TRA LA LA LA LA, MY NAVEL-GAZING PERSONAL FABLE CONTINUES

One of the definitions of “intention,” according to Google, is “the healing process of a wound.” That is goddamn heart-warming. Like Google knit a tiny sweater for my heart.

Goals are for children wearing shirts with the name of the local watering hole written across the back of them. When I set goals (LOL WHEN LINDSAY WHEN DID YOU DO THAT) what I’m actually doing is making a list of things I think I SHOULD be.

- Skinny (duh)
- Good at stuff
- That’s it

It doesn’t work. Obviously. My socks leave little dents where they cut into my ankles, for one thing.

I almost never have a clear picture of HOW I want something to work out. And I don’t really, REALLY want things very often. Which is probably why goal-setting, which I think requires clarity and some kind of plan, isn’t something I personally find very useful. I’m not trying to carefully plot out the twenty-nine steps I need to take in order to reach some specific place I’m not even sure I’ll want to be in by the time I actually get there, PLUS, what if a tree falls on one of the steps. What if that happens. It happens, friends. Trees fall.

Anyway so “setting intentions” seems to be much more my speed, since it’s essentially what I do anyway. Want the thing, be open for the thing to happen, accept whatever actually happens. Right? I don’t know I skimmed exactly two articles on this and then took a nap on my lunch break and the Diet Coke hasn’t hit my bloodstream yet.

(Pretend there’s a pretty banner here that says “November Intentions,” made by someone who knows how to use an editor other than Microsoft Paint.)

- Quit smoking. I’m actually on Day 3 already. So what happened was, on Friday I went to happy hour at work for once AND THEN went home and got ready AND THEN stayed out all night dancing AND THEN got up early and made second breakfast. (First breakfast is always the egg sandwich lovingly prepared by the man at the corner store who side-eyes the eyeliner on my chin when I wander in at 6AM looking for puffy Cheetos.) So THEN because I am an elderly lady I went right back to sleep until it was dark outside. (I’d planned on dressing up for Halloween on Saturday night – that’s right, I’d planned on going out two nights in a row. HA! HA HA HA! HA!) I then spent the rest of the weekend watching horror movies and playing “How Many Versions of the Quesadilla Can I Think Of and Ingest?” A lot, is how many. A lot. So because I did not leave my apartment all day on Saturday and only for the briefest of moments on Sunday (to get my face waxed and play on some swings), I didn’t smoke because I don’t smoke indoors because I’m not a heathen and also because I wouldn’t get my security deposit back. So I thought, meh, maybe I’ll just quit. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s terrible, but not as terrible as smoking, I guess. Also I’ll probably be very wealthy now, so. That will be nice.
- Keep not eating meat. I’ve been doing so good! I ate chicken once, because Diego made tinga at work and brought home the leftovers and made me tiny baby bite-sized tostadas. BABY BITE-SIZED TOSTADAS. Kill me.  I just need to be better about remembering to take my iron (remember how I told you I was elderly), and at replacing whatever else is in meat that I’m not eating that I need to be eating in order to not feel light-headed when I stand up too fast.
- Journal. Now that I take naps at lunch instead of wandering around with a ham hock in one hand and a pack of Marlboro Reds in the other (DON’T CRY FOR ME, I’M ALREADY DEAD), I can maybe also work in some journaling time. This will be important, since not smoking seems to be increasing my life expectancy while DRASTICALLY shortening that of certain people who sit within a ten-foot radius of me.

That’s it. Aren’t you jealous that I’m going to become such a better person by the end of November? Because that’s my other intention, to make everyone jealous. BECAUSE OF HOW SKINNY I AM.

