sickly prince sundays

one day of the week for the diseased and aristocratic pls

I’m actually for once not feeling sickly, quite the opposite, I’m feeling very vigorous, sunburnt in the cool air, talking everyone’s ear off - but I like the image of the sickly prince. There should be a specific day of the week for behaving diseased and aristocratic. I do have extended periods in bed where I behave like a decaying monarch, typing, thinking, tossing about in too-hot sheets, piecing together my little dispatches - which are riddled with typos and entire embarrassing areas of texts (that a good editor would tell me to reign in or nix, but are kept there out of my own ignorance and laziness, or maybe because I want to hurt myself later with cringing re-reads, or to make myself take this all not-too-seriously, as if leaving my errors out in plain-view is a psychological challenge which helps me become more comfortable with imperfection, because that’s a hurdle that prevents me from sharing my writing).

It’s restorative at times to take to rest in a self-important and haughty way, in your nicest lingerie and vintage silk pajamas, ideally with your hair in rollers, with a few spritz of perfume, various creams and potions applied to your skin, even slipping yourself under the covers in an etiquette-school manner as if you are precious silverware folded in a fine cloth napkin at a dinner party. Private acts of vanity exorcise narcissism from your system. Be a little decadent. Sleep it out.

Right now, I feel so moved by art, and very filled up with my own soul, and happy to be alive. Some of that might be the creatine shakes talking. Sometimes I like to compile little lists of “where I’m at” because I tend to go through these intense phases of interest, and then I blip out of them, continue on and will, like, forget that I spent a whole 2 weeks murmuring John Martyn songs to myself, something like that. It’s important to deeply experience movies, books, music, food. Too easily this activity can feel like… I dunno, a race to consume, like you’re behind, catching up, as if there’s a curriculum. The antidote to that feeling is to think about certain scholars who have dedicated their own life’s work to someone else’s singular work. I think there is an immense beauty to that. Depth and substance. You can draw a lot of inspiration and life force from just one or two things.

So, these lists aren’t commandments, just a sort of *non-exhaustive* “note to self” about what’s been on my mind, what enrichment has been dropped into my enclosure. Wonder what you’re into, too. Let me know.

Beverage List

Cortado - This is what I make at home and since realizing I can order this more appropriate coffee:milk ratio from regular cafes, lattes now TASTE gauche and excessive

Mariage Freres earl grey in a ceramic cup applied to sinuses before bed

Creatine, dark berries, vanilla ice cream, coconut cream, blended, take in the morning - sort of convinced flavonoids can cure depression

Water from Oberweis glass milk jug - it’s 4million times more refreshing than any other vessel, somehow

Gold thread green minerals - my go-to when faced with the refrigerated wall of Whole Foods Special Drinks

Negronis, which were never a fad for me

Coke with lemon slice

Reading List

Bluets, Maggie Nelson

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

An American Childhood, Annie Dillard

The Courage to Create, Rollo May

The Lover, Marguerite Duras

Farming: A Handbook, Wendell Berry

Close Range, Annie Proulx

A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch

The Oblivion Seekers, Isabelle Eberhardt

Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung

Wendell Berry is my favorite poet because he was a farmer. I’m mostly now interested in reading work from people who were businessmen and farmers and sailors and whatever - people acquainted and close with the earth, its workings, its creatures, its people. I am very bored with New York, city folk, paranoid philosophers, etc.

Annie Proulx should be required reading, also. I want to talk about her too much. Both Annies, actually. An American Childhood is a re-read for me. It’s incredible!

Actually reading Jung has been illuminating. These are concepts that are so well integrated into the mainstream that they won’t necessarily strike you as spectacular - Anima or Shadow, for instance, you probably get the gist of if you’re at all online or literate. But reading Man and His Symbols provides hella context, is extremely interesting, and has given me a couple psychological tools to deal with the world and with myself - versus previously … yes, I could have a conversation about Jung, but that’s very different than engaging with the ideas. I like this on the Animus, too, which conceptually isn’t as sexist as I braced myself for.

Realizations List

Colors are vulgar to me

Olivia Newton John was so beautiful

Walking with your hands behind your back feels so good when you don’t have a bitch in your ear telling you that you look like an aging professor

My achilles tendons are perfect (according to a ballerina)

Life is long and I have it in me to make hundreds of paintings

The most low-vibrational thing you can do is watch Youtube Shorts on the Roku

You are just a person
We are all just people

It’s counterintuitive, but the more comfortable I am with you, the more likely I am to display traits of anxiety, nervousness, weirdness. All that stuff is close to my core and somewhat private. When other people get close to me, it’s actually a sign of trust and intimacy to reveal insecurities, moodiness, faults.

