December 26, 2023
Hello friends! Life has been happening a lot recently and I’ve left many of you in various states of abandonment. I’m no ghost, and this is an attempt to reconcile my radio silence during holiday break after unraveling a helluva lot of burnout.
I was sifting through old papers and found a list of epigrams I’d written years ago dedicated to long lost acquaintances. Stealing from yourdictionary.com, epigrams:
…have a very broad definition. What one person considers an epigram, another may consider an elegy, poem, or perhaps even a song. The most basic definition of an epigram is a brief, clever, and memorable statement. Some of them are formulated with satirical purposes in mind, and others are purposely meant to be confusing.
And so, without further ado, please find your epigram below…
Oh, and if you’re wondering what I’ve been up to, I wrote a little recap of the past year here. Please excuse any tinge of underlying dread—I was a bit of a sadgirl that day.
Alex
Reminiscing on chicken—what Katya and I affectionately call Gikken. I spy your new site. Wish Affe had worked out, though I likely couldn’t afford one, let alone the NFT. Still dreaming of a return to EU where we can grab a beer in Berlin.
Bert
Was reorganizing a bookshelf when I came across the comic book I bought in Ghent in that fantastical place by the river where we swapped pawns. Another fond memory of the boat bar. あなたの夢の日本でのキャリアは見つかりましたか。
Caroline
How are your cross-state rendezvous? Come catch sun in CA—would be lovely to tour LA with you! In the midst of brain research? Mom find love? Pups since Coco? Our time in NYC was too short.
Dima
Got your Italian postcard, haven’t responded, wish I were there! Impress me with your Portuguese. I’ve eschewed vertical climbs for mountainous slogs. Eyes on Orizaba this coming year. Sending well wishes to your family in UA.
Ellen
Infinite phone tag! Haven’t gotten to congratulate your marriage—will save excitement and stories for our eventual audio interference. Our last meet in Lititz was eons ago. The oldest flame in this list. Kippis!
Emily
My Moto skills in Bali were abysmal, but now I’ve got a 650 twin engine and could barrel us across the island. KEVRI alive and well? I still wear those $0.001 pants from the crowded market. Missing my eastern home. You dream of Kuala Lumpur?
Igor
Your sent songs spark sweet sadness. Miss your laughter. Our drunken dialogues on the iron horse. May your inspiration live ever on. Staying safe? Wherever you are, I know you’re keeping the place warm with words and unbridled cheer.
Jake
Though we’ve drifted, I often daydream of our disk days on the mall. Professor Smith yet? Wonder which records you’ve scratched this holiday season. Miss late night study banter. Need a roomie reunion… meet us in the bay.
Jenna
Just caught you on the telephone. Cut short. An abridged slideshow of years past rehearsed in an instant. Time’s a funny thing. You reminded me spending time with yourself is okay. A peaceful emergence from solitude worth the painful patience.
Johnny
Yesterday, France. Tomorrow, the moon? More likely Korea. Went snowboarding recently and still the best time I’ve slid slopes was with you. All of life still a stage? Marveling at your career. Send love to Elisa. Your magnet’s on the fridge.
Sue
Perennial penpal, your last letter’s unread but not forgotten. I selfishly unselfishly await proper time to respond. Haven’t been to campus since graduation. Returning would be romantic—and make me feel old. Sending all the goodness in the world.
And because you asked:
Katya
Writing to the closest as if from afar. Thankful distance is no longer in our vocabulary. Writing across like Lviv Chocolate. Both softer with time. Awaiting all that’s yet to discover. The greatest novelty, your constant comfort. Mosht.
December 22, 2023
Here’s me with 226 pg/mL of estradiol and Double Mint Chip ice cream (semi-sweet chocolate chips in a base brightened with spearmint AND peppermint) coursing through my body at the tail end of my 28th birthday. This is the only one of 8 shots Katya snapped through the window of Smitten on Valencia Street where my expression isn’t dismal.
I’ve been burnt out and gnawing on a heap of stressors that’ve bubbled over the past few days. There’s an expectation of certain jubilation on birthdays because usually those who care about you pay extra care and attention on your day. I wanted today to be different, but still wasn’t really feeling it.
Katya and I hiked 26 kilometers diagonally across the San Francisco peninsula because I needed a reachable goal to keep my mind off of unpleasant things. This post is also something I’m doing to feel like I’ve done something worthwhile on a day I see as an opportunity to reflect.
Gifts received:
- Bull’s Blood perfume by Imaginary Authors. A single spray lasts a day or longer. The original formula contained a banned ingredient that led to its eventual reformulation. It’s lusty and particular and controversial. I loved it on first sniff.
- A heart-shaped blush stamp that looks like a blob when applied. The butt portion of the heart should be more pronounced. Or I just haven’t figured out how to use it yet.
- An illustrated version of one of my favorite photographs of myself, except the artist gave me comically (because it was unintentional) dark skin.
- A book about K2 accompanied by a card that says Gay Icon on the front.
- Cleaning by MUJI.
- One (1x) Rocky Talkie outdoor radio. Unfortunately two would have been too expensive. I have to hope my future climbing buddies will have their own. I tried scanning channels in my kitchen but no one answered.