The only earth is inside me (violet streaks, a dense green).
A glass ball. A giant’s cupped hands. It’s impossible to tell, and unnecessary.
Afloat in the center my bones are budding.
The surface of this liquid silk might be a mirror, if there were anything for it to reflect -
in the dark there’s nothing to do but feel it.
I ask nobody where everyone went, and then you’re there as if summoned
and you’re smiling and your tongue is pushing the moon through your teeth.
I don’t ask you why you’ve kept it a secret, but I want to know why the water’s so warm.
You say, “It’s because of the stars.”
And for once you’re telling the truth,
and at once the tide rushes toward the baby moon you’re still grinning around,
and gaseous globes burn bright all around us
they’d fallen, they were under us all along.

because talking about food never gets boring at all, or: what i learned from the woman who only eats potatoes

One day last week I came home to find this at my door:

I used all the air in my lungs to hiss “THE DEVIL WAS HERE” and then fell over. Then I got up and ate a bagel at 10PM – which turned out to be the top of a slippery, chubby slope that I did not see the bottom of until yesterday. Approximately yesterday.

Ignoring the candy bowl behind me SO HARD. 

Almost entirely by virtue of the fact that cereal is my preferred choice of meal, I don’t generally eat a lot of meat. Over the past few years, for some reason, I started to sometimes get super grossed out while eating it. Plus, twice after eating some sort of beef I had stomach cramps that lasted for days and were so bad that I couldn’t make myself eat anything. (Peppermint pills helped a little bit, if you too are feeling crampy and sad! Also if you drop them into a pot of boiling water you can pretend you’re at a spa before you rip blackheads out of your face with a two-dollar mask from Korea. I don’t actually know if either of those things are good ideas, actually. But I’m not dead. So.)

Anyway since I already don’t eat much meat, I’ve recently been thinking, why not eat no meat at all? So that’s what I’ve been doing over the past few days, and I’m thinking about eventually working my way up to full-on plant-based. The fact that I decided to start this now, after a week of eating all of everything (though I did manage to eat a cuisine from almost all of the continents, and also supported local businesses, so I’m basically a hero), speaks loudly to the fact that my relationship with food and what it does to my body still isn’t exactly a well-oiled machine. So I have to take eensy weensy baby steps in order to have plenty of time and opportunity for check-ins with myself. “Self,” I will say, “You are making decisions in the interest of being kind to us, right? And not in the interest of starving off your fluffy parts? They’re some of your most fun parts, remember that.”

"Heavily filtered photo" is my preferred choice of diet.

THIS week it’s been 80 degrees every day so naturally I wore my new sweater to work and then came home and cooked “healthy vegetarian fall things” that I got off Pinterest. Sweet potato crock pot chili? My lazy, grotesque-looking version of eggplant lasagna? Using all of the hot appliances my baby kitchen has to offer? Check check check. That was two nights ago, and the chili is aging BEAUTIFULLY. Like an angel. Like a Chilean angel. For those of you who are wondering, the secret ingredient is to set your alarm for 1:30AM so you can get up and turn off the crock pot you intelligently turned on at 8PM AND THEN when you hear that alarm, wake up just enough to swipe at your boyfriend’s head until he gets up and turns it off. He probably has to pee, anyway. You’re doing everyone so many favors.

Well, okay! This post has both maintained the historical ratio of FOOD STUFF to OTHER STUFF posts on this blog, AND saved my face from use-tax-and-Quickbooks-related fingernail gashes. When should I monetize this baby? Yesterday right?

some disjointed thoughts about catcalling, though I don't think that phrasing is very cat-centric

Over the summer I was leaving a corner store when a very young man almost ran into me on his bike. He stopped short, and we looked at each other for a very brief moment while my heart worked its way back down my esophagus and he (probably) assessed my in-one-piece-ness and whether or not I was going to yell at him. As he biked away, he called out his apology (which I believed and believe was sincere since I generally operate under the assumption that people do not leave their homes in the morning with the intention of mowing me over on the sidewalk) and then: “That’s a great dress!” It was a great dress. Is. I did a good job picking it.

