rachel loves to talk about herself

it is only right to begin with someone else’s words

“For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore it volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could demonstrate to you that I have done nothing but continue the reading of a single book.”

[from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino]

“...and every articulation of the solitary man is but a single word. Every poem, story, novel and essay, just as every dream is a word from that language we have not yet translated, that vast unspoken wisdom of night, that grammarless, lawless vocabulary of eternity. The earth is vast.”

[from “Myself upon the Earth” by William Saroyan]

“How often may the clarinet rehearse/alone the one solo before the one/time that is heard after all the others/telling the one thing that they all tell of/it is the sole performance of a life/come back I say to it over the waters”

[from “Sonnet” by W.S. Merwin]

“And Polo said: ‘Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.’”

[from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino]

statement of purpose

this is the final entry on this blog: the semester is ending and these words are now archiving themselves as i write them: if i have to say anything about this semester i will say that it was short: then again so am i: i am in disbelief that the winter will come and go as it does: sometimes when i divide my thoughts instead they multiply: if i had to say this semester was short i would be lying it was its own eternity sequestered and memorialized: when time passes and you grip its hand: when the snake bites you and you bite back: the purpose of this post is to say goodbye: if i had to characterize the semester i would say: was it so different? and the answer, yes, so different: that my mind could linger in new york and moscow while my body dwelled in providence: that the body dwells on earth and the mind is elsewhere: i loved it is what i want to exclaim as time accelerates and grasps the distance ahead: i loved it all!

what happened to me once

i was writing the final paper for my high school sophomore english class. the prompt was: what is your worked out way of seeing the world? and i realized that my worked out way of seeing the world is actually just a pastiche encompassing how a bunch of other people before me have seen the world, or at least the way in which they have talked about seeing the world. it’s nice that i’ve devoted so much energy to internalizing literature, but it’s also a bit absurd to know that i am a remarkably unoriginal person despite identifying so deeply with the creative process.

i have not seen much of the world. i have not seen much of my own hometown, nor providence, nor any other place. but i was struck by the question and my lack of originality in responding to it. all i had to offer was a bit of cynicism, a bit of self-loathing.

yeah, well, um, so that was how i found out that i’m entirely inauthentic, and this semester, the first half of my sophomore year of college, i tried to measure whether or not i have managed to become more real over the course of the past four years, if i have somehow overcome my history of falsehood. i wanted to know if i had evolved into something beyond the confines of my consumerist outlook. i wanted to overcome the boundaries of my identity.

in this spirit, i found myself being more true to who i am, improvising a bit, speaking when i felt i had something to say. it was alright.

a quote from my high school sophomore year final paper [how i have grown!]

“As a teenager unable to wholly appreciate the world beyond Wellesley and incapable of feeling independent, I can only imagine the power of freedom in the greater community; however, this year, I caught many glimpses of freethinking, especially in English class where deep discussions were encouraged. I will carry what I read with me forever, but more so than in the past, I will carry the knowledge and realization that accompanied the text. Summer begins this week, and I look forward to “lighting out for the territories,” just as settlers did so many years ago. I hope to find something wondrous and incredible; I am going to prove Nick Carraway wrong.”

materials for the memorial

to remember this semester, i need: eight rolls of film, a few friends, a distant love interest, another distant love interest, as many oranges as you can fit in your backpack, a new sweater, a trench coat, bed risers, instability, a camera lens, a starbucks receipt, a chai tea latte, books, and a few more books, more than a few books. some scrap metal.

proving nick carraway wrong

when i said in my essay (written, i will remind you, when i was sixteen years old) that i wanted to prove nick carraway wrong, i meant that i wanted to correct his sentiment at the end of the great gatsby that the european colonial fuckheads who came to the americas and destroyed everything were actually the last people to feel the full possible extent of man’s capacity for wonder. according to him, in the time since dutch settlers arrived in new york uninvited, we’ve built everything up to such an extent that no more wonder is possible. no more aesthetic achievement can be found.

this is proven wrong all the time. just because a city has been constructed with materials and made to function as a metropolis doesn’t mean we can’t continuously reestablish ourselves as citizens of it. when i stand on the bridge above india point park, i feel a sense of awe and gratitude for the universe that is indeed unique to providence and also is a sense of wonder i wouldn’t trade for anything else. this happens also when i drink a really good cup of coffee or when i read a really beautiful poem.

but also i can’t help but compare this surprise of approaching new york city for the first time (carraway’s vision, articulated by f. scott fitzgerald) to akerman’s exodus from manhattan in the closing scene of news from home, which we watched during the final meeting of this seminar. approaching new york elicits feelings of excitement, potential, grandeur—exiting the city builds up a visual paean, but with a simultaneous spirit of loss, of exile. in akerman’s film we all become the first humans, sent out from the garden of eden. or perhaps, in a different biblical interpretation, we get to do what lot’s wife didn’t (gaze behind us to see what we are leaving)—no, i am not yet a pillar of salt.

for the sake of being cheesy: maybe these cityscapes operate as semesters do. at the start of the semester, with the nonphysical landscape of intellectual excitement spread out before us, it is impossible not to feel some kind of wonder. then the semester ends, and we pull away from it. what do we see? what is left?

who am i to question what remains? a remnant:

the ode

by the power invested in me by another few months that have left us—

by the power and the empowerment gained in all the books read, the notes taken, the bowls of soup consumed—

i sing [empowered by some sacred yet irreligious muse]—

here is to many more semesters full of wonder!

