Status update

August Sander, Three Young Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, August 1914

Abandoned my attempt at buying more satsumas to catch the DASH, my favorite bus service in Los Angeles, which has over 30 meandering routes around the city. Not counting the mostly closed-door commuter service, it goes just a bit past La Cienega to the west, as far east as Cal State LA, through Northridge, around Wilmington and San Pedro. As far as I can tell it is largely ridden by the elderly inhabitants of any given neighborhood and is as close to a Sunday drive as one can get on public transportation. Before there were reliable apps you could text the number on the bus stop sign and get the next few arrival times, a service I used often when I lived in East Hollywood, texting from my couch before departing for the stop at the end of my block. It is a perfect service. I love it dearly.

Anyway, I'd practically run out of Whole Foods to catch the bus, but then that plan, too, was jettisoned in favor of picking up sushi for dinner and, while I waited for my order, a pack of Juul pods from 7-Eleven - je fume, donc je suis (malheureusement!). The sushi, pods, and I stepped out onto the street, which was for some reason swarmed with cops, and restarted the journey home.

I leave for Colorado on Thursday. It’s going to be cold. So far my mental packing list has just three things - “Wool coat. Black Timbs. Socks.” I want a Prada puffer, a Heattech turtleneck, and ear muffs, but my budget - or rather, my sense of reason (malheureusement encore!) - will only allow for two of the three.

Finished the Wayne Koestenbaum book and started two others - Richard Powers’ Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance and Elizabeth Wilson's Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. History marks the spot, and I'm caught.

Evade

Michael DeForge

Maldito Perrito

Pablo Orrego Marin

Forsythe Jones

Made a joke yesterday about how wearing a navy turtleneck makes me feel like Jughead, and then, upon further reflection, realized that maybe Jughead - specifically, the old 50s-early 60s Jughead - had more of an influence on my personal style from childhood on than I'd known. The turtleneck! The slim trouser! The peek of ankle!

Jefferson Boulevard, summer 2019

Wayne Koestenbaum, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes

‪“Jeffrey’s, the only eatery obscure and dingy enough to mirror my insignificance and secretly reverse it (turn it into magnificence) via the deceitfulness of mirrors. A reflective surface lies: pretending to send back the same, it pollutes the original.”‬

Bertolt Brecht, "Not That I Didn't Always"

Not that I didn’t always have the very best of intentions
An undue fondness for tobacco is perhaps the one fault I could mention
Or that I didn’t perhaps get upset when it was much too late to be
And Müllereisert always said: come on, stop all that sipping of thin tea.
But my principle was: anyone can run into luck, you just mustn’t run away
And suddenly it turned out I’d written a real play.

I’d hardly noticed a thing, it had just sort of slid out
Matters of principle have always given me a lot to worry about
For me everything started with principles, I’d say
Tobacco, for instance, as well as my taste for liquor
I really did want to keep quiet at first, but I gave myself away
And Orge said: well, it’s not going to get better any quicker
Best thing would be to finish yourself off now with a bullet
Rather than suffer at length, or however the consolatory phrases put it.

And now almost every week I write one
It tastes like soft-boiled eggs in a glass
I know that one is more than none
But I think it’s all tied up with my aquilline nose, you know
And you just can’t do anything about it - that was proved long ago
And I too was born to rise to the highest positions.
Orge once inadvertently let drop the view:
You used to have the makings of a tiger in you
But you had better say goodbye to such ambitions.

Status update

Soup, salad, and two satsumas for dinner. I'm interested in clothes again which feels like a homecoming, if I can permit myself to be hyperbolic (but I guess it's not hyperbolic if it's true). I'm reading Wayne Koestenbaum's first novel, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes, and Brecht poems. Cooking, too, has regained its charm. I guess I feel generally reinvigorated. It's nice. One day I will put myself on a budget, and stick to it, but for now I'm having too much fun.

Taking it all the right way

David Bowie, "Right (Alternative Gouster Mix)"

Bertolt Brecht, "Questions From A Worker Who Reads"

Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Rejina Pyo SS 19

Rejina Pyo's SS 2019 collection is a breath of fresh air: vacation dressing that's not that tired ass late 70s-early 80s Italian vacation three-oranges-in-a-net-bag thing that's been rolling out every summer for the past few years.