notes from los angeles, 10.9.24
i am a bird and my chest is orange
emily and i have this journal we send back and forth to each other - kind of like sisterhood of the traveling pants except instead of pants its a notebook covered in stickers. it’s very cute, it’s kind of like writing letters to each other but better because it means we have access to all the previous letters at once every time we write. many months ago, we had been talking about writing, and emily suggested to me an exercise where you write a series of sentences that all start with the same phrase.
BEGIN TANGENT
i really love to talk to my writer friends about writing. something i have been desperately looking for for the past several years is a regular check in with other creatives to talk about what we’re working on and brainstorm. i never ever ever feel as energized in my creative work as when i’m talking to other artists about their work, especially if we do the same kind of work, like photography or writing. if you are seriously interested in meeting regularly individually or as a group (probably on zoom?) to talk about ongoing projects, please!!!!!! let me know. this is my dream. this is the greatest thing my world is missing right now.
END TANGENT
this is what emily wrote:
“one of my favorite writing exercises: take a phrase (at least 2 words but can be as long as you like) and only write sentences beginning with that phrase. write until you feel you are done. don’t feel pressure to tell a story, see what words you play with and where you take yourself.
i am a bird and my chest is orange. i am a bird and i have teeth. i am a bird and i can smell your coffee.”
emily currently has the journal, and when i asked her to send me a photo of that passage so that i could copy it down, she sent along with it a passage that i had written in response that accidentally fit in to this framework:
“i’m really enjoying swimming these days. i’m really enjoying the sun and the heat. i’m really enjoying my relationship. i’m enjoying the music coming out these days. i’m enjoying an iced coffee in the afternoon. i’m enjoying the feeling of having a job in the future. i’m enjoying the growing collection of photo strips on my corkboard. i’m enjoying my current manicure (orange-y red with a little white heart on every nail). i’m enjoying lighting a candle, putting on a video essay on youtube about a show i’ve never watched, and cleaning my room. i’m enjoying the prospect of a new dog entering my life soon. i’m enjoying this pen i’m writing with (the perfect combination of light and wet. does that make sense to you?).”
i’m a little tickled that i hadn’t realized it at the time, but then when i think about it, i guess my style of writing does really gravitates towards that sort of clipped, rhythmic, descriptive prose. i write repetitively all the time. i think i used to be a much more magniloquent1 writer, extending my sentences in endless strings of commas, trying to find the longest, most obscure words i could find to elucidate to my readers my significant prowess with the written word. don’t get me wrong, i definitely want you to think i’m smart. but mostly i think i’ve been influenced by the non-fiction i have started reading in recent years. nothing drives me crazier than someone not getting to the damn point!! but i think i’ll unpack that at a later date if you don’t mind.
BEGIN TANGENT
some of you will remember this. when i was in high school i invented a word: magnamorous. mostly this started because i mistakenly thought it already was a word, because it sounds like a real word (i think i was actually just thinking of the word magnanimous). the least gracious analysis of who i was in high school is to say that i was a “pick-me girl” but when you’re uncool and gay and go to an all-girls school and spend all of your free time on tumblr and reading fanfiction, mostly means you make a fake word you made up your entire personality for at least a short period of time.
if i were someone who took latin or studied the english language extensively, i would probably say that based on the roots of the word, magnamorous would probably describe someone as “full of love” or having “big love.” i think that’s actually really nice. i don’t think we have a similar word in english. maybe i was onto something at age 15?
END TANGENT
i’ve seriously lost the thread here. i was talking about this writing exercise that emily introduced me to. despite the fact that i have apparently already accidentally tried it, i have been thinking about it a lot. it feels almost like writing poetry, which is something i haven’t done in a long long time.
i have a little black dog and he has big teeth. i have a little black dog and he waits for his dinner. i have a little black dog and he sleeps in his crate. i have a little black dog and he dreams of the birds. i have a little black dog and he walks with a limp. i have a little black dog and he thinks i’m a god. i have a little black dog and he doesn’t play fetch. i have a little black dog and he digs through the trash. i have a little black dog and he lays in the sun. i have a little black dog and he wants to run. i have a little black dog and he can’t help but bite. i have a little black dog and he’s in the crook of my neck. i have a little black dog and he’s under the bed.
emily said that you shouldn’t feel pressured to make a story out of it, and while she’s certainly right from a methodological point of view, i can’t help but feel like a story can’t help but come out of an exercise like this. there’s so much to be gleaned about someone’s relationship to something based on how they revisit it over and over and over again. there’s even things to be gleaned from what they write about. i write about my little black dog because he’s such a focus of my life right now, as i navigate my new life with a SON !