full of the same sentences over and over again until they mean something!

homework! late night conversation! illicit activity! language! joy!

full of the energy that keeps me suspended in something nameless—contentment?—and allows me to center myself in this beauty!

thank you, universe, for reading! for allowing me to write!

dear past rachel,

i wish i could tell you it got better but it didn’t

no i don’t think postmodernism comes out of a laziness with language

her grief was pornographic mine was made of wrought iron

or was it that it was fraught with danger

or was it just caught on some hook made of nicotine and wine-stained carpeting

well, now, out of the corner of your eye how many ghosts did you recognize?

i am not bothered by them at all, yet i cannot stand the past

i guess because she will never be pleased with who i become

maybe i’ll become nothing and cease to care at all about it

oh i wish i could tell you it got better

then i spent thanksgiving in providence and grew somehow more intimate with loneliness

eating pizza on wickenden street and seeing the lights fade one-by-one

buying film at hunt’s and admiring the empty petco cages

drinking black coffee and studying in the basement of the athenaeum

well, out of the corner of your eye how many ghosts did you extinguish?

the purpose of memory being: to keep the fish alive

dead in the past the future as a flexible uncertainty

i intended to grow a lush garden out of words but instead built this

did you know before that ikea sells couches for less than one hundred dollars

i am sorry if i have somehow let you down

i forgot the traffic on the seven billion highways required to travel the forty-five miles between providence and wellesley, massachusetts. however, before leaving, i had remembered that there would be inconveniences precipitating from the many other travelers gearing up for thanksgiving and the holiday season.

i forgot how loud my father yells into his bluetooth headset, yet i remembered keeping my phone’s volume low in case he called.

i forgot the lived-in smell of my house, but i will always remember the story of the man who lived in here before we did. a cigarette smoker, he filled what is now the family room with the scent of a freshly lit marlboro. i think he would have gotten along well with my friends.

i forgot the lack of healthy food in my kitchen. at mealtimes i always remember how i ate lean cuisines and other frozen meals all the time in high school, and when my college friends complained about brown university food, i felt uncomfortable because everything in the dining hall was so much healthier and more edible than what i got at home. there’s something about opening an empty fridge…

i forgot how much my brother loves to sing and how my sister is at times untrustworthy. i can recall the days when we joked that my brother would be a cantor and my sister would be a lawyer.

i forgot my mother’s apolitical attitudes, but i remembered reading marx in my bedroom and wondering why no one had ever talked about this with me.

i forgot the whole foods on washington street, and when i walked in last night and saw how elegant it was, how much nicer the produce was and how calm and peaceful and full of free samples it was, i remembered all of the supermarkets in providence and felt sad.

i forgot the length of the road that spans from whole foods to my high school. it is a much longer walk than i noticed in the days when i walked it with friends. but i remembered how nice it was to see michael at the end of it.

i forgot the stars over wellesley. i remembered the clouds.

i forgot how nice it is to talk to someone who has known you forever. i remembered wanting really badly to see a shooting star, and then last night on the bleachers with michael finally seeing one.

i forgot how to get to bertucci’s from the high school, but i remembered how my friend sylvia worked there for such a long time. we loved visiting her and should have done so more often. the last time i ate there was in may, after freshman year had just ended. the salad was great.

i forgot the solitude i felt in high school. i selectively remembered safe friendships and ignored my shyness, strangeness, peculiarity. i remembered feeling like college had turned me into a different person.

i forgot the natick mcdonalds. i remembered going there only once in high school, after a trip to target, but we had used the drive-thru.

i forgot how big some of the houses in wellesley are, and how driving around them at night you begin to wonder how anyone could possibly need so much space, because no one needs so much of anything. i remembered going over to a friend’s house in my junior year of high school and realizing that i was a bit of an extremist and didn’t regret it at all.

i forgot the name of the street you must take to get back to my neighborhood from weston road [elmwood]. i remember priding myself on an encyclopedic knowledge of my hometown, drawing maps on the back of my hand and whatnot.

hi, hi. so i'm going to be straight up front—just a shot in the dark. i know this is a long shot but why not. hey we were flirting all night. this is for the guy who works there, hopefully you know who i am by this post. a lot has happened this past week and i need to share it with you.

we were shopping at stop and shop and we looked at each other and smiled. on my way into shaws last monday you said hello and later we spoke in the produce aisle. you were standing behind in the "express" checkout lane. today about 11:30 am i came into the depot to get some spouts as i passed the isle where they made the keys there you were. i stopped at your office to drop off a check for an xmas item last thursday, just before lunch.

you wave to me almost every morning we talked once real quick about my kids coats he left it on the bus. it was crazy busy at dave n busters last night saw you at the bar first. at daves in smithfield yesterday, you walked by me at the deli and you were wearing orange yoga pants and had an absolutely beautiful smile. i brought you the newspapers this morning and got a coffee ive been looking at you everytime i come in but can never get up the nerve to really talk to you or get your number or what not. i was sitting with two people as well a couple tables away and we kept glancing at one another throughout our meals?

you admired my tattoo and i thought you were very cute, although i was with someone and not in a position to keep talking. you waited on me today. you rung my wife up a week ago. we sat by the bar and our dinner was late and you were kind. and very attractive. i drove by you with my truck, you were walking and we locked eyes, idk but whenever i am outside you keep checking me out and eyeing up my ass and beltline.

