Right as I opened my computer to finish this essay, I got an email save-the-date for a friend’s wedding this fall.

I am having the type of morning where it feels hard to settle into the day. I put too much rose syrup into my iced latte and it tastes overwhelmingly, almost laughably, floral; I am watching a tennis match where a two-time domestic abuser is poised to win when he shouldn’t even be allowed to play; I wanted to swim today but is is slightly too cloudy and slightly too cool, so now my day’s plans as a whole are slightly unclear.

I wanted to finish this essay this morning because I have an unexpectedly free few hours and I didn’t want to spend them on social media. I’ve also been working on it on-and-off since February, and haven’t really gotten anywhere. My lack of ability to complete an essay celebrating the love in my life has been making me increasingly anxious.

But admittedly, I am not having the kind of morning that makes my heart stir.

But then comes the save-the-date. And suddenly I see my dog curled up into a ball at my side, taking his morning nap. And then I see an Instagram DM from a long-distance friend. And then I remember the chimichurri ingredients sitting in my refrigerator waiting for me to prepare them.

And then it all comes rushing back, these little tendrils of love. When I look closely, I can see them in every corner of my house, circling me like small specks of dust illuminated by the sun coming in from the window.

I think sometimes about the necessity of seeking out love everywhere you can all of the time. There’s too much noise going on otherwise, too much to distract us from the fact that we should be solely focused on finding and celebrating and spreading and feeling love, love, love. We were not put on this earth to toil and suffer alone.

Though I wasn’t enamored by the book as a whole while reading it, I find myself returning often to the final passage of Piranesi:

I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness infinite.

It is romantic to think of the world and the people in it as an interwoven labyrinth of possibility, and joy, and potential. To think of people leaving our little tendrils of love all around us, extending them to both friend and stranger.

It’s easy to spot these tendrils when the weather is pleasant and the sun is high in the sky; it’s harder when the sky is gray, when the world feels cold and impersonal. Or in Texas summer, when the air is hot and thick, and moving through it feels like walking through an invisible jello.

On days when I can’t clearly see the tendrils, I can get so hung up on anything. I can get hung up on why a friend didn’t text me back, why I didn’t get invited to a hangout, why silence is sometimes more than silence and becomes an aching absence.

You have to develop a stalwart pursuit of love. It’s the only way through. Even now, I imagine the low hum of the air purifier is the soft breathing of my sweet house’s walls, interrupting the silence of a gray morning in a romantic act of reaching-out.

Could my house be breathing? This house that I get to live in with my partner of almost a decade, with our dog who is perfect in every way, where friends burst through our unlocked front door like we live in a sitcom? It feels very alive. And perhaps it is, with memories of Halloween parties, and watch parties, and long heart-to-hearts. I can picture myself dancing in the living room with Dan after we got back from a night out, the ghost of me swirling in front of my eyes to the phantom sound of a Jackson Browne song.

The tendrils of love are so alive in this house. They are so alive in my life, and I can see them so clearly when I look for them.

My dog just woke from a deep sleep to pounce on his little frog toy and run with it into the other room, his paws creating a gentle tap-tap on the hard wood. I am going to vacuum the floors, then maybe I will go outside and lay in the sun until sweat runs down my skin in fat, wet droplets. Then I will go for a drive to find things to photograph so I can finally use up my film and see photos from a trip I went on last month. Later, I will marinate steaks while Fiona Apple plays on a Bluetooth speaker.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness infinite.

I went to Chicago because we bought tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Cadillac Theater, which is a great theater to see it at because it is beautiful and intricate and feels like a Parisian operahouse (not that I’ve been to one). After the performance we ran around downtown Chicago in -7 degree weather trying to find an Uber and eventually giving up and going to a bar where the bartender did not like us for a reason I still can’t quite deduce.

A few nights later we walked to another bar in the snow and I felt giddier than I anticipated to see real, fluffy snow for the first time in maybe 10 years. When we sat down, Kelby remarked that it’s kind of fun to come in from the cold and be somewhere.

