ceasar salads, diet coke, and fries

all sights here.

all sounds here.

there’s a little cabin in my head. little spruce trees, enough to shade for shelter. there’s always a book by my side. always a movie on. every morning begins with a new album. from start to finish, the music goes on just like the old days. 

this is what i want to do and i’ll try to do it all day. every waking moment in wait, instead of looking at my phone, i’ll immediately crack open a book, crunch through pages, catch flight of the breeze. i don’t know why, but being on my phone all the time makes time slip away too quickly.

have you ever watched shadows shift on your wall from afternoon to twilight? have you ever watched the ice in your coffee shrink to the surface? have you measured days in cups of coffee? nights in a bottle of wine? or two? have you let the future take over your present because you fear pointed pressures outnumber the hours? 

it helps to step back. watch people pass you from point A to point B. watch a cloud inch across the sky. watch the ants march one by one too. in this way, the words come with intention. words that lead up to the way you want to be. ways in which the story starts. 

then the words form sentences and i follow along. i let go. i let the writing take fold. and it happens. the poetry, the voices, the plot and the people. for me, usually, the story starts with an image i can’t get rid of. much like a stain and the stain strengthens into an entity, fully formed, standing like a man, full of fear or failure, cowering over me. this is how it starts. you could call this the beginning of a nightmare. you could call this a warning sign to act.

my original draft to this started like so:

god i think i’m dead.

meaning this. this life. the words flowing out.

i’ve been talking to myself a lot, which isn’t something new. i do it for the camera. i do it for my journal. i do it as little failures towards something. detract from dead-ends. i want to go somewhere with my thoughts.

most times this is how the writing begins. a failure.

everything is speaking to each other. so much so that the year finally feels like it’s beginning for me. we’re halfway through the year, but better late than never.

i just finished reading Gabbert’s Any Person is the Only Self and it ends so beautifully on rereading:

"Some people say rereading is the only reading, but sometimes I think first readings are the only rereading. [First readings are] when I have the most capacity for shock and joy. When I reread I am always comparing my experience to my first impression, a constant distraction; I am tempted to skip and skim, to get along with it and verify my memories already, my belief that I already know what I think."

"I thought: Memory is impoverished compared to experience—a good argument for rereading. But experience is richer than assumption or projection—a good argument for reading something new."

"If I still like the book, I’m not fundamentally different, but I’m different enough to make a difference. Part of the difference is that I can articulate now what I understood then more instinctively—which doesn’t make the later reading experience better."

i’ve been rereading old Murakami, the ones that made me. informed me. really helped young Nathan in and out of the terrible teens.

— 

does one work better than the other? which one is right? all i know is that when i start these monthly write-ups, i ache with images, let them start a new month, a new pair of words to live by, dress by. have better days overall. 

and so, it’s a brat summer. caesar salads, diet cokes, and french fries. soccer jerseys but i don’t play sports. big books as visors, always in my hand. let other people know you’re reducing your screen time with the great american novel. let everyone know that a book is not an accessory, that reading is a thing that you do because you are, in fact, better than the phone-locked folks next to you. exist on two apps: letterboxd and goodreads. goodreads because you can actually talk to people like storygraph really doesn’t care about your friends!!! get off instagram. stop taking pictures. stop wasting gigabytes with a bloated photo stream of photos you’ve taken and forgot you’ve taken the next day. instead open the notes app and jot down what you saw, bring it up over brunch:

“the other day, I saw clouds meet the sky in a way that it looked like the city punctured the sky, a breaking of nature.”

I don’t want to see photos over the dining tables al fresco. i want good conversation, wit, hospitality. 

once, over a dinner date, a guy kept looking at his phone when he failed to keep the conversation going, when he failed to ask me a question after i’ve asked so many. and so, i opened my book. 

“what are you doing?” he scoffed.

“obviously, i’m reading,” i said.

what i meant to say was that i was looking for words that would keep life going.

in the end, i realized he was someone with so very little to say because post-coital, the pillow talk was simply snores and SZA from his laptop. still to this day i can’t sing you a SZA song because i never understand what she’s saying!

so yeah, let people go back to talking, but only if it’s entertaining. if it goes mumblecore over boring anxieties, i’d rather watch those 2010’s feature length YouTube films. 

and i’m all for going out, but i feel like i justified all my nights last year to stay in this year. host. nurse a bottle of wine or two to end evenings. i should call her. i want to talk to him. invite them over. sing songs. hear the favorite stories again, wait for the punchlines again and again. you know how this ends. hear about that situationship, let the train wreck, laugh, over half-watching a black and white film. and if in color, let it be only technicolor.  santal candles burnt down. plates of fruit polished off. let friends wash your dishes. iIt’s the least they could do, especially if they came empty-handed. let them leave with a book. maybe it’s time to do that Nora Ephron. Black Swans by Babitz. make them drag that big book throughout summer. ask and look for it when autumn comes.

you might be looking for a man in finance, 6’5, but I want a skater boy. i want spontaneity. they’re the ones that will meet you in the park with a sapporo. i want to sit on his board, hear dumb stories, do bum shit. i want to use my disposable camera as much as possible. i want to hear their friends play music, thrash out, not care about money. i don’t want to care about money anymore. stability for life, instability for fun. 

this is for july.

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