so i’m spritzing the le labo for a while, feeling luxurious.

the moment I step foot in new york again, every person i know is rolling their eyes at ms. 33, telling me she smells like pickles and that it’s played out.

played out? have we lost our minds? played out is chanel no. 5.; played out is dior sauvage, and even those two i have to give you a point for because you bought perfume! all perfume is optional and a blessing. i come from the land of victoria’s secret, of the bath and the body, cherry blossom and vanilla, of cucumber lime for the weird girls, of wonderstruck by mrs. swift. no perfume is played out. perfume is a mark of consideration.

still, i relented. i am hardly a member of the circles who know this sort of thing. i stashed 33 away and rocked on noto’s basil yarrow mist, which is like a jean jacket— something you throw on for the in-between weather.

then i thought about it. the first time i smelled santal 33 it blew my hair back. i was on spring street exiting the 6 train; my fine city had just traded winter for spring and i felt alive again. i smelled sour citron and thin bark and chartreuse. i smelled an icon.

so what if i want to wear the same perfume as everyone else? i can douse myself in the stuff without getting nauseous or having to think about it all day. it’s not too sweet, nor is it obtrusive. it smells like perfume. they nailed it! why do you think so many people bought the bottle?

my apathy for a scent of my very own does not mean i’m averse to the art of perfume. i have been known to spend an hour in the bergdorf’s basement, wasting their time on the floor and trying not to seem desperate for a sample. they know i’m poor though, because the rich people just go in and call out to their husbands like “MARK. You need a new perfume. Get whatever,” wave their hands around, and walk away. also, my shoes are dirty.

here are a few i’d recommend if you hate 33:

amouage, search: if you’re the type of person to spend $400 on a smell, spend it here and send me one in the mail. it smells like burning, or of, as neiman’s puts it, the virile energy of resilient minds unafraid to fight their inner darkness to become their ideal self. i hear the brand has its own frankincense forest.

cdg radish: a handsome friend of mine wears this.

l’eau d’issey: a smell i know anywhere, and it’s affordable. my 5th grade teacher wore this and i would hug her around the waist and breathe it in. it smells like water and the healing power of a gin and tonic.

anything dries van noten: specifically the leather one, but all are beautiful.

malin + goetz: in cannabis. popularized by the rapper asaad.

anyway, wear whatever you want, and try ebay first.

x lil

On their unconventional atmosphere, the team at Margiela wrote via facsimile:

And close they are. The place is packed out, two floors bustling with people standing, squatting, chatting, leaning. one cannot remove themselves from the models, nor can they you.

25 men come out in shirts, white coats, and sandwich boards with either ‘6’ or ’10’ written on them. also on these boards are images of clothes. Ligne 6 turns out to be a classics collection, items you could buy from the brand that the team thought of as staple pieces. These were also at a lower price point than the runway items. Ligne 10 is a collection for men.

Other men come out to provide a sneak peek at their collection. and peek they did.

I await our return to a 1999-sense of whimsy, fedora and butt crack and tailored pant. three-stripes-of-tape-as-top. Dressed in white, leather, stripes, and black, the men look strange and intellectual— like they got pulled out of a lecture on Kerouac at SUNY New Paltz.

Then the models descend upon us. Once the show begins, 54 men light the 40 women who walk. Several follow each woman with the lights in and out of the space, illuminating them like fireflies, who then blink out into the abyss.

They weren’t even models: sure, they were a swath of beautiful women, but not models. This was in attempt to have the audience “focus on the clothes”. I’m fond of the proliferation of blood-haired women. More on blood later.

Because the women are not models, they’re smiling, strolling, posing, they’re walking like people walk, spreading their arms out wide to touch us. The lights are off, they’re in white, silk, metal, they’re being dressed by a man who won’t show his face, people are screaming with glee and nodding and smiling back. They’re taking the elevators between floors and looking around as the music booms, snares and mics with distortion. They’re making it up because they have to. It makes you look at the clothes more.

What of the clothes? What are they trying to tell us in 1999, with pants and platform shoes, with curtain-like tops and long, easy skirts, with denim and cotton? Walk around. Go to shit. The clothes want you to read Foucault on a disgusting chaise longe at the flat of a girl you just met who lives off of an ambiguous income. They want you smoking. They want you talking loud.

Nirvana rains down upon the listener. Songs played include:

scentless apprentice- nirvana

river euphrates- pixies

scary- the kelly deal 6000

failure- skinny

milk it- nirvana

polytechnic- warrington-runcorn new town development plan

super sex- morphine

new year’s prayer- jeff buckley

speed of life- david bowie

This playlist is out of control. Drum-heavy. Screaming. Getaway car. Jeff Buckley begging for something better. Electric chairs. Why have i always been a failure? It’s at once cool and erratic, tight and loose. I go to a lover’s house and they blast these while they show me their vintage copy of Delta of Venus.

But then Margiela has always been subversive. I also read this from the 1999 interview with the brand:

People didn’t know where to place the work. A year and change earlier, Mr. Margiela had been appointed to creative direct womenswear at Hermès. how odd: a deconstructionist in charge of the brand considered the final word on luxury. I think of this 1999 show as a reminder that Margiela could do whatever the hell it wanted. We’re playing Pixies and my lab coat is covered in blood.