And she’s right! It is. I love the ritual of taking off coat, scarf, hat, and gloves. Of spending some time thawing out at the hangout. Of putting your little accessories back on before making the trek home. It makes everything feel a little more romantic and special. Not only do you love me and want to have a beer together, you’re willing to put on multiple things and brave the cold to do it.

What I watched: I’m a James Blake stan. I don’t know if this is cool or corny, because I love him and I am not going to Google it. A few years ago, he released a song with Rosalía called Barefoot in the Park_, which broke chart records in my car. I didn’t know the song title was inspired by a movie until earlier this week when Barefoot in the Park (the movie) came up on my movie recommendations, and I put it on solely because I love James Blake.

The movie stars sexy Jane Fonda and sexy Robert Redford as a newlywed, opposites attract couple in New York City. Jane Fonda’s character Corie is an eccentric party girl type, while Robert Redford’s character Paul is a more uptight, sensible lawyer type. The movie is about their first few weeks as a married couple and the trials of adjusting to the real world outside of their honeymoon. The title comes from Corie lamenting that their marriage won’t work because Paul is too uptight for her, citing specifically that he wouldn’t join her in running barefoot in the park.

This movie was cute! It was made in 1967 so some of the jokes and themes don’t hold up, but I actually was surprised how genuinely funny and charming I found it throughout. I was on the edge of my seat during their blow-up fight scene, and rewound that scene and watched it over again when it was finished.

What I took from the movie is the importance of having fun and being a little bit silly. And also the importance of letting love change you, while also staying true to your foundation. That partnership is a mixing of people into something better. [Spoiler alert] In the end, Paul goes on a bender without his hot, fun wife, and Corie realizes that she likes to have Paul’s stability and reliability to support her free-spiritedness. Which is good because they are both so hot in that movie, they deserve each other.

James Blake touches on the concept of becoming better together in his lyricism for Barefoot in the Park (which is funny because he actually said in a Genius interview about the song that he hasn’t seen it and is a little unclear on the plot): “Barefoot in the park, you start rubbin’ off on me.”

What I saw: I’m really sorry to say, but the Wholesome Side of 𝕏 Twitter account moved me to tears. I saw this video of girls on a bus singing together into the camera, then accidentally dropping the phone out of the bus window. As the bus speeds away from the phone, the phone camera remains pointed at the sky and the chaos of the bus performance becomes the peacefulness of the fluffy white clouds in the sky accompanied only by the sound of birdsong.

I could write so many things about this video that it’s actually hard to pick just one. It’s a beautiful dichotomy of chaos versus gentleness; it’s a commentary on cellphone use in what is still a beautiful world; it shows how life imitates life imitates art. It is all of these things and none of them, too. I think really you should just watch it and let it make you feel however it makes you feel.

I think that seeing this video in this specific moment, when everything feels so heavy, made it more impactful to me. I think we get to choose everyday whether the world is worth fighting for. Sometimes on my most nihilistic days, I don’t see how we could possibly feel that it is. But it is worth it to look at the chaos of the world and remember that there is still the big blue sky filled with birdsong.

What I felt:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Today my friend Jane told me that sometimes she thinks about how she could get in her car and drive to Seattle without telling anyone. This made me laugh because I often do the same thing, but with the Big Bend region. I imagine myself packing a few essentials in a backpack, getting in my car, and driving down I-10 for eight hours through the thick black sky dotted with shining stars. In my dreams, I arrive in the Big Bend just as the sun rises over the peaks and paints the world in a dusty pink.

I like to think of the world as a place where anything can happen if you allow yourself to imagine it. It’s comforting to imagine all the stuff that’s out there, existing, just as I am existing, and if I really wanted to I could find a way to get there.

What I watched: It’s always magic when you give yourself an unexpected afternoon off work. No matter what you do, it feels special because at least you’re not where you’re supposed to be. For me, it reminds me that everyday is full of possibilities.

