AFIELD NOTES

Tornadoes and Chickens

AFIELD NOTES — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:20:16 GMT

Hello from the extremely wet Upstate. I’m in the midst of a two week stay up here while both kids are at sleepaway camp (!). This time feels quite luxurious. No kids. No real responsibilities. I’ve started to contemplate what comes next for Afield, but have decided to put that on the back burner until September. For now it’s about movement and travel. I have seven months of relative stagnation I need to get out of my system.

I’ve always been one who is loath to talk about the weather and this extends to even monitoring the weather, which has come to bite me in the ass a couple of times. Recently, my kid and I were out shopping for camping gear and made our way to the REI on one of those weird ass highways in New Jersey. While there, a tornado warning was in full effect and we were asked to shelter in place in the store’s basement stairwell. Now mind you, I’m from Oklahoma where tornadoes are a dime a dozen and well, honestly, I kind of liked them. Yes, I’m well aware of the destruction and death, but as a kid it was rare for a tornado to strike down in a city so I felt pretty well insulated in Tulsa. We lived on the edge of the city though, so my dad and I would sit on the front porch and watch the sky until it got too risky, then the five of us would huddle underneath the stairs. My brothers and I loved it. We would have snacks, get flashlights, pillows and blankets and tell ghost stories. Or at school, when we would have to file out to the hallways, away from the windows, it was a time that was so out of the ordinary, where us kids and the teachers were in the same boat, it felt like a new and exciting adventure we were experiencing together.

So this time, at REI, when we were asked to shelter in place with thirty strangers, I felt a little giddy anticipation. Here was something out of the ordinary I was about to experience with a lot of people I knew nothing about. Yet, this time was different. Thirty people huddled in a stairwell, every single one of them, save my kid and myself, were staring at their phone. For the forty-five minutes we were together barely a word was exchanged. In the end it was a lot of nothing.

We headed to the South Shore of Long Island for a few days last week. My 11 year old is obsessed with Sublime so we got him tickets to a show in Patchogue. We decided to make a little holiday out of it and I booked a room at the Mama Farm bed and breakfast in Bellport. The inn is an idyll set on acres of wooded land not far from the town. Paths lead from the main building that meander through the forest, taking you past goats and sheep and heritage chickens. We were lucky enough to score some passes to the resident-only Ho Hum Beach, which involves taking a little ferry over to Fire Island and alighting on one of the best little beaches I’ve encountered yet in New York. Another bonus is that right next door to the B&B is Early Girl Farm, a wonderland of native flowers, gorgeous vegetable gardens and the lovely woman in charge of it all, Patty Gentry. On Fridays and Saturdays she hosts a market only open to her CSA members, AND guests of Mama Farm. We loaded up on fresh produce, drank cardamom ice coffees, and ate some incredible margherita dosas. Yes, I did in fact open up my Zillow app while there.

Anthony Luscia is the manager of Mama Farm and a true gem who gave us all the insider tips. The farm itself is owned by Isabella Rossellini who I encountered one morning and the only words I exchanged with her was to inform her that I was boiling an egg.

I finally made it to Cherry Lane Theatre this month where I saw Shifters, fresh off its successful run on the West End. An exquisitely acted love story that weaves in and out of time and memory, it had me in a state of tears that surprised even my friends. Also I just adore a black box theatre. The story is somewhat predictable, but somehow that makes it even more endearing. The play is on until September 13.

My husband and I also made it to the movie theatre together for the first time in maybe a decade. We saw The Invite which we both really loved, and gave us good fodder for a post-film discussion on the 45-minute drive home from Kingston. The film has the smart, frenzied and dialogue-heavy energy of a Woody Allen movie, which I adore. Penelope Cruz is just a joy to watch, and Olivia Wilde does manic well.

But, anyway

AFIELD NOTES — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:51:14 GMT

So the worst part is over. My last chemo was at the end of June and I had a double mastectomy two weeks ago. The first seven days after surgery were terrible, but the pain was mitigated by an alternating regimen of tylenol and oxycodone. But the thing about surgery, as opposed to chemo, is that everyday gets a bit better and that, psychologically, is everything. Also, a few days after surgery I started to feel like myself again, like the chemo was finally seeping out my system. In my last post I wrote about how the new version of me was unsure about how to be in the world. I think maybe my old self is making a reappearance, though surely in an altered form.

The writings of literary critic Anatole Broyard have been essential for me throughout this experience. It was such a joy to discover a writer who wrote of his illness with such wit and who possessed an outlook on his cancer that was so similar to mine (though his cancer was terminal). This quote in particular has stayed with me:

“I think that only by insisting on your style can you keep from falling out of love with yourself as the illness attempts to diminish or disfigure you. Sometimes your vanity is the only thing that’s keeping you alive, and your style is an instrument of your vanity. It may not be dying we fear so much, but the diminished self”.