Same street, further down. There is a woman I see sometimes as I surface from the train at 116th. She is, in a word, magnificent. She looks like someone painted her. I don’t know a way to keep describing what she looks like without being reductive, but the thing that most people would probably notice first is the expanse of her hips – it is a great expanse. The first time I saw her, something audible tried to get between my teeth.

“You could fall empires,” I wanted to whisper.
“The tides, they search for you.”

But I didn’t, because I’m not a fucking asshole. So I understand the impulse, when faced with the female form, to voice awe. I also understand, though, that I do not have the right to insert myself into her day by commenting on her physicality. I do not assume that her presence in front of me is a question I need to answer. She does not need or want my validation, and she is certainly not asking for approval by walking by me. She doesn’t have to smile because I think she’d look prettier if she did. She doesn’t have to acknowledge me at all. She doesn’t owe me one single thing. Nothing.

I also understand - it is not about awe.
You feel powerless, inadequate. I understand. But you're wrong.

The only thing worth saying out loud about what's in this picture is how much stuff is on the floor.
We are slow-at-furniture-buying humans. Okay?

Same street, still. Outside the cute bakery. I’m listening to voicemail (who leaves voicemail? I hate it so much) and weaving through the slower-moving of humans on the street when I hear someone call me a “big-legged white girl” and loudly wonder what my name is. He stops on the sidewalk and turns to watch me walk away, which I know because I gave him this look:

And then kept walking, phone still attached to my head.

My thoughts are that, they are that “I like your dress” is not “I want to ___ all your ___, *****!” I think of the grays in between, the insidiousness, the overtness, the anger. It’s easier for me to hear about having my “___ ____” than it is to have the word “big” applied to any part of my body, because the former I can easily identify as violence and the latter directs my analysis to myself. There are compliments (which actually belong in a place nowhere near or touching this conversation), and there is aggression, and there is the inability to differentiate between the two, and there is violence and assertion of power and there are many many well-written articles that are written about male gaze and rape culture that articulate the thousand years of oppressions that have led us to today.

This, obviously, is not one of them. But it's what I'm thinking about while I should be answering emails. So, do me a favor and pretend you emailed me and this whole thing was me answering you.

I think when you are truly stuck, 

when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, 

you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, 

and jump, and pray. 

It is the momentum of last resort. 

RENATA ADLER, SPEEDBOAT

I went to sleep half-listening to the debate last night, less because I’m a responsibly engaged adult citizen and more because Diego was watching it next to me and I had no choice. Honest to God I’m building a wall in our bed, and he’s paying for it. Make bedtime great again. Other terrible, half-hearted joke. My heart is too heavy, and my brain still hasn’t wrapped itself around the fact that this whole situation is something it needs to take seriously.

Not to make light of something that is actually horrifying, but this whole election reminds me of that one friend we all have who can’t tell when the joke’s over and ruins it for everybody. Except that instead of everybody rolling their eyes or changing the subject or saying SHUT UP DEREK, some people think Derek should drive us all home. Even though Derek is clearly hammered.


I got to fall asleep between clean sheets in a home that no one is bombing. I am trying not to take things for granted.

Pictured:
- Date night, we’re gross (but you get to see the Beverly Marsh sink, sooo)
- The candles I’m burning to make room for a new batch that should arrive tomorrow by the grace of UPS (there was a sale! I had a coupon! I am le weak!)
- Tom Wolfe keeping me company while I washed my socks on Saturday morning
- American Horror Story Coven, because it’s Halloween (I know I’m late to every show but I had to nope out of the first episode of the second season like eight times before I remembered that it’s okay to skip things if they’re terrible – NO IT STILL FEELS WEIRD PLEASE ASSURE ME THAT I’M NOT MISSING SUBTLE PLOT POINTS BECAUSE I DIDN’T WATCH THE SECOND SEASON GAH.) I like it embarrassingly a lot. It’s like when I first read Harry Potter and wished so hard that Hogwarts was real, except that now I just wish I could pull off that one witch’s red hair. Also though I’d like to live in the woods by myself and listen to Stevie Nicks all day so I guess I’d take her hair, too. Ugh. Witches. Living the life.
- The outfit I picked out but wore only to the bodegs because it was raining and pizza delivery is an option and lately I am very into cancelling plans if I didn’t buy tickets for them because we have some busy weekends coming up and then it will be The Holidays and so I will take any opportunity I can to be the bottom of a blanket pile, thanks very much.

