I am leaving this house in a few hours, but right now I am sitting on the burgundy Turkish rug I share with the cat, writing this. A year ago, this cat was older, let me explain, she slept all day and barely interacted, so I was convinced I’d never see her again. This year, when her owner reached out to me for coffee, I was surprised to see her following us, screeching for our attention. We figured out her meds, her owner said. So now I realize she has outlived both a version of what I was and what she was a year ago, and we sit here today, slightly edged on by our animal instincts.
I don’t know if I have properly mourned the person who sat on this couch a year ago to write its colors (olive branch greens, pimento reds, salt of the sea yellows) an exercise taken on because she was reading about color; maybe because I didn’t think of her as any different from who I am now, until one day I looked at my face and compared it to that in my photo album, dated March 2024, and I was. I miss my long hair. I had learned to mask my anger well and was resolute in my new-found silence. I am reminded once again, when earlier this week the past reached out to me and I looked at its message blankly, with not much in my head, and then all at once a river in my body, at how comically predictable the fires can be. Every Spring someone rushes back around, asking me to hold on to their hand. I ask to no one in particular in the universe: when will the past morph beyond its selfish grasp?
After sitting in the deep bathtub with the hot water melting the ache in my ankles and hips, I must have accidentally toweled off the meticulously wrapped layer of calm I had on my body, must have exfoliated it to bits with the heat steaming from the tub. I must have eaten something that didn’t succumb to my stomach acids and now it flips inside me. I must have taken the wrong route on my walk, and now the stench of dog shit lies underneath my white-socked feet. I must have simply, as they say, slept on the wrong side of the pillow. One day I will wake up and feel fine again, less anger in the river and less mud in my steps. I’ll get back in the bath tub, let all the steam rise off me, let the proverbial water do its thing. When I’m about to get out, something celestial will come down and grab me by the armpits, kiss my baby-bare chest, hands, and head and say look you did it. You’re cured!
What would these angels do with what’s left of this body? I like to think they would brush the hair until it glistened black and straight. Remove the chipped nail polish from the toenails, the sides of the fingers, and undo my fingerprints. Put another soul into that skin, a little softer and younger. Let it go onto the world, let it fascinate in both grotesque and beautiful: sex, death, pain, work, guilt, and romance. Bring it again onto the attic room bed, where I’ve woken up every morning, until two hours from now when I will leave.
Thank you for reading! Although February was better than its predecessor, I was still very much in the thick of an angst/anxious fog. March is still somewhat sticky with anxiety, but I wrote this while drinking a Martinelli’s (the best juice) while sitting on my front porch in the sunshine, and I think that might start curing me. I was so filled with anger these past few weeks and had no way to put my finger on what the cause was, so writing this felt somewhat therapeutic, although I don’t have a one-size-fits-all cause to my emotions (in fact, it feels like theres a whole mountain of them) it feels good to just write that I am/was just angry and waiting for some sort of release. I feel slightly bad for all the angst this week, but hey — I’m a girl with a Substack, what could you possibly expect!
The show that I was costuming, Julius Caesar, is now open! If you are local to Boston, please go see it! I am so incredibly proud of our director, Charlie, our stage manager Zoe, our team of actors and my fellow production designers for all of our hard work. It’s set in an 80s New York corporate office, which was fun (sometimes daunting!) to costume. We are running a pay-what-you-want show on the Ides of March and we would love to have you there! You can get tickets here :)
These past couple of weeks I read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, whom I love, although sometimes she is Literature for Boomers coded. However, her collection of essays, These Precious Days, which I first read two years ago, changed my life and writing for the better. Commonwealth had been on my to-read list for some time and I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to write an adaptation in the future, and this felt like a book that could be a possibility in that project. I am currently reading Nine Stories by JD Salinger, a Kelsey recommendation, which I have been slowly devouring but loving. Salinger was such a little weird freak and I love how purposeful every weird detail of his writing is. The title of this issue is inspired by Salinger’s short story, A Perfect Day for a Bananafish.
In late February, A and I went to NYC to see Cornelia Murr perform her second full-length album, Run to the Center. Her music is always sonically cohesive and so hauntingly gorgeous. My current favorites off the album are Pushing East, Spiral of Beauty, and Meantime (I love a good whistling in a song moment).
I am also nonstop playing the Tennis single, At the Wedding. Tennis the band is probably in my top three favorite bands of all time because they are so consistently getting better within their sound with every release. The way they’ve experimented in their growth is so fun to witness — I can’t wait for their new album and to see them in May!
While writing/editing this, I listened to in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music by Dagmar Zuniga, a psychedelic folk album I randomly found on Youtube. My favorite lyric: even God / gets stuck / in devotion.
That’s all I got for now. Enjoy these pics of my life lately, now that I don’t have Instagram on my phone.
with so much love,
gabo <3