i picked you up sunday about 10;15pm in east prov. to pawtucket. i saw you yesterday and you looked sexy as hell. you spilled ur coffee at cumby's last week and i helped u clean it up. holy crap last night at whiskey republic so many guys. saw you in the back dining room this morning sat nov 11th you were sitting across from another couple man and a woman. you asked me if i needed a receipt for the check. i said i didn't.

and i loved your beautiful smile. looking very beautiful in your sweat pants and coat lol we locked eyes numerous times and check ed out at about the same time exchanging glances threw the parking lot. you passed me again near the juices and flashed that awesome smile again. i tried not to look at you because i knew it would bring up past demons. it seems no matter who you are you get shit on. you are my neighbor i believe, or you hang out there very often. thought you were adorable.

you drove off in a black car and i let you get near the exit. i believe i saw you leaving the parking lot in a white VW jetta 2.5. u asked if u could buy a cigarette i gave u two for free and we talked about football u said your a packers fan i said i dont do sports. i have been here 10 yrs shit on by the time i retire. i called you by the wrong name, but that didn't bother you. we exchanged glances a couple of times. knew i probably stood no chance so didn't bother. you two are friends but not talking to one another. but its been a week now and i can't stop thinking about jumping that counter and deepthroating you. it's time we start living again and stop being miserable.

i have a blue car and a tan suv. i had tan suv on elm street back glass open and drivers door open. shouldn't have to be this hard to find love i am a man in my 51 years old and retired. i'm 19 but live on my own so we could chill whenever. i am a handsome 41 year old native rhode islander. oh and i’m tall, brown hair blue eyed, very handsome, and yeah the bulge doesn't lie either. i am in my mid 50s.

you are a cute slender woman in her late 30s or early 40s. you are a cutie. you wear glasses i believe dark blonde hair or light brown.. your a cutie!!! ur a petite blonde. you looked like you can take a nice dick down your throat. you did a double take and i loved how gorgeous you looked. your about 5'5" brunette with a tan, young maybe 20s? you are very handsome. you were wearing a light gray pullover with a zipper front and jeans. you told me your name and it started with an s. god you are so damn beautiful. just seem like a really great girl, hope your man treats you right the way you would deserve. you deserve so much more than a little boy like that who is too immature to clean up his act at his age.

and i want to tell you what a pleasant experience it was. regardless, it was a sweet interaction but if you would like to get a drink sometime feel free to reach out so if it's you email me. if you interested in being friends and having occasional safe discreet sex, i am open to it. i would love to get to know you regardless of your situation. and id love to chat with you more on a more personal level. me and the wife are finally done so i can come rescue you from that 'little' junkie husband of yours. if you are interested in getting together to smoke please send me a note.

maybe see you next saturday afternoon as i know that is a usual time for you. i think you are hot and if there's any interest on your part lets get together and see. hopefully you see this and we can chat. let me know if you see this, would love to get together sometime. if you see this, please get back to me. know it's a long shot but hope to hear from you because your just as freaky as me. so if you see this please reply so i can give you my new number.

won't be long now.

your fuckin hot dont know what team u play 4 but let me know. hit me up if u see this please. just because someone pays the bills doesn't mean thats 'taking care' of you. i miss you my love. i've always wanted to get you in bed,no one will know let's do it!! just want to show you how good fucking you would be.

both of us spending the rest of our lives with people we've fallen out of love with is such a waste. so tell me what i was driving when i picked u up. tell me what i said to you? and color hair i had. if this is you tell me what color my hair is? tell me what color jacket i was wearing. tell me the name that i called you in the subject line, or what i was wearing. (and include the image / wording of my tattoo). if it was you tell me what color was the truck? and so i know it's you, what were you wearing? tell me something about you so i know it's you. please reply if you're interested by including a detailed description of me and the clothing i was wearing. put the name of the street you live on AND the street i live on in the subject line so i know its YOU.

it gets cold so early now and sometimes i text my father mid-afternoon to ask him if he would please tell me a sad story so i feel like i have something to think about, but i still feel wordless after all this time, after all these afternoons of rain dripping down the windows. it’s the time of year when afternoon swirls into midnight. for no real reason, typing the word “swirl” reminds me of the multicolored yogurts i favored in childhood. i think that if i were to eat that yogurt again i might feel sick, or very sad, or both. i have been very dependent on yogurt recently, but the adult kind that’s bitter and mixes nicely with granola.

my father tells me: within sixty days of moving into his childhood home, he heard about a few kids close in age to him who were killed in an automobile accident. this took place in cleveland, ohio. it is strangely familiar because on sunday night, i was walking home from the library and a car barely noticed my presence. i was halfway across the street when the car made a right turn without hesitation, leaving george street unapologetically, and i thought: i could have died here, in this darkness.

but instead i kept walking and enjoyed a meal at the dining hall and made it back to my room in one piece. i cleaned my room on saturday so on sunday night it felt like an unusually empty space. i threw my backpack on the ground and sprawled out on the couch and worked on my russian homework, which was all about letter writing, how to address a secret lover in a secret language, the usual.

my father tells me: the house around the corner burned down because the lady would not throw away her newspapers. if i ever started writing paper letters i think i would hoard them and my house would burn down too. i want someone to write me letters—it would be worth the flames—i want someone to tell their life story in handwritten words composed with love and adoration. i thought about this on sunday. at that point it was the middle of the night. it was also 9pm, and because it was so late and so early i did a few readings for my religious studies seminar before packing up and putting on a pair of sneakers and going to the gym located in my oddly utopian dormitory.

