4. Bad Pasta, Good Lovers

hello angels

i am hailo

I took a long break from writing about my own life because I had to figure shit out.

I was looking for a future in other people, in relationships with romantic men, I was thinking about moving to London and I was stressed.

Stress is an interesting force. I am sitting at my kitchen table. The kitchen table is my favorite place to write, because the posture is perfect. A parallel elbow, like 90 degrees.

I just ate banaza pasta with olive oil and salt and pepper and tarragon and dates and blueberries. Less so to eat, more so so my head would stop hurting. I keep my pantry sparse, even though i don’t mean to. The blueberries were nice.

I’m trying to put my mono mania back into my writing so that it doesn’t seep into other aspects of my life. I want to read my fiction at a reading I don’t organize myself. I want to be a wife, but I want to be a happy wife.

I’m grateful for my exes. They take care of me even when I stop reaching out.

I would like to do a hard launch. I would like to be in love. I would like to have a lot of coffee and crown molding and a man in a suit.

The problem with writing about your dating life online is that people get invested. You get paranoid that people won’t want to date you for fear of being written about, or that they will want to date you so that they will be written about, and then you end up in this weird middle ground where everything feels like performance. But everything is, isn’t it?

At my best, I think I am always performing for God.

At my worst, I get silent, or systematic, or cruel.

I was so stressed yesterday. I am facing the stupidity of my early twenties and I’m trying to do it gracefully. I am trying to remain soft.

I have one ex that reaches out a fair amount. We will call him Beau. He is an artist from the south. He’d been reaching out on the weekends and I’d been caving deeper and deeper into myself, in my own little corner of our shared neighborhood.

Now I am making chicken stock from scratch with ginger and tarragon (the rest of it, it’s dried up and going bad). I love going to my local butcher. A lot of your local places are less money than you expect. Jane Jacobs.

There’s one butcher that’s older, and we always do this back and forth where he asks me how I want the meat cut and I giggle and gesture because I have no idea what any of the words really mean, I just want to bake a chicken wing.

I could be a butcher for a day, maybe. But I think that is the art instinct, to want to try everything once so you never get sick of life.

I wanted to carve out my own little corner of things for personal writing again now that hot literati has gotten bigger.

I’m going to explain how the media industry works and why you really shouldn’t be upset when people are trying to sell you things, or as we say in today’s age “monetize.”

There is one week light above my stove and it makes me sad but I don’t know why. I loved my kitchen in Germany, but I would have rearranged the furniture. That’s the winter I started using a french press and running down international roads. A jog in Paris is nice. Even though people look at you funny because a lot of people don’t jog there (yet). (American influence. A$AP Rocky. What is marriage if no one is doing it anymore).

The “media industry” as we know it (Cosmo, Vogue, Vanity Fair, so on so forth), was propped up financially by print copies and advertisements. Now, as people don’t really buy print as much, they must be leaning on advertisements, right?

There is a part in the internet that was never turned on that would have required you to pay to use it. Think about that the next time you’re complaining about social media (i am envisioning a mirror as I say that.)

The internet creates the ability to duplicate things forever, which is why people care so much about authorization, or “unique” codes or things that are fungible or whatever. Because if you can copy paste, then why would you buy anything? Why pay to get behind a paywall when you can just forward to your friend?

You have to value the work of people and understand that there is someone thinking, reading, feeling behind work. But of course with the whole AI thing, now there is another layer of abstraction when someone creates a prompt instead of choosing the words themselves.

I don’t think AI is inherently bad. Like everything else, I think it’s just a tool. I think about the theory of tech and extraction or externalization. When we put something we once considered a fundamental part of the human experience into a piece of technology, we often lose the ability to do it ourselves. Like remember and recite. Or make eye contact when you order.

what does it mean to be human? we should be asking that question and advocating for a human experience for everyone.

But don’t be so bleak. Socrates thought writing would end people’s ability to remember things or have collective thought and culture. Things are always changing, you know, and you have to find the meaning in your own life and try to add value for people or whatever.

Or, as I got tattooed on my wrists in London:

We will probably get through this. Please remember that those creators who tell you that it’s going to end the world or be the destruction of us have also gamed the social media algorithm to play on fear or desire. A bleak mind will yield a bleak outcome.

Gotta have faith, right?

I have faith that I will find the one. I’m grateful for my father. He thought I’d meet some sort of Prince in London, and while I’m flattered and I find the idea very fun, I’m trying to get better at growing my media business in this cooky landscape.

As I write this, one of my best friends at my old company just sent me a picture of them getting engaged. Love is alive.

I had coffee with Beau today and he remarked that I communicate like I kiss. That I pull away as soon as he thinks we’re drawing closer. He is a phenomenal communicator and takes my work as an artist extremely seriously.

I laughed and agreed that in dating I can be a bit skittish, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I don’t know if love is giving your entire self to someone. I think it’s learning how to co-exist. How to support one another in your goals.

We were at Cha & on the lower east side. He had a matcha and I had a hot black americano. I always take the lid off to let it cool and sip it from the wide brim of the cup. The Maria’s played. I have strong associations with their songs now that I’ll get into eventually, I guess. I said I liked the song. He added it on spotify.

If we have ever dated and you have read my writing, I hope you find my portrayal fair.

If we are dating and you are reading my writing, you might as well just tell me.

I showed him some Eva Hesse and Albert Watson. He read me a quote about beauty and women and I closed my eyes, letting the words deeper into my head.

If you gave me a million dollars I would give it all to my mother.

If you gave me a man I could love I would do my best to stay.

Beau started describing another artist from a poetry reading he’d invited me to. I recognized the profession of the character he described, and the demeanor, and the gusto.

He was describing another artist I used to date. One who fed me whenever I was in his neighborhood and once told me he was “the only person I could actually marry.”

The world can be a confusing place and when the world gets small and your network connects, it’s a lot of looking around, I guess.

I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to hangout and make a lot of art and have a very good family someday.

I want to be wildly in love with the man I marry.

I want to be a cow, a furry cow, lying on a bed of grass looking up at the sun.

I want to make a good soup someday.

If you close your eyes and put the tip of your tongue on the line between your two front teeth, I think that’s what love feels like.

I can smell the broth now. Under that sad little light.

I think I like to cook for two, but you can tell a lot about someone by how you move in a kitchen together.

A bad boyfriend is a lot like an electric stove. He doesn’t speak to you so you never know how things are turning out.

but what do I know? I can’t even make a good soup yet.

I am trying not to moralize, and I am trying to write more.

I am hailo and I am your angel and you are on the other end of my screen.

I hope you appreciate my honesty.

and if you do, maybe buy something from me.

Cheeky ending or a desperate, plea?

Capitalism.