Throughout his life Broyard was acutely aware of the reality of death, likely due his own father’s slow, painful death from cancer when Anatole was in his late 20s. I haven’t experienced a similar loss, but I do believe I have always been quite conscious of dying and death in my regular day-to-day. Not to say that I’m completely comfortable with it. But it is something that I think of regularly and that informs many of my decisions and how I live my life. I suppose this is why the last line of Broyard’s quote resonates so clearly with me. It has been the diminished self that has so frightened me and caught me off guard throughout this experience. Turns out it’s not necessarily death that scares me, but aging, illness.

Broyard did not make it to the other side of his cancer. I wonder how his writing would have changed had he survived. Rather, I wonder how my writing will evolve now that I’m out of the thick of it.

I’ve always loved to read. I got into the Russians at an early age, possibly to my detriment. I was prepared for a life full of drama and machination: affairs with nihilistic aristocrats, spirited and possibly fatal disputes over an inheritance, and regular theological discussions with priests. Alas, this is not the life I lead in the suburbs, being quite domestic with my husband and kids. Although, maybe this is the fate of many middle class women, both then and now. I suppose I was under some false impression that I would rise out of my meagre beginnings and enter an aristocratic world of intrigue. My husband likes to joke about my longing for the beauty of the past, something that would only appeal if I found myself in the upper echelons of society. A position that most of us would unlikely find ourselves were we to suddenly be transported to, say, 18th century France.

All this to say that in some ways I had been building up towards something as dramatic as a cancer diagnosis. It was my time to shine. In my writing anyway. As Broyard put it, “A dangerous illness fills you with adrenaline and makes you feel very smart. I can afford now, I said to myself, to draw conclusions. All those grand generalizations toward which I have been building for so many years are finally taking shape.” Cancer has given me permission to explore some of the existential questions that have been lingering since my youth, allowing me to put my more dramatic, and yes earnest, side on display.

But now what? I have to do another ten months of maintenance chemo. Baby chemo. But the effects will not be nearly as dramatic. I’ll be able to return to my normal life and my idle time will be seriously diminished. And my writing? I’m not yet sure what form it will take, but the sanction that cancer has given me to write, my own writing, won’t dissipate. Maybe it will take a more lighthearted tone. But I doubt it.

Let's get physical

AFIELD NOTES — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:10:15 GMT

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my physical self. Since I was around 11 years old I have had an incredibly low regard for my appearance. I do remember the before. I remember feeling good in my skin, remember it not being so important, mostly I remember not comparing myself to other people. Then, middle school.

For years I would look in the mirror, and focus on every flaw, down to the point where they would start to feel like a deformity. I hyper focused on my nose, which felt too large for my face (it is). It became an obsession to the point that in high school my parents finally offered to pay for plastic surgery (as two elementary school teachers this was a proposition that was well beyond their means). I contemplated their offer over several days, finally coming to the conclusion that I didn’t want to risk going under the knife and maybe even started to have a little appreciation for my prominent nose. I never really gave the issue much thought again.

The general feeling of ugliness remained, though I managed to make a bit more peace with it over the years. I was fortunate for most of my life that weight wasn’t much of a concern….then, middle age. This has given me something new to fixate on for the last decade or so. But for the most part, after struggling through the morning process of getting dressed, I could go through most of my day giving little thought to my physical appearance. I had little taste for mirrors and hated seeing photos of myself, but otherwise, with age, I came to appreciate other aspects of myself and was able to move through the world with some ease…then, cancer.

With a cancer diagnosis, even when the prognosis is good, as in my case, the threat of death is there. My cancer could spread, and I could die. And yes, while thoughts of life and death, the meaning of existence and what it means to lead a good life have been on my mind somewhat, what primarily occupies my thoughts is my face. My hair. My body. The hollow-eyed, chubby person in the mirror who can’t possibly be me.

As Sontag said, nobody has managed to glamorize cancer (unlike with TB). This is undoubtedly true. And throughout this whole ordeal I have often felt like a monster. The loss of one’s hair, I’ve realized, is a trauma. It is no accident that shaving heads has been used throughout history as a tool of punishment because of how effectively it strips a person of their identity. Think witch trials, mental institutions, prisons. While chemo doesn’t inflict this as punishment, the effect is the same. And I would argue this rings even truer for women. Cancer and chemo are guilty of identity theft, reducing the person to their ailments, the body taking precedence over the mind.

