During our flight, a young lesbian helped the older woman with nearly every task. They had just met. She was opening hummus packets, holding her coffee with milk, and talking about God. Long conversations about God. The older woman hadn’t flown on an airplane for forty years, she said.

As the younger woman lowered the older woman's bag from the overhead compartment, it fell with a metallic thud, and somehow cut her hand. I looked down: a plastic shopping bag filled with thousands of coins. Was this all the money to her name?

A little boy yelled out loud in a language I couldn’t place. French? Now, coughing and coughing.

—

the way what you want stretches
the circular parts

how to stretch
how to zip it a little
how to stretch it long
tension you see
is me and you

the band between here
and there
edges buzzing
when the belief in
yourself is so low

how do you find yourself in it
can you spot yourself

The man next to me in the exit row was sleeping and farting. I smelled a rank toot nearly every five minutes. In between his deep fart sleeps, I peeked over at his phone screen, and he was looking at tips for anger management at full brightness.

—

There is this feeling that I have where I don’t know how to make things big for myself.

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Dear sweet friend,

The first place I go when I can’t figure out how to return, I compose a list:

1. An awareness of one’s participation in history.

2. Two shiny legs.

3. Bronzed and womanly.

4. A large hand reaching out.

5. Architecture.

6. Stuffed dog.

7. The way that I feel.

8. The floor is painted with words.

9. A weird lump.

10. Sexual submissive.

11. Beaten to a pulp.

12. The world’s game is to push you.

13. The answer is always to look at something long enough to see how I might change it.

14. Conflict informs.

15. A deep throat.

16. Screaming through your conch, like a snail with a throat.

17. Paint a picture.

18. Cold as ice.

19. Windows.

20. Lines.

I sat in therapy yesterday and was reminded—how many times will it take to remember, I wonder—that I have a body I can come back to. A body attached to my swirling head.

For you: Last month, I produced a foraging workshop with my dear friend Dr. Priya Sury for a healing and wellness system she’s building called Kölam. Priya and I can talk endlessly about how systems oppress, especially our health system. I have so much to learn from her. Whenever we shoot off some intense framing of a present reality, we both say in union, without missing a beat, “And healing demands truth.” It tickles us, blurting out this shared mantra together, because it feels so obvious—but then, when you remember how hard it is to find the body, it makes sense that the truth healing demands is even harder to find. Anyway, make some sumac sun tea, light a stick of incense or sit outside, and listen to this mediation Priya and I made to help you feel your ecosystem.

Love!

—scotty

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I’ve been visiting my partners in Berlin and collecting, as I always do. Fieldwork.

Early one morning on the street, I cried to Dennis — about everything, really – and after some time, a white-haired woman opened her window. She leaned out and offered a peace sign with two fingers. As she smiled softly, a cat circled around my feet. In the past month, I’ve encountered two aggressively friendly cats out and about. How nice!

Findings and other soft records:

Birds recorded from our apartment’s balcony during the day. That night, they got rowdy. I woke up in a panic, pulled from the steady air of my CPAP, convinced a woman was being attacked in the courtyard. I knocked on the bedroom door and asked if we should help her. The boys said in unison, “It’s the birds." The next day, the bells rang for the pope – for what seemed like hours.

Have you ever asked someone to oil the chicken?

For you: that’s all you get. :P

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

I hadn’t been shopping in forever. We were still in the pandemic but at the point where we were venturing out and starting to wear clothes again. I’m a body with thick thighs and even thicker calves, so I blow out every crotch. I was on the hunt for pants.

I asked a Nordstrom employee with a blond bob for help. She obliged and stomped off toward the stretchy denim. A few paces ahead, she turned a corner as a waft of scent pranced behind her. It caught my nostrils off guard. We had been masked for so long, so to have a scent flow through my KN95 and land in my nose nearly made me weep.

Roses. Peonies. A powdery smell laced with rhubarb, warm woods, vanilla, and incense that makes you pause mid-sentence because you need to ask, What are you wearing?

Everyone asks me that, she said. It’s Delina, follow me.

She led me to a softly lit shelf where Dee lived: a deli-pink bottle shaped like Miss Trunchbull, frilly tassels, topped with a silver sphere embedded with a tiny pink crystal at the top. The bottle was husky and had raised floral engravings.

I knew immediately. I called my husband over to sniff. Maybe it was pandemic deprivation, but he loved it too. The way it overwhelms but is also just enough. Covers up days-old body odor.

Delina was created by French perfumer Quentin Bisch for Parfums de Marly. It's a lavish, theatrical eau de parfum dripping with the opulence of King Louis XV. Powdered pink wigs as tall as can be, walls taut in chinoiserie silk, a countess hissing gossip behind a laced handkerchief, sweat-licked stable boys taming veined stallions. At Versailles, everything got spritzed daily with bespoke fragrances: the rooms, the fountains, the king. He was obsessed with smelling good, as was his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, which earned his court the title la cour parfumée, the perfumed court. Marly braids Louis’s refined nose with his other throbbing love: horses. Delina is likely named after a 9-year-old mare from his Château de Marly stables. There is no historical record of this beauty, but I know she was husky. And hot.