the elliptical stage of my adventure lasted thirty minutes. by the end of it i felt a sudden urge to run outside. it was just barely warm enough to justify my choice, and there wasn’t any ice on the street yet so i had to take advantage of the sidewalks. college has taught me to carefully analyze when i should take advantage of things. i drew inspiration from how over the summer i did a few late night runs through the neighborhood called fox point. it is part of my obsession with night, humidity, stars. i ran for a little while. but i felt tired and walked back to my room.

by then it was monday morning—monday morning!—and i looked around my room and felt incredibly lonely and went to sleep at 2am. i briefly skyped with a friend from home who told me to be happy. i thanked him for his honesty. my room was warm, clean, quiet. the heaters are on now so warm air huddles in the corner of the 120 sq. ft., over by the staircase bookshelf i bought on craigslist from a woman in providence a few weeks ago.

outside it gets so cold so fast. i need to stop wearing sandals around the university buildings if i want to keep my toes. in providence, i can spend five dollars on a cup of tea and it leaves me with a bit of warmth; otherwise my survival hinges on how i wear a lot of raggedy sweaters. i have a moderate-to-intense affection for winter coats, but don’t appreciate how everyone on this campus wears the fancy kinds memorable only because of the brand name. my close friend told me that in moscow the winters have personalities—in providence winter just happens and we cower from it.

it gets cold and sometimes i text my father mid-afternoon to tell him about my two coats, which i love in part because i refused to spend more than $15 on them, a proper approach to budgeting so i can still get tea every once and awhile. my father offered to send me one of the coats in storage that belonged to my paternal grandmother so many years ago—a fur coat that looks like a wes anderson prop. i am vaguely uncomfortable with fur coats; i’ve been flirting with going totally vegetarian for a long time, and the thought of wearing an animal makes me shiver a tiny bit, but maybe that’s more because i’m cold than anything else?

just kidding. then my father tells me: she would’ve wanted you to have it! and i stand in my room staring at that text message, contemplating what it means for someone to want something for someone else. i think i know but i know just as well that i don’t. it strikes me as ridiculous that the world has spun so many times without my father’s parents on it.

there is something about my life in winter that disappears. what i mean to say is that in lower saxony el lissitzky is reimagining the structure of my bedroom. the room is no longer carpeted, but tiled with suprematist color palettes and is lit by centuries of history i haven’t yet learned. the room is a collage of thoughts and feelings. it overlooks a city made of compounded words birthed by a dictionary whose title i can’t pronounce. night never overtakes it, and for whatever reason, when the cold does decide to settle on the avenues, instead of coats we wear beautiful necklaces made of flashlights and broken disposable cameras.

1. when i do not live in providence i live on the internet.

2. the way people talk about where they come from is sometimes too much, and that the internet can provide a platform for us to experience this is also too much. not to mention that tuesday afternoons are overwhelming.

3. making this collage was a much-needed break from midterms. there’s a whole world outside this dorm room [in which i just read all of “on being blue,” hell of a day it’s been, happy halloween].

you are not far from the kingdom of god, but here are some cities you are far from: los angeles, san francisco, phoenix, san bernardino, seattle, san diego, denver, portland, sacramento, las vegas, san jose, salt lake city, tucson, honolulu, fresno, albuquerque, boise, modesto, santa rosa.

here are some countries you are far from: australia, indonesia, the solomon islands, palau, tuvalu, the marshall islands, vanuatu, fiji, tonga, samoa, east timor, new zealand, kiribati. you are far from china, taiwan, japan, north korea, south korea, mongolia, and vietnam.

and you are far from venus, mercury, mars, neptune, saturn, jupiter, uranus, and pluto, and you are far from the kuiper belt, and you are far from the oort cloud. you are far from stars—alpha centauri a, wolf 359, sirius, barnard’s star, procyon a, procyon b. you are far from the moon.

when it snows and the mayor of providence declares a parking ban, you are far from the dining hall. the distance to the gym becomes irrelevant when flurries cause its closure. you are far from your close friend’s dormitory—it’s on the other side of campus now. you are far from the mail room, starbucks, and your monday afternoon seminar.

you are not far from the kingdom of god, but you are far from chicago. you are far from columbus, indianapolis, detroit, milwaukee, kansas city, omaha, and minneapolis. you are far from wichita and from your dear friend in st. louis. you are far from sioux falls, akron, des moines, st. paul, and ann arbor. you are far from cleveland and you are far from the rock and roll hall of fame.

here are the countries just an ocean away: ireland, spain, france, portugal, the united kingdom, monaco, belgium, the netherlands, italy, finland, sweden, norway, denmark, germany, andorra, luxembourg, san marino. you are far from all of them.

you are far from the west side of the city in which you live. you are far from its coffee shops and the planned parenthood. you are far from the bus stop that could take you there. you are far from the mall. it’s for the best.

you are far from the truth. you dwell not in someone’s house but in a tiny room in a building that requires swipe access for entry. you are far from a miraculous recovery. though you possess the words, you are far from fluency. you are far from a good day.

you are far from buenos aires and santiago. you are also far from history and from the future. you are far from lima and you are far from victory. you are far from celebrating christmas.

you are not far from the kingdom of god. you are, however, far from rishi. you’re far from gabby, allison, abi, haley, sabrina, rachel, alex, simone, michael, natasha, maggie, teddy, david, brianna, matthew, and sarah—especially sarah, off in los angeles, learning computer science and residing among palm trees—you are far from countless others, too many.

when it’s nice outside and you venture down to the river’s edge with one of your best friends, and the sun bolts down at such an angle that curses your eyes, you begin to forget how far away it is, that sun. you forget the vastness of the earth and think only of the river, the waves that carry bottles from one side to another, transporting trash with grace that makes the distance seem small.

this week i made an effort to focus on ambient noise.