Perhaps then it is no surprise that I’ve tended to focus so much on my physical defects. There are times I’ve not wanted to leave my house (many times in fact), because of how I look. I’ve become vulnerable and unsure how to operate in the world. There are days I’ve become convinced my husband will tire of me and be done (a thought that I had never before entertained and that he insists is unreasonable, though if I keep harping on all of this he would have a good reason to). But what I find so interesting is that my feelings of inferiority aren’t just about feeling ugly, but rather not feeling like myself. I don’t know how to operate in the world looking and feeling like I do. I am not who I am.

Vanity today has reached a fever pitch, an obsession with the physical self that borders on a collective psychosis. Consider this, from writer Laura Reilly, introducing High Touch, her new aesthetics and longevity newsletter earlier this year:

“In January alone, I’ve done Botox, Emface, IPL, scheduled Moxi / broadband light, seen my orthodontist, cardiologist, GP, OBGYN, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, plastic surgeon, trainer, and pilates instructor. I’ve renewed my health insurance and medspa membership. I’ve drawn blood three times and given two urine samples. My current skincare routine is 6-8 steps, my daily supplement stack is 17 pills (20 on Mondays) and a peptide taken subQ, and I’ve engaged at least 5 high-tech tools from my home device library (red light, SAD light, PEMF, etc). I’ve tracked every meal, macro, and relevant micronutrient. All of this, and I consider myself pretty healthy and not hypochondriac. I am n=1, but I am not alone here.”

I don’t mean to single her out. I mostly want to highlight my reaction to reading her post. First, shock at the lengths a woman much younger than myself would go to in the name of aesthetics. Then panic. A panic that I’m not doing nearly enough. Followed by feelings of failure. If all these successful women across my social media feeds have the time to be both professionally accomplished and this devoted to their appearance, what is wrong with me? I am neither.

In the end I land on feeling that it’s all just too much. I’ve dabbled in botox. I’ve spent entirely too much money on skincare products. I have a red light. I get the occasional facial. We each have our own red line and I’ve drawn mine. At least for now. Though of course it’s been more gradual than the changes that have come with chemo, my aging face has made me feel less like myself. This is one of the most difficult aspects of aging, and what I’ve done so far is try to smooth away some of those year. Attempts to eradicate those jowls that surely aren’t mine, to lift those eyelids that must belong to someone else.

I’m used to moving through the world in a certain way. Where my past self landed on the scale of beauty is in some sense irrelevant. I had grown accustomed to myself. Accustomed to how people would react, or not, when I entered a room. Accustomed to how to engage with new people, how to function in a crowd.

That self has been stripped away. I no longer know how to act in this new body, this new face. Has the chemo killed the cells that made up me and replaced them with someone else?

I’m obsessed with the idea of getting back to myself. Being normal again. But maybe this experience is also like aging. I will never be 27 again. I will never be someone who hasn’t had cancer again.

To be an aging woman is to slowly become someone else. Someone who fades into the periphery, who no longer garners the attention they once did, who has to relearn how to move through the world. Chemo has simply been an acceleration of that process. Is it any wonder that the Kris Jenners and Demi Moores of this world go to such uncanny extremes in search of themselves?

When I look back now at pictures of myself as a teenager it makes me sad to think about how much time I spent agonizing over my looks. What a waste of time. And surely I’ll think the same when twenty years from now I’m looking at pictures of me today. Well, maybe not today-today. But, you know, when I’m back to looking like myself. Whatever that is.

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Nothing to say here

AFIELD NOTES — Thu, 28 May 2026 10:39:29 GMT

I’ve had the worst case of writer’s block the last couple of weeks. Actually, I think more than a block it’s a state of having absolutely nothing to say, much less write. It’s a curious thing when your life is put on hold. You realize how much energy, inspiration, and stimulus come from the external. And I have always been a seeker. Like never, ever satiated. I’ve always thrived on novelty and been hyper aware of having this one life to live, driven by an almost manic need to see, taste and experience as much as possible. (My friend Serena would attribute this to my Sagittarius rising and my Sagittarius moon). In any case, while some of these tendencies have most certainly mellowed over the years (I’ve been a serial monogamist for several decades now), others have certainly not (I’ve lived in New Jersey for only five and a half years now and it’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere since I was a child). And yes, I’ve analyzed this tendency of mine endlessly, the life of wandering versus rootedness, and what makes a good life. Simone Weil would say that uprootedness is one of the great diseases of modernity, and Socrates, who never left his beloved Athens, would likely agree. And while I believe there are large kernels of truth to such wisdom, I’m inclined to agree more with Nietzsche who believed travel and wandering were essential for self-knowledge. Let’s just agree for now that both ways of living have their pluses and minuses.

