notes from the laundromat 2/26
ava was here!
at first i panicked. it was an unexpected variable in this experiment. it felt silly to sit a foot away from her with my head in my phone when i hadn’t seen her in a few weeks & genuinely wanted to chat. so i said hey & we chatted.
ive been trying to view my life & writing as bidirectional. my life is not separate from writing and writing is not separate from my life. cooking as writing, walking as writing, talking to a friend as writing. listening to my instincts, following my pleasure and my joy rather than trying to pry inspiration out of my undernourished or sleep-deprived mind via a militant writing schedule.
and i can also see how this experiment, of writing every week while doing my laundry, could be seen as edging against capitalism’s insistence on optimizing time, of constantly churning out product. even if my intention is to practice ritual, to record the day & by doing so insist that dailiness, and the dullest moments of my life, are art too.
truthfully i am devastated today, as i have been most laundry days. since im writing to you from my phone im also a touch away from the news, and ive been checking it. today my stomach dropped when i learned of aaron bushnell’s death. he self-immolated in front of the israeli embassy to protest israel’s atrocities against palestine. on instagram ariana reines called aaron’s immolation a “principled act of unimaginable discipline and generosity.” his deep adherence to his values & his refusal to live in a world where mass murder is accepted, funded, protected, is so moving to me. i also wish aaron was alive.
im not sure how to not always be looking at the news. i know my body cannot handle it. but i also want to know the truth, so i can speak against it. in “alien daughters look into the sun,” jackie wang said she never wants to read writing that is entirely stripped of politics. of course its all politics, even the personal, per that audre lorde quote. but today im thinking about capital P Politics, and their savagery, and how id like to find a way to never pay taxes again, so i can disinvest from them.
ariane reines “Be honest: have you never even once imagined doing such a thing? Have you never imagined giving yourself to the world in this way? In some way? In any way at all? You will find as you meditate upon this also a parable of the artist’s life as we most secretly dream it: to give ourselves entirely and truly, beautifully and totally— to this world and all worlds to come. For Love. To give ourselves to and for Love.”
ava and i talked about songwriting. she told me about the farsi word “جا افتاد”(pronounced ja oftad) that roughly means “fell into place.” its often used to describe dishes in cooking & how the next day they often taste their best, they’ve “fallen into place,” because theyve been able to marinate in their own juices. she said she’s been trying to view her creative practice as an act of ja oftad, of letting all her journaling and reading and observation of the world settle into her body, trusting something meaningful will come from it. knowing it already has.