things I'm over:

1. putting my time in things that don't impact what I care about

2. that entertainment in the city is mostly based on novelty and sexiness, or spectacle and luxuriousness; I am over distractions to sate a lack of meaning

things I still like:

1. music on Spotify, the small finds in my discovery playlist, but I don't agree with how artists are not adequately compensated

2. jazz

3. damien rice when the algorithm plays him 

4. playing piano 

5. the way the strings resonate on my vintage suzuki guitar

6. keeping the important things close

hobbies on rotation:

pottery, watercolor, piano, poetry. hiking.

things that are difficult:

writing, writing short stories, writing plays, writing characters, writing story arcs, writing a pitch. that my pieces are not finished nor polished enough when I let them go. trying new things when writing poems.

dishes that i have obsessed over and obsessively made multiple times in a row in the past calendar year as they come to mind:

1. chicken larb

2. punterelle alla romana

3. steamed fish (salmon/striped bass/sea bass) with ginger and scallions

4. potato kugel

5. baked mackerel

6. poulet roti

7. arroz con pollo

8. mushroom "chicken"

9. corn tortillas

10. chile verde

11. hatch chile chili

12. chicken tinga with roasted ripe red anaheims and roasted ripe red aji dulces and three kinds of tomatillos

13. green chickpea falafel

14. chicken tagine

15. roasted fennel

16. roasted cauliflower/broccoli 

17. miso cacio e pepe 

18. cacio e pepe

19. pan fried squid 

20. white beans and leeks

21. french onion pasta

22. mushroom rice

23. shitake chicken

24. rainbow cookies

25. amaretti cookies

dishes i've made when uninspired:

1. roasted chicken thighs with miscellaneous spices and herbs

2. pan-fried chicken with miscellaneous spices and herbs

3. chicken soup

4. roasted honeynut squash 

5. kasha

6. sardines and potato salad

7. salmon pokè bowls

8. blanched or sauteed water spinach/ sweet potato leaves / tatsois

9. miso roasted eggplants

10. roasted tomatoes

11. soba

12. vegetable barley risotto

13. sauteed garlic chives and tuna

dishes that I did not obsess over but made well:

1. miso corn

2. homemade chili crisp

3. summer peach gelato

4. hummus

5. tahini 

experimental dishes that I will not be repeating:

1. traditional pork bolognese - bland and greasy.

2. turkey dan dan noodles - turkey tastes weird and is not a satisfactory substitute for pork. the pork version is amazing.

3. gluten-free, dairy-free, seed-oil-free, I can't, but actually can believe it's not "Mac nor cheese" - got the flavor with spices and nutritional yeast but not the joy and dopamine that comes only from cheese

4. instagram recipe of mujadara - too acidic and sweet

5. roasted lean leg of lamb - no fat makes for a nasty, dry, spongy texture

6. gluten and egg free five-spice oven "fried" chicken - texture is meh, flavor is whatever

7. gluten and egg free southern oven "fried" chicken - texture is meh, flavor is whatever

8. vichyssoise - gross texture and bland

9. red borscht - high effort, gross texture and bland; easier to just buy

10. braised squid - bland and mediocre texture

11. lazy green curry mussels - canned curry paste and frozen precooked mussels are both mistakes; this needs to be wholly made from fresh ingredients 

dishes I attempted multiple times but failed at:

1. focaccia

easy snacks that I don't count as real cooking:

1. sundried tomatoes, italian mortadella, anchovies, ricotta, and honey toasted on top of bakery-sourced focaccia

2. pan-fried soup dumplings

other tasty things:

1. seasonal sauteed ramps from the farmers market

2. the seedy sourdough from lost bread

3. donkatsu from a hole in the wall in flushing

4. ripe bartlett pears

5. pizza bianca with mortadella from forno del ghetto

6. bonci's

7. chilean muscats

tl;Dr:

currently obsessed with piano but I have to finish a piece I'm writing before the end of this week.

distractions:

birthday

unresolved guilt

my sister; school

all those other people I could've been friends with but am not friends with, because they are lovely in their own ways but really just too much of something eh and bad.

good things:

pottery

piano

work from remote

parties, even though they are far away. (halloween)

eh:

foot cramps

cramps

meetings

Dreamt I got in a car with some sketchy strangers, but played along and found myself at a political gala. Ran into friends who were working and making the rounds; one of them said I could help by kicking off a song in 40 or so minutes, Bon Iver to drown the chatter, and I said yes. 

This was my last song I would do for them and this space; I was dying but did not tell them; I wanted to go out, business as usual, and had 40 minutes to myself to wander the karaoke bar booths and rooms while they worked. 

I would've said goodbye if I saw anyone I knew, but I didn't see anyone. Just more strangers, and I wasn't in a space to start something new. I never say it like a goodbye, but sometimes it is; just seems like a see you soon because they think I'm a given, someone they take for granted as fabric to a space.

somewhere between the overplayed loveliness of clair de lune and something more repetitive with a beat, a real hero, I haven't got much to say except it's just the aftermath, what remains after grief, and the drying of tears. one story closes and another opens, beginnings after endings.

this is not a clever story with a pithy morsel, just a Friday.

sometimes, before I have my coffee, I am a time traveler as I type away. I change my queries to extract the numbers I need as I sit in a classroom in 1994, listening to the radiator hiss by the open window, smelling whatever it is that makes the smell of old radiators, perhaps old silvery paint, or maybe just the age of its body and waters.

I am newly 6 and I wish for snow from the overcast white-grey skies as mind idles while my teacher reads from some book, and I am listening to the trucks go by outside. what is attention? I do not yet know the word "daydreamer", but I am daydreaming.