this is my 99th substack post, which is bonkers! and in all that time, i have never followed through on the promise of my blog’s bio, which is quite literally: “prophetic visions and pictures of fried eggs.”
to bird the stone with one kill, i’d like to share some of my top pictures of fried eggs.
first up, a fried egg with skillet fried sausage and peppers, coffee + kefir with cinnamon, in my second-to-last los feliz apartment. the year before, i picked up a cookbook from a vintage store that was a collection of celebrity recipes, organized by a famous columnist. this was farrah fawcett’s contribution.
although it’s barely even a recipe its simplicity and deliciousness stuck with me. in the time since, i’ve learned that tyramines are one of my migraine triggers, so i can’t eat as many cured meats and cheeses as i would like. so on the rare occasion i chef this up for breakfast, i’m teleported back to this particular time in my life and get to experience the good and bad memories all over.
the kefir was also part of a diet i was trying out. my aim was to improve my gut flora to clear up my skin, which did work btw.
this is a fried egg with some zucchini and chili crisp in the little Parisian apartment where i stayed over the summer. i lived like a king in a shoebox for a short while. i could sit in the bed and touch all the walls without moving and still, it was heaven to me… if i ever say to you “i was born in the wrong era,” what i mean by that is i think i was meant to die in a garret in 1913.
it’s really stupid that i had so much fun in paris because this is me now:
it happened pretty spontaneously. someone i knew was subleasing their place in paris, about to be out of town for a handful of months. i was listless in minnesota, nannying, applying to jobs, feeling outside of time, forgotten by the life that continued on without me in los angeles. so out of curiosity, i asked what the rent was, and was pleasantly surprised that my savings could cover it and more. i’d been reading the lover by marguerite duras and watching so many eric rohmer movies, that france had been on my brain for a while, and it seemed absurd that the chance to go was just now falling into my lap. it’s not like i was doing anything else. it would have been stupid not to go, essentially. so i did.
i have a lot to say about paris that i’m hoping to obscure and fictionalize in the future. what i’ll say about it now is that the experience of traveling somewhere alone, without knowing the language, for an extended time (for me, around 3 months) is psychedelic. the spaces between standing in crowded jazz bars, jaunting down the seine, clinging to someone’s back on a motorcycle, going to olympic games (i was there for that, yes), pedaling past the white french cows in the countryside, and holing up in cafes with a book and a pack of Vogues, the spaces in-between all of that commotion were like vast prairies for my mind. i think back on my time in paris like a silent meditation retreat. i had to contend with myself, keep myself company, entertain myself sometimes, soothe and comfort myself, hype myself up - especially when i felt shy and nervous. by the end of my trip, i felt so calm and even-keeled, and closer to myself: my own best friend.
spending a lot of time in silence can give you a solid sense of what you want and what’s possible. your heart has a lot to tell you. you can’t hear it if you’re not patient and if you’re not listening. i also think there’s something beyond perception that can speak to us - in dreams and in signs.
i spent a lot of time at the cemeteries in paris. on an early rainy morning, alone as ever, i paused for a long time in front of Beckett’s grave. i don’t want to sound too weird, but it was then that a thought appeared that felt as sure and cement as the truth: “auto-fiction is lazy, and a waste of your talents. your creativity is better focused elsewhere.” i don’t want to sound too weird but I don’t think the voice of this thought was my own.
I also saw Beckett’s photo on the wall of a barber shop in paris, as in it was one of the styling options. that made me laugh a lot.
A fried egg and some nice toast on a polish pottery plate on my bedspread in Minnesota. I’m heading back home to see my parents and brothers in a few days, and I’m excited because they’ve been getting snow. And the first fall is always so beautiful, even though i don’t believe it’ll stick around long enough for me to enjoy it.
I have a recurring dream where I’m back in the quad outside of my college’s library at around 2 am, returning to the dorms with my books under my arm, when it’s just started to snow - and the world is quiet, blanketed, giant flakes appearing and disappearing as they drift under the street lamps. My breath is cold and my body’s warm, and it’s like I can see every individual snowflake, my vision like a magnifying glass and time like a slow ripple on the surface of a pond.
okay i’m not really sure how to end this one. maybe send me ur pics of fried eggs and i’ll judge them like it’s a beauty pageant. okay ciao!!!
-your friend Cecilia
you're the coolest woman in the world