The last photos I’d ever take in John’s folk’s house. We have our standard Christmas fete, the whole family on the day of, a big dinner. Before folks trickled in I stand in the foyer and snap a pic of one of John’s mom’s paintings in the hall, I post it to IG. It’s a house that holds zero bad memories for me. Every moment has been one where, since meeting John and accompanying him home some nine years ago, I have felt welcomed, loved and embraced. It is a magical home that feels like a museum, chock sky-high with art-major retiree bric-a-brac and books and antiques and mysteries. Tapestries. Relics. The backyard houses John’s dad’s cactus and succulent collection - the fruits of nearly 50 years of labor and passion. Scraped together on a civil servants wages.

It’s all gone. The Eaton fire ripped through the whole neighborhood and in a single night it all went up in smoke. Everyone is safe, we were able to get docs and heirlooms out the night prior. They have only the clothes they had on their backs. John sits up at night muttering he should have been able to save more. “I will never not be able to see the flames coming down the mountain.” he says.

The folks somehow in good humor. “The site recommended a coat that was on sale and I thought “Oh, that’s cute, but I already have a coat just like that one.” Wait, no! No I don’t! I have zero coats! I don’t have anything! Hahahaha”

A little breakfast buffet for my little sisters.

“This is cyberpunk,” I say as I unload the dishwasher wearing mirrored Oakley shades, my full bicycling strap bag with pouches, a giant d-lock, and my phone mounted next to my head in a day-glo mesh phone case. All because I am half-way out the door the gym when I realize John will be home before I get back, and I want him to come home to an unloaded dishwasher.

Today it strikes me that the future is here, has been here, and I barely ever notice. Not just Thee Future but My future, the weird projection glimpsed briefly and imagined as a child, a teen, a miserable college student. Is this a gratitude journal? Not quite, but just trying to take the time to say “Oh, hello.”

Daily I step away from my little home office in a house I own, with my dog, my partner, in a place that’s not Utah. That alone is several assorted dreams fulfilled, and somehow I don’t wake up each day freaking the absolute fuck out about it, jumping for joy, kicking down the door, etc. I step away from my little desk, in my little home office, and make make myself a little lunch. Fresh greens blanched and roasted in the oven. Make myself a garlicky little yogurt sauce with lemons I pluck directly from my tree in my back yard, mixed with seaweed from a tin bought on a trip to Wales, fried spicy shallots from a neighborhood shop, and pistachios I split with birds each morning at coffee at the shop down the river from my house.

And yet no “holy shitting” myself, constantly, endlessly, until I am hoarse? How did I get here?

While I am picking my lemons I dismiss a spammy phone call from the watch on my wrist, and respond on the same to a text from a coworker. I do some drawings while I eat on a sheet of glass and the ghostly white facsimile of a pencil that has more computational power in it than the computer I grew up playing Lode Runner on. I am frustrated that the little voice assistant I can talk to to turn my oven on and off is a little too chatty. You never saw the Jetsons ask Rosie to politely shut the fuck up, and yet I’m confident now it would be an almost daily utterance. “Your timer is cancelled Mister Jay! And by the way, Mister Jay, if you’re curious about the weather you can say “Hey Rosie! What’s the weather tod—” “Jesus Christ, Rosie, can you please can it? No one asked for the play by play.”

I message some friends from a couple continents away, I will see them in two weeks I say, and I look forward to the third 10 hour flight in as many months I am taking for fun and my own money with more a mix of boredom and annoyance than sheer fucking wonder.

A quick jaunt to the the Trixie Motel.

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.