⭐
cataloging the day, mostly the ordinary things. the way the light shows on the mirror i put up, the way a an open drawer can make my room feel messy, the 10 free book of Manet’s work got, etc.
today I wrote this, “Today, student in my class asked me if we all disappear when we leave the room. I tried to tell him in a way yes from our eyes, but not from the world. He didn’t like my answer and asked me to leave the room.”
He’s my favorite.
Jan 25, 2024
Related Recs
💏
I’m thinking about two quotes from things I read yesterday.
- Kaveh Akbar: “Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.”
- Lynne Tillman (writing about Nan Goldin): “A section titled "Empty Rooms," which lies at the center of the book, insists on what's lost or gone. Goldin is traveling, staying in hotel rooms, visiting friends, returning home and leav-ing. There's a portrait of a plumped pillow on a bed, rumpled sheets and two pillows that stand in for bodies that once lay there, a mirror that reflects light only on an ordinary bureau, golden paintings above a bed's backboard, and all are stage sets for memory.…Hotel rooms usually mark transitoriness and freedom from daily life, but they're haunted by the many bodies that have passed through. The photographs are also haunted by her absent friends, some of whom have died and some of whom are far away. Temporary stations themselves, the empty rooms emphasize the inadequate hold anyone has on life, how it all just goes, finally.”
I texted Jancie the Akbar quote. She reminded that love is a room you don’t even know you‘re building.
And now I’m thinking about the rooms I have built without knowing, how many people have been in them. The world is very big and full of very many rooms. It’s amazing to see that now.
Jul 9, 2024
i haven’t been sleeping very well lately.
i’ve gotten into the routine of napping around 5:30, waking up at 8:30, going back to bed at 2.
i’ve been in a rut lately too. academically, intellectually. i think i, ironically, have forgotten just how to be.
let me tell you about my day tomorrow. i got this starburst flavored c4 that im excited to drink, and ive started to write poetry in french, which, is funny, given the level to which i speak the language really only allows me to say profound things like “ i love to go to the butchery “
but its relaxing.
i am allowed to just be.
be bad at poetry.
not understand french repetition, or linguistics.
i am a novice, and i am just that.
i see my girlfriend tomorrow, i’m excited to spend the night, it’s been a hot minute since ive gotten to lay next to her. i miss her bed, and her stuffed animals. she has this one- she calls it Wolfie. it’s a really sweet story, actually. she had two of the identical little plushies - and the only differentiation was that Wolfie, god bless, had a distinctive smell to him. she saw this very, when you take into account they were otherwise exactly the same, minuscule little trait, which for her was enough for them to truly be individual.
we have plans, valentine’s day plans, but she won’t tell me what. i hate surprises, truly, but i love her. shes taught me to appreciate a lot of the things i hated, like
mannequin pussy
emo bands
pda
ambition
and i do now, without a doubt, love these things with all my heart. i think it’s normal to hate things you feel you’re not good at, or other people are better at.
i can’t ride a bike.
i put off driving for a year.
and it makes me so insecure. i think the people around me love to give me the benefit of the doubt. that i am smart, capable, confident
but it is easy to be smart capable and confident in your own element, especially when that element allows you to communicate your insecurities, it becomes a paradox.
to communicate is to not - and the absence of communication is communication within itself.
my sister was angry at me today, and she said
“molly, you’re not any smarter than me, you just talk better.”
and i really do wonder if she was right
i wanna tell you guys about a new artist ive been researching. alex colville. he (painted from the 50s to the 70s, but the pretty large consensus actually) opinion is that they look a lot like 2000s early graphics. this one isn’t my favorite - just the most illustrative. i’ll post it in the morning. ( i love promises like that )
i like it. it makes me itchy, nervous, like
i’m back on the sims 3 and clicked the speed up button and cried and cried because my sims would never get those four hours back.
Feb 13, 2025
🪺
Bereft of a true home, I dwell instead in sentiment and practice the collection of numerous small tokens thereof: an olive-pin, a tea-tag, a berry-shell, a fortune. I treasure the incitement of memory brought about by these little markers in time-passed, as I do that incited by the more obvious strains: postcards and Polaroids and locks of hair … and these too I try to accumulate, these too light me! But perhaps what is most meaningful is the undisplayable — that which is gone — letters received and lost, letters writ and never sent and lost; a poem misplaced in the loose-leaf of a moulting notebook. A garland of flowers or bouquet that remains only in a blurred photograph; a collection of photographs drowned in a flood. Since my adolescence, some of most beautiful pictures I’ve made on my cameras have been the nonexistent — the mechanisms failed or my Nosferatuesque fingers blocked the lens or or the memory card betrayed me or the film was overexposed through actions entirely beyond control — yes, the most beautiful, I say! It is just so. I can picture them all behind my eyes in perfect clarity — so so beautiful — as beautiful as the flowers that nevermore will fragrance a room and all those words which forevernow lay unread. I can’t speak exactly to the wider benefit of this “recommendation”. But somehow this is the sort of thing that makes me happy.
May 10, 2023
Top Recs from @maxwelljkane
⭐
after every meal, quite literally an antidepressant
Jan 30, 2024
⭐
semi-recently i got one of those tan alarm clocks that has the red numbers and a little radio dial. anyway i got it to use as an alarm because my phone just isn’t enough
the radio is such a good way to wake up, ive been switch around on stations but the classical FM 90.9 my go to right now
good to get out of the habit of grabbing my phone first thing in the morning
Jan 31, 2024
⭐
i just want to stomp in mud, bite my friend, and break a barbie in half again
Jan 30, 2024