[in the sciences library: someone walking across the room. pant legs rubbing against each other. skin neatly becoming under nylon. someone typing one key at a time—no fluidity to the motions and their learned rigidness. tapping of the books in a backpack. whoosh, all the pant legs saying in unison. introductory chanting. the peculiar voices whose words i cannot grasp. the stranger’s footsteps in the stairwell.]

this week i made an effort to focus on ambient noise.

[by the faunce entryway: a couple listening to a bright eyes song. shared headphones. prospective students introducing themselves with pride. strong tones. a friend knocking the marble table onto its side. thud is the word, but the word has no meaning. suddenly all conversations in the adjacent room ceasing, and a stillness, still the stillness is confounding. hushed. never heard this before.]

this week i made an effort to focus on ambient noise.

[in starbucks: an old man swiping his credit card: click. someone typing one key at a time—no fluidity to it. fluidity of the ice shifting in her tea, bright pink and melting. clear umbrella closing, door opening, the buzz of the lights, the bus engine starting on the street, out by the tunnel where i have sometimes wanted to linger forever. the barista calling a series of names into the void of a shared memory.]

this week i made an effort to focus on ambient noise.

i realized recently that i will wake up one morning and look in the mirror and realize i’ve become eugène atget. this isn’t a big deal; i’m not too fond of being myself most days anyway. in fact, i’ve been yearning to start over. it’s about time i pick up a new face. this may be just the opportunity i need.

with this new beginning, my window over charlesfield st. will look out over a neighborhood of paris—hell, all the neighborhoods of paris, all at once—if the panopticon were a city you could behold in one glance and then close your eyes to it forever, well, that’s what i’m talking about—and not contemporary parisian neighborhoods, but the old ones, what paris looked like before its current form. but i will still have a bit of resentment for having ended up in a post-haussmann paris—can’t be too greedy when it comes to these types of situations, though, can we.

and i’ll walk around the city lamenting the completion of the boulevard saint-germain. [perhaps, just like now, i’ll walk around the city lamenting everything.] and i’ll walk around all day with a camera in hand and take pictures of the sides of buildings. it will be an effective way to look back on moments i wasted trying to capture them.

at first atget was a photographer for the benefit of other artists. he documented random things and wanted to sell these images to painters who had short attention spans and needed a new point of reference. i can relate to how painters wanted to know everything. i can grasp why architects wanted to know everything.

meanwhile, the people of paris wanted to remember everything, and surely i can relate to that too, but anyhow, this is why they started buying atget’s photographs of paris before it became paris 2.0, because photographs were a manifestation of memory, permanent enough that you don’t even realize that they’re fading until they’ve faded beyond recognition. atget realized he could do this ‘city photography’ thing all the time—and so he did, more or less, and took literally thousands of pictures of a city that was disappearing.

fading, i guess, like the very photographs he took. like the photographs we all take. i mean, it’s the small changes that build up. it’s the minute differences you don’t think will make any kind of impact, but before you know it, it’s been a year since you pierced your nose and you can’t remember anymore how the stud felt going in, and the lack of a sensation in your memory keeps you up at night.

when i wake up one morning as eugène atget my first step will be to walk along the seine. then i’ll send man ray an email. then i’ll die in 1927, and that will be it, probably. [can’t be sure.]

i have never been to paris—or europe, or anywhere that is outside the united states and isn’t montreal—but i find great pleasure in imagining places of which i can’t really prove the existence since i haven’t been there. somewhere in paris, a man is eating an apple. probably. i’m not sure why i have the right to write such a sentence when i cannot imagine the man, the apple, the city of paris. i don’t really know what any of it means, other than that i don’t know anything at all, which, when it comes to knowledge, doesn’t count for much.

i’m sitting in my dorm room, watching thayer, thinking about the photography midterm that’s coming up this week. it’s a marvelous city down there. it’s a marvelous life, even though it ends [because it ends?] and i don’t know what it is but late nights and midterms turn me into a morbid and god-fearing child and i feel very young and very alone here, not in my own life but in the largeness of the world. 

“Ему удалось все-таки разобрать, что записанное представляет собой несвязную цепь каких-то изречений, каких-то дат, хозяйственных заметок и поэтических отрывков. Кое-что Пилат прочел: ‘Смерти нет... Вчера мы ели сладкие весенние баккуроты…’” [from the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov]

there is no death…

yesterday we ate sweet spring figs…

a bicycle and its pedals…

before august seventh…

this critical realism…

a matter of map making…

globalized commodity production…

to put into the abyss…

only a change of words…

by the sink and soap…

spent a dollar for…

then sat in the dark waiting…

the lighter cost us…

after october first…

the sweater dried and…

plato argued that…

i thought of you when…

at the pharmacy they said…

dna determines how…

in heartbeats we counted…

there is no love…

on the phone he mentioned…

what defined exchange…

a theory of everything…

INT. LIESL’S ROOM AT A UNIVERSITY IN SPACE - TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, JUST AS MAYAKOVSKY WOULD HAVE IT! - AND NOW IT’S SATURDAY, HOW LOVELY

a small dorm room on the fourth floor walls covered in a few ugly posters of german modernism pretty large windows under which the current resident a girl named LIESL has placed a couch on the wall perpendicular to the windows and parallel to that with the door is the bed and on the couch liesl is reading a book and on the bed TOBIAS is trying to sleep