Last week, I blocked off my work calendar and went to a matinee screening of The Testament of Ann Lee at the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse. I will be honest, I did this because I didn’t realize the movie was going to get a wider theatrical release and thought that was my only opportunity to go see it. And that’s on me!

I love it when I sit down in a movie theater and can tell immediately that I am going to love the movie. This happened with Ann Lee. It’s a folk “musical” with big, enchanting cinemascapes and intricate costuming and a growing uneasiness underlying soft gospel music. It’s the story of a woman who has fallen into an undesirable life and her attempts to grasp at something greater.

My friend Sonia told me that for the first half of The Brutalist she was awestruck, thinking that she was watching a fantastic piece of art. I recalled her saying this during Ann Lee because it was created by the same people who made The Brutalist and inspired that same feeling in me. I found my eyes wet with tears multiple times throughout the movie just because of how big it felt to be watching it. Even if I was alone, with a Diet Coke and a basket of fries, in the very last row of the theater, I felt like the screen was reaching out for me specifically. I felt surrounded in the magnetism of her story, and the world.

As they sing in the movie: All is concert, all is summer.

What I made: I made a lot of food for a full-day Lord of the Rings marathon. One of my “don’t save her, she don’t wanna be saved”-s is when I am elbow-deep in party preparation. I have accepted my divine fate as someone who communicates love through acts of service. This is because I am famously kind of bad at communicating with words but do generally know how to bake a cake.

It also just means so much to me when people show up. It means so much to me that somebody did some of the dishes in the kitchen while I was out of the room. It means so much to me that Michelle brought an Arnold Palmer with a sticky note on it that said “Aragorn’s Piss.” It means so much to me that Hannah and Alex brought a mug from the Hobbiton set in New Zealand for me. It means so much to me that Trent dressed up like a hobbit and helped make food all day.

So much has been said about community-building in various thinkpieces throughout the years, but it really is so meaningful. I worry sometimes about how online teenagers are now (not to age myself; however, I am FAMOUSLY 30!). There is nothing good to come out of online. I often think about the Hanif Andurraqib post where he details the trend of people lamenting their friendlessness in social media comment sections. It creates such a deep pain in my heart to imagine a world where people aren’t accustomed to showing up and being shown up for in return.

The Lord of the Rings is also such a good trilogy of movies to watch and celebrate friendship (or, dare I say, fellowship). Frodo Baggins doesn’t carry the ring to earn personal glory, but because someone has to or else the world is doomed. And Sam doesn’t go with him to get rich, but because he wants to help his friend. And I don’t cook a bunch of hobbit meals because I want everyone to tell me I’m the best girl, but because I want them all to come over to my house.

Why does anyone do anything they do in those movies? Obviously, it is to do their part to help destroy the ring. But also because they love each other, and the world, and will do whatever it takes to protect it. Just like we do in life!

What I read: Continuing on the established Middle Earthian theme, there is a line from this poem in The Fellowship of the Ring book that I love:

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

This poem is, of course, very famous in the outdoor apparel market. A few years back I put an Instagram poll up asking if anyone knew that “not all who wander are lost” is from the Lord of the Rings and basically no one did. I enjoy things like that; everyone is nerdier than they think they are.

But back to the main meal: Deep roots truly are not reached by the frost!!!! There is something so beautiful about a deep root. Roots of love, confidence, security, age, family, and friendship that you know are unwavering.

In my mind, that line is linked with this quote from The Tenth of December: “...and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever--”

A real, true and gritty love is a beautiful thing. Love that does not splinter with pressure but only becomes stronger and deeper. The gift of being seen in your summer and your winter, and being loved all the same. A deep root that will never feel the frost.

In this weekly newsletter I’m going to do a weekly retrospective of things I saw, liked, hated, etc. This will typically span Sunday to Monday, but because of the short first week of the year this is an extra long one (FOUR bonus days, for the PRICE of ONE!!).