The point of this piece was to talk about having nothing to say, though it seems I’ve found my voice. The fact is that I have lately taken to not doing much at all. My life has gotten very, very small since cancer. I rarely see friends, my social life is verging on non-existent, and my restaurant and museum going has become sadly minimal. And travel, oh, how I lament Thee! (and the 1K status on United that I will surely be losing this year).

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But still, I’ve got my books, my husband, my kids, my podcasts, my music (I’m leaving this here in the order they came to mind). And it’s true, Lorenzo and I still have the occasional heated debate (very occasional, and actually not very heated). In some ways, I fear that what I have always feared the most has come to pass. The mundane. As someone prone to depression for much of my life I have hit the depths and remained there for some time, surrounded by a darkness that was so stifling and so lonely that escape seemed little possible. Until it was. Each time, somehow, I’ve wriggled out of depression’s stranglehold. Not unscathed. And perhaps even a little bit better for it. Though it’s hard to say really, as the intricacies of a depressive episode are difficult to recall after the fact. Which, thank God.

And on the other hand, as I’ve said, I’m a seeker, and the highs that come from being in or discovering a new place are something else entirely…throw me into an unknown situation or a foreign city without a clue and I’m thriving (not as challenging today as when I was armed with little more than a Streetwise and pocket dictionary, but still). I’ve accepted this aspect of my personality and in some ways agree with the notion that you can’t have the high highs without the low lows.

I’ve always understood that a full life for me is one of both joy and suffering. One can’t exist without the other. And the real hell, the thing I fear most, is nothing at all. Chemo does something to your brain, or maybe just my brain, but it has sapped me of all verve. No more than that. It saps me of everything, leaves me empty. And not empty in a dark way, just a nothing way. A cemetery on the side of the road next to a strip mall in a suburb kind of way. Like devoid of all romance, meaning and just entirely fucking flat.

I’m currently taking a writing seminar and much of the focus is on visibility, how to get your work out there. Our teacher today spoke about the importance of consistency and suggested to some of us to think of Substack more as a journal, so this is how I’ve decided to approach my work here for now. So my musings may read more as ramblings or journeys that take the reader along for the ride, not really knowing at the outset where we’ll end up. Our assignment today was to write an about page for our Substack. At one point in my draft I assured the reader that my writing would never be too earnest. I’m afraid today I’ve failed in that.

Only up from here

AFIELD NOTES — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:47:20 GMT

I’ve become a bit of a recluse lately. I find myself driving to adjacent towns for pilates, for groceries. I like the anonymity of New York. In a dream scenario I would retreat to Mallorca or maybe Marrakech for several months, only to return tanned, thinner, with hair and cancer-free.

It’s not only the vanity that is keeping me at bay, I haven’t felt my best lately, which they say is normal as chemo goes on. I don’t feel sick per se, but I’m insanely tired all of the time and just don’t have much social energy. And basically I just really don’t want people to see the sick version of me. Not now.

Mentally, though, I’m doing pretty much ok, save for that low self-esteem. I have had some low points, actually maybe “a” low point. Picture this. After having dinner with a friend on the Upper East Side, I had to run down to the Village to collect my car from a garage that was closing at 9:30 (didn’t even know that was a thing). It was a Thursday night, people sitting outside cafes, mingling on the sidewalks. Being late, I’m running towards the garage and bam. I fall flat on my face. No warning. No time to even put my hands out to stop myself. I saw stars. I think maybe I was out for a second. I wake up surrounded by some concerned, drunk citizens. One is threatening to call an ambulance. I first check that my teeth are still intact (they were) and raise myself from the ground, still with only a mind to get to my car. My nose and wrist are covered in blood. I feel a goose egg already emerging from my head. My wig is slightly askew. I limp the next block to the garage just in time, wash up in a filthy sink and get in my car to head back to Jersey. At a stoplight a few blocks away I come to a halt in front of my beloved Bar Pisellino. Glancing at the 20 year olds in their bralettes and pencil skirts, carelessly smoking cigarettes and throwing back spritzes. And this, this just put me over the edge. I used to be those girls (minus the bralette, but god how I wish those had been in fashion when I was the size to wear them). And it’s not that I want to BE them now, I have no youthful wish, but for a moment I missed myself at that age. And the contrast with where I was at that moment was just too much to bear.

The trauma of the event didn’t last long. The next morning, with my burgeoning black eye, I was able to relay the story in all its dark humor. Because goddamn it WAS pretty fucking funny. And absurd. And just really a cherry on top to the year I’ve had.

