new york diary

I read this at Sara's on the Lower East Side on 14 April 2023, for the opening of Harris Rosenblum's show 'Inorganic Demons.'

A plain young woman has woven two thin braids into her loose tan hair. She’s wearing head-to-toe black leather. She steps out of a striped yellow sportscar at the intersection of Allen & Houston. The unseen driver pops the trunk for her; she removes her bags one by one. She motions for him to roll down the window. Says, “See ya.” He revs the engine and speeds off, tires screeching. The New York plates read MADPETTY. 

At the bus stop at night, I lift my phone to take a picture of the city lights. As the scene comes into frame on my device, I hear a crash, then a chorus of human sounds. A police car has hit a black sedan. Looks like an Audi Quattro from the '80s. 

Dinner at home. Leftover tom kha gai and a handful of licorice candy. I pour the soup into my bunny bowl, punch 1-0-0 into the microwave. I think about seeing Chuck earlier tonight, how cynical he was about the art world. How I said, when we were in line to buy apples, that yes, it’s harder to live in New York than Los Angeles, but this is a city that asks of you your full capacity, and isn’t that beautiful? And doesn’t it give so much in return, more bounty and splendor than the intellect could ever fully grasp, so much that its fullness can only be touched thru feeling, spirit, only be metabolized as an encounter with the sublime? And how he said, name three things. And I said what? And he said name three things that New York has to offer. I named two, and as we riffed on those, the conversation meandered elsewhere. I felt a little chastened. I bought a McIntosh. He bought a Red Delicious.

Walking down Division with Kingsley, who has a nosebleed. A famous fashion photographer’s grandson is yelling at passersby, “A buck gets you a dick or a duck!” He greets Kingsley warmly, by name. He asks if we’d like to buy a dick or a duck for a buck, brandishing two buckets filled with orange foam toys: one shaped like dicks, the other shaped like ducks. Kingsley uses his last dollar to buy a duck. We ask which is selling faster, and he says the dicks. As we walk away, I ask King how he knows him. King says this guy used to hang out in an art collective headquarters / traphouse on Canal that we all spent a lot of time at in 2019. King asks if I remember him, saying, “he was the one who would sit in the corner doing whippits and then randomly trash the place.” I say I don’t. King says this guy is sober now. I say oh, that’s great. He says, yeah, almost two years. I say that’s amazing. I think about how in May, for me, it’ll be three. 

At the nail salon, I turn the bottles upside down to read the names. A shimmery teal-grey is “clean slate.” A deep olive is “things I’ve seen in aber-green.” A purplish silver is “tinsel, tinsel, little star.” A dark turquoise is “my studio’s on Spring.” This one is my favorite. What a scene it conjures. I love the apostrophe. “My studio’s on Spring.” A phrase tossed off casually, with a wave of the hand, passing a friend on the street. I check my phone and my mother has sent me a picture of the sunset from 500 miles away. The colors are, from top down, pale blue, apricot, and the sort of pink that beauticians like to call “dusty rose.” When I return home, I look up these shades in nail polish. The blue is “mooning.” The apricot is “swoon in the lagoon.” The rose is “eternal optimist.”

When I was in the country, I read Rilke, who could barely tolerate the glare and the noise. Here, I’m drawn to writers who would have been fun at parties ~ Frank O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, Renata Adler, Elizabeth Hardwick. I remember two books I’ve been wanting to read that are simply transcribed bits of gossip and story. One is called A. The other is called Talk. 

In bed, I write in my diary, “thinking about how I am, blessedly, predisposed to happiness, but I want to — need to, for my art — remain vigilant about not letting myself lapse into a kind of blithe complacency. I do not want that — I want to remain sharp and questing, directing my expansiveness toward doing the work.”

I sign a lease on a rent-controlled place on Henry Street instead of entering an MFA program. Really all it takes to enjoy life is to trust God and listen.