the new pretty committee #16
a lot left. 9/29/24
musings
when A told me everyone leaves new york, always leaves, always is leaving, maybe even already left, i thought it was a personal problem. maybe a lack of perspective from the forced intransience of four years of university. maybe some foundational insecurity. maybe some bad luck.
i hate to report that everyone leaves new york. i saw M for the last time today before she’s back to colombia. aside from that, four of my other best friends have left new york city since i started this newsletter. three acquaintances, if that matters. i sit in autumn quite content with my social life, but i also find myself profoundly feeling the missing of these people. the angst of the push and pull, the fear of the other shoes waiting above me. i love people a lot. it sucks when they go.
when people leave i am scared both of the fact that i am lonelier and that i could possibly enjoy that loneliness. i have been learning to live with myself more than i have been in the past but it is almost dizzyingly difficult to try to, say, spend a night to myself and be pleased with it. i feel untethered: if i slip and fall, i only have myself to catch me. there is a security to being dependent but it is one to use with caution because dependency can truly wear on those who love you. i’m not trying to give some silly posture of individualism here, just a baseline contentedness i think it would be neat to find in myself.
a year and a half ago, i said “no new friends.” i’d found i didn’t have enough time for the friends i already had and wanted to focus on the amazing people i had in my life. and i did and i’m very proud of it. now many of them have left and i have changed quite a bit. and i suppose that it is now time to make new friends again. and also make myself my friend or whatever. how scary how exciting.
what i’m listening to
fixin pt 3
almighty so 2- cheef keef
the new nilufer yaya album idk i’m feeling too lazy to google the name and format it and such
quiet light
what i’m reading
difference and repetition - gilles deleuze
difference and repetition reader - henry somers-hall
cien años de soledad - gabriel garcia marquez
the moon that turns you back - hala alyan
what i liked this week
to think that my last name could last eight years and in that lasting could be worth the lasting and worth the time to name it.
tearing through cien anos i mean cien años de soledad but like actually tearing through it to the point it took me eight days and i found myself obsessed with needing to know what happened next
having this approach validated by M’s mother who said she has read it many times but has not read it fast enough to mantain escape velocity
typing up my poetry from the last two months into a google doc
light drunkenness is so in
my new boss is really wonderful and while i try not to talk about work here because i am much outside of work, it is something to appreciate
quiet light concert in a church (as a sequel to quiet light email)
discounted books due to wetness
prescience
attempts at new friends
cien años de soledad really is that book i could love and talk about forever please talk to me about it its amazing
a poem by me
8/2/24, kb
nyc test of me of little faith: i’m on time to meet friends to be late for a gallery opening phone says rain ears don’t my umbrella got taken at the moma or maybe it broke oh well door swing no rain i hail yell “howdy” to annette on the step for the third time today’s sky says rain nose too but god gave me these long legs to make the most of a drizzle i’m indexing outcroppings though because this walk is pregnant with a dash because despite faith it comes slow then quick then i’m in the deli waiting for this dude to buy corona and skinny pop ‘ta lloviendo?’ and i say ‘demasiado’ even though i wasn’t addressed but corona pending i’m nodded at ‘que tu quieres’ ‘una par aguas’ a chuckle. ‘grande o pequena’ ‘pequena’ ‘a cinco’ slap it down ‘gracias brother’ and he gets a bit out of body and says ‘llueve mucho’ which could mean it rains a lot or it’s raining a lot ut i’ll puzzle that later/now plastic off umbrella out the trick is to angle it against the wind and don’t look up and pray but my shield is about to give so i dive towards a door that just my look has no eave but a huey in the lobby clicks the door and gives mercy to my soggy ass ‘lotta rain’ ‘mmhmm si’ probabilities in my head: this getting better? i wonder while pulling earbuds into pockets and tote under my shirt and fuck it it’s just water and it’s fivesix blocks to the m train and that only comes every ten i swing the door open to a tempest ‘it’s estill raining’ i am told ‘i got places to be!’ my blue pants are looking navy is that a car fuck don’t look up is that a fence a person a river a break? round the precinct and i pray it doesn’t last and make me look like a dumbass. doesn’t last. two blocks just gotta make it to qdoba. first time anyone’s said that. i got there. then bounced to the bk then bounced up the stairs closing my umbrella shit did i hit someone next train five minutes oh you’re fucking me but at least it’s still pouring so i did what i hadta plus i thought to put this in a poem even before the pour so that can distract me from my legs are going numb in train ac. after like three stops the rain stops and keeps stopping. and now dry people are getting on the train like the pinnacle of brilliance i guess i’m so wet but it ends like all nyc stories cuz now the i’m over the east river and i wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, even if i was warm there