Dispatch #042321: Notes from a week spent thinking

Hi, how’s it going? Did you have a good week? Mine started pretty slow. I’ve been in and out of what seems like the same funk for a little while. There’s no particular reason why I’m in one beyond my feeling a bit like a slice of toast that’s been left out too long. It’s like the coat of malaise, spread over the bread has melted into it and you can barely taste the difference between the two ingredients anymore. But it’s definitely not like, despondency. I can pluck myself out by pulling pretty simple levers — getting dressed, going for a walk, answering questions to an open thread!

I got through most of them (the open thread questions) by this morning. It made me want to shop — how great are these shorts! Someone just snatched this top. I’d wear these shoes all the time, don’t you think?

I’m not going to get anything, but it’s fun to fantasize. Lately, for example, I’ve been overcome by a desire to find a collarless pink jacket that I could wear as a shirt. I don’t even know if one exists, but I can’t unsee this bubblegum pink number that flutes really slightly at the waist to pair with low slung ivory twill shorts and red wire sandals.

It’s Friday right now, btw, and I’m not sure where in the world you are, but in New York, it’s late afternoon and pretty pleasant outside. Tuesday of this week got up to like, 75 degrees. I wore underwear as pants to celebrate.

leandramcohen

A post shared by @leandramcohen

On Wednesday it started to hail while I was eating lunch outside, which was ironic because just moments earlier I was thinking, “Gosh it feels nice to have the sun beating down on my face again.”

I didn’t have an umbrella, so took refuge at a nearby supermarket, where I found “Simply Seed Flatbreads,” which are essentially a cluster of bird seeds cut into rectangles for humans to eat. I paired them with kalamata olive hummus as a snack between lunch and dinner that afternoon and had this idea that for the first Office Hours (the newly launching Zoom hang — more on this next week for scheduling!), we should totally have like, a ~flight~ of Meditteranean spreads. It is the least productive idea I’ve had lately, but doesn’t this spoon-on-plate look darling?

Productivity is overrated. Sometimes I think I have become a machine who is wired to believe that if I’m not being productive all the time I’m not necessary or functional or maybe what I mean is that I start to believe I’m useless but I reject that possibility. There is something so fucking gorgeous about being, doing, thinking for the pure, indulgent sake of it.

Last night I drank one mini bottle of champagne. To be honest, I’m actually writing this particular passage from last night, sitting on my knees with my computer resting upon a short table in my living room. My ankles are about to give out. I’m only two sips through the mini bottle I just told you I drank in full but am confident that by the time you see this I’ll have finished it, although…have you ever thought that assumptions have the potential to trap you into self-fulfilling prophecies? Maybe I won’t finish it, why am I so sure I will? I never thought about it like this before, but it seems like a thought worth pursuing.

Usually, when I think a thought is worth pursuing, I write it down as a note in my phone. Here are some recent ones:

The most ironic one has to have been:

But I also write stuff down that I just don’t want to forget (the artist formerly known as a to-do list: “Buy milk, don’t pursue every thought!”).

Recently on my mind: impulse.

I wrote a pretty long dispatch earlier this week and was going to publish it on Thursday but when I re-read it the next day, I realized it wasn’t right. On Tuesday morning when I finished it, I had that PUBLISH-THIS-MOTHERFUCKER-AND-shout-it-from-the-roof-tops feeling in the pit of my belly. Do you know it? Usually comes around for me when I get something off my chest, or untangle some wires that I couldn’t quite figure out but have come to think I so fully get that it’s almost like I’ve just unlocked THE TRUTH OF IT ALL — know everything there is to know and suddenly, 100 pounds of confusion have been lifted from out of my lap.

It’s very intoxicating! And often followed by impulse.

Slowly I am learning that impulse is tricky. On the one hand, it’s so much fun to give in to the rush, even more when the stakes are low: when we’re talking about an outfit or weird food pairing, or delivering some form of compliment or whatever.

And when you are met by a response that you like? Ecstacy!

I used to text Abie, for example, in the late evening hours while we were broken up to be like, “Meet at your place in 15?”

Often he was like, “Make it 17, and if you can spare another 16 seconds would really help with my guesstimation of how long it will take for me to get home,” and those responses would thrill me but sometimes he wouldn’t answer at all and that made me feel about the size of a birdseed (not the crackers, the individual seeds), which is probably, in fact, how I started to learn that giving in to impulsivity can also be kind of dangerous.

It’s an easy sensation to get addicted to — it can make us believe that we want to do something, or should do something, or eventually that we have to do something when the feeling strikes.

Lately, I am thinking it’s best to sleep on it. Not always, with everything, but when there’s still a clarity that has yet to present. Maybe this sounds super obvious, but I think for a long time I kind of lost control over my own agency. I was run by a clock! And when the clock said do! I did! Without realizing it was my own clock, like I was in charge of winding it.

I don’t know, so much feels old right now, but also incredibly new. Do you ever feel like that? You don’t have to answer that — but tell me, how was your week?

Signing off yours truly,

Leandra