What I saw: I went to the Austin Film Society and watched a movie called The Taste of Cherry. I like to go the movies and purchase a Dr. Pepper and then cry at a movie. One of life’s little sacred rituals. I thought this movie was gorgeous. A bulk of the shots included the lead driving around the desert in his beautiful car. The movie is about a man who has decided to kill himself and is looking for someone willing to cover his body in dirt the morning after he does it.

A character he meets tells him this story: “One morning, before dawn, I put a rope in my car. My mind was made up. I wanted to kill myself. I set off for Mianeh. This was in 1960. I reached the mulberry tree plantations. I stopped there. It was still dark. I threw the rope over a tree but it didn’t catch hold. I tried once, twice, but to no avail. So then I climbed the tree and tied the rope on tight. Then I felt something soft under my hand. Mulberries. Deliciously sweet mulberries. I ate one. It was succulent. Then a second, and third. Suddenly I noticed that the sun was rising over the mountaintop.”

I loved this monologue specifically! There were a lot of really impactful interactions in the film. But an early Google search for me after we got in the car to go home was: mulberry tree story Taste of Cherry. It is so important to notice the mulberries. The moments of sweet softness. The good things that distract us from misery, or just make it all a little more bearable.

When my friends are sitting in my living room watching television together? Mulberry. When my dog curls up beside me on the couch? Mulberry. When I think I’m out of Hill Country Fare Diet Cola With Lime but I shake the box and one more can rolls out? Mulberry.

Small things can mean so much to me. I carry them all around like little mulberries in my pocket and the sun always rises high and bright in the sky.

What I heard: My boyfriend called me the fuck out. And this is because we drove to Bookpeople on Friday night and on the way home I was talking about the One Direction song “Rock Me.” He hadn’t heard it so I put it on and then scream sang over it the whole drive. On Sunday we got back into my car to drive to the movie theater, and “Rock Me” blared through my car speakers at a startling volume the second I pushed the on button.

“Em….have you been, um, listening to this song on repeat since we went to Bookpeople on Friday?”

The answer is yes I have. OKAY?

“Rock Me” is so good. It was co-written by the guy from the Cardigans, which is kind of funny to me. And also it’s sexy!!!! One Direction is being horny!!!! I think that the saying “I want you to rock me” instead of “I want you to **** me” is so diabolical; but also, of course, they don’t just mean sex….they also mean, I want you to sweep me off my feet! Change my life! Knock the wind out of me! It’s so beautiful and heartfelt. It’s so fun. It’s exactly what pop music should be.

“I want you to hit the pedal, heavy metal, show me you care”….. When this part comes on I am speeding my car down Lamar. I feel like I can fly. In a non-serious sense, this song is awesome because it is goofy and stupid and delicious. But also, this song is awesome because it is about being earnest and having fun and letting your feelings overwhelm and consume you.

I do, genuinely, think it is beautiful to allow yourself to be knocked clean over by your feelings. To lean into them. It’s so vulnerable. And this song is about that; it’s such an unapologetic anthem about being young and horny and in love. It makes me want to write fan fiction.

What I read: While organizing a closet in the office, I found an old journal that I kept in 2018 and 2019. It’s an ugly, robin’s egg blue and says BE YOURSELF on the cover. I didn’t buy it for myself; I don’t remember where it came from.

Like many journals I have kept throughout my life, it is sporadic and half-filled. One entry inside is from 2019:

“Sometimes I feel like I inherently don’t understand something about life that other people all do. I feel like something isn’t clicking. I feel like everybody is mad at me and I don’t know why. I feel like I can’t think of anything funny to say, but also nothing meaningful. I feel like my entire life and all the people I know and all the things I want and the person I want to be and the things I want to do are all together on the same city bus and it is leaving the stop and I am running after it.”

