dispatch vii

train thoughts

i don’t remember where my baby blanket is. at some point in the past four years, in the constant moving and transience, it was misplaced. not the one that some distant relative had embroidered with my name — the one i don’t use, the one i’ve never used, except at coffee shops — but the smaller one. one side was cool white silk, the other a hodgepodge of basketballs, footballs, baseballs, and soccer balls. for the first eighteen years of my life, that was one of two creature comforts that truly meant something to me. the other was a small pillow, about half the size of a regular one. the pillow in it was constantly being swapped out, losing stuffing, tearing, staining, but the pillowcase was the same. soft checks, monochromatic blue. when you turned it inside-out, you could see the fading from decades of nightly use. it revealed my every night time movement — the crane of my neck, the textures of my hair, the arch of my skull. talismanic, to me. at some point, the pillowcase ripped. it was stitched up, somewhat hastily, by my mother, attempting to prevent a mental breakdown from her eldest child. it ripped again, of course. things like that fail, in spite of or because of their necessity.

i’ve written a lot about how songs take me back to specific places and times. at my core, i have an unreliable memory. tendrils of time slip and wind, slick like fish. when i was in elementary school, we took field trips to watch the salmon make their journey home to lay their eggs. you can go to these fish ladders, watch them fight the current. this is what certain songs do. an urge to go back. but unlike those fish, it’s not possible for me to exactly recreate the circumstances that lead to my present condition. the closest i can get is a facsimile. as such, on the train home today, i listened to ‘so hot you’re hurting my feelings’ by squirrel flower. it’s the first cold evening of the year in new york, and i went in to work woefully underdressed. clutching the terry cloth closer to my chest, clenching my palms, i close my eyes and try to remember, and then to forget. and yet. despite the chill, despite the melancholy, despite the relative silence of the city on a holiday and the ever-present hum of the subway tracks, it doesn’t sound the same. oh well.

i’m reading intermezzo right now. i haven’t finished it yet. when i do, maybe i’ll write about it, but i’ve never really been able to develop a coherent voice when it comes to sally rooney. i haven’t been watching movies. when it’s late at night, instead, i sit and hope one of my dear friends will give me a call, breaking a cycle of boredom. sometimes they do. it’s wintertime, almost — i’m convinced every year that fall becomes more a myth than a reality. i’m due for a new fragrance. maybe this unfortunately named one from universal flowering; maybe the new woody glossier scent. tell me, what do you want to smell like in the fall? for me, it’s pine.

a few songs for you, ones that take me back to a specific time and place, so texturally rich i’m jarred awake by the fact that i can’t touch it.

xx

van