I told the woman at Nordstrom I would think about it, and left. Jason ended up buying it for my birthday. Nordstrom curbside pickup. I sat passenger as Jason rolled down the window when a person appeared. All of us masked. She handed him the bow-wrapped package and gently mouthed, I hope she loves it, not knowing it was for me.

But she did know something, I did, in fact, love it.

Later that year, walking near the Whitney in New York, our first time back since quarantine, we passed a storefront. Parfums de Marly. Not Delina in the window display but her same broad shoulders and hips in the hottest of pinks. Oriana. Must be Delina's cousin, I told Jason. A woman smoking against the storefront, without even glancing our way, rasped, It's her sister. I moved closer, immediately recognizing the scent. You're wearing Delina, I said. She was on a break from working inside.

Yes, she replied, been wearing it 35 years straight. Impossible because it was released in 2017, but it didn't matter. It feels eternal. (Come to think of it, maybe she said 5.) Delina embeds in your clothes and leaves a sweet tinge that transforms you into a lady. A fancy. A fancy lady faggot. I wear Dee to our gay bar’s kink night just to give the men an experience. Her scent is so femme it creates a juicy and delightful dissonance that repels the hyper-masc and anyone not interested in sensorial delight. Delina is my jument de guerre.

Last fall, I took a walk with my good friend Dylan. We collected our cameras, grabbed Delina as our subject, and set off. We caught up and complained. We've known each other since we were 18. It's our hobby to walk, make art, talk shit, and complain. So yeah, the photos are from this walk.

For you: Pixie tangerines are here at last. I like to cut them into quarters, dig my fingernail under the point of a wedge, then use my teeth to extract its almost cartoonish shade of orange flesh. Tiny, sweet nuggets from winter’s slow sweetening. Grab a handful or two if you see them.

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

Fever on and off all week. Forgive the structure.

Oh, here comes my cat. She takes a seat on a pile of magazines, and won't break her stare with me.

In between pages on the typewriter, I go downstairs and spritz myself. To spritz is to feel like you want to be somewhere else. The act of spritzing takes you. Now back at my desk, where the nearly suffocating scent of homemade incense billows next to me. God, he doesn't want to be here today, does he? Ambient drones in my ears. A grey world pulsing at the edges. Feeling somewhat energized.

Raw dog. Raw oyster. Raw peanuts. Raw almonds. Raw milk. Raw nerve. Real and raw. Really raw girls. Girls, girls, girls.

When you drive across Wyoming, something you do every weekend for your sister’s volleyball games, stand-alone buildings appear in the middle of the emptiness. One moment nothing. The next, a building. Then nothing again. There was one I waited for, Northern Dreams, a tiny red building miles outside of Casper. A hand-painted sign affixed to the side with bubble letters and balloons: Girls Girls Girls.

I knew when it was coming, too. A mile marker. Just a few more until Casper. I'd brace for it, and then the moment she was in view, I'd open my mouth and scream, "GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!" I'd relish every sound of the word, the guttural ‘guh’, the wrenching lips forming the middle ‘eeerrl’, the snaking ‘sss’ at the end. My voice getting higher and more ecstatic with each repetition. The Delight! The Disgust! The Devil! My mom would whip her head around, scandalized – every time. (She'd find gay porn on her internet history soon enough.) We'd fly by in our forest green Dodge Caravan. A mirage, swallowed up by the dry land. Was anyone ever inside? No time to stop. Onto Casper. Not a good looking city but at least there’s a mall.

How do I set a margin on my typewriter, I google. Oh, this button, then this button. Typing again: Oh, boy. Boiled. Boilette. Toilette. Damn, my words have been overwriting each other for lines now. I didn’t realize.

I squint at the solid black line of overlapping letters.

Oh, well. Back to something different.

For you: Facekini, a charming photo book by photographer Peng Yangjun. All kinds of facekinis! How chic!

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

1. The sliding bathroom door on the train jiggled open an inch, then quickly shut. Jiggled open, then shut, on and on for a minute or so. The lock was jammed, and someone was in there. I looked up from my phone as a teen tried to pry the door open from the outside. It didn't work. Eventually a bulky woman busted out, catching her balance. She turned to huff aggressively at the door that had almost trapped her. Before I could take in her face, she firmly pulled a Santa hat well below her forehead and ears and took off into the next train car.

2. A thickly bearded bear at the bar rambled about how a mouse in his kitchen had left him sobbing on the cold tile. I was fragile from too many energy drinks, he said. He asked if he could take a quick bump, ducking below the table and popping back up to tell us how he trapped the mouse in a jar, then added a piece of moss to make it a little home. He bounced to another unrelated woe. And then another. I couldn’t keep up. My contacts were drying out.