TOBIAS: why don’t you sleep

LIESL: i never sleep

liesl is lighting a cigarette she’s smoking out the window it’s so against the rules of the university liesl why are you doing this? the smoke is blowing everywhere no one in these fictional martian lands can breathe anymore what a tragedy and the smell of the cigarette is particularly strong because these are marlboro reds we’re talking about also known as cowboy killers ashes are all over the windowsill

liesl COUGHS

tobias is finally almost asleep again he’s tossing and turning and liesl is still smoking the cigarette it’s perhaps halfway gone now and outside the city is nice the city is an eye color the city is the car that drives past wheels screeching the city is a collection of dying trees on the galactic sidewalks

TOBIAS: how comforting to fall asleep to the smell of a cigarette

LIESL: that’s a fact

the cigarette is gone liesl drops it into a nearby red solo cup and picks up her book tobias is sleeping now and outside the city is filtered in through a character’s perspective the city is about to be raining cats and dogs the city is made of money the city i love you more than life itself! the city is the writing on the wall and liesl TURNS THE PAGE SO LOUDLY that tobias wakes up

TOBIAS: anyway what are you reading

LIESL: i am reading a book about screenwriting

TOBIAS: is it interesting at least

LIESL: yes syd field suggests that writers should avoid cliche keep action lines concise

TOBIAS: that’s nice

LIESL: i guess

INTERVIEWER: good to see you again, rachel. so, when was this home built?

RACHEL: another day in hermosa, this glorious beachwalk of short buildings, this city that’s not mine. it’s the last day in hermosa, august nineteenth, and i’m supposed to pack and skip to the pharmacy and check out the antique store i had passed at the wrong times each morning and therefore never properly visited. there’s a bit more cloud cover today. i haven’t done laundry all week, so i find myself wearing the same skirt i wore on thursday and feel gross about it.

INTERVIEWER: and how long have the current owners lived here?

RACHEL: it had been a week of walking around this neighborhood—felt simultaneously like less and more. i had acclimated to the local aesthetic without ever wanting to adopt it for myself. i recognized certain dogs and, from time to time, the people walking them, particularly those outside the starbucks where i went for wifi and the occasional snack.

INTERVIEWER: what’s the foundation made of?

RACHEL: when i first set out in the morning i have my mind already on when to return. i’m made of this consciousness i’ve been trying to deny for a lot longer than i can recall, and it’s all some chaotic blend of collective and individual memory. without harsh sunlight i can see everything clearly, including the gelato restaurant where i go for a special last-day-treat, and so i tell the girl behind the counter that i have a red eye out of LAX that night, and she asks me why i didn’t come to the gelato place earlier, and i explain that i just didn’t notice it until it was too late. “but at least i’m here now,” i tell her, and pay, like, seven dollars for a milkshake.

INTERVIEWER: and what’s the slope and length of the driveway?

RACHEL: shortly thereafter i get a text message from some guy. he asks me why i’m being terse or something stupid like that. and i get that physical sensation of rolling down some hill, or maybe a driveway, and i feel dizzy and kind of out of touch with myself. all around me, hermosa beach is still just doing its thing. some old man waits for the beach cities transit bus to arrive.

INTERVIEWER: can you tell me, is there moss in the roof?

RACHEL: i get the same sensation later in the day—it keeps coming back. i call my good friend while walking back to the house, and i pass the lighthouse cafe, where a few scenes of the feature film la la land were shot, and i suddenly hear the soundtrack of that movie… and i think, rachel, you’re imagining this! but i’m not imagining it. on the other side of the pier, some organization is playing la-la land on the beach, and a thousand people have come to watch it.

INTERVIEWER: would you say the gutters are in good condition?

RACHEL: gazing at the crowd of movie-going californians makes for quite the experience. it’s peculiar to know that their perception of the city is entirely different than mine, that whatever infatuation each individual may or may not have with the sand in their shoes speaks to some childhood i was not privy to. the movie’s soundtrack bellows over the waves.

INTERVIEWER: in what direction does the property face?

RACHEL: now we fast forward to when the feeling returns. well, i get the same sensation yet again once school has started up for the year and i’m across the country, you know, in providence, and i’m talking to my good friend, and we’re sharing a container of mozzarella sticks at jo’s, appreciating the fluorescent lights. i tell him that i feel really troubled about how some brief pseudo-platonic relationship came to a destructive end, and he shrugs his shoulders at first, not really sure of what to tell me.

INTERVIEWER: do you think i might be able to peek under the rugs?

RACHEL: then he goes ahead and asks what exactly it is, i guess, in so many words, that is making me upset. i try to put into sentences what lingers beneath the surface. i explain—the sensation is spreading—how aggravating it is to know someone well for a very short time, and then to know that they are going to live the rest of their life without ever thinking of you. and yet i am so incapable of forgetting. and this applies to love and friendship just as much as it applies to the blank faces watching la la land on the beach in hermosa.

INTERVIEWER: well, is this home in a floodplain?

RACHEL: my friend shrugs his shoulders and tells me, “that’s how life works.” and the sensation, at that point, is all consuming, and i cry out in agony [rather, i take a very dramatic sip of water].

INTERVIEWER: is the basement finished?