WHERE I ATE - only took me five years of being back to make it to Superiority Burger. It was good, but I’m not entirely sure it lived up to all the fanfare. But I pretty much trust anything that J. Lee (have a read of his reaction to the NYTimes new best 100 Restaurant list) says in regards to food, so if it’s one of his faves, I will definitely be going back.

WHERE I STAYED - I try to stay somewhere lovely the night before my chemo, to fill up on something beautiful to sustain me over the next several days. My most recent stay was at The Twenty Two in Union Square which fed my predilection for cosy, elegant English interiors beautifully. From the art-deco bar to the light-filled atrium where breakfast is served, the hotel is a delight for the eyes.

WHAT I WATCHED - I went to a midday movie by myself, something I hadn’t done in decades, and watched The Christophers, the new Soderbergh film with Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. It was a delight to watch…superb acting, superb scripting. I also breezed through DTF St. Louis at the suggestion of several friends. It was fantastically original. And I just adore each of the actors.

WHAT I READ - oh god, what haven’t I read. I’ve been knocking off several books a week. Some highlights: On the Calculation of Volume by the Danish author Solvej Balle is an extraordinary, mesmerizing series of a woman stuck in a time loop, endlessly repeating November 18. The Plunge, by Lila Raicek, an erotic thriller that would make for a perfect beach read. And then I read the much-talked-about Yesteryear, which started out with a promising premise, the trad wife instagram influencer gone wrong, but in the end somehow falls flat for me and misses opportunities to address larger, of-the-moment questions and fails to create characters in whom I’m much invested.

DON’T MISS - I took my 10-year old for an early birthday present to see The Stranger Things on Broadway. I must admit my expectations were fairly low, but it was actually an incredible performance. Four days on and he is still thanking me everyday for having taken him.

DON’T MISS - speaking of the 10-year old. We’re in the phase where I’m showing him all of my favorite old movies, and last week we watched Amadeus, which I am happy to say he loved almost as much as I did. Coincidentally, The Morgan Library currently has an exhibition on Mozart, and the kid was excited to see Mozart’s actual first violin and original music manuscripts. The exhibit is on until May 31.

The Case for New Jersey

AFIELD NOTES — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:08:04 GMT

I discovered DENSE shortly after moving to New Jersey. In fact the magazine’s first issue pretty much coincided with my move. Having just come from Berlin where the topic of design was ubiquitous, I found myself a little discombobulated living in the suburbs, and in New Jersey for that matter. Discovering a magazine that focused on design in New Jersey helped me feel a bit more grounded in my new surroundings. Fast forward a few years and I also discovered the Jersey Art Book Fair, an event hosted by DENSE that takes place at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City (an area that actually feels VERY Berlin).

On the occasion of JAB 2026, which takes place this coming weekend, I wanted to talk to Petia Morozov, the founder of both DENSE and JAB. An architect, designer and New Jersey native, Petia has spent much of her career making an intellectual case for a place that is often dismissed, derided and stereotyped.

Petia and I have corresponded periodically over the years and I was so pleased to meet her in person. I went in thinking I was interviewing a designer and the founder of a magazine and book fair, and came out feeling like I'd been given an entirely new way of seeing the place I’ve lived for the last five years. I honestly could have listened to her hold forth on New Jersey the entire day. Perhaps this is an occasion for a future Afield event?

AFIELD: Where did the idea for DENSE come from?

PETIA MOROZOV: From a frustration. The narratives about New Jersey were easy to digest but they lacked the depth and complexity of a place that is so uniquely positioned within the urban fabric of the eastern seaboard.

As a state we're close to 9 million people, and you feel the breadth of New Jersey's influence because of how New York really does share and blur its infrastructural needs: social infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, economic infrastructure. They are very blurred. As a Jersey girl, I was really trying to reckon my whole life with this question: why, if New Jersey is such an important place in the whole scheme of things, does it get so diminished by narratives that oversimplify this unique urban condition?

DENSE is one small pebble in that ripple, pushing back against the idea that the more dominant narratives get to win in a kind of survival-of-the-fittest storytelling. Place anchors all of the ways in which we represent our realities.

AFIELD: How does your design sensibility shape the way DENSE approaches storytelling about New Jersey?

PM: Design is always an act of speculation. You are conceiving of something that doesn't yet exist. There is a very thin line between the present and the future, which also means we are not so far from things that have happened in the past. DENSE is trying to seek some way to talk about New Jersey speculatively. We don't presume to have any answers, but as a question. And when we situate things in the past and think of them as having an archival quality, it makes it more difficult to imagine that there is still an act of reckoning required. DENSE is trying to change that.

