hello, long time no see. i had some difficulties with my substack account but those should be cleared up now. i am considering doing a paid tier of posts that would be more informal and personal (like this one), with the rationale being that a) i could use the money b) it would force me to consistently produce quality new writing on a regular basis. to be determined, but if you have an opinion about this please let me know.
for now, i’m writing to you alone in a bedroom that is not mine. a few blocks away my clothes are circulating rapidly in a dryer that is so old and squeaky it shrieks every few seconds, loud enough to be heard from my room, so I am seeking refuge in an apartment belonging to two indie logan square boys. they named their wifi network after a Steely Dan song. the password is bodaciouscowboy.
i am writing to you because i don’t want to file my taxes (which i believe are now late but this does not impact my motivation to finish them). there is a certain creative impulse that only touches me when i urgently have to be doing something else.
i was very close to being broke about a week ago. i do not have much to say about the experience except that being a woman in stem is really not as lucrative as one would expect; i remember talking to a postdoc once who told me she was thinking about starting an onlyfans to make rent (she was paying rent for two apartments at the time, but still, she was a senior scientist at one of the most well-funded institutions in the country).
before i moved to chicago i was never broke, i never lost my phone, i never drank so much i threw up. i am sitting with the thought that i’ve become a much less serious and conscientious person than i was three, five, seven years ago. the places i’ve lived have changed me, which has made me so, so much happier as i have gotten older, but i have a murkier sense of myself, my desires, my ambitions. i feel like my journey through time has been that of a viscous liquid being poured into different containers, waiting until it finally solidifies into a shapeless pellet.
this morning i went shopping for books, looking for nothing in particular. i left with a skinny vintage paperback copy of Speak Memory, some Clarice Lispector books i bought so i can talk to Carl about them, and one of those books with an edgy title and a monochrome cover that some artsy New Yorky girls were reading a year ago. it was very cold outside. i wore a Black Flag tee shirt, my best black wool cardigan, and the Abercrombie & Fitch Dad Coat i bought with my first paycheck, which made me feel rich, and i found a shiny new hardcover copy of a book my brother loves for $2, which made me feel crafty. then I went to a Mexican diner for my second breakfast of the day. the diner had orange walls and a defunct claw game that said FANTASY WORLD and a beautiful hammered copper portrait of the virgin mary hanging behind some poinsettias on a table that had a sign politely asking me not to sit there. the waitresses were sweet to me. i ordered huevos rancheros with eggs sunny side up and corn tortillas and read the first few pages of one of the books i bought.
as i left it began to snow delicately and i felt radiantly happy. and i felt filled with the secret delicious guilt of shirking my responsibilities to the IRS. and i felt something deep and unnameable, but it felt like a fundamental truth.