October.
Well that was chaotic, no?
I feel like we were all flung from the grips of the hot girl summer that never quite was into the sweater weather that hasn’t quite settled, leaving everything feeling neither here nor there and altogether profoundly ungrounded.
Where are we? What time is it? And, especially if you are a newly minted Angelino like myself, what goddamn season is it?
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bit shaken and a lotta bit stirred, moved, transformed. Like a seasick sailor at the dusk of an unflinchingly scorching day, squinting her eyes and finding hope in the distant horizon. Not quite there, but also not where we were. Suspended in flight.
This post is part of a series where I summarize my month for you by recounting the little moments that all add up to a life.
Scroll down for a non-inclusive list of things that marked the passing of time this month, some things I noticed, & some things I read / watched / listened to in October 2021.
In Sum
To file under things I didn’t realize I missed during the pandemic:
The women’s bathroom on a night out.
Particularly a small bathroom (2 stalls, 1-2 sinks, a mirror big enough to catch a view of most of your outfit but small enough to have to cram yourself next to a stranger reapplying her lipstick, and with an energy that compels you to ask her if you can borrow it).
I went to my first live gig since all of this mess, and wow did i miss it. All of it. The mingling at the merch table, the smell of fake smoke/dry ice, the sweaty bodies on stage close enough to see their humanness, their running mascara and bulging forehead veins. And the girls in the bathroom, hanging out in the stall next to mine (an innocent drunk stall hang — think chattering about last weekend’s brunch & taking turns peeing & excitedly discussing what songs the performer will do in his encore — not the rushed silence of passing around drugs or doing something that needs to be hidden). Loudly complementing my shoes when they notice them under the gap in our stalls. The smile I carried with me to the sink, looking into my own eyes (above my mask) and telling myself, “You are here. This is happening. You missed this. It’s been so long that you forgot about it. But it’s here now. You are here.”
*****
The joy of hearing songs in other people’s cars.
*****
I was having one of those days where you are frantically running around to accomplish just a few seemingly simple tasks, but they end up being so convoluted because you live in a city and nothing is easy and you are in your late 20s (so you do things like order furniture & utilize the Post Office) but not in your 30s (so you don’t have a printer or more than state-minimum auto-insurance coverage).
Anyways. I needed to return some shoes I ordered (because I ordered them in the wrong size? I don’t understand how I still don’t know what shoe size I am? Do we ever know? Does anyone else out there have feet that they think are a half size different? Bueller?), but I needed to print the return label. And the return was USPS only. Okay, fine. I waited in the long line at the Post Office (why is EVERYONE else running errands at 3pm on a Wednesday?!) just for them to tell me they don’t have the capacity to print the label for me. So then there I was, running around Los Feliz looking for a godforsaken printer, carrying a cardboard box under my arm as I dodged weekday brunchers & homeless encampments (this is 2021 in America).
I ended up finding a small local print shop on the corner, right before an alleyway. The kind of place with multiple push pin boards, a Coke cooler, and a preference for cash. I loved it immediately.
And, as the universe is wont to do, it promptly displayed its sense of humor — on this most annoying Admin Afternoon, I had wandered into Walt Disney’s first studio location. An animation studio turned copy shop.
Hollywood, baby.
*****
The most LA view there ever was:
*****
Honestly, my October was filled with a whole lotta this:
Sitting on my couch (melting into my couch is probably more accurate), noticing light patterns, holding on extra tight to the things that bring me joy. Adjusting to change, letting the dust motes settle.
*****
“Bit by bit, with as much optimism as you can muster.” - my very favorite comment I’ve ever read on IG by @penelopesingsforjoy, in response to a @lianafinck post.
Things I Read / Listened To / Watched
Connie Britton on Jedidiah Jenkin’s podcast, Question the Self. A great listen for a multitude of reasons, but particularly if you’ve ever found yourself observing your life from the outside, thinking that this was not at all how it was all supposed to go.
Bryan Sansivero on the CBS Sunday Morning Show. He photographs abandoned houses — but not just in a ‘look at this creepy old house in New England’ kind of way. He captures the interiors of these homes, some of them still untouched in a way that is both remarkably eery and hauntingly beautiful. It’s wild.
I fell deep into performance art / creative movement Youtube this past month, and honestly — inspired. Catch me in my living room, pushing all the furniture aside & trying to figure out what different emotions feel like in my body. I don’t know, don’t @ me. (But also, try it, it’s the best therapy in a very body-keeps-the-score kind of way).
Nick Cave’s newsletter, The Red Hand Files
A beautiful, simple Q & A format in which every single answer penned by Nick Cave himself is at once straight to the point & exquisitely poetic.
Here, a couple of gems (but I highly encourage doing your own mining):
on anger:
“As Susie and I grow older, the anger at the indifference and casual cruelty of this world can still burn bright, but it does not define us, for the oxygen that fuels that anger is love — love for the world and love for the people in it. Love becomes anger’s great animator, as it should, as it must.”
on his writing process:
“The most important undertaking of my day is to simply sit down at my desk and pick up my pen. Without this elementary act I could not call myself a songwriter, because songs come to me in intimations too slight to be perceived, unless I am primed and ready to receive them. They come not with a fanfare, but in whispers, and they come only when I am at work.
Pen poised, I sit to attention, in my suit, on the edge of my imagination, prepared for the beautiful line to arrive. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not — either way I am powerless to influence the outcome. So often we stand bereft before our ingenuity, with nothing to show for our efforts. Yet at other times we are ushered in.”
Lorde’s letter to herself on her 20th birthday (why I’ve never read this before, I have no idea).
I am ingesting this particular paragraph & using it as a way to frame the whole of 2021. A weird hangover, a lot of aching, a lot of waiting, all hopefully underscored by a powerful reveal.
“I turned inwards to my friends, my family, towards this moment, so I could learn more about who I was, and so I could let this new project show itself to me. And oh my god, it was a colossal year! One for the ages. I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover.”
and I’ll leave you with that. Happy November friends, when all the ghosts actually come out to play.
xx mm