Recent Books
Great news — it turns out I can wear clogs. Scored some Roa Fedaias from Mohawk a couple weeks ago.
I spend the week acquiring bougie items in the viridian wedge of the color wheel: A dangerously drinkable gin from East London liquor with a bottle that actively attempts to seduce my mind into thinking it’s a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. “I’m just a chalky, citrusy, eminently sippable 80 proof White with pronounced minerality.” A pitch-perfect Olive Tree scented candle from Flamingo Estate. It smells: Greenique. Sempervivenerous. Soilish.
Not pictured: green corduroy pants, key limes, margarita mix, pistachios.
Embarrassing the chokehold Monocle magazine still has on me. The primordial, craven centers of my brain just uma_thurma_pulp-glitchion dot gif -ing when I see that stupid ass matte-stock Swiss grid cum aspirational fappery: “This could be me. I could have my shit together. My house could have maple surfaces! I could wear clogs!” This past week it hits me with particular force at my most vulnerable. I joke with John at the beginning of the trip that I don’t want anything major from our time in London, I just want to come back fundamentally changed in some deep and profound way, fitter, happier, more productive and is that too much to ask? But I am in Heathrow seconds away from boarding, more or less exactly the same, quelle surprise, and I see the stupid fucking March issue and my pupils dilate and my fingers itch and I spend the first 20 minutes of my flight skimming the pages* planning a metamorphosis, a transformation, a triumphant rising from the ashes: I am shopping.
*No one has ever read an issue of Monocle. That’s not controversial to say, it is literally just a fact.
All of this is coming at a time when I’m finding myself 1. desperately needing some new clothes due to actual attrition, 2. struggling with silly, fuzzy questions of “who am I” in the general sense, and 3. struggling with silly, fuzzy, existentially crippling questions of “who am I at 41? What’s next? Is it time to die? Don’t these lame shirts from three years ago and bags under my eyes signal to everyone that I am actually very ready to go gentle into that good night?” Let’s-get-you-to-bed-grandma.
I spent Saturday morning tracking down a bunch of items from this spread, or at least reasonable facsimiles, the vast majority of these pieces being deliriously overpriced basics in the vein of James Perse bullshit. I like the general style though: a gently upgraded basic Sim, the fashion of a non-playable character who doesn’t even have a quest for you. I also, probably, am really only responding to the soft, perfect, extremely kissable face of model Alex Petit.
I don’t know, I’m just at a point in my life where I truly understand the note of “the clothes are wearing you.” So I’m trying to triangulate on basics that maybe just have a little something extra, something that says “this is intentional” or “I put some thought into this” or “I was not talked into wearing this by appeals to my growing sense of aging out of existence — this is not a sartorial red corvette.” I stopped in at Form & Thread at Kings Cross in London, and picked up some items that seemed pretty versatile.
Here are the books I read in February.
Hello from London in the third week of four, just living here to see what it’s like to live here.
I get up early to get to Soho to get my first facial: let’s get into 41 as fresh as possible. The facial takes place in a basement, in bougie skin place all frosted green and white, in an alley with a dozen or so sex shops and titty bars. The basement treatment room is walking a fine line between massage parlor and dentist torture chamber. My clinician is named Bloena. She extracts three things that I do not even begin to comprehend, not because her Russian accent is thick, but because I literally do not know the word she is saying and she’s removing them with a needle and I can’t guess what they are from my side of the procedure. I make a note to look it up after, but promptly forget the word and now it is lost forever, or until I decide to do some light googling*.
She attaches two electrodes to me: one to my shoulder, one to my… skull? to conduct electricity through my skin to pull a vitamin c mask deeper into the tissue to calm my nose and cheeks that have just been strawberried between her gleeful fingers. “Sorry if hurts, but I cannot help myself when I see pores as bad this ones. Overall very good, especially for a man, especially from… Kaliforniya, but I must squeeze them, sorry.” Great, grand, cool. Afterwards my skin is softer than it has literally ever been and my pores, while perhaps more visible at the moment, are crystal clear.
Anyway here is me in a Zoom meeting between me and nobody that I stood up specifically to see how my skin looked in the cam solely through which my coworkers experience me. I am not not a camgirl.
*They were milia, plural for milium: tiny keratin buildups.
Here are the books I read in January
Home for February. A friend late last year tells us “if you’re serious about potentially living in London you should come in February, when there’s no fun events and we’re in the ass end of winter.” I decide to surprise John with it for Christmas. I find this spot on Airbnb that has a monthly rate less than half our mortgage and pull the trigger. It’s cozy, both in euphemistic realtor speak but also in fact. Perfect location for us, just a 10 minute commute to John’s office here, and easy for me to dial into work from home. Here’s to February.
