Field Notes 1.19.26

I took a Harry Potter sorting hat quiz after watching Deathly Hallows Part 1 the other day. I’m a Ravenclaw, the house of intelligence, curiosity, individualism, and wit. Consider me sorted! Consider me read down. It’s like being a Capricorn with no down sides. I’m a Ravenclaw sun from now on.

I’ve been running around town since the first day of the year without making much time to write. They say if blocked to read and if overthinking to write. I’ve been somewhere in the middle: reading habitually and writing repetitively. Over time that should bear fruits, no? I’m always thinking, though. My inner monologue shouldn’t make its way on to paper each day. My notebook would jump off the roof. My laptop is shimmying off the table as we speak.

Instead of for reflection and goal-setting, the start of the year has been for friendship. For saying thank you to coworkers who do things for me. For waddling in the snow. For playing a lot of pool and ordering hotty toddies. For cooking all my meals at home. For listening to the feedback I’ve received and trying a new method. For shortlisting. For preparing my mind, body, and spirit for a ski trip.

It’s a three day weekend and I made time to write something worth reading back. It’s snowing still. I have plans for friendship later today. I’m listening to Oneohtrix Point Never in my headphones, feeling connected to a satellite in the sky. I’m in the library with Luna Lovegood thinking about Cedric Diggory. Field Notes:

Flammable Era?

It was my birthday last Friday. I don’t feel the need to get into the nitty gritty of being a person who hates her birthday. I loved my birthday this year.

A friend called me at 8am. I hung up with her before ordering an earl grey pastry at Radio Bakery. My brother called me at 8:45am. I worked all day solving problems without mentioning the day’s uniqueness amid meeting small talk. I strictly big talk. I maintain a separation of church and state.

At 5pm sharp, I went to the wine store on the corner where the last bottle of En Route, a special bottle that we drunk on my brother and mom’s birthday one week prior, sat practically begging me to purchase it without questioning the price. I did my makeup listening to rap music. I prepared my apartment to host three girlfriends before my bar party. They brought me ice cream and wine and sang for me.

Later, nearly everyone I invited showed up to the bar. We drank $10 martinis until 2am and played charades until 3am. If normally my life is a movie, I believe it to be a game of charades now, too. I was improbably picked from a mixed bowl to make others laugh. To make something known without needing to use my words. To keep ‘em guessing while they lose track of time.

This year, I am gunning for grace. I want to spend more time in the gaseous state. Airy, floating, and flowing. Elevating and evaporating. Taking up as much space as my ceiling allows. Yet I want to fall in love and sit in that sunken feeling. To sit in its deep, familiar couch. To be so comfortable to take a nap.

Can gas fall? Or do I seep through over time? Must I be lit on fire? I should come with a warning.

My sink on the morning of the 10th.

In Your Glove I Feel Like I’m God

“You cut me down just to show me I’m not.”

I recently heard this song Sugarcane by a three-piece from Atlanta called Sword II. I’ve been fixated on it. I made my roommate endure listening to it on loop while we made breakfast on Saturday morning. I am obsessed with the chorus sonically, but also poetically. I wish I wrote it.

Lately I have been a woman on a mission, working very hard to develop a routine in the new year that I can stick to and that supports my need to recharge and my desire to improve, generally speaking. Still, I find being busied doesn’t trump the almighty nature of pining for someone. My only remedy is music and its supreme ability to take the words out of my mouth and the pressure off my chest:

Opening Sugarcane lyrics.

Here’s the playlist I’ve been running on shuffle lately, if you’re interested:

Quarterly Visits

Once a quarter I go to my favorite store in the neighborhood, Cueva, and try on all the menswear I can’t afford. I ask the kind associates to pull my sizes from the basement stockroom. I touch every article in the store and search for the Gourd-pinned hanging tag revealing prices that I blink and nod at. I tap my finger on my thigh to the beat of the perfectly curated playlist while I wait for an available dressing room. One wired headphone remains in my ear in the event that I need to stealth Shazam.

