little pleasures of march
in the pursuit of loving my life again
our funny little house
From the first second we stepped into it, we talked about this house as if it were already ours. There was simply no other version of the future that could exist—no future that could be imagined without us making this place our home. It’s little in that it’s cozy, and funny in that some rooms feel like extra limbs in awkward places. There are rooms we’re not quite sure what to do with, and we find ourselves, often, walking around and scratching our heads at its old scars and quirks and ailments that need healing.
It’s the kind of house I always imagined living my life in—labyrinth-like, with more walls than are probably necessary, with a floor so old it creaks, a room at the top that reminds me of the attic Jo March wrote her life in, with a skylight I very much plan to lay directly beneath when the sun is high and everything starts feeling bad again.
We spend our weekends tearing it apart and putting tiny pieces of it back together. We talk about dinner parties, and birthdays, and nurseries. Pick out a new front door. Look for the bed we’ll spend the next decade loving one another in. Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell plays from where my phone sits on the windowsill while I take a razor to the paint-covered outlets and he pulls old staples from our warm, wooden stairs.
Out in the backyard, there’s a fig tree. A cosmic gift from Sylvia, to me.
patti smith
I think, at this point, I’ve read every article ever written on Patti Smith, going all the way back to the seventies (thank you, NYT archive1). She’s the coolest person alive, and I don’t feel the need to defend that, because it’s simply, objectively, true.
This is the first time I’ve felt genuinely inspired by someone in a long time. It’s not only the breadth of art she’s managed to create throughout her life, but the way she lives—her curiosity, still, after living so much life, her gratefulness, her love. Patti makes me want to do things differently. Read different books. More books. Start experiencing things alone again, simply for the sake of opening myself up to the world. I want to delete most of my social media. All of it, eventually, maybe.
She makes me want to be a better person. Less afraid, generally, but also, as an artist. I stopped writing poetry years ago, despite how much I loved it—why? I stopped journaling—for what? I want to be content spending an afternoon laying on my floor and listening to music again, taking breaks only to meticulously peel an orange and scribble a few lines I’ll forget by dinnertime, like when I was seventeen and so full of everything. I worry I’ve lost all of my curiosity—but more on that in the future.
I listen to her music, note down her favorite poems and book recommendations. I watch the videos she posts to her substack with rapt attention, grateful for all that she’s giving, waiting and eager to change.
new york
This seems like a silly thing to acknowledge now, when I’ve been commuting into New York almost every day since my sophomore year of college (freshman year, I lived on 96th and 3rd). I think I’ve become bogged down by the commute the last couple of years, dreading the walk from station to office that never feels long enough, dreading the fact that on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I will have to spend my hour ride in with my thigh pressed against a stranger’s, dreading navigating through the tourists lost on their way to the library.
This month, on my short walk from Grand Central to my office, I started looking upward. I trace the way the edges of the buildings cut into the cornflower sky. Focus on the way the morning light kisses the steel and stone and creates stars where it meets the windows. I take deeper breaths, remind myself how much I love this city.
