brain dump #1
what i'm reading, wearing, feeling, watching this week
what i’m reading:
i finished a second read of ‘on earth we’re briefly gorgeous’ by ocean vuong this week. after a trip to the contemporary and stumbling across a portrait of ocean painted by thai artist jiab prachakul i decided to pick this book back up. macarthur grant aside (lol imagine), ocean is an incredible writer. i believe he has the ability to impart the incommunicable intimacies that come with loving another person. this second read i found myself haunted by the ways he described the damage working in a nail salon did to his mother’s body.
“Because I am your son, what I know of work I know equally of loss. And what I know of both I know of your hands. Their once supple contours I’ve never felt, the palms already callused and blistered long before I was born, then ruined further from three decades in factories and nail salons.”
to love someone is to resent all that drains them, that tires them, that takes from them more than it gives.
what i’m feeling:
i’ve been thinking a lot of the baldwin quote “the place in which i’ll fit will not exist until i create it”. (i mean when is there not a baldwin quote rattling around my brain honestly). i have been reeling with post breakup feelings of “where do i belong and why doesn’t it feel like here anymore?” similarly to how i feel about san antonio. my heart wells with that san antonio pride that we are all inherently born with but it doesn’t fill me with enough reason to live there anymore. it’s why i left in the first place. i thought that cohabitating with a partner for the first time would give me that home feeling that i’ve always searched for but that feeling never came. there was no nesting period, there was no making the home ours. just a year of sharing four walls with a stranger. i’ve often considered that maybe there is no one place for me in this world and that i could very well be a wanderer. i find a lot of solace in roaming- in getting lost in the grocery store, nature, thrift stores. i’m happiest when i’m aimless, unsubscribed to a schedule. i feel at home with myself. i’m all i have. it’s when i try to share that feeling or make home of another person. that’s where i falter. blah blah blah choose better people blah blah blah choose yourself blah blah blah regurgitated therapy speak. i know. i guess i just want a Home. sure, i share a lovely house with beautiful views of austin’s nature and a housemate who’s company i enjoy but is it Home? i don’t know. i don’t know.
what i’m wearing:
i saw chloe sevigny wear mary jane birkenstocks so i bought mary jane birkenstocks / those princess di athleisure photos that everyone has on their pinterest boards live rent free in my head
what i’m watching:
the encampments (2025): watching the weeks leading up to mahmoud kahlil’s detainment and the progress the students of columbia were able to accomplish was so powerful.
tombstone (1993): I’m Sorry I Can’t Be Normal About This Movie (rip val kilmer)
this has been a brain dump
with love,
-f.