I was late to work yesterday, and on my way to the train I saw this guy from very far away, sitting on a railing by the Utica stop. He had very dark skin and a shiny black du-rag on. He was trying very hard to get the perfect selfie. He balanced his Honestea on his shoulder, then thought better of it. He returned to a scrolling position, I assume looking through his various attempts. I felt horrified; the whole thing was so incredibly vulnerable. But then I realized that the park was empty, except for him and me. I decided the whole thing wasn't so bad then, and somehow this meant that I wasn't horrified but actually this feeling was guilt. For walking in on him?

Anyway, sometimes I get this thing–I see another black person doing something incredibly mundane, like this selfie man, and I get really emotional. Or a woman heading to work. Or a kid playing in a store while his mom shops. It's not quite a sadness, but more like a crumbling or spilling over. I guess it could be considered sublime in character, both the horror and joy of recognition. I'm struck by an immense interest in the interior life of this stranger, and it feels happy because I can sort of recognize it as some jouissance-y thing. Even if one-sided, I know my interest in them comes from some distant idea of being-together. Then I become terrified by a visceral and overwhelming desire to ensure that everything is okay for them.

This is the worst manifestation of my control issues. In Paris, I had sobbing fit and D had to calm me down; I kept saying, in various ways, that I love so many people and how can we make sure that nothing ever happens to any of them. I used to do something similar in high school; sophomore year it seemed like all of my friends were terribly depressed. I would stay up until 4am some nights, crying in my dad's arms about how I couldn't make it better. In retrospect, perhaps I too was depressed, but why dwell on the past.

This kind of obsessive empathy doesn't really seem sustainable at a planetary scale, but I also don't think it's a bad feeling. To lose it would make things smoother, but that would mean losing the texture of experience.

ho hum

Walked in a fashion show last week and didn't have very much fun. The not fun part was no one's fault. I just don't do well with the fashion set. I was told I'd get a free item and now I am wondering if I should have nailed that down. What KIND of item? I hope I don't receive some cut-up dainty t-shirt with boob holes.

Spent a lot of time with D and family also last week. My mom was in town and we had a nice dinner with her at which she gushed about our relationship. It was very cute. I went uptown and stayed with her at her hotel and we had a nice time hanging out. We didn't argue at all. I told her that sometimes she and Natasha trigger me with the way they communicate, which is to say they communicate similarly, and sometimes I get overly annoyed at one of them because of their cumulative vibe bouncing around me. Love them both dearly though, of course.

I got sick last week, so the weekend was quiet. This, I enjoyed.

I pulled a crazy stunt and emailed someone about something I'd written and got a positive response, but now I'm waiting for the latest update.

Last night, Natasha and I had dinner with CD; he's great. I say this with finality, he's just all around great. We went to see this cool musician he works with and everyone was there. I felt good because I hadn't paid to go. The show was really good. We socialized. D's new friend met us there; they have a cute thing brewing. It's hard to not be too annoying about it to D. But it seems like a real and fast friendship. One thing is that the new friend has a sort of annoying voice. In a way this makes him sort of charming though.

D said something unthinking and sexist about the singer and I got very annoyed with him. I'm not totally sure why, but I made him talk about it for longer than even I actually wanted to. I think it's because I think he is a good man and deserves to be pushed if he says something dumb. If I didn't believe in him, I wouldn't bother. This makes me realize, in a roundabout way, my utter lack of belief in A, like in him as a person, throughout basically our whole relationship. Anyway, D is good, and at his worst he still has the best intentions, so a 20 minute browbeating about what we don't say about women (though hopefully not so condescending!) seems worth something. I hate for him to think I'm actually mad at him though; it's hard to explain, even to myself, how I can be mad but never to my core. I guess that is the belief part.

Rehearsals start again tonight.

Very tired. D's sister's wedding was this weekend and it was beautiful. I think it's knocked something out of place in my head and now I can never be cynical again. Love is amazing and family is so important and it's so genuinely lame to pretend otherwise. Obviously things are hard sometimes, but this love and family stuff, oh man it makes it worth it.