I have such a complicated relationship with the woman I was at 24. I made things harder for myself at almost every turn. But I do truly love her, too. She was so lonely and trying so hard. I want to shake her by the shoulders just as much as I want to give her a hug and tell her to get off her phone.

I think this particular passage really stuck out to me because I remember exactly where I was when writing it. I won’t go into the particulars. I’ll just tell you that it was late morning and I was journaling in bed while my dog was pacing around my room trying to get me to walk him.

Revisiting my old journal entries feels like checking in with an old friend. But the kind that you’re kind of worried about and don’t want to spend too much time with. Like you suggest coffee and she suggests shots at the bar.

Maybe I won’t ever understand whatever big thing about life I was trying to unlock at 24. Maybe that’s fine. I think I get now that the point of it all isn’t to understand life, it’s just to show up for it even so.

The scales of grace-giving are unfair and hard to balance. How many times can I skip the gym before it’s not taking a rest day, but just being lazy? How many times can I cancel plans before it’s not resting my body and mind, but just being a shitty friend?

I like to give myself grace to jumble up my words or try to play along with the bit and accidentally kill it. How far that grace extends to real faux pas, like my number one personal friendship sin of making someone in my life feel unimportant, is shrouded in mystery.

I like it when the air cools and develops that earthy, crispy scent. The autumnal scent is international. I used to smell it at home in Maryland, and now I smell it at home here in Texas too. I learned a few years ago that said autumnal scent is the smell of decaying leaves, which smell earthy and sweet.

I hate un-decorating. Fake spiderwebs and big spider-shaped balloons are fun to hang up and fill up. The take-down? Not so much. It feels like coming home from vacation. The excitement is gone, the party is over. All that’s left are half-empty balloons and questions about whether or not you behaved normally or in a way that will be discussed later over dinners you are not invited to.

Getting older is learning that the magical smell of fall is the smell of decaying leaves. It’s not necessarily sad, but it just is what it is. Or it’s not what you thought it was. It is childish and naive to think that the whole earth is coated in a musky-scented perfume for the autumnal months, yet the scientific explanation is just simply more boring.

Is it possible to preserve the magic and grow up at the same time? Can you close your eyes and take a big whiff of fall and ignore the small sound in your mind that now likens it to your own race toward the finish line?

I get attached to pretty much everything I interact with. I didn’t want to stab the deflating spider balloon with scissors, crumble it up, and put it in the garbage bag because the balloon had a face.

I’ve gone through periods of love and hate in regards to my own sensitivity and sentimentality. It’s too easy for me to get my feelings hurt. And yet, it is similarly easy for me to feel deep appreciation and love. The scales of my emotional balance are so constantly in flux that a saner man would render the scale broken as a whole.

This too, I think, just is what it is. No changing it now. Every hotel room I’ve ever stayed in really was my home for a few days; I keep all the key cards in a little folder in my desk.

Giving myself grace is knowing that the party is going to end and choosing to hang up the spider balloons anyway, even if I have to murder them later. It’s Give Myself Grace season.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a hillside painted with mustard yellows and burnt oranges. As a child we would sometimes go to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, to leaf-gaze. In my memory, the oranges are so bright on the trees that it almost looks like the hills are on fire. And you’re surrounded by them! Everywhere above, brighter oranges and more vibrant yellows; below, crunchier leaves under your boot.

I find myself hesitant to look up a photograph of what Harper’s Ferry actually looks like during autumn. The memory of it is suspended in my mind in such an idyllic way that there’s no way reality could ever compare.

All of those beautiful colors and that wonderful scent, all just the death knell of the millions of leaves on that hillside, all dying slowly.

But it’s hard now — you know, with the Internet — to imagine a time when strangers’ opinions weren’t so apparent or so seemingly-important. Along with a deluge of content comes a even bigger stream of people’s opinions on said content. It’s exhausting. At risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I am almost nostalgic for the time when my biggest worry was whether or not a college acquaintance thought I was cool but I had no real way to know either way. I don’t want all of this information at my fingertips.