I didn’t intend for this post to be so scattered. I was going to call it Bull’s Blood and had some fantastic metaphor cooked up. Seems my bitter mood’s gotten the best of me and I can’t remember the through line. I hope I’ll manage to squeeze out a separate writing within the following week to reflect on accomplishments and wisdom gained during this past year. Off the top of my head, this year I:
- Summited Mount Rainier.
- Didn’t summit Mount Shasta.
- Earned my scuba open water certification.
- Ran a 1/2 marathon in 1hr 45min.
- Bought my Royal Enfield and put 100s of miles on it.
- Acted in a professionally-produced adult film.
- Directed and acted in my own adult film.
- Visited Yosemite for the first time.
- Was a practice dummy for Katya’s massages.
- Came out to pretty much everyone who wasn’t already informed.
- Learned how to inject myself.
- Went sailing on the bay.
- Visited family on the east coast.
- Joined a social club.
- Saw Flume in concert.
- Dyed my hair pink.
There are a few more important moments that should be kept discrete, but I’ll hint at their existence lest they become lost to time.
Gah, this post is disappointingly vacant. I’d aspired to enshrine something meaningful for my future self, like I’d done at 25—but no, looking back, that writeup was similarly void of essence. To quote myself exactly three years ago to the day:
Told myself I’d do a writeup. Get introspective so I may look back in 25 years and see where my head was at. The day somewhat escaped me. Didn’t have as much time as I’d have liked for writing. Always the case, ain’t it? Relaxing nonetheless. Owe it to you to dig deep before the year’s up. Here’s a promise to publish words more coherent than these.
Always the case indeed. And that promise fell through, didn’t it! Maybe incoherence is the essence of these reflections. Because I spend the rest of my hours toiling towards some semblance of coherence, structure, meaning. The prophecy of last line of 25, though, has been fulfilled: “…in hope the shell will further shed.” That shell’s long gone… reckon I’m waiting for what was underneath to crystalize.
4/5ths through my 20’s, but who’s counting? I’m just a girl with a single radio, waiting for someone out there to glissade into my channel. In more ways than one.
See you at 30. Or next year. Or this upcoming week for your New Year’s post. Or not because you’ll stay in a bloody mood. Or forget. Or get overwhelmed. Just please don’t be so hard on yourself. I love you. And you reading this, who’s not me.
Happy holidays. Or not. Feel what you feel. And be glad you’re capable of feeling anything at all, because that’s an incredible part of being alive.
October 22, 2023
Tonight at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, Werner Herzog told his audience that we were all living fictitiously—an amalgam of various presentations, none of which were entirely authentically ourselves.
He also noted that he did not believe in the concept of the present, going on to illustrate how the idea of the present is asymptotic with a metaphor from one of his recent books, The Twilight World: A soldier lifts his boot from the mud. The remaining print represents the past and where the foot will fall represents the future. The arc of every point in between, as the foot travels up and back down again, is what is imagined to be the present, though undefinably so.
Obviously, authenticity and temporality of the self are not new topics. So it felt almost stupid to listen to this guy simplify them to roaring applause.
A patchwork of fictions might as well make up reality as we know it, in which case, reality is fiction and by constantly performing versions of ourselves, we are being authentic. And the present needn’t be defined by a single static unit, but perhaps instead a tumbling aura of energy to which our collective consciousness seeds credibility.
Though Herzog is a legend, and downplaying his wise interpretation of profound concepts is akin to dismissing Picasso’s simple sketches as easy—in both cases, the autors earned their salt.
Quick tangent: Do you ever use a phrase and know in your heart it makes some sort of sense but have no ever loving clue how it weaseled its way into your mind hole? The salt phrase sounded right and I could rationalize the logic behind it with my cursory historical knowledge of the ancient value of salt, but some other sector of my brain questioned whether I made it up and the reader would have to either assume I know what I’m talking about or tally a bullshit point and decide whether to keep reading based on the veracity of my cerebral spewing.
Speaking of the present, my cat whose fur has spilled onto my bodily contour as waves lap the shore has decided to gaze up at me lovingly from an unfathomable slumber. I looked into his eyes and was reminded of the susceptible nature of writing—that producing an essay such as this cannot be completed entirely in an entranced state. And it made me think back to Herzog and tonight’s conversation and how mad I was at his own tired fiction. Here he was in the flesh, and I had to listen to the performative facade of his celebrity.
I really wish he had messed up somehow. Or been put on the spot. Or been hurled into some unknown, having to navigate on pure instinct. I include tangents and asterisks in my own writing because I want the production to be part of the product. The viscerality of reality should counterbalance the pretense of my uncertain, half-baked, poorly prosed, lazily unedited ideas. I want to offer the glimpse behind the balderdash, because I yearn for it in every piece of perfectly-polished media I guiltily consume.
That’s it for tonight. I lost my momentum. Katya stopped snoozing and summoned the popcorn. Pepper’s tufty tide has receded into an ocean of blankets, away from my typing elbow. It’s past midnight, as usual, and my daily regret for lack of a diligent sleep schedule has surfaced. I’m just glad to get something new up on the site to push the porn piece down a chronological notch—I was riding on that reflection for too long and need to make way for the next escapade. Until then, my drafts folder is fucking massive.
May tomorrow’s fiction turn instantaneously into the past with great vigor.
April Littrell