Books read in December
Books read in November
Books read in October
We are at our friend Taylor’s birthday party at a straight, semi-goth french bar in our neighborhood after the chic oyster & wine bar in his fell through. Ours a parking lot affair with $2 white wine that is surprisingly good, and $14 cocktails that are surprisingly not. I make a face while drinking some done-up paloma and exclaim “this cocktail tastes like apple peels” and Taylor snatches it out of my hands, takes a sip and eyes wide replies “it tastes… exactly like apple peels.” Later, Jon approaches with something like a vodka lemon hand sanitizer and says “Try my drink, it’s bad.” I do and it is and I offer mine, he sips and says “it tastes like….” I of course offer “apple peels” and his face goes slack. “Wait, that’s it exactly. Apple peels.” Sisterhood of the traveling garbage pale cocktail, we.
In any event, what a pleasant surprise to spend all night talking to new people and coming away with new friends. I spend most of the evening with a friend’s coworker mutually gushing over Terrace House: Opening New Doors, and then while recounting personal histories find out he moved here originally to pursue a recording career, and upon further investigation, in an essential Los Angeles experience, find out he’s an artist that I love. “There’s no way,” he responds, and I offer proof in the form of a 2022 Spotify Wrapped playlist where he’s perched near the top. “Ok, so you’re the only other person besides my mom who listened to my music, wow. That’s actually so nice.”
In London we eat at all the places. You ask me for recommendations when I come home and I tell you I would drop everything and fly back for meals and or drinks at the following: Berenjak, Planque, Discount Suit Company, Dishoom, Ozone Coffee Roasters, Omotesando Coffee. I also tell you that we ate at Rovi, from Ottolenghi, with a sniff.
London №1
Most of what we do in the UK is bear witness of ancient relics representative of hoary and inscrutable cultures past.
London № 2
London museum grindr profiles of yore.
Stopped at Present & Correct after maybe literally 13 years of following them online.
T-minus seven days until we’re back in the UK. A week in London with John before I take off for Wales by myself for a week-long immersive Welsh language program on the Llŷn peninsula. I will now do the thing you’re apparently not supposed to do and talk about my plans before hand to the invested scamming public lying in wait to theft my identity.
We’re starting in London, and eating our way through the better parts of everyone’s recommendations. Then, off to the Salisbury Plain, by train, not automobiles, to see a man about a henge. (Today I was at Aesop buying face-stuff and semi-precious soap, and at checkout the clerk magnanimously offered me a spritz of their latest fragrance, to be sprayed on my bag. She told me, with a straight face, that “Ouranon* has notes of frankincense and is reminiscent of ancient monoliths” so I guess we’ll fucking see, bitch.) After Stonehenge we’re back on the train over to Oxford and then bussing back to London. On Friday I will be tattooed by a person named Mouse, on my forearm and up onto my hand against literally everyone’s better judgement, after which we will go see Abba Voyage for the second time.
*She couldn’t have known, but another Aesop fragrance, Hwyl, would have been too on the nose, as it’s Welsh for “goodbye!”
At the end of the week John heads back to LA, while I board a train to Holyhead/Caergybi on Angelsey/Ynys Môn where I’ll spend a day so I can have a head start the following morning to take a train Bangor, then a bus to Pwllheli, then a cab to Llithfaen, then a 1.5 mile walk down the side of a mountain to the edge of the sea to stay for the next 6 days at Nant Gwrtheyrn. I’ll spend every day from 8-6, learning to speak Welsh and making little excursions to taverns and coffee roasters to talk to locals, and I’ll spend every night sleeping in a row of converted miner’s cottages from the 1800s. I am terrified and excited and cannot wait.
After that I’ll retrace my steps back up the peninsula to Caernarfon where I’ll crash for the night before taking a 6 hour bus ride down the Ceredigion coast to Cardigan/Aberteifi where my great great great grandparents lived. I’m spending a two day breather there in a bougie converted-maritime-warehouse inn, before heading by bus, then train, then subway back to the airport to fly home to LA.
On the otherhand, today while scoping out spots to grab coffee in Aberteifi, I saw that this ultra cute bakery and cafe was hiring full time baker positions, no experience required, so maybe I’m never actually coming home at all.
Books read in August. I give up on River Enchanted & London Seance Society about 100 pages in, both algorithmically recommended via Goodreads, the first and last time I’ll be trying that. The Salt Grows Heavy comes recommended from a friend with gushing praise and is the single worst thing I have read… ever? Absolute dreck, I persevere out of sheer hatred and incredulity and rage. Verbal gooning and bating from an author who surely had a formative sexual experience in a Hot Topic, after hours deep in the American McGee’s Alice merch section.