The Internet has seemingly made people more willing to offer up critiques to complete strangers. Realistically, no, someone on the Hotel Vegas patio would never call me a poser idiot for my take on a movie. But someone on TikTok? They’ll just tell me to kill myself for not liking the newest Wes Anderson.

On frat coolers

I’ve recently become enamored with the idea of a fraternity cooler. If you haven’t seen this, it is a tradition where a fraternity brother invites a sorority sister to a frat formal and he* pays for the trip, hotel, etc., so in exchange she buys and custom paints a Yeti cooler for him with stuff he likes on the sides.

What initially struck me was how talented these women are at painting. I mean every single video I see is a work of art! They’re painting not only technically impressive coolers, but they also are so funny and clever. Dogs playing poker, the name of a fraternity where the name of a liquor would be on a bottle, the guy’s name as a license plate. A frat cooler is a testament to the sentimental hilarity of a woman with a crush.

But of course, like anything on the Internet, there is an underbelly of capital-D Discourse on my treasured fraternity cooler videos. Different shades of the same “no man deserves this much effort” color. I will say I have been lucky throughout my life to have never had more than a surface-level interaction with a fraternity brother, so maybe there is an underlying toxicity that makes the comments true. But it overall strikes me as a genuine shame to think that effort spent is effort wasted — especially in love!

Perhaps it’s the gift-giver in me (gift giving is, I think, the way I best communicate love), but it doesn’t make sense to me to conclude that anyone in your life doesn’t deserve your time. Or that there is some sort of scale that must be balanced before the frat brother can Deserve the Cooler. Here’s my hot take: Everyone I love deserves a cooler. If I learn anything as I catapult toward 30, it’s that there is no finite amount of love that will be chewed up and gone forever. Love is just there; spent, regurgitated, rejected, received, recycled. No love spent is love wasted.

And isn’t it romantic? The idea of loving someone so much that you want to do something for them? Baking a cake from scratch; a drive to the airport; buying an extra candy bar because you know it’s their favorite; and yes, painting the cooler. It is beautiful, to me, to celebrate people.

Or, simply: Fuck it, world’s ending. Paint the cooler.

*His parents. His parents definitely fund the vacation.

On being like other girls

I’m not like some girls; I am very much like others. Brunette girls with glasses and a thrifted wardrobe are around every corner in a city like Austin, and I am proud to mill about alongside them with an iced oat latte and a car overdue for an oil change.

But that isn’t to say that I relate to every aspect of “girlhood.” I think the hard pivot from the manic pixie dream girl rejection of femininity to the homogenized essence of girlhood that is packaged and sold Target-Exclusive is a somewhat aggravating byproduct of the black and white nature of anything that happens online.

The truth is that no, I am not like all girls. Neither is anyone. It strikes me as somewhat to bizarre to pretend like all girls are alike; or, if I really want to be cynical, it just feels like becoming the very thing that “womanhood” should have grown out of by now. Haven’t we learned that gender is a spectrum, girlhood is fake, and people are just themselves forever? Is it truly a rejection of girlhood if I don’t know any Taylor Swift lyrics? Is it not feminist if I didn’t clap and cry along to the America Ferrera Barbie monologue?

What is romantic about “girlhood,” to me, is its diversity. What makes girls so different and also so much the same. How the intersections of gender and class and race and past experience twirl around each other to create perspectives wholly unique.

I love one of my girlfriends because she is easily the funniest person I’ve ever met; I love another because she never judges; I love another because hanging out with her makes hours feel like minutes; I love another because I admire how she is bold and confident; I love another because she is smart and talks lovingly about books; I love another because I don’t see her often but when we do it is like we saw each other yesterday; I love another because she finds so much beauty in the mundane. And so on, and so on.