BEGIN TANGENT
speaking of which, i don’t believe i’ve formally introduced you all to my son, joojoo (“little bird” in farsi). he’s been with me for two months now, and it simply couldn’t be a better fit. i have spent many years wanting a dog, but knowing that it just wasn’t feasible with my life (i didn’t have a job, i wasn’t settled, i had too much going on, etc). this summer, however, i finally started looking. especially once i got my job offer. dawson said to me at one point, “you end up with the dog you’re supposed to have.” i am grateful to my past self for having the patience to wait for the right dog for me. joojoo is that dog. he’s some sort of generic small shelter mix. my best guesses are that he has some sort of chihuahua, terrier (jack russell or border maybe), and mayyyyybe he gets his curly-cue tail from a pug or similar breed. he had three and a half working legs and needs a bit of a running start to get on the couch. he loves to go to the park. he’s very good off leash and kind of weird to other dogs on leash. he herds me when he wants something. he doesn’t bark except to dogs and people he doesn’t like (and his intuition is excellent). all he wants, and i really mean all he wants, is to lay on my lap, no matter what i am doing. he is my perfect angel.
END TANGENT
here’s another one.
ink in my skin and i’m grinding my teeth. ink in my skin and my palms are sweating. ink in my skin and the lights are bright. ink in my skin and the sun is setting. ink in my skin and the building outside is lit up gold. ink in my skin and language is twisted on my tongue. ink in my skin and there’s two young dykes in the corner. ink in my skin and a couple from spain. ink in my skin and i’m thinking about work. ink in my skin and i need to reschedule. ink in my skin and how long will it take to get home? ink in my skin and this is a weird part of town. ink in my skin and i’m not unhappy. ink in my skin and language is beautiful. ink in my skin and i probably won’t see you again. ink in my skin and my arm is warm. ink in my skin and look in the mirror. ink in my skin and i can’t sleep on that side.
i just got a tattoo, if that wasn’t clear.
BEGIN TANGENT
i found the artist who did my tattoo, marisol, on instagram because of course i did. i wasn’t really planning on getting another tattoo until october/november, but marisol’s work was really unique and beautiful and she was only in la for 3 days, and she lives in spain so it was now or never. i’ve been really into the idea of being patient and waiting for my gut to tell me when it’s time to do something but more on that some other time, i’m sure.
perhaps the singular most important thing i learned in my early twenties was that when you’re speaking to someone in a different language, it doesn’t actually matter if your grammar or vocabulary is perfect. if they’re a native speaker, 9 times out of 10, they’ll be able to fill in the gaps and understand and they won’t actually care. i learned this while studying abroad in spain, and it opened up my world in a way i couldn’t have imagined possible. anytime i feel shame or embarrassment about not speaking a language perfectly, i think about how i feel when i speak to non-native english speakers.
marisol is colombian and has lived in spain for half her life and doesn’t speak a whole ton of english, but luckily, i speak spanish well enough. we spent 4 hours chatting about her life and my life and our experiences in europe and in the americas. she is a kind, warm, funny, and very talented individual who i feel lucky to have met. i don’t know that i’ll ever see her again, but now her art is on my arm forever. life is beautiful and language is strange but i’m always floored by how connection is just out there, waiting for you to reach for it and reach for it and reach for it.
END TANGENT
i think when i imagine this writing exercise, i imagine it more as a work of fiction, an opportunity to tap into the absurd and the irreal. but my writing has always been strongest when is comes from observation. notably, this is where these newsletters usually start, with me telling you about where i’m sitting and what’s around me.2 it feels like an easy way to get the juices flowing. in this case, i think it’s time to wrap up. i’m writing to you from my bed, my bedside lamp glowing warm against my orange walls. i’m up later than i should be, but i wanted to write, and i couldn’t say no to myself. the sheets are still cool on my feet and warm on my knees. outside, there are crickets chirping, and every so often, the sound of a siren streaming in from very far away. the fog is hanging low in the canyon tonight, and a cool breeze sidles its way in over my face and onto my shoulder. joojoo is dozing off in his crate on the floor by the closet. he would prefer to sleep in the bed, but he needs a bath. my eyelids are starting to feel heavy, my breath is sinking further into my chest. the house is quiet. the night is quiet. tap tap tap, goes my keyboard.
it’s rare for me to hit the end of a newsletter and feel like i have so much more to say, but that is what i’m feeling now. fodder for the next one, i suppose! you’ll just have to wait. in the meantime, i’m sure i’ll regret not going to bed sooner tomorrow, but for now, i’ve enjoyed the company.
good night. good afternoon. good morning. i love you.
shish<3
p.s. i like looking back at old editions of this newsletter (i’ve back posted all of them, if you’re ever feeling nostalgic, or are interested in reading the ones you may have missed) and seeing how image heavy they were. i like see what past me was reading about and thinking about and writing about. it feels like a lifetime ago and also yesterday, like all things.
this wasn’t the word i was going to use here, but when i was looking up the word i was thinking of (prolific, which is not quite what i am trying to get across here), i discovered the word magniloquent, which is so good here and makes me sound sooooooo annoying. (-:
the trouble, of course, is that sometimes (oftentimes) i write these newsletters in chunks, so by the time i’m sending it out, it’s less relevant. in this example, i could point out the fact that i wrote most of the first half of this piece hunched over my desk in the bedroom at dawson’s house on my work computer (don’t tell anyone).