Chasing Your Ass Around the Globe
a "real-time" Augustan account
Oh dear, not another “[meditation] on place”—but then again, what else is there?
August 6th
Kevin said, “everyone who’s anyone is in Europe” and by the looks of my Instagram stories for the better part of June and July, that does seem to be the narrative. Or at least that “everyone who’s anyone is [wherever you aren’t.]” What will August’s narrative be?
August 10th
The U.N. Secretary-General warned that “humanity is just…one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” but I’m mostly zooming out on the map to Find My Friends as I chase them from one place to the next.
I don’t mean for my narcissism to turn maudlin in that uniquely Millennial way, I mostly wallow [non-pejorative] in my solitude and boy oh boy have I been alone of late. Beckett and I are summering in Georgia and it is absolutely glorious. I’ve often joked if one subtracted from Los Angeles 10 million people (and their 10 million homes) and replaced them all with trees, that would be Atlanta.1 And yet I, a native Georgian, remain continuously stunned by the endless verdant expanse that provides the backdrop of this urban metropolis situated in a deciduous forest in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.
There’s something here on returning Home, and seeing that which was taken for granted with fresh eyes, and maybe even that thing about youth being wasted on the young or whatever.2
August 17th
But Home is where your people are which, in my new nomadic state, has become increasingly difficult to discern. Which is why I posit that August’s narrative could perhaps most accurately be described as “missed connections” if you’re feeling pessimistic and “serendipitous encounters” if you’re a glass half full kind of girl. It is true that no one seems to be where I am at any given moment but then again I did hear a disembodied voice scream my name as I rounded Perry St in the West Village only to turn around and reconnect with a friend I hadn’t seen since she left LA for New Zealand four months ago. And to focus on the ones who are not here is to neglect those who are.
August 20th
“Do you ever wonder if some of these magical moments are just coincidences?” was Roxy’s response when I told her that story. I parroted the other piece of advice Kevin gave me which was to, “trust the city” and I must admit she has come through.
I lost myself in a boy my first weekend in New York. I spent 23 hours with Him in two days. We found weed in the Village and smoked it on Anjelo’s roof. We talked about love and loss and identity because that’s about all I got. I wanted a summer crush, I wanted a bit of New York City chaos, I wanted connection. Magic or coincidence, the City provided.
August 24th
And now four days later it is worth asking if there is a way to engage in old patterns without being wholly consumed by the intoxication of infatuation for there is, after all, a fine line between indulgence and substance abuse. Have you ever compared a potentially toxic romantic encounter to your relationship to drugs? “Which is to say with a consciousness and in moderation.” Because we did get high on each other and we knew it had the potential to be catastrophic as it has been for me in the past. I haven’t fallen apart yet and perhaps that’s growth. I’ll let you know when he texts me back.
August 27th
Matty and Brielle gifted me 45 minutes alone with Joan and a martini before dinner in Dimes Square and I relished every second.
After a toast, they indulged me in reading an excerpt for it matters not how trendy the restaurant, I will bring the conversation to a halt to share a devastating sentence I just read because that’s the kind of girl I am.
“I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroine and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.”3
If you’ll allow me an earnest moment, I find friendship is my current opiate for what better feeling exists than being known, what greater high than being loved? I am leaning in™ to my full cringe self and let me tell you, there is freedom here.
Epilogue
I want you to know that my heart is full. It is so important that we put ourselves in places that allow us to recognize that we are loved. I have been held by my people of late and I wish the same for you. In isolation I found a version of myself that I didn’t know existed. In community I find peace.
The hope was to see Him again before I left—a toxic bookend to leave me with the high I dropped into. He did respond but unfortunately…
He’s out of town.
And for the record this joke usually kills!
A line that is in my mind because it was said by the hot French guy on Loot (AppleTV+)
Didion, Joan, “Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, (New York: 2008), p. 63.