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Blondshell's music has saved me again and again, what makes you think this time would be any different? I had a lapse in memory today, squinting in the bright spring sun with blocked nasal passages, begging for breath – "You're not even a good friend, but I'll let you act like that's the problem."

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Is the endless still unbound Or am I just different now?

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I’ve spent the last gasps of 27 contemplating instinct and desire. Feeling at once closed in and entirely boundless. Taking measured breaths and reminding myself not to buckle my knees. Eating raw onions, oiling my cuticles. This last year I laughed whenever I got too close to the flame. I had my fair share of fun; I got it out of my system. It hurt like hell when I realized I was on fire. I’m fine now

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Two of everything

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From "Violence" by Sister Ray, which makes me feel sad for my younger self (me 6 months ago)

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Every Valentine's Day I walk 5+ miles alone and listen to a playlist of my dearest love songs. This year I still walked 5+ miles but I didn't have time to do that because I was busy being in love. Here is my favorite one, though, for posterity:

It's a foregone conclusion!

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Gentle awed and afraid…Stepping from the room of desire into the further room of love…!

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"Maybe: look for someone you can’t initially understand, but also don’t feel like walking away from...I guess two irreducible complexities smash into each other, either co-creating something more or falling to pieces. Patience and listening are good. Some craziness is useful, I think, some faith in the power of your will. Maybe it helps if you date the most fascinating person you’ve ever met, if you always want to hear them say one more word."

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(an excerpt from something i wrote detailing a memory from each month in 2024, one i will probably never share in full)

I am writing this to you from a quiet December. It has been a furious and catastrophic year. I was at my most careless and callous, feverishly trying on other lives with a rolodex of different people. I refused to remember that one of them was always my favorite. I spent so much time running from shit. And just before the year ends, right under the wire, I have decided to see what it might feel like to stop. I don’t know if I am any stronger now than I was in January. But I am sure that my capacity for love is bigger now, somehow. Thank you to this miracle of a year. I am not ashamed of any of it.

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Derogatory

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EDITORS NOTE: I wrote this back in October, a month where I had maybe some of the most fun I've ever had. That month was like the decadent, opulent party you'd throw moments before conceding to disaster. That is to say, my life was totally flipped on its head at the beginning of November – which is a story for another time, one I hope I will someday have the bravery to tell. Rest assured I'm writing everything down. That said, reading this back in my Google docs reminds me of a lighter time, which is both laughable and relieving, so I'm sharing it anyway. I never finished, but don't want it to go to waste.

I’m resurrecting the consumption logs. The last time I posted one was April of last year, I think? I had a genuinely pleasant time scrolling pretty far back on this blog reading those old entries – and other more saccharine posts – even though my sensory memory is so strong it sometimes makes me feel sick. I hope I don’t fall off again! I’m sure I’ll be saying that again in no time.

Moving on. Some late-October hang-ups:

“You’re Not The Only One I Know” by The Sundays

I’m “late,” I guess, but music discovery is fun for that reason and I don’t know why we feel the need to preface when we’re only getting into an old band now. I’ve been on a real The Sundays kick this fall. It started when I first heard “Life Goes On,” this bewilderingly gorgeous and cascading gem of a track that randomly only got added to Spotify once I’d begun to search it up on YouTube like muscle memory several times a day. 

“You’re Not The Only One” appears alongside “Life Goes On” on the 1997 EP ‘Cry.’ I feel particularly spiritually connected to music that came out the year I was born. I am of the belief that those albums tell you more about yourself than astrological charts do. 

An aside: I’ve recently come to accept the fact that I am kind of nuts. That’s not only because multiple people have used that specific word to describe me to my face, but because these past few months I’ve really noticed (and been critical of, promise) my regretful penchant for saying way too much way too soon, often with a brash, abrasive, and prickly delivery. I don’t mean to come barreling in as strongly as I do, but 1) it’s a defense mechanism and 2) I’m working on it. This happens mostly with men, by the way. Something to think about. 