AFIELD: You’ve described New Jersey as a “placeless place” with the repeating highways, the malls, the disorientation. And yet DENSE is entirely about making people see the place anew. How do you hold those two things together?

PM: You're talking about a place that is a total contradiction. Statistically very dense, and yet there is also a parallel narrative, one you don't so much read about as feel. There is a kind of placelessness, where forms of architecture repeat in ways that induce a placeless sensibility, that what you're doing in this town can be done in another town entirely.

But before New Jersey was New Jersey, it was a place of vast intelligence about how one engages and senses place. The geology of New Jersey, bounded by the Delaware and the Hudson, and more locally by the Raritan, the Hackensack, and the Passaic, the rivers have been storytellers of New Jersey and urban designers well before the Europeans arrived. And no one knows that story of place more than the Lenape, who cultivated this place to such an incredible level of innovation that we haven't given it the recognition it deserves. DENSE is trying to hold both of those things, the placelessness and the deep history, at the same time.

Operating away from the spotlight of New York or Philadelphia
allows for a different kind of thinking,
more lateral, more collaborative, more willingness to experiment.

AFIELD: A lot of people I know here have a complicated relationship with calling themselves suburban. Why do you think that is?

PM: New Jersey has always existed in relation to somewhere else. The state lines between New York City and Philadelphia are a formality. The infrastructural, social, and economic needs are so blurred that in many ways New Jersey is just the place where those two cities’ energy spills over. And for a long time, that has meant that most of our creative energy flows back to those two places rather than staying here.

But the idea of what the suburbs are is changing. New Jersey is going to fill in differently than New York or Philadelphia. Those were organized urban systems, intentional and legible. New Jersey is a series of accidents. And yet there is too much energy here for it not to grow into something. I would love for people to imagine what New York would look like if New Jersey vacated, not just physically, but creatively.

The complicated relationship people have with calling themselves suburban is also, I think, about not having a story that reflects back who they actually are. The dominant narratives about New Jersey, the jokes and the stereotypes are a way of not having to reckon with the place itself. DENSE is trying to give people another story. One that reflects the actual complexity and energy of where they live.

There are two factions of people.
You love to hate New Jersey or you hate to love it
(New York Metro area on your Linkedin is a dead giveaway)

AFIELD: You've described New Jersey as a place that operates out of the spotlight, away from the scrutiny of New York and Philadelphia. How does that obscurity become a creative advantage?

PM: New Jersey has an astonishing history of innovation, the offset printer was invented here, the film industry started in the Palisades, Fluxus was working in central Jersey, the first Black vocational school in the country was here. Utopian ideas flourished. Operating away from the spotlight of New York or Philadelphia allows for a different kind of thinking, more lateral, more collaborative, more willing to experiment.

AFIELD: Talk a bit more about Jersey Art Book Fair.

PM: JAB Fair is almost like a Trojan horse. It’s not about staking a flag and saying “now we have an art book fair.” It’s asking: could this act as a lightning rod for many more expressions of what New Jersey represents? A sense of place that I think of as hard to love. You love to hate it or you hate to love it. The “New York Metro Area” on your LinkedIn is a dead giveaway.

This year we’re focused on Journal Square and Mana Contemporary — which is itself a bastion of what Jersey City was. A tobacco processing factory that produced the cultural DNA that Mana is now capitalizing on. Jersey City is being threatened, like so many places, and that urgency is very present in this year’s fair.

AFIELD: What are some of the programming highlights at this year’s fair?

PM: Robert Sullivan, the acclaimed author of The Meadowlands, is leading a walk on Saturday morning, asking what it means to really inhabit and know a place. Saturday, May 2, 9am.

Alex Wolfe’s practice is about walking as a way of prompting questions about memory, loss, and what place induces in us emotionally. Sunday, May 3, 12:30pm.

Larissa Belcic of Nocturnal Medicine creates rituals around grief and climate change. There’s something very necessary about that right now. Ongoing.

Sue Huang, the current artist laureate at Rutgers, is performing an extraordinary piece through sound and image around botanical forms of life that have emerged in New Jersey and may no longer be part of it. Ongoing.

Rujuta Rao - Redraft (2026) is a spatial, modular publication, compact enough to travel, expansive enough to step into. At its center are complex infused beverages, alcoholic and not, that trace the artist's disorienting double life: one steeped in a childhood home in Goa, India; the other taking root in New Jersey. The two feel simultaneous, like the layered flavors of amaros and bitters which the viewers are invited to imbibe and contemplate. Each guest receives a limited-edition, risograph-printed menu. Saturday, May 2, 3:30pm.

