked to a chubby ginger guy with a little black beanie on who asked Nino if he was a creative:

“What does it mean to be a creative?”

“Do you make art?”

“I don’t know, what does it mean to make art?”

I might as well just say what play, for the aforementioned reasons: Gasda. It was good, mostly.

One of the actresses, a blonde girl with two symmetrical tattoos which looked like musical notes along the front of her pelvis, made eye contact with me. She was beautiful and I wanted to say hi to her but we left so quickly that it didn’t happen. Someone connect me with her and I will be in your debt. The eye contact may have been disinterested though. I’ve been wrong before. I was the hungover guy with a buzzcut.

When the intermission came to an end and the chubby ginger with the little black hat came back, he said:

“I just talked to no less than 3 beautiful women, where do they come from?”

“All over the world. I’ve been tracking them. Thats why I am here,” I say

“Are you from New York?” he asks Nino

“No, I’m gay so I’m in New Jersey”

“Are you?”

“Gay? Yes”

“No, living in new jersey?”

“Also yes.”

I watched The Worst Person in the World when I got home It was rather devastating and I wanted to curse whoever told me to watch it. I forget who it was. I was drunk then too, I think. I saw myself in the girl who was always leaving and the man dying of cancer.

I talked to my mom on the phone two days ago for the first time in a month or so and she told me she may have cancer. I start trying to write into my notes app but I am too drunk and my eyes are wet. I managed to get very little out:

“I think about how you died 4 years ago and I have been here, living the unremarkable life that every person lives. I ask myself if you’re really missing out on much. I can’t help but say yes, you are. It’s very important. All this.”

This was to my friend, Lily. It sounds so cliche to say but she was one of the best people I have ever met. Genuinely selfless. But she was. Why is this so cliche?

After the library I walk toward Soho and over hear a woman with too much make up and probably expensive clothes on say “$8000 isn’t that bad for Cartier. It’s an investment.” We stare at each other and I can’t help but feel she is embarrassed.

I feel like I am watching myself in a movie, because that’s what it feels like to walk through Soho, hungover with a scarf and black boots. I stop in a record store even though I don’t have a record player then leaf through the posters, debating whether I want to present myself to the women I will have in my room (who else could a poster be for?) as a Depche Mode, Billy Idol, or Led Zeppelin-guy. Zeppelin would likely be my choice, even though Depeche Mode would be cooler, because the Zeppelin would be more authentic, but I don’t like the actual image of the Zeppelin that much so I just buy a poster for a movie I don’t know.

When I got home I read a lot of my journal entries from before I moved to New York. It is hard to know if you have more or less talent than you think. You write something and think its brilliant, you wait a couple days and think its shit, then you wait a couple months and think its brilliant again. We are probably just interested in our own lives. Are you interested in my life? So strange to read the strangers writing. Every 6 months I don’t recognize the man I was. And yet I do? Someone tell me I have talent. Someone tell me I am worthy of love.

I’m putting in a Zyn. I’m just going to post this om substack cuz fuck it. lol. Ill post some imagist, high-culture bullshit next, don’t you worry. Life is shit but God is good. I miss you Lily. I miss you mom. Everything is going to be okay.

Every day is a blessing

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Some older poems because this is the only way anyone will read them:

PS. Sorry for bailing on our plans today Taylor. I hope you understand.