“walking to providence station in the rain 10/8/17”

dear future rachel:

sometimes you have to write about simple things. i don’t mean definitions (1+1=??) nor the obvious (a thesis statement,your favorite novella,family history surface-level). i mean you can sit on the fourth floor of the rockefeller library trying to write what you want to write and it will take you hours,probably,until morning,so sometimes you have to settle and type out pages of what needs to be written.i mean you can wait in your dormitory for the world to spin a fraction more/sit in tealuxe for the rest of your life,or you can venture back to class with your head down. up. down again.

in this spirit:here’s what’s been happening lately in my life,this life of mine. i outlined an essay about poets,walter benjamin,and architecture; i piled up bullet points in my bedroom; i read a passage of the bible; i forgot my glasses at home; i learned rebellious and wayward children are to be put to death; i went to a doctor’s office in downtown providence to get a prescription for birth control; the streets were bleak,the lighting strange.

what bothers me most is how the things i want to write about cannot be explained. indeed i am very infuriated. sometimes it is because of name/face that i am starting to get the impression i might be running low on words.

outside[have you noticed that it is always outside,that i am reliant on indoor/outdoor binaries to place myself in this city]a man in a camo shirt is crossing the street,many of the women around are wearing white sunglasses,the shadows left by rustling leaves form silhouettes on the backs of street signs otherwise obscured by countless stickers and advertisements for a record store that closed in may,so many women have stylish coats,the bustling,the way one man holds his water bottle in his right hand,dangling it above his leg.

there’s a bus advertisement that reminds passersby that the flu shot will never give them the flu—thanks,ripta!—there’s the man next to me eating salad so loudly i think i might get an aneurysm and/or perish instantly in the sound,and all i really want is to write something that can capture the sharpness of this wednesday morning,something beyond the abstractions i know to be true about my life,something concrete as the air in my lungs.

anyway,future rachel,i hope you are well.

“My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognizing them. The words ‘Phone directory available within’ or ‘Snacks served at any hour’ will no longer be written up in a semi-circle in white porcelain letters on the window of the little café in the Rue Coquillière.” [from species of spaces by georges perec]

i step outside my dormitory onto the terrace and i notice a sharp pain that spreads across my face and recedes back into my sinuses, concentrates around my nose—and then i realize that fall is here and i can’t escape the truth of its chilly pervasiveness.

a month earlier the terrace had been populated by my peers. by day they sat alone at the metal tables to write essays and do projects; by night they gathered around pipes and boxes of turkish blends and played music from their portable speakers. today i speed walk towards the central building of the complex without seeing another person. even thayer st. is empty, windy, cold.

it’s fall now and the city has changed. it’s a palpable change that haunts quite traditionally in the spirit of halloween. and though it seems as sudden as the first frigid day of the academic year, its speed is determined by the rate at which the leaves turn orange and drown in the dirt, decay under our feet.

i guess it’s a fact of life that cities change. just today miller and i were talking over brunch about the store closures on thayer st., how he really misses nice slice and resents its replacement, some restaurant devoted to the preparation of grilled cheese, a food item i remember making for the first time at age seven one saturday morning using kraft slices and frozen white bread. on thayer st. you can get however much of that delicacy you’d like.

change, in a city, can be good, but for the most part it arises as a result of insidious institutions. strange to think that they could get away with so much.

unlike summer temperatures, nice slice isn’t coming back to thayer street; the west side of the city is so lucky to have local access to a pizza restaurant that considers fig to be a proper topping. change is pretty random in and of itself but the ways in which things change seem consistent—weather patterns, food trends, the continuous filling and emptying of certain storefronts.

i hate change but i need it all the time. routine manages to be my best friend and worst enemy; this semester in particular i’ve found myself frequenting the same mindsets over and over again, the same dining halls, the same social spaces. it all feels very permanent—until it doesn’t, because every place i’ve ever been is shrouded in the fact of its temporariness. providence is providence to me because i cannot stay here forever. it’s doomed to memory.

in the same way change is scary, not-change is scary. consider the fear you experience when you find yourself very comfortable with someone—could i possibly trust them? you find yourself asking—that weird familiarity when everything has been consistent long enough that you can recall with eyes open or closed the sound of wind outside your dormitory window, etc.

“this too shall pass,” people say to me a bit too often. i’ve usually thought of that in terms of events—but places are just as much a fixture. the aspects of cities that seem the most permanent to us still tend to be man-made, constructed within the past few centuries, this millennium at most. the stores on thayer st. are, in isolation, fragments… a fragile narrative within an impenetrable story. and someday thayer st. won’t be anyone’s memory.

anyway: starting in the winter of my junior year of high school i spent hours each week scanning old film slides that my grandfather had taken in his lifetime. at one point i came across a picture of a 1960’s highway exit in southern california. it was a pretty ordinary image with great color saturation, a very blue sky, an open road. one night my father saw the picture and asked me, “do you think it’s still there?” and sitting on orange chairs in the basement of the house we opened safari on our respective laptops and tried to find the exit sign on google maps street view.

the open road of the early 21st century looks an awful lot like that of the mid-20th. the same cloudlessness, the same blue.

finally i found it: “look at that!” i called out to him and took a screenshot.

