Diary 55

10.20.25

“I think we have spent too much time and energy in the past decade, or decades, imagining dystopias, and I don’t think that artists should be doing the imaginative work of the right. I think we need to stop doing that, and…we need to start thinking about what worlds we want to live in, because without having that idea, and that idea being really tangible, really full of detail, it doesn’t happen.” —Olivia Laing in conversation with Spencer Bailey via this episode of Time Sensitive

What does utopia look like? feel like? sound like? So much of the information we consume and the rhetoric we’re exposed to insists on describing dystopia—partly because it is important, mostly because it’s profitable—but how do we really begin to make progress without envisioning where we’re going? I think we have to steep ourselves in that image. Not to the point of delusion, but to really develop a vision of utopia which, at the very least, disrupts the predominant narrative that “everything’s doomed” and serves as a guiding light, a way forward.

10.21.25

“And think of the field opposite the telephone pole her brother wrapped the car around. How you can turn your attention away from the crushed red car and his body and walk into the field where nothing is happening, just indifferent wind in the indifferent grass, but a particular wind in particular grass.” —Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station

Grief suspends time and space, but also solidifies it. It’s one of those experiences that feels impossible to articulate, but I think Ben Lerner gets close to it here- “how you can turn your attention away from (the place where everything is happening) and walk into the field where nothing is happening.” How, in moments of suffering, you can seemingly move between two temporalities: into the hospital room where she’s lying dead, out into the hallway where it’s a normal day and the nurses are having lunch. On the surface the hallway looks like “indifferent wind in the indifferent grass,” but it’s now “a particular wind in particular grass.” Which is to say it’s marked by her death, too. It’s no longer just a hallway, it’s a hallway in the hospital she died in. The nurses eating their lunch are somehow part of it too. Everything you notice & experience in the throes of grief suddenly becomes significant by association.

10.22.25

My partner and I regularly take walks along the beach right after sunset, as the ocean turns a dark, soft pastel color in the emerging moonlight. It’s often the only time I have outside of work and school to really slow down and make meaning of my experiences, contemplate the future, or else just notice my surroundings. I notice all the stones covered in algae and little pools of saltwater where there are hollows in the sand; the weight of my partner’s hand in mine; how the air in October smells briny and metallic. If anything feels like proof that I’m alive right now, it’s this: emerging from our night walks wind-whipped and sweaty.

10.25.25

Over drinks with my friend Mary Grace, we came to observe a guy at the other end of the bar dressed like a Dalmatian—wearing floppy black-spotted ears, a black nose, and a dog collar—sitting next to dommy mommy Cruella DeVille. We weren’t sure where they came from or how long they’d been sitting there, and laughed at the thought that we’d overlooked what was now clearly a spectacle.

When was the last time you let something fairly distinct or obvious go undetected? Where was your attention when it happened?
(Maybe it’s speeding in front of a cop car, accidentally washing a hot pink sports bra with your white clothing, or uncovering a secret that actually wasn’t secret at all- your attention was just elsewhere).

10.27.25

Style Inventory:
-cotton quilted military liner jacket
-stacking silver hoop earrings
-cargo pants / old levi’s
-‘Stone’ by Liza Pittard
-hanging silk scarves open (all four corners splayed) on the wall

Christopher Nelson, “Occlusion.” Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol. 41, Spring 2025.

full moon risen in
partial eclipse
above silos and skeletal

grain chutes—
you watching as well
all those states over

texting its colors
almost lemon…now it’s
tomato red

as it surrenders
to occlusion—
killdeer quiet

on ground nests
and ticks
at grass tips

arms extended
as in prayer or
ready to dive

for, yes, blood
that’s the color
and more so

in the fade—
what was it
that moved between us

silent, massive