The blood jacket. The blood jacket is punk. Margiela is punk and they make sure you don’t forget it. This is a party, after all: people are everywhere and I sense the warehouse is without central heat or air. They want you to wear their clothes in basements, cafés, to see your affair. The women have natural glam, undone hair— perfect for an artist reaching for her giant bag at the edge of her apartment on the way out the door. The clothes want you leaving.

Thank you to lucas lorenzo , firstview.com , and Oliver Leone of yourfashionarchive.

but i was young then!!!!

after two bouts of food poisoning i am now the proud owner of a sensitive stomach and a hatred for the game. i don’t want tantalize the senses any more. i’m good! I just want to feel medium-good. this is, i hope, temporary, but i am at the whims of my body for now.

at the beginning of the year, i make lists of things i’m keeping and releasing. this year my stomach has revised the list for me.

OUT

perfume

perfumed people

candles

fabric softener

consuming mint (smelling it is fine)

eating standing up

eating even a little too much

wearing glasses while exercising (dizzying)

tea

coffee

nightshades

fog machines

not getting enough sleep

alcohol

any stress at all

posting for strangers

deeping anything

IN

(WARNING: LAME)

brown rice

meat substitutes

farting

being supine

movies from the 80s

journaling

ugh meditation

long hair

zofran <3

pepto bismol chewables

spinach

yoga every day for serious

posting for like 36 people i really fuck with

coconut water + limeade + maple syrup

listening to people in their 30s-90s

“listening to my body”

dancing in the club. thank god

this is the year of great releasing, even to the point where i’m releasing sovereignty over my desires. can i really claim to know better than my stomach?

2. found this in the woods. came back a few days later to show someone and the whole forest had been blown around by a storm.

i was on the phone with my friend when i took this. she and i were talking about how the physical self in the third dimension might just be a shadow of our entire being, how we could exist over the structure of time but are not dictated by it. wouldn’t that be nice.

3. found this on the ground next to a hair salon. i like the burst of pink in the center. if you’re missing your photo of you and your grandpa, i have it, it’s in my notebook.

4. found a phone at a party and took this photo on it. met the person who it belonged to shortly after… I fear this image will be lost on them. after i took this my friend and i went to 7/11 and he bought me a donut.

5. a portal… it disappeared the next day.

As a woman of duality I come to you with a second list.

BOBOVITA OATMEAL

Bought this in Greenpoint at a Polish market and did not translate any writing on the package. Cut to me three days later sauntering around my house claiming I had finally won the war with breakfast, I’m just eating this now etc. Went to reorder it online and found out this is a product for babies!!!

I can’t keep eating this right? Now when I buy it I feel as though I am taking resources from the most vulnerable members of our species.

It goes well with a drizzle of tahini but what doesn’t.

AMBIGUOUS CAKE

Ate the cake in question at 2 in the morning in the back room of Berlin Under 2A at my girlfriend’s mom’s boyfriend’s 70th birthday party after his hardcore band played a show downtown.

Earlier that day I got violently high on accident after attending a friend’s screening for a short he made… at a weed-themed film festival. The culprit? Me, obviously, aided by weed honey smothered on Teddy Grahams. I thought, when in Rome, and 40 minutes later realized that I was in fact in Long Island City in a full suit and more stoned than I have ever been in my young precious life.

I could not even touch the complimentary submarine sandwich station, and ran out with the last shred of sanity I had before plummeting into the chaos of my own mind. At least my friend’s film was excellent.

Ten hours later and I was still outside; I’d been to a dinner (could not eat, just practiced centering breaths and thought about the concept of weather), a hardcore show, a pizza parlor, and found myself at an afterparty in the velvet-curtained back room of Berlin singing happy birthday. Cue the cake.

Now I had seen one cake on stage at the hardcore show: some guys in hoodies handed it to the guitarist and he waved it over his head to the delight of the crowd. It appeared from the balcony to be a grocery store sheet cake situation, piped in blue icing. As the song crescendoed, a woman with beachy highlights pointed to said cake and whispered, “eat the other one. that’s been on stage and god knows how they got it here.” She’d heard a rumor that the guitarist’s friend, a Real Chef, had made a second, secret cake, and sure enough it materialized in the hands of a woman who meant business.

This was the best piece of cake I have ever eaten. I instantly knew an Italian man had made this, it tasted like mi famiglia had sent it from Jersey. We ate this in the dark mind you, so I took this photo to get a good look at it, and in the hopes I might see this through sober eyes as I do now.

I’m left with more questions than answers: are those layers chocolate or coffee? What kind of jam is that? Most cake is either horrifying or slips up on one crucial element, be it texture, sugar level, flavor profile, density. Not this. Not a six layer piece of cake at 2 in the morning. Real Chef left the top coat of icing unsweetened, just genius. I should have found him and shaken his hand.

??? GIRL KIBBLE

I tried a new method of making tofu and it turned out platonic ideal-level good. I have no idea what I did now. Did I freeze it? Did I crumble it and bake it? Why did it turn out so fab? I ate this for 48 hours at every meal interval.