3. At the airport gate, a guy with curly hair and a sandy-colored goatee was talking to his girlfriend on his phone and kept saying, I don't hear you say you miss me. She wasn’t saying it back. He was repeating it over and over, each time more desperate. I ate a protein bar and took sips from an Evian, wondering when she will tell him.

For you: a fragrance from Czech perfumer Kintsugi, inspired by forest bathing. Hanzo crashes in with fruity freshness, settles into velvety apricot and soil like a fairy beneath the forest floor, then drifts into deep, dreamy woods by morning.

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

A list to be read out loud:

Pig, 
slop, 
corn, 
barn, 
slats, 
petticoats, 
hair, 
hairy muff, 
meat curtains, 
gloves, 
apples, 
seeds, 
trees.

Scrapes, 
scraps, 
bandage, 
hospital, 
muse, 
nurse, 
purse, 
Merce, 
hearse.

Lipstick, 
mother, 
milk, 
powder, 
dry, 
poke, 
scratch, 
dead, 
burnt.

Pursed, 
tight,
spool,
needle,
contaminated,
alive,
cultured,
cutlery, 
sword,
power, 
weakness, 
bend.

What are you imagining? Speak it out loud.

For you: my dear soul sister Martha shared some 777 Hz Frequencies to lift me. I want to see you floating too.

Love! (I can’t believe I almost sent this off without Love! Truly, Love! I love you.)

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

The other day I was looking through my purse (that’s what I call my phone actually I don’t but it does feel more chic so I will start doing it) and I found some instructions I wrote out for a pal on his birthday back in July. I had taken a photo of the typed out paper right before mailing it off. The photo was a bit blurry because I took it in night mode but didn't line the yellow and white crosshairs up and didn't bother taking it again with flash. The instructions were titled, "a score for another year."

My birthday is a few weeks away (Scorpio, Scorpio rising, Aries moon - EMOTIONS!), and revisiting these instructions got me wondering what another year looks like when floods are washing everything away and bombs continue to drop and the mountains I grew up under won't look the same after the sprawling wildfires. But I suppose it will be another year.

The instructions I wrote for my friend were intended for the summer months, but at this point we need any warmth we can get. Obviously not talking about the Big Warming but more like the deep warmth that only losing yourself while sinking your mouth into a ripe pear can conjure. You can follow these instructions during any season, as long as you're able to withstand the variability of water temperatures. Or I suppose you could do it in a bath or the pool at a Holiday Inn.

A Score For Another Year

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Download, screenshot, share with your coworker Rockets out back taking a smoke break. If you'd like me to send your own instructions in the mail, send a mailing address at scotty@matterlevel.com. It would be my delight!

For you: get lost to this album by man rei.

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

The sky was burnt orange tonight (or yesterday as you read this today or some other time way after, I suppose) as the air rumbled and lit up.

My mother yelled at us to get into the basement when it stormed outside. "GET! IN! THE! BASEMENT!" My grandmother Gloria would race down the stairs, too, the second she heard a crack. It must have been a San Diego thing. I saw her wig nearly fly off her scalp as she skipped a few steps to land her feet on the safety of the basement floor. Next to the stairs was a freezer filled with white packages of a disassembled cow. My sister's hamster would occasionally get out from his plastic cage and hide underneath the freezer. We would have to lure him out from underneath with the neighbor's female hamster. Imagine being a sexy hamster!

For you: a dear friend recently sent along this meditation where you feed your demons. I haven’t done it yet but maybe we do it together and report back?

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

I saw a small cave.

Okay I wrote that a few minutes ago. And I came back to it. And I honestly looked at it and don’t remember writing it.

It felt like it had just appeared out of nowhere. Mystery fingers typing about a small cave. Mystery fingers take me to junior high, when someone found a pencap in their fish stick. I remember seeing the pencap with my own eyes but then I don’t think I did. I think I heard about it in between class but why do I feel like I saw the pencap? I can remember the color of it. Red. Red plastic sticking out of a tan clump of chopped up fish.

I do remember now that I had seen a small cave. And that I wrote: I saw a small cave.

And I remember why I wrote about it when I did, but I am on to something else now.

-Do you ever feel like that?

For you: drink this, listen to this, and wear this.

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

Do you ever feel like you move on, this way a little bit, that way a little bit, upwards a little bit, but then somehow you are very far away and still wish you were that way a little bit?

For you: Romance is not dead. You can romance yourself. I’m doing it right now! You can do it too! Find a cloud and watch the sunlight tickle the edges.

Love!

—scotty

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Dear sweet friend,

Sitting here in my neon green exercise shorts. I’m looking out my window thinking about how soon the lilacs lining the driveway will start showing their color and leaving trails of their scent.

For you: A track for Spring by Perila. Stand somewhere you can feel a breeze. Ruminate on these questions as you listen: What new colors am I seeing right now? Where do I feel the colors? What do the colors make me hope for? What is peeking through the ground? In which ways will I bloom in the coming months? How can I be a vessel for growth?

Love!

—scotty