The lyrics of this song really make me feel seen – lines like “Where’s the harm in voicing a doubt?” and the kicker, “You’re not the only one I know, but I’m far too proud to talk to you anyway.” It’s a delicious performance of finger-pointing disdain, like something that feels sooo awesome to say, but when the facade crumbles as the song unfurls it ultimately reveals a whole well of straight up sadness and disappointment. Perfect to me!

Serendipitously, the Hancock hosted a Halloween party this year with a lineup of cover bands performing music from The Sundays, The Cure, The Cranberries, Talking Heads, and The B-52’s. I was dressed as a (sexy) bunny and had the time of my life twirling around to these songs “live” in a definitely haunted Bed-Stuy mansion.

(As I was looking up a YouTube link to insert here, I found this one, which made me smile a little. I had a torrid, beautiful experience once with someone who loved to show me videos of songs paired with movie scenes deemed fitting by random people on the 'net. It seems here that user vertigo60 chose Michaelangelo Antonioi's 'L'eclisse,' which upon my research, is a film about a doomed romance and "the difficulty of connection in an alienating modern world." Ah!)

Redemption

I keep thinking to myself that 2024 has been the year of the redemption arc. As I alluded to up there, I’ve come close to fumbling many a good thing with my misplaced intensity, or my desire to feign intimacy, etc...call it what you will. It has brought me a decent amount of shame, but I feel very, very grateful when I think about the people who’ve given me a second chance and situations that have come back around in ways that make more sense. I’ve always known that I’m a slow-burn, long-game type of person, and that it takes me a while to warm up to the things I want to love. This year I’ve learned that not everything will leave before you get the chance to prove it! How lucky.

Typing in proper case

I’m 27 and a half now. That’s literally just a guess and I’m not fact-checking due to I don’t think beautiful women should ever have to do even simple math. I’ve been typing in all lowercase since I had started a Twitter account at 11 years old (and got banned temporarily in my early twenties because I tried to add my real birthday to get balloons on my account). It probably began as an act of informality and laziness, and then maybe turned into an aesthetic choice, but I’ve begun to consider that it might be time to grow up. I haven’t fully committed, but I might do so at least here on Tumblr. Don’t hold me to it.

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my end-of-year camera roll audit took a false start this evening when i woke up from a nap –– one of those Bad ones where you fall asleep while it's light out and then wake up in the soul-crushing dark –– hit shuffle on my Spotify library, and opened my Photos app. it's currently that weird long weekend after Thanksgiving where time doesn't mean anything at all. earlier this morning i thought to myself that i've done a really good job at avoiding feeling one singular feeling during this holiday season so far, a time that has historically made me crash the FUCK OUT. i couldn't tell if that was a proud or sad realization. so anyway, it's dark, and Spotify started playing "Ask" by Sharon Van Etten, and somehow my camera roll glitched and bounced back to a very specific Saturday in March of this year, revealing a collection of photos i had taken on a very long walk in Long Island City where i couldn't stop pulling my phone out and taking photos of everything that felt like a "sign." i took that walk a day after i had a remarkably tough conversation with someone who would come to mean way more to me than i thought they already did at the time. wait actually i didn't even set out to write about this when i opened this draft so i'm going to stop myself here. now is not the time.

what i meant to share was this essay by hanif abdurraqib, one that was published in 2019 but, according to the screenshots in my photo library, i rediscovered in March. it's about Whitney Houston and summer crushes.

And, yes, I have a crush on memories that were surely not as beautiful as I have made them out to be. Because that’s the whole trick. I’ve had crushes on all my friends, and if they don’t have one back on me that’s fine because I’m still going to text them at unfortunate and odd hours of the day with some useless miracle that I couldn’t possibly keep to myself. So few of my crushes speak back. I am cultivating my comfort with unanswered desires, and it is going well. I have room for so much more. I say a prayer. I fall in love.

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this song came on in a store i was browsing through and i pretended to keep sifting through the same rack over and over again just so i could hear the entire thing

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it was always our story, if you forgot

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goodbye to the final blooms of august