Emchap's Shit from the Internet 1/24/17 🍠
I was all set today to write about how I left work today and walked from Chelsea down past Madison Square Park, and all the way down 5th to Union Square. I saw a weird mural of two pineapples getting married, and no one yelled at me, and the weather was almost nice. The sun wasn't down right as I got out of work, and I had a brief moment of less "oh, maybe I shouldn't leave" and more "this is the right note on which to go."
But then the wind kicked up, and I wasn't wearing a heavy-enough jacket, and my friend called me realizing that I was going to the wrong location of the pizza restaurant we were getting dinner at, because I still don't really understand where neighborhoods in Manhattan are, and any lingering nostalgia I had was gone. If I still haven't learned the neighborhoods two years in, it's probably a sign New York is not for me.
But the pizza was fantastic, and my friend led us to a speakeasy in the back of a Japanese restaurant afterwards (my first NYC speakeasy!), and though I am profoundly ready to go I am sad to be leaving so many people here who I love so much.
This time next week, I'll be on the west coast, and I am excited and terrified to see what comes next.
Shit to read
I had forgotten the blog post I wrote about moving to NYC. The coworkers with whom I got really drunk in that blog entry are the ones with whom I got pizza tonight, and it is funny to see an early iteration of people who I did not know would play such a huge role in my life.
Cast iron is good, and this article on self love shows why.
At the end of the day, "I read too much Didion and decided to go for it" is the reason I am moving to LA, in the same way "I got drunk with my coworkers" is the reasons for NYC.
Apparently Indians send each other good morning gifs and it's hammering phone storage and I love this story.
Ursula K. Le Guin died, and I am so, so sad. My mother's friend gave me the Earthsea books as a child, if memory serves (or at least I associate them with her), and they were some of the first fantasy books I'd ever read in which the protagonists were neither white nor gryphons, and I 100% believe that the way she wrote contributed to my eventual pursuit of an anthropology degree. This interview is very good, and this riff on Omelas is too. (Read the original, if you have not.)
Shit to eat
Order the baba ganoush from your favorite Turkish restaurant.
Wait 40 minutes, get distracted by vacuuming up cat litter from the EVERYWHERE that it manages to get itself.
Hear a very polite knock on your door that you worry means that the poor delivery man has been standing outside for a while.
Pray that that's not the case because you would die of shame.
Eat the baba ganoush with crusty Turkish bread.
The food will be delicious, and you will immediately feel the skin of the roof of your mouth become irritated.
Remember the part where someone who you've known for two years told you that you're responsible for 50% of the "my mouth hurts" complaints that he's heard in his life.
Do the mouth on what that means relative to your total contribution given that you've known him for a very short period of his being alive.
Debate whether you're maybe allergic to eggplant.
While this is happening, absentmindedly eat half the container, because it's very good.
Table the issue for another time when you are not hungry.
Shit to listen to
I have been powerfully homesick for a particular late summer when I was 23 and had a house with a porch and good money and another when I was 16 and my friends had cars and things seemed like they might go on forever with a vague halo of cicadas, and it is weird to want a thing that does not exist any longer and may not have ever existed except in your retroactive memory. "Done" makes me think of that.
I will a thousand percent be listening to "leaves" on my flight to California and weeping. Does anyone have a soundtrack of California songs?
Shit to buy
Never buy anything, or you'll have to move it one day. It will be horrible.
I wore the thighs out of my jeans again, and will be repairing them in California.
I'm really excited to see how this travel litter box holds up.
If you ever fly with a cat, you have to take them out of the carrier for security, and it's horrible. Request a secondary screening (gets you into a smaller room rather than the main line) and get this harness and leash.
You can buy cardboard boxes from Amazon rather than scrounging them and it makes life SO MUCH EASIER.