Amanda Thackray and Jin Jung from Jersey City are leading a kite-making workshop. People will come together using found objects and things of personal meaning to make kites, and then fly them over Mana Contemporary as we close out the fair. Sunday, May 3, 3:30pm.

Jersey Art Book Fair takes place May 1-3 at Mana Contemporary, 888 Newark Avenue, Jersey City.

Idle time.

AFIELD NOTES — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:17:38 GMT

For the past fourteen years my life was consumed with caring for my autistic, epileptic, ID kid. The paperwork, the appointments, the applications. All this was a lot. And then there was his actual care. Theo is a lovely child, but he is relentless. From the second he wakes up (usually around 5 am) till the minute his beautiful head hits the pillow he is a frenzy of questions, requests, demands and a complete and utter inability to entertain himself even for a minute. Oh, how I sometimes prayed he was like those autistic kids who would stare at an ipad all day. We were lucky if we got five minutes.

It has always been challenging parenting Theo, but puberty took things to a whole new level. There started to be behavior problems. At home yes, but then school. This started to become a problem. Even at his out-of-district school for autistic kids, behavior problems are little tolerated (there are other, less-desirable schools for these kinds of kids). We were getting desperate, the situation was escalating. Our home life centered completely around Theo. The stress was intense and there was never a moment of respite. Never.

We started to explore boarding options last spring. This seemed like the only solution for us all. For us to keep our sanity and our wits about us. For his brother, to undo some of the home stress. And for Theo. He needed stability. A schedule. To be entertained. And he needed friends. His brother and the neighborhood friends, four years his junior, were outgrowing him. The situation was unsustainable.

I am yet unable to describe in detail the heartbreak of this situation. I am still facing it every day. So I cannot properly convey the emotional component of all of this. I will stick to the facts. The fact is we found a school in upstate New York for special needs kids. He was suspended after nine days. For behavioral issues. He then went to a treatment center in Utah for six weeks. We hoped to get his meds adjusted and we simply couldn’t be the ones to oversee that process. While there we found another school for him. This time in Tennessee. He’s been there since November. I got diagnosed with cancer in January.

Last year was the worst year of my life. Full stop. Dealing with Theo was a relentless stress that likely took years off my life (?!). Saying goodbye to him was even worse. Missing him I feel a literal hole in my heart. And thinking about what if’s…I hardly let myself go there.

When he left last fall, though, there was also an awakening. We had been living in a constant state of fight or flight for fourteen years and suddenly, overnight, the situation drastically changed. Our house was quiet. I could wake up gently, sip my coffee, and read the paper on a Saturday. We could have a conversation with our younger son over dinner. We could look forward to the evenings as a time for relaxation, and not as the hardest fucking part of our day. We could invite people over without fear of some sort of incident. In return we could go to the houses of others without stress over what could possibly happen. Or knowing that we would be able to have a conversation without constant interruptions and requests.

I got diagnosed with cancer in January. I must admit that my initial reaction was one of self-pity. I had just gotten my life back. And now this. Although in some ways I wasn’t surprised. I keep reading that stress doesn’t actually cause cancer, but I put little faith in this suggestion. In any case, I do still have moments of self pity, but truth be told, the most prevalent feeling is one of relief. Relief that this diagnosis came AFTER Theo left home because if he had not been sorted this whole situation would be hell. A hell that likely none of us would have survived intact. Because I cannot for one minute imagine going through cancer and its treatment with Theo in tow. It’s completely and totally unfathomable.

On some days I even saw my new diagnosis as a welcome distraction. The distraction from missing him. Missing the way his smile renewed my faith in a god, for how could something so beautiful not be sacred. Missing his particular way of calling me “mommy” and his awkward but completely sincere hugs. Missing the way he loves to host, loves a party and how much he just adores being around people.

With a new cancer diagnosis one goes into action mode. Finding doctors, appointments, scans, loads of paperwork. Cancer took up where Theo left off. I had years of training for action mode.

But for now that frenzy is over and I am in unfamiliar territory, with way too much idle time on my hands. Theo left, then cancer filled the void before I could feel it. And now I feel it. The discomfort in this is disquieting on the best days, despairing on the worst. And I’m torn between trying to fill this void or sit with the discomfort, though the latter…

A little change of scenery

AFIELD NOTES — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:21:53 GMT

This last round of chemo kind of took its toll. I mean they all have but this one took more of a mental toll I suppose. The hair loss and steroid weight gain has been a giant blow to my self esteem. I mean enormous. And now the hair loss has extended to my eyebrows and eyelashes, making me look even more tired than I actually am (which is super fucking fatigued). I’m trying to keep it together. Working with what I have. But it sometimes feels like putting makeup on a pig. Basically, I’m just really not feeling like myself. And I’m missing outside stimulation. And novelty.