This particular visit I was feeling talkative. I purchased a pair of denim in honor of my new return-to-office need for more pants and as I checked out, I told the associate that the store playlist might be a copy-paste of one of mine. He responded that maybe they did, copy-paste, or that both of us just have good taste. Okay, first of all, who needs Hinge? He revealed the name of the store’s Spotify account and I’ve been devouring its monthly playlists on shuffle, cherry-picking my favorites for my own playlist, although a quarterly one.

I stand by the human recommendation engine notion. An algorithm could never put together a playlist like this, nor replicate the minds of the rotating staff of menswear lovers who Group Project it. No technology better than the passionate human brain could ever recommend me a pair of dark denim from a Scandinavian brand and explain its fit in comparison to a nearly identical East Asian brand. Speak detail to me.

I look forward to next quarter’s learnings.

mfpen is a great brand.

Currently Reading

Table For Two by Amor Towles. Is it nuts to read a critically acclaimed author’s newest book before any of his previous works? The barista at the coffee shop I frequent basically jumped over the counter when he saw the author’s name on the cover. I felt like a proper idiot when he tried to talk about him and how his book A Gentleman in Moscow changed his life. I have a bottomless reading list.

This one’s full of short stories and up to page 153 has had nothing to do with a table for two. Towles is indeed an excellent storyteller and I’m appreciating the ease with which he writes from different narrating perspectives. I’ve been reading before work for 20 minutes and on the subway as I am meant to talk about it the first week of February with a small group. I know a book club is not a competition, but I am watching the clock.

Very good so far!

Bills Niners Patriots Bears

I am often right about things. I get that from my mother. My mother could recall the last ten years of football history and give you a play-by-play of the best day of her life — Super Bowl LIV — off the dome. My mother could be mic’ed up in the booth with Cris Collinsworth and Tony Romo, that is, if she didn’t think they were full of shit. What I lack in pass-me-downs of my mother’s football knowledge, I make up for in my belief in my correctness rate.

I haven’t watched much of this football season, just enough to be able to spew a few sideways statements in a sports bar full of stressed men, but I woke up spiritually aligned to a parlay that I had to see through. It came to me in a dream: $20. Bills, Niners, Patriots, Bears. Moneyline — I don’t care how. In fact, I don’t even need to watch.

I called my brother to lock it in for me. He immediately threw $20 on top. We’d split the $1,123 pot — let’s ride. I posted my undeniable winning ticket to the gram with great certainty, even chirping back after a few thumbs-down responses.

Fast forward. I tuned in to the first game with just enough time to watch the 30 seconds before the Broncos kicked the winning field goal in overtime against the Bills. I won’t further recount the first leg of the parlay, or the second, the third, nor the fourth. In summary, much like Josh Allen, I let the team down. I let my family down. I lose, we all lose. I lost.

I understand this is a tough read. Let me serve as a reminder to keep your bets between you and the gambling application, you and the group chat, or better yet, you and God. Let him humble you. And now that I think about it: you can’t spell parlay without “pray” anyway. Now, I’m doing so for forgiveness for bringing it up at all.

Me and the group chat.

Social Audit

I don’t want to read anymore about social media addictions and disdain for Instagram. Like anything in this life, you get out what you put in. Despite your hate for it, you are putting all your eggs in the algorithm basket and having it feed you. Consider sending your dish back to the kitchen. Start over and make it better.

We’ve had social media for over a decade now and your interests have likely changed since you first started your account. When is the last time you audited your following? Unfollow everyone and everything you don’t care about anymore. Remove followers while you’re at it. There are probably more men over the age of 50 following you than you’d like to think. Block them. You are not required to know about a middle school classmate’s trip to Florida. Grow up. Spring break has been replaced with spring cleaning.

Follow artists and comedians and real friends. Follow the journalist whose report you liked. Follow your local coffee shop. Follow the primary source.

If you’re going to be addicted to something, at least have it inspire you to a standstill. At least learn something in the scroll. At least start a conversation. At least be introduced to someone new. At some point after being inspired, learning, conversing, and being introduced, you might just log off. Lucky me — I’m ready to do the same.

Factory reset.

Un beso.