Let's Live Like This

Almost Time for Almost

It's almost time for Almost, the latest in-print issue of We Still Like, featuring two pieces by yours truly! There will be a release party in SF on August 11th - info below:

We invite you to get ready to like the hell out of our third issue at our raucous release party celebrating the publication of We Still Like ALMOST. Join us as we raise a glass to everything ALMOST — all those nice-tries and pipe dreams, anything ephemeral and phantom and imperfect. Our featured readers will be spilling almost everything (except their drinks) as they entertain us with tales of faulty memory and mix tapes, Sapphic poetry and exes revisited. Our readers will hit the stage at scheduled intervals, leaving guests time in between readings to explore the area's hidden treasures, like small-batch wine, handmade ice cream, custom-built messenger bags and thin-crust pizza. And to browse your brand-new copy of We Still Like, of course! No ordinary reading, the We Still Like release party is a party-within-a-party, as we join forces with The Bold Italic's 3rd Base: A DogPatch Microhood block party to show off SF's unsung Dogpatch neighborhood. Copies of We Still Like ALMOST will be available for purchase for $12 at the event.

Who: Hosted by Sarah Ciston and Chris Pedler, editors and co-creators of We Still Like. Held in conjunction with and supported by The Bold Italic's 3rd Base: A DogPatch Microhood event.

When: Thursday, August 11 at 6:00 to 8:00 PM

Where: Rickshaw Bagworks, 904 22nd Street, San Francisco

Price: Free!

RSVP/Contact: Sarah@WeStillLike.com

Happy Birthday Happy Baby

My sister Kate just had a beautiful baby girl on July 23 at 3:47am. (No name yet.) I am so excited to meet her and kiss her and so proud to be her aunt. Love you, Sissy & Matt & Baby!

Let's Go

Experimental Blogging...

Here's my most recent column for WSL:NYC. Click above to read more at We Still Like!

Little Jim Laughing

Little Jim can tickle himself. He can put his hands into his armpits and scrunch them to make himself laugh. This is Little Jim's best quality. Making himself laugh since he was born.

Little Jim was born in 1995. This makes him old enough to know that he should not be making himself laugh in public. Where he used to tickle himself anywhere and everywhere, now he only does it in private, with the lights off in his fish-blue room.

In 1995 Little Jim's mother was as big as a barn. She was full of Little Jim. When she gave birth to him she was screaming, and when he came out laughing she was screaming still.

Little Jim laughed for his whole life. Until recently, when he stopped.

Little Jim Walking

A cactus burns a silhouette into the burning sky. Little Jim going for a foot-burning walk out behind the property. Little Jim only seven or ten years old. Blonde as the sand, skin as orange as the sky. Little Jim: the same colors as the Texas landscape, out near the border fence at the wrong time of night.

Little Jim remembers what Big Jim told him once: Never go all the way to the border fence. Big Jim in his big voice, demanding so much. Little Jim wasn't a rebel. Simply liked the sunset so much that he wanted to follow it. Big Jim's eyebrows would come down on him like a hammer if he saw where Little Jim was right now. Saying: Told you never go out there!

At the border fence there is a dark pile of something. Little Jim is being careful and he feels warm, even with the evening breeze. The dark pile is right at the edge of the border fence, and as Little Jim approaches it he sees that it is not moving. The dark pile is a man, and Little Jim looks him directly in his black eyes. The man is caught in the border fence, his leg ripped up from the wire. His chest is also ripped up.

Little Jim stands, not knowing what to do. At first he thinks to run away, but then he remembers how his mother would never leave anyone alone. He goes to the man, who is being quiet as he bleeds and hurts. Little Jim crouches above him. Little Jim rests a hand on his chest until the chest stops beating. Little Jim closes the man's open eyes and puts his own hat over his face to shield it from the sun that will rise hot and angry in the morning.

Think That Snow Is Falling

From Yoko Ono's "Snow Piece," because I saw her in PS1 last week and she smiled at me.

Actually Reclaiming Happiness

Proud to be a part of the latest issue of Actually People, edited by the excellent Katherine & Sarah Fontaine. Here's my article.