I find it difficult, though, to be out in the world. I find myself unsure how to navigate everyday situations. I was recently invited to coffee by a friend of a friend, and found myself so self-conscious about meeting someone new that I almost didn’t go. And in the end I wish I hadn’t, having been so ill at ease that I’m sure I made the whole ordeal much more awkward than it should have been. Writing is difficult too. I find it difficult to locate the words I need to properly express myself. And then, on the most physically taxing days I struggle with passing the time, and finding some sort of purpose to the day.

And, yet. On my best days I see a friend, go on walks, and sincerely appreciate the seemingly endless amount of time I have to read. I find the energy to go to the city for lunch, a museum if only for half an hour, or go to the opera and not feel guilty for leaving at intermission (Tristan und Isolde was five godforsaken hours!).

March 17

AFIELD NOTES — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:13:44 GMT

The city was still asleep. She was surprised at how much so. Five thirty am in New York City didn’t seem ungodly. But no one was on the streets. A car would occasionally come into view, but nothing more. The windows of her hotel room looked uptown, allowing for a view of the East Village tenements, eventually giving way to the skyscrapers of midtown.

I Lied

AFIELD NOTES — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:25:23 GMT

I lied. Maybe this is becoming a bit of a cancer journal. But I do hope you’ll forgive me. Chemo seems to take over everything when you’re going through it. For the next several months at least, I have accepted that I am at the mercy of its timeline. The good news is that for the last week and a half of said cycle I am feeling pretty damn good, almost back to my old self. Though I do tire much more easily. On the other hand, the first ten days or so after treatment are pretty awful. But, now, being aware that there is a respite makes those terrible days a little bit more tolerable. And thanks to being given some Lorazepam this time around, I’m able to relax and focus a bit more: lots of reading and even a tad bit of writing.

I’ve been reading a lot of fiction. Going through a couple books a week. But I’ve also been reading a lot of philosophy. When I’m going through something difficult it helps me to intellectualize things and I’ve been curious what the “experts” have to say on illness. Quite frankly, very little, given how many of us deal with bouts of illness, both serious and mundane, throughout our lifetime.

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed…when we think of this and infinitely more as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature”. –Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill

I agree with Woolf’s sentiment that illness, given its pervasiveness, is spoken and written about too little. But to me it comes as no surprise, for when one is in the depths of illness, they often lack the capacity to think properly, let alone write. And once one is healthy again, the last thing they want to do is revisit that diminished state, preferring instead to get back to living and put that time behind them.

In any case, for now I’m still in the research phase. Reading the thinkers who have things to say on the topic: Susan Sontag, Zadie Smith, Simone Weil, Havi Carel, and even a bit of Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Jonathan Haidt. I hope to collect all my thoughts on this in a future post.

But for the purposes of this post, I’m interested in the topic of social etiquette and sick people, because despite all the philosophy, what strikes me is something simpler: how people relate to the sick person in front of them.

“…wider society tends to view the life of the ill person only as tragic and full of suffering: people are fearful of illness, and so they tend to be fearful of ill people. Many disregard them entirely, or call them brave and move on.
The ill person, in addition to facing up to their illness, thus finds themselves socially alienated between these two conceptions of what they now are: a set of symptoms to be treated, and an object of suffering to be valorized or ignored. It is little wonder that illness can make people feel unseen, defeated, and alone.” - Havi Carel

I want to explore this particular notion more. The idea that the sick person must be “strong” or to underplay their symptoms to be more socially palatable. Society's discomfort with illness, so at odds with our youth-obsessed wellness culture, stems, I assume, from its proximity to death. But today it’s the notion of being seen that I’d like to address. Illness can be quite lonely, there is no getting around that. The person going through it, is facing it alone. Yet, there are things others around us can do to alleviate those feelings of isolation.

I have been incredibly supported throughout this process, from friends, neighbors and members of the community. It’s amazing to see how much people sincerely want to help, and it truly has helped me get through all of this in a better mental state.

I’d like to share some things I’ve learned so far. Primarily because, as I mentioned, most people truly do want to help when someone is going through a difficult period, but often they don’t know how. So I’m here to offer some practical suggestions. And second, so that going forward I remember how to behave when I find myself on the giving end.

The one where I take a stab at poetry

AFIELD NOTES — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:35:59 GMT

SEPTEMBER