The foods I trust involve some level of the great mystery; perhaps I crave a spiritual element to dining. I ate this with brown rice and it looked like something you’d feed to a Rottweiler you really love, but I sensed a greater knowing from within these crumbles, which oh, I remember now, I grated, fried in an enamel skillet, and blessed.

xoxo lil

I grow weary of the spoils of the health food industrial complex and yet I indulge.

BIOCEAN OBJECT

Pretty sure this was something in the realm of electrolytes. I bought this because a brassy woman in her 40s told me to upon entering a small business. They had the vials in a little cup in the front, their stems blooming in a bouquet. What the hell, it was 3 dollars. The woman instructed me to pop that little pointy end and gulp it down, then I thanked her and stepped out into the street.

Boy oh boy this was gross! It tasted like straight saltwater. Still, the experience was charming: it reminded me of taking a shot of Underberg.

top notes: salt

middle notes: chemical

base notes: water

I did have a hangover the other day and bought another one.

CATALINA CRUNCH

I know people who live and die by this sword so I bought it. I should have run when I noticed the first ingredients were pea protein/guar gum/chicory root; none of those words are in the bible.

top notes: crunch

middle notes: plastic, a whisper of cinnamon

base notes: stevia, monkfruit, poison

I'm still eating it every morning: it is not worth it but it is in my apartment. When I do, I try to focus on the textural aspect, then I squeeze my eyes shut and dream of C*nnamon Toast Cr*nch.

NOVEAU LUNA BARS

Gather round children, come hear the tale of the old Luna Bar formula. Long ago (2013), in a land far far away (Wilmington, Delaware), you could get these bad boys off the shelf at T*rget.

At the height of my Luna Bar devotion, they looked like snickers and were filled with legitimate cookie dough. Delicious. This product is single-handedly responsible for my early academic career.

Also they were specifically for women? Not sure what that was but they made a great product over there at Luna. It was chic, one got the sense the bar had traveled abroad. It paired well with Blood Orange’s Cupid Deluxe.

top notes: chocolate, cookie

middle notes: espresso, front backpack pocket

base notes: honey, the ymca

Fast forward. Now i did not have luna bar money for a few years... god forbid i turn my back on this company for a SECOND. Now they are shaped like remote controls and the cookie dough flavor has ceased to exist. I am pro-yogurt-on-the-bottom, but have not tried these out of spite. I imagine one could pumice their foot with the top element.

A few websites allegedly sell the original ones (are people allowed to sell expired food?) but I have had food poisoning twice this year and am not willing to risk it.

HONORABLE MENTION: FREE SNACKS FROM WORK

SKINNY DIPPED LEMON BLISS ALMONDS

These are marketed towards the worst part of me, that diet dog I keep locked up in the back of my psyche. Unfortunately they taste delicious. Their only hindrance is the after-mouth taste, which is one of having eaten too much sour candy.

LITTLE BITES BLUEBERRY

This was dinner one night on a set where I thought there would at least be cheese and prosecco upon wrapping. It did not fill any void whatsoever, not even the sugar void, nor the nostalgia one. I blame my prefrontal cortex.

COMBO MEAL

Found this by the freight elevator. While it makes my own gut grumble in fear, I support this endeavor. Kombucha + 4 jerky sticks = an outside-the-box thinker.

xoxo lil

any sound

waking up at 6am

waking up at 10am

dressing as fran lebowitz for halloween, thus becoming imbued with writer’s block

partying

holing up after partying out of guilt

guilt

desire of physical objects

maintaining my corpus (sleeping/ eating/ showering)

ml buch’s song “can you hear my heart leave” which i must listen to 30 times a day

reading the corrections

pondering “my blog”

looking at pictures of jonathan franzen

id/ ego/ superego

moshing. wasn’t detrimental, just didn’t move the needle in either direction on the writing front

looking beautiful in the mirror

xoxoxo

fiber arts. I need an activity with a concrete ending. This pattern was free which is good because I overspent at the Sheep and Wool festival on this yarn from a nice lady at a Jesus-themed booth. I usually knit with a headlamp but lately I’m trying to look sexy around the house, so the balaclava does not look great. Whatever. Perfection is the enemy of a warm head.

events. As I am the bravest girl in the world, I went to two literary events this week. Both were bangers; first I went to Lauren Cook’s premiere of his film I Love Shopping, based on his book of the same title. A few days later I saw Susan Cheever discuss her new book, When All the Men Wore Hats, about her relationship with her late father— and Godfather of the Short Story— John Cheever. It’s getting great press.

subscribing to one (1) Patreon. Maybe we’re oversaturated, family. Maybe it’s okay to just follow one account. I follow sigh swoon on there; I like when she talks about the daily process of being an artist. This is good for me because I have a habit of disturbing myself by picturing my entire life at once when really I need to sit down and type. This week I revisited this episode.

prompts for first graders. I got this from the great Lauren Cook himself. Here are a few:

Describe a dream walk through a garden.

If I lived on a mountain, my daily routine would be…

Last weekend I….