I want to feel glamorous every day and I don’t think this is an unrealistic expectation

Living in a mid-sized post industrial American city and spending your traveling days anywhere but Europe is IN.

I admit, all of these are things I first tweeted, that I am now harvesting from my own feed. But it’s fine, because they’re also realizations that I’d like to cement and make a little more permanent. I stand by my lunatic ravings!!

Watch List

The Curse

Contrapoint’s new 3 hour Twilight video essay

Caroline Girvan’s workout videos

Beau Travail

Marty

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mother!

Mala Educación

The Long Goodbye

To Live and Die in LA

My favorite on the list is Beau Travail, which is loosely based on a Melville story, further feeding into my obsession with Melville’s work at the moment. It’s a movie where the entire time you’re waiting for something to happen… until you get to the last twenty minutes, and realize it’s been happening all along. Then you are side-swept. A friend of mine introduced me to Denis Lavant a week or so ago, showing me the absolute ending of the movie, and since then I’ve been enthralled by him, by his movements, his choices, dance in film. Without spoiling it, I’ll say this: sometimes when your entire life falls apart, and it’s all your fault, all there’s left to do is dance. The soundtrack in this movie is so expertly deployed, too, I’ll mention, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it - driving, showering, chores. I’m feeling very, very inspired.

BTW, I swear by Caroline Girvan. The workouts are so intense but so targeted, well-planned and executed, that even though I’m slacking off by 30%, I’m still getting immense physical and emotional benefits. Normally I feel exasperated and frustrated by YouTube exercise videos, but absolutely not with Caroline. Doing these workouts a few times a week has allowed me to produce evidence for my meditative motivational mantra, which is: “I’m a normal girl. I am so normal. I am behaving in a normal way right now.” because it feels like the kind of thing normal girls do.

Mother! is an iffy inclusion, because I didn’t find it to be good, at all. But you think about things and certain images stick with you, I guess. For similar reasons I had a period where I could’t get Under the Silver Lake out of my head, and kept wanting to make references to it in conversation, despite it being deeply imperfect and not really a movie worthy of recommendation.

Aesthetics List

Puka shell belts, bracelets and necklaces

Men’s painter shirts over vintage slip dresses

Tomato red stockings

All green outfits

Henni Alftan paintings

Goin’ fishing - core

Instagram Accounts List

Luke Hannam - now, this sounds very mean, but this artist essentially makes knock-off Picasso sketches. That hasn’t ruined my appreciation for Luke’s work at all. In fact I am very taken by their beauty. I want to make my own knock-off Picassos as a result. His work just feels so fresh and different. I think because I’m used to drawing gaze-averting waifs, these full-bodied figures staring at me with wide eyes and pronounced philtrums seem so bold, gorgeous and energetic, especially because they register very, very differently than Picasso’s work, despite borrowing pieces of the aesthetic.

WeOpen - I really, really dig this sort of discussion about art. I’m on the same page as Taylor about 60% of the time, and even when I disagree I find these short videos to be stimulating. Everything IS art. Interesting lens, great way to put unique works in front of people.

Listen List

I’m On Fire - Bruce Springsteen

Angel Of The Morning - Juice Newton

The Rhythm Of The Night - Corona

Modern Love - David Bowie

Cowboy Take Me Away - The Chicks

American Pie - Don McLean

Sound and Vision - David Bowie

Stand By Your Man - Tammy Wynette

The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies

My Sweet Lord - George Harrison

Hello It’s Me - Todd Rundgren

None of these songs are going to be necessarily “brand new” to anyone reading this. They’re just really, really good oldies. Great to sing along to in the car, for running, feeling exuberant. Now, lately, I’m on an anti-irony agenda. I’m trying very hard to be pro-cringe. And even as a little girl did I find this kind of music to be, well, cringe! Sappy! You can’t just say you feel! It’s so embarrassing! But then if I try to investigate why I *used to feel* that way about unabashed Juice Newton lyrics or an earnestly horny Bruce Springsteen song, I realize I’m the one who has a problem communicating clearly, and knowing what do with clear communication handed to me. Lately I’m finding mumble-core and overly aestheticized music to be tedious. I want directness, plainness. Say it with your full throat!

Actually it’s sort of amazing American Pie has such corny lyrics, mostly around drinking whiskey and “the day that music died,” when it also has lyrics that completely knock the wind out of me with their gorgeousness - for instance, “Did you write the book of love? And do you have faith in God above?” and dancing to dirges in the dark... Like, holy cow. Go off Don.

Blahblahblah

Okay we’ve had enough time inside my head. Thanks for reading!

-C