HANNAH! on the eve of your birthday i dedicate to you a monument! one already built, ordered from a sears catalogue! made of papier mache! made of hair! made of life!

on the eve of your birthday i call you up on the phone! how lovely it is that phones can connect cities and other separate entities! that your voice can fill my dorm room! and when you leave the call to watch more bojack horseman on the eve of your birthday, i think about boston, the city in which you were born seventeen years ago!

boston is a city of flashing lights! sometimes i recall the week we spent in the galleries at the museum of fine arts and laugh to myself about the boy whose name recalled a holiday of triangle cookies! the face of our instructor who justifiably preferred your artwork to mine! and as dearly as i appreciate that museum i loved the walks down huntington much more! when we went to the burger place near mom’s office and talked about our lives and my college years seemed so far away then though it was only weeks!

we took the train so often then, do you remember! our art supplies!

HANNAH one of my earliest memories is from when i was two and a half! this is statistically improbable, as most adults can only recall a few events from before they were three! it’s of a street in newton where mom and dad dropped me off so they could go to boston to the hospital to … have you! it was dark outside and i sat in the back seat in those days! i spent the last hours in the world without you sitting around in newton!

newton for many reasons is even more hilarious to me than boston! newton where we went to school for too long! where you celebrated your bat mitzvah! where you go canoeing from time to time (kayaking, more recently, how you’ve grown)!

HANNAH you gloriously apathetic younger sister of mine! flutist dancer debate extraordinaire! on the eve of your birthday i celebrate you as sincerely as the soviets dreamed of a monument to the third international! but unlike this monument which went uncompleted by its creators you are real and genuine and full of a vibrance unchallenged and unbound! it’s good you’re a libra!

HANNAH on the eve of your birthday i celebrate boston the city of your birth! and i wonder when we can go back to max brenner and eat a whole cake just like the days before the purple line tracks separated us!

we will explore new cities!

you will show me paris! london! we will see reykjavik and berlin and moscow and jerusalem! we will accumulate frequent flier miles!

i remember my first semester of college coming to a close [which frankly was a crash landing]: it rained all the time. the days stuck together and so i could not differentiate between them. my umbrella started to stretch. my socks were disappearing fast. i wanted to safeguard the rest of my life from these inglorious hauntings. a well-connected advisor of mine suggested i get tea with his friend, who would tell me in so many words how to save myself for spring. and when we met on thayer street, the windows were still damp from the last storm. the sun set at five. dark/misty/slick, this city of molasses and motorcyclists. the lights of passing cars shined with such ferocity that i sometimes mistook them for a visage of new york smashed to bits. it’s all we are. the friend and i bonded over a love of warm beverages and the color yellow. 

that night, she emailed me a list of shops to try in the city of providence; here are a few of them plus my own suggestions.

Blue State Coffee. 

we’re sitting in one of the seats by the windows. the spring semester kicked off just a few weeks ago. one of the biggest snowstorms of the year is going to hit tomorrow. we’re talking about russian cartoons, my friends and i. we’re talking about the snow.

rating: 4/5

best drink: hot chocolate

Tealuxe. (1 / 2)

i buy tea on the way to the library. i also buy a cookie. it’s midterm season and in the zero decibel section i write my best poem of the semester and decide not to study for an upcoming math exam. there are crumbs on my black coat. for a moment i think my gloves are gone. i walk home after midnight.

rating: 5/5

best drink: it’s the drink-cookie combination that merits our focused discourse

Starbucks (Angell Street).

another shade of grey strikes my wrist. i’m leaving providence tomorrow for spring break. i’m in love with my friends. i come from paper nautilus where i purchased a copy of kundera’s the unbearable lightness of being. i need a latte. sitting around the large table are many blank, caffeinated faces.

rating: 4/5

best drink: all hail the butterscotch lattes of early spring

The Coffee Exchange. (1 / 2)

my friends and i walk in when it first opens in the morning. we stayed up all night—the last of the school year—we watched the sunrise at india point park. a neon green inchworm hangs off of my jacket. the wood paneled walls and the first experimental drippings of the sun.

rating: 4.5/5

best drink: hot latte, even in mid-may

White Electric.

while spending the summer in providence i decide to attend a career lab event on the west side of the city. i buy a latte before the meeting begins. i am jittery for two hours. i am far away from my sublet.  i walk home through the edge of sunset. i decide not to work for an arts nonprofit.

rating: 3.5/5

best drink: only ever had a latte. was electric indeed

Malachi’s.

“we could go to malachi’s?” he suggests.

“um, they’ll be closed by then. tealuxe?” i reply.

“sure!” he says.

rating: n/a

best drink: alone

Tealuxe. (2 / 2)

i walk past it at first. i consider pretending to have forgotten. i order my cinnamon chai. i drink it fast. i see his eyes and the glasses that frame them. i take out my computer and pull up a poem so it looks like i’ve been here the whole afternoon.

rating: 5/5

best drink: the cinnamon chai, hot with whole milk

Starbucks (Thayer Street).

once i ordered a chai tea latte and got both a chai tea latte and a green tea latte. it was ten o’clock at night. i was meeting someone important. when i try to sit at the table where i had my two lattes, i get palpitations. i sit there anyway.

rating: varies

best drink: varies. they are often out of pumpkin spice

The Coffee Exchange. (2 / 2)

i watch one of the baristas request the phone number of a particularly attractive customer. i eat my gingerbread and wait for a drink. to this establishment which federico views as behind on the times i usually go with friends but being on my own is fine. it’s worth walking down benefit street every once and awhile, you know, before it ices over. and it’s good to withdraw and drink alone so that not every coffee shop becomes the ghost of a prized interaction you created there, stirred in with the foam.

rating: 5/5