There were three, I think. Perhaps a fourth escapes me. 

A hallway built through them, like a needle stuck straight through. 

The giant’s hands at work. 

Yes, maybe. I don’t know.

It ran right through. It made bridges between them, and under the bridges and along the sides were empty lots that filled up by mid-morning. More would come, the lots spilled over, the excess a slow circle back into itself.

The piercing was the common thing. The structures stood without regard to the other. Other than the piercing, and the movement.

I’ve been where you are. I can tell you some things.

Like,

On a certain floor on a certain day, separate yourself from the current. The door under the north staircase opens into a concrete courtyard, suspended below one parking lot and above another, concrete steps in a double helix through the center. Sit down on a step. Light a cigarette. The step will be cold.

There’s a photograph on each step. Her hair, when she appears, isn’t quite the same.

It’s close enough. Until it isn’t.

Don’t stay outside too long.

I CONFESS: it's tuesday

I’ve been listening to Christmas music since the end of August. Part of me is afraid I’m going to burn out by the time Christmas actually gets here, but the other part of me just wants to start lighting the Christmas candles I’ve been hoarding since last year. And the pro-Christmas part of me is bigger because it eats more cookies, so guess who wins. Also, if I were the sort of person who could use the word “juxtaposition” without sounding dumb, I would tell you that I’m quite enjoying the juxtaposition of my morning commute from Queens to Harlem against the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” (see: Children laughing, people pushing each other over to get a spot on the first M60 that comes even though everybody knows another one is thirty seconds away, children laughing some more and grinding potato chips into the floor with the toes of their light-up sneakers).

Don’t worry though, I’m not trying to skip fall. I sat near some hay bales outside Gansevoort Market the other day:

Now all I want to do is go to an orchard and pick things and drink cider, even though I know it’ll either be too cold or too hot for my liking and then I’ll complain about how heavy the pumpkin is and how it got dirt on my coat. It’ll still be fun though. I’m so fun!

The gym I “go” to was merged with one of its sister locations two blocks away. So now that it’s not directly across the street from my bus stop, which I need not point out is the greatest burden to ever be endured by mankind, I am feeling extra smug and accomplished about actually going. I confess, though, that I still wouldn’t have known the stupid gym had moved if Diego hadn’t gotten out of work early last night and picked me up so we could go together. (Monster. Actual monster.) Because if we hadn’t gone together I wouldn’t have gone at all. As it was, all I did was run a half-hearted mile and then walk on a .00001 incline while watching thirty minutes’ worth of Amberlynn Reid’s Youtube videos. (SUCH A COMPELLING CHARACTER.) See, the issue I have with working out is that once you start you do not immediately fit into size-two bikini bottoms. Which is enough of an issue for me that I don’t want to bother with it at all. Me and my pajamajeans are doing just fine without you, abs. Wherever you are. 

I can’t remember how many days it’s been since I washed my hair. 

I wrote most of this at work today. It’s amazing how much less time everything takes when someone isn’t making a series of increasingly-uncomfortable-to-listen-to personal phone calls at the desk behind you, or forcing you to mentally construct a detailed plan to launch yourself into the sun because they won’t stop tapping their desk and sighing or typing aggressively loudly (the reason their fingers are free for all this noise-making is because they are making the personal phone calls on a hands-free device, so don’t worry, at least they don’t look as douche-y as they’re acting. Don’t. Worry.)