I guess what I’m getting at: You don’t even have to be like all girls to appreciate girls in your life, or the idea of femininity. I love to spend a few hours chatting it up with a bitch I have little-to-nothing in common with. Yes, baby, tell me about influencer drama. Explain to me what happened between Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter. Let me into your world while we dip salty chips into queso. I’ve never loved you more.

Pure spring romance

As the days stretch out longer and the air is hot with humidity and anxiety, I find that we’re entering the most romantic part of the year. Sure, there is a romance to the idea of warm winter coats and fires in fireplaces, of snuggling up and hunkering down. Everybody knows that. But where’s the tension? The exhaustion? The passion?

That’s for now: for late spring becoming summer. Summer is the real lovers’ playground. Let’s go, I’ll paint you a cooler.

I was thinking this while I was walking my dog to the coffee shop the other day, around 10:30 in the Texas summer heat. I had him on his leash — the leash I bought from a Petco the day I got him, five years ago now — in my right hand. The leash is knotted in places, but I don’t know how or why. It’s a deep, pure green, which is my actual favorite color, though I am outspoken about yellow being my favorite color, since that was my favorite as a child and I am reluctant to give up on it. It is a simple, six-foot leash. I’ve never thought to replace it, even as I’ve cycled through collars and harnesses. Always the same green leash.

In my left hand was my cellphone, through which my friend who had called me was talking about work, and video games, and whatever else. I had my phone pressed to my ear, but sometimes I had to hold it up with my shoulder while I used my left hand to coax my dog forward, or away from another dog, by giving him a small treat.

The reality of it was: I was hot, and sweaty, and somewhat overwhelmed. And a large yellow dog was soon to come bounding up the fence from where it was lounging in its yard, which would startle my dog and send him into a frenzy. And at the coffee shop a man would be inside with his dog, and not knowing my dog or his temperament, would not think to keep his dog away from my dog, which would send him into another tantrum.

And on the way home I would have my iced oat milk black sesame latte in hand, and my phone propped up on my shoulder, and my dog would stop to go number two. And I would be juggling my phone, and the green leash, and the blue bag of shit, and my coffee.

"Look, I gotta go,” I would say, exasperated. “I’m struggling.”

And then I would put my phone into my pocket, and throw the blue shit bag into a dumpster. And then I would look up at the trees swaying in the gentle summer breeze and listen to the cars going by and the lawn mowers humming and the birds chasing each other through the trees.

~

It is by romanticization, I think, that we can slog through so many things. Logging onto work meeting 15 minutes late because I woke up 5 minutes late and then I had to change out of last nights clothes and tie my hair up in a presentable way becomes less lame and more cool when I imagine that I am the lead of a sitcom.

A few months ago I was laid off in an unceremonious two-minute Zoom call. For some reason, it made me recall a softball game I played when I was 13 or so. I was the fastest on the team. I couldn’t hit the ball far, but could hit it far enough to get on base and then run my way back home again.

I was standing 2-3 feet from first base, my weight on my right foot, which was stretched out to my right in somewhat of a semi-lunge (a common position for a base runner who may have to take off soon). The sign that I should steal a base was my coach taking his index finger and running it along the front brim of his hat.

I glanced to him, and saw him perform this move. I shook my head. He did it again. I shook my head. He did it again.

I had the same low-burning fire in me then that I have now. A tendency to bottle up and explode, or more aptly, to shove it down and to cry. I was on thin ice with my coach, because last inning he had told me to move forward since he thought he batter was going to bunt, and I didn’t do so because I didn’t want to get hit in the face with the ball if she didn’t. She bunted. I missed the play.

This was just one in a string of my recent insubordinations. A few weeks prior I had been hit in the face with a ball, a line drive to third, hit too quickly for me to even register it was off the bat before it collided with my cheekbone. It opened up a well of fear in me that clouded my judgment about so many things in that time period. Maybe one that’s still there even now.

I watched the pitcher wind up, release, and my teammate swing. She missed the pitch. It hit the catcher’s glove, and I took off. The catcher threw the ball to the second basemen. Like I had so many times before, I pressed through my feet and dove towards the base, my arms outstretched, my fingers reaching so far outwards that I thought they might come out of their sockets.