Reclaiming Happiness

I must admit that as a former resident of California and a current resident of Brooklyn, New York, I was (and continue to be) nervous (in a very specific nostalgia-oriented way) about writing a column under the heading “Reclaiming Happiness”. This particular nervousness arises in a variety of settings, including Corporate Interviews Where You Wear “Button Up Shirts”, Phone Calls With People In Different Time Zones Who Are Not On The Same “Wavelength” Simply Because It Is Still Light There And It Is Not Still Light Here, “Meeting Up For Drinks” With People You Have Crushes On But Can’t Touch Their Hand Gently Because You Are “In A Relationship”, and Being In A Taxi Cab In A “Foreign” City And Not Knowing If You’ll Get “Screwed” On The Fare. These things are nerve racking because they make you admit things to yourself. They make you admit that you are maybe not the person you thought you were/you are maybe not living the life you thought you were living/you have a deep ache inside of your soul for general reasons/ you may need to make a “Life Change”. I was nervous to write Reclaiming Happiness because I would need to delve into the act of measuring my happiness, to perhaps admit that I had lost much of it along the way, that happiness was not a thing that one could be but that one could have, could lose, and would at points need to reclaim.

In doing this I would need to admit things like There Are No Trees In Brooklyn. (I would need to mention, in my defense, that there is one tree, which I have trained to grow through my bedroom window in order to photosynthesize alongside it/be able to breathe at all.) I would need to go ahead and admit that There Are No Real Thrift Stores Here Because They Are All “Vintage” Instead. I would need to say that There Are Rats That Mate On The Subway Tracks and that Waves Don’t Crash But Cars Do and that Crickets Cannot Be Heard and Stars Cannot Be Seen. I would then need to go farther and admit that Everyone Smokes Cigarettes Here and I Kind Of Like The Smell, and then even farther by admitting that I Have An Alcoholic Beverage Mostly Every Night Even On Mondays Even On Sundays. I’d push on to say that The Subway Smells Bad and Sometimes Brooklyn Makes You Feel Like You Need More Tattoos and The Stairwell Smells Bad and Sometimes Brooklyn Makes You Feel Like You Don’t Exist and The Bodegas Smell Bad and Sometimes Brooklyn Makes You Feel Like The Trash On The Side of The Street That Doesn’t Get Cleaned Up and In The Summer Everyone Smells Bad and Sometimes Brooklyn Makes You Feel Like Everyone Is Three Thousand Miles Away. These things are hard to say out loud, Actually People, and I resent the fact that I am saying them at all, but the first step to Reclaiming Happiness is admitting you have a problem, and so here I am, admitting the shit out of this shit.

I guess it’s time for the Reclaiming Part. During the Reclaiming Part I should disclose the things I am doing in order to Make This Work, the things I am doing in order to Get Happiness Back, the things I am doing to Love Life. The problem is that the Reclaiming Part might appear to be boring to the average Actually People reader, because of the very average locations and ways in which it occurs, which are streets, tunnels, walkways, restaurants, and parks. These open public domains are where the most Happiness Inducing things occur, things that make one Believe in "Living" Again, things that make one "Fall In Love" With New York Again, things that make one Stop "Holding One’s Breath" Again. Things like Old Man Who Looks Like Your Grandfather Playing Accordion (give him a dollar every time), The Perfect Cappucino (Abrazo), Breakfast at The Counter (Sunday paper), Fire Escapes (life escapes), Thunderstorm in SoHo (wet bandana), Best Conversations You’ve Ever Had With Strangers (they’ve read that book, too), Wood Paneled Walls (70’s), Pork Belly (with sauce), Rose And Oyster Combinations (happy hour), Emotional Moments In The Public Library (the ceilings!), First Snow (magic), That Place On Manhattan Avenue With The Piano Player (Hey Jude), Lipstick (blaze apricot), walking in the rain (June), walking in the heat (forever), walking in the snow (magic), walking in the haze (depression), walking in the now (always), walking in the new (now). The thing about Brooklyn is that you never know when you are reclaiming yourself, but slowly, always, while walking, you are.

You are gathering happiness as if it had wings, you are in the middle of a constant parade, you are basically made of confetti, you are hip and you are young and you are walking. You are walking and gathering and amassing your happiness, you are walking and reclaiming and living, you are desperate and you are young and you want things so badly that it hurts your actual physical body even the organs even the joints. You are holding the biggest net you have the biggest mouth you have a whale mouth you have baleen and you are catching all the krill of happiness you are lighting every match of happiness you are finding every wing of happiness and flapping it, treading on it, smashing it between your teeth, until it is dirty or you’ve lost it or it’s gone, when it’s time to admit that you are without it again, you must find it, that it needs to be reclaimed.