I also think I'm just a normie in the end. In passing, when I've told some people about the wedding–like just "oh I'm going to a wedding..."–they're so critical of the whole thing, like still pushing this liberal arts school fuck convention agenda. I guess I can see the use of that in certain political terms, but like if you're going to be straight and like work and have a credit card, and all these things that are conventional necessary evils then like I think it's okay to love someone and want to have a party with your family and make it clear that you're a team and intend to be for as long as possible. This all seems fine to me! And you know what, never–even in my most self-styled "radical" periods–I don't think I ever thought I wouldn't get married. Anyway, for a little bit, probably around the time of our Europe trip and just after, I felt a little embarrassed by my own happiness, like I should have some fake qualification about something. Like "yeah, i'm in this great relationship BUT...." or "yeah I'm excited about my work BUT..." It's so fashionable to hate your life. But it sucks to deny oneself the full spectrum of emotional experience just because it makes you a bit corny. I love my life!

After the wedding, D and I went to Clandestino in our evening-wear and people stared at us. We ran into a few people we knew and they were like "ha-ha what's with the clothes." We explained and they were all like oh, cool. I realized I had a bouquet with me and so it seemed like I'd caught it or whatever.

We were on drugs and very happy so we stayed up far too late and missed the wedding brunch. We got Dim Sum and were both too hungover to have a lively conversation, but it was nice nonetheless.

Then I went to Z's house with Ellen to meet him and J's new baby. The baby had a very serious face and his pinky nail was roughly the size of a peppercorn, if not smaller. People always talk about how small newborns' fingernails are, but it is actually as marvelous as they make it out to be, I think. The baby was lying in his bassinet completely still when we got there, such that he honestly looked dead; his skin was still sort of weird and seemed not meant for external use, which maybe gave him that pallor. Anyway, when I held him he was lively and he stretched a lot and tried to open his eyes, but he didn't really have it down yet. His hair was dark and I think his face is shaped like J's. His older brother threw a bit of a fit after a while, probably because of all the attention he wasn't receiving.

Anyway, it was lovely. Z and J are nice and I'm happy for them.

to LA

In the air, almost to Los Angeles. I'll only be there a few days, which makes me angry and annoyed. I'd like a nice, full week to see everyone. I think it's especially annoying because the trip feels like its's marking the end of summer. I was a bit in denial about how busy the fall will be. When I get back from LA, I have to go straight to D's sister's wedding rehearsal dinner. Then the rest of the weekend is wedding stuff. Then, the following week, I don't have a single evening without plans, between work and family things.

I'm glad about this in some ways, but I just wish I'd been realistic. I spent the last few weeks hanging out and partying too much and feeling bad and stressed for a number of reasons. Now I feel a little better, but it took spending a whole day knocked-out by a stomach bug and then a sedentary weekend in the Hamptons to get me back on track. I just can't and don't want to drink and mill about in the way that I used to find appealing. It's really hard to not want to do that and not feel guilty about it though, for some reason. Like I'm being high-horse-y from a variety of angles. When really I just don't have time to lose time to hangovers and coke-y depressive moods.

I stopped writing on the plane because I became convinced that the guy next to me was reading over my shoulder. Mortifying to be caught blogging in public!

Now I am at my Dad's house in Altadena. He and my brother were both out when I got here, so I had a snack and now I'm sitting on the couch, writing this. I haven't been here in like 7 months which feels insane, after living in the same city as my parents for three years. It's nice, but freaky because New York feels more like home. My Dad has only lived in this house for about two years, I think. It's not particularly close to my childhood home. So everything's a bit foreign, despite the fact that the furniture is a collection of straggler pieces from the house I grew up in. I think a project for myself in 2020 will be to help him redecorate, if he wants. The house itself is very cute, but decorated with the care of a 26 yr old guy. Which I guess is the last time my dad really had to decorate a space.

Anyway,  Zoe sent me this artforum piece, and it had this Robert Smithson thing that nearly made me cry. "Smithson felt that in both cases [in the case of two ecological artworks that came under fire for waste or pollution], the community had made of the art scapegoats for their own failure to come to grips with what they knew was killing them."

I thought this was so good. The whole piece, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation," by Philip Leider, was really great. This is the kind of art writing I aspire to, I've decided. Dispatch-y, in the mix, careful, nuanced and political but not ideological. Very good stuff.