I felt the glove hit my helmet, right in front of my eyes. “Out!”

There’s something especially embarrassing about being tagged out when it wasn’t even necessary to run in the first place. I took off my helmet and threw it into the corner of the dugout.

And just like that, I was benched.

~

Life is more fun when you show up. When you dirty every dish in your kitchen trying to make a cake, while your right foot is holding your dog back from licking up chocolate-covered glass from the measuring cup that shattered on the floor and the oven is beeping because it preheated. In these moments of adrenaline that I feel deep, pure love.

I made a promise to myself a few years back that I would keep pushing, ever-forward, towards that mythical beach, where the water is clear and the sand is white and everyone I’ve ever loved is all back together again. I made a promise to myself that I’d answer my phone when my friend calls me while I’m on my walk, and that I’d organize the shoes on the shoe rack, and that I’d almost crash my car because I’m admiring the sunset, every damn time.

And at the very least, no matter the outcome, I will run toward second base and I’ll dive as hard as I can, and I will reach my arms out as far as they can go, reaching ever-forward, trying so hard to get there.

❂

After a game night with a few friends, laughing together over a plate sugar-soaked strawberries and non-dairy whipped cream, a bowl of watermelon and generic brand sparkling waters, I smiled and went to sleep. If I ever don’t pick up my apartment, the cause is one of two things: I’m feeling good and tired. Or, I’m feeling terrible, and tired, but know I will only lay in bed sweating under the covers and watching Youtube videos where someone is smiling. I didn’t pick up my apartment — or, I didn’t pick up the last piece of watermelon in the bowl on the coffee table, laying in wait for a dog to sniff it out in the middle of the night.

❂

Yellow garden spiders aren’t harmful. But they are huge.

❂

I have the emotional capacity to become attached to anything. The depth of my emotional pool goes beyond where the water becomes black, down deep to where it is also freezing cold, and the pressure of it is enough to start to kill. When I first saw the yellow garden spider perched on its intricate web, swaying coolly in the breeze, I yelped. She was right outside the door to my backyard. I called for my dog to come back inside from where he was happily sniffing in the grass. I shut the door, closed the curtain, peeked back out again. I googled, “what spider in Texas is brown and yellow?” “Does it bite?”

❂

Yellow garden spiders don’t bite unless provoked. But they are huge. Something in a spider’s evolution — especially one that measures four inches on a ruler — made them look uniquely threatening. I’ve never been close enough to a big spider to see the fangs, until I looked out my door window and saw her there on her web, unmoving other than the gentle back and forth of her web in the wind.

❂

A day after I first saw the spider, my friend Andrew came to remove it. By that time I had learned that yellow garden spiders like the sun, and plants. They don’t bite people or animals — if they do, it’s in self defense. They also eat aphids, grasshoppers, wasps and flies. When Andrew walked into my apartment he said, “Do you have any Raid?” And I said, “Oh, you’re going to kill her?”

❂

I am oftentimes experiencing a mild panic. Traditionally, there have been many things to panic about. When Andrew raised the bottle of wasp killer to the spider’s nest, I closed my eyes like a woman in a medieval fantasy novel watching her beloved get beheaded for treachery. She scrambled to the back of her web, moving her body for the first time since I first spotted her. I watched her scramble to rebuild parts of her web that had been taken down by the wasp killer. I looked away, and back, and she was gone.

❂

“The spider is gone from the web now!” I texted Andrew.

“Oh shit, lock your doors,” he replied.

❂

Today I woke up after a bizarre dream. I was vandalizing someone’s home, and they arrived back to it to find me there. I woke up before my alarm, took my dog for a walk and bought two small coffees instead of one large one because I couldn’t decide what I wanted. When I removed the curtain from my door, there she was on her web. Right where she had started, swaying coolly in the breeze.

❂