My Perennial Room
I’ve been waking up when the sun lifts its first edge over my neighbor’s house and throws itself into my room.
Hello! Thank you for being here. Writing to you from the small universe of my apartment to yours.
Reclining Nude Holding a Book by Félix Vallotton
My Perennial Room
I’ve been waking up when the sun lifts its first edge over my neighbor’s house and throws itself into my room. I don’t own curtains, a strange choice maybe but I’ve never liked them. I whip my arm over my eyes the way someone in a movie might if the curtains are pulled open with a dramatic yank. Then, I wiggle myself over to a corner of the bed where the sun isn’t and remember I have the whole stretch of the day to myself.
I’ve always liked being alone. The same way I like being suspended in the in-between space of a bus or a train or a car ride, places with windows to peer out of and people that don’t require much from me but make me feel like I’m part of something. I miss the in-between spaces. I miss watching someone apply lipstick when the train steadies, feeling the weight of the person next to me when it lurches to a halt (sorry! they would say, shifting back to their side of the seat).
I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into the intricate world of my apartment. One that consists of mismatched plates of food: a smear of peanut butter, sweet pickles, yuzu jam and tuna, choosing a sequined top to wear with my sweatpants and showering in the middle of the day not to clean myself but just to stand in the water. It helps that I have a mirror to the right of my writing desk when I feel the need to be witnessed.
I can trick myself into thinking that my ideal day is one when I am completely unmoored—when I don’t have a meeting or concrete plan with a friend but rather work I can do on my own time. And then it’s just me and time is shapeless like a popsicle left out in the sun that melts into a bright sugary puddle of goo.
And I start canceling plans at the last minute: the hike I said I would go on early in the morning or calling my aunt back on the day I said I would because I’m sure that all I want is to be alone. And like milk that turns in the fridge overnight, the formless days start to sour. I’m bringing my coffee back into bed, where I scroll my phone until it gets hot in my hand and riding some wave between caffeinated and fatigued from the screen’s blue light. I’m pulling a cold, precooked turkey sausage from the fridge, spooning grainy mustard on it while leaning against the counter and calling it lunch. I’m licking the round edges of the tuna can. Pretending I can’t hear my phone ring across the room. The ceiling sags inward and my sweatpants are suddenly too soft, the jam I dropped in my yogurt, saccharine and I’m slamming things shut.
And all I want is to be next to someone pulling their hair back behind their ears, shifting in their seat between sentences. I want the feeling of tight unyielding denim around my legs and a hard heel that makes my calves ache by the end of the day. I want to witness someone drop a bag of oranges on the sidewalk and scramble to help pick them up. And I leave the house and walk with a friend and their presence feels like cold water to the face and the air feels sharp and I feel brand new.
Once, in a writing workshop, my professor said something about character that I will never forget. She said what the characters in your story want should be visible on the page and should change from scene to scene, but what they really want is what the book is about. I remember how she stood up from her chair to write what she had said on the board, the way she did when she said something she wanted us all to remember.
What do you want? the white chalk squeaked and her script got larger, taking up more and more black space, What do you really want?
And this is what I keep coming back to. Sometimes what I think I want in a moment isn’t what I really want. I have layers of desire that I pull from like a fist of straws in front of me and I have to try to pick the longest one. And there are times when doing the opposite of what I think will feel good in the moment can make me feel better later. Just like how the anticipation before you jump into a lake is the hardest part and then you will yourself to lift from the rock and suddenly you’re submerged in the cold, blue water and it alters you for a moment before you break the surface to come up for air.
Things I Read & Recommend
The definitions of these two words: Solastalgia: a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change. Clinomania: an excessive desire to stay in bed.
This short fiction piece, The Waves by Gina Nutt in Joyland on listlessness and distraction. I loved it for its chaos and questions.
“ I want to shave the bar of soap with a box cutter, mold slime between my fingers, whisper into spongy microphone foam. I want to know if touching the slime feels as good as watching. Does saying the words feel as tingly as listening. Is it more satisfying being the person flaking the soap to fragments?”
If you want a poem that will knock you over: What The Living Do by Marie Howe.
This illustrated essay, Indoor Feeling by Lena Moses-Schmitt.
I’ll read any profile or interview that E. Alex Jung writes and this one is with Sohla from Bon Appetit on why she left.
“Sohla?” the video begins. “Do you have a minute?” The stars of Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen have so many questions, and Sohla El-Waylly is like their own human Alexa: Sohla, how do you temper chocolate? Sohla, how do you pronounce turmeric? . . .“The Test Kitchen is really fun as long as you play your role, and I didn’t like the role I was put in,” El-Waylly says. “It became increasingly frustrating to become a sidekick to people with significantly less experience than me.” The interview ends, “Toni Morrison once said, “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.”
This Adrianne Lenker profile in the New Yorker and one of her new songs I listen to on a loop and enter some kind of fugue state.
My midday snack of peanut butter and jam on a spoon with salt on top.
Every Single Person Has a Right to Housing an important piece by Alexis Zanghi for Jacobin. I liked it for its description of a general need for more “third places” spaces defined as free, communal spaces where “people can be alone together.”
Elsa Majimbo is the best person on the internet.
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading. Popsicle guy below was drawn by my friend Vivian Ponte-Fritz.
