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William Turner:  Surf  (1842)  Watercolor

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There’s no holly, but there is

the glass and granite towers

and the white stone lions

and the pale violet clouds. And

the great tree of balls in

Rockefeller Plaza is public.

Christmas is green and general

like all great works of the

imagination, swelling from minute

private sentiments in the desert,

a wreath around our intimacy

like children’s voices in a park.

For red there is our blood

which, like your smile, must be

protected from spilling into

generality by secret meanings,

the lipstick of life hidden

in a handbag against violations.

Christmas is the time of cold air

and loud parties and big expense,

but in our hearts flames flicker

answeringly, as on old-fashioned

trees. I would rather the house

burn down than our flames go out.

- Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan, Frank O’Hara

Christmas - Paul Batch , 2020.

American, b. 1979 -

Oil on panel , 8 x 10 in.

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Tyn 9.12.24

That my friend drops a daily instastories update where she opens various advent calendars for the last 12 days of christmas. She has 13 calendars, some of them are homemade by friends, one is just a bag of gachopan from Japan that a friend of a friend got for her. As someone obsessed with tiny objects and childlike whimsy, I am absolutely hooked on the tradition of watching these stories. It feels like an extreme kindness as I go through my annual seasonal depressive low.

The temperature rose and we are finally getting rain, I waited today’s rain out and enjoyed sleeping late to the sounds of it this morning/afternoon. If all I need to go outside is a good raincoat then I’m golden, but of course I was born in Spring. Also the shift in pressure gave me a migraine in my sleep, but I’ll take it over the 30 degree days with 20 mph winds. I really enjoyed my walk for errands as opposed to being like “fuck fuck fuck WHY why why WHY” about being outside.

I somehow managed to lock in and have not totally failed at buying Chritsmas presents for my family. It is so hard being in a family that really doesn’t communicate well and being a “parentified daughter” or whatever (oldest daughter) because I want to be intentional and personal and there is so little to go off of but my brain is like trying SO HARD To think of the Perfect Gift that I get stressed about the holidays when I remember them in summer. So as it’s not even the 10th and I’m not panicking! I feel good about that. I usually have this shit way less together!

That, yeah, actually just showing up even when it’s hard, over and over again, over time will assuage anxiety and imbue community. Ikr, crazy?! But it’s true and even when I feel so scared of people, I’ve yet to regret showing up to a thing/event, and only gotten better at feeling more at ease/belonging. This is really big and miraculous for me, and it’s important for me to note my growth as I don’t have outside validation atm (therapy)

When I went to pick up my dinner order at a new taqueria, Nene’s, two blocks from me I moticed they had a Paleta (Mexican popsicles) cart! I got this one

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My cat is sleeping so happily in my coat, life is worth living

I think and then pause and know this is the same feeling that allowed cats to domesticate us to begin with.

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I want a better life. I want a better job. I want a job I don’t hate, I want a job that doesn’t gaslight me into questioning if I actually have “anger issues”. I want ease in a world that’s determined to deny us all of it. I want to not hate and resent my body and always find the wrong in the mirror. I want health if that’s still possible. I want to play music. I want to get past the hump of not starting! And not studying! But I have never really recovered from the loss of my former friend who was truly one of the best teachers I could have ever known and learned from. I know I can’t do it on my own, without the pressure to study, but I want to get over that and find somewhere to begin and BEGIN. I want despair to ease the grip it has on me, just a little. I want to know what to do with the grief of knowing I have no possible future because the earth is dying. I want to know how any life, any consciousness, can bear the weight of this impossible grief. She’s dying and we killed her so a ceo can die on top of a pile of useless money. I don’t want to live in a future where gradually there won’t be vegetables or fruit, there are already so few bugs. I want to know if the human condition really is just evil, really is just selfishness. I want to know how to get through the next week, with daylights savings coming to deflate what little is left of my spirits. I want to know how to survive this week, and then the next, and then the next, and also why I should have to?

I want to not always be crushed by the reign of greed and incompetence that is this country in the present, end stage capitalism where people look actively for a reason to deny you resources and security - as if being alive in itself isn’t enough of a reason to deserve them.

I want regular therapy, regular yoga, and some sort of recurring art or music practice. I want to watch every movie a friend has mentioned or talked about with those friends. I want to clear the misery from my life like burning away a layer of underbrush so new plants can breathe from the earth. I want to not be sleeveless and sweaty walking to lunch at 1 pm on the 1st day of NOVEMBER. I want to throw my body into a churning ocean because all of these feelings are too big and too heady and that’s the only thing that sounds relaxing. I want to not return back to work sobbing from having written all of this out.

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For those of us whose hearts' are a Clarence Clemmons solo on a Friday October evening.

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10/18 tyn. Today there was a man playing trumpet along to an accompanying track in the transfer tunnel at 59th, instead of a man preaching*.

*Screaming about Jesus at commuters while his friend live streams.

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Found this one tucked into a corner at The Met, on a recent visit, for our year anniversary. A better view.

Thomas Cole, American, The titan's goblet, 1833, oil on canvas

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Anti tyn:

They dismissed me after 8 weeks. I don’t get health care, again. We’re entering election season, the end of baseball season, and winter. If I write here with gratitude in the future, I will be surprised myself. Life in America is living hell.

Things I’ve been encouraged to be thankful for, extremely misguidedly: the opportunity. That crying on the subway is a new yorker’s right of passage. That I can rest now, since I complained about always being tired.

There is no rest, I am not okay without health care. I am meaningless and believe god should personally apologize for the mistake of my own life ever happening.

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tyn 9/11

Grateful that I did not make Union at Local 3 IBEW in Pomonok, Queens, as much as it was crushing to be let go two weeks before Christmas last year. I don't work an hour away from home across from a dead shopping center. I'm glad nobody talks down to me, and my training at this job has been thorough and supportive. If I had made union I might have stayed forever just for the insurance, and I'd be far from home and exhausted and miserable 5 days a week.

Thinking on it, I'm glad the 45 year old I knew for 11 years of friendship online ghosted me when we rekindled our spark back in May 2023? Anyway, a day before that even happened I sat next to my current partner at a Mets game and had such a nice time talking to him that I thought "huh, is there something here? between us?" and there was. I'm glad, and annoyed, that for some reason this man that I knew and really enjoyed knowing decided he could not emotionally communicate anything and just vanished. Lucky me to know the real quality of his character, right? Couldn't say "hey I'm probably moving for a new job so...", couldn't communicate anything. An incredible lack of respect, and imagine knowing me and how fun and smart I am (sharing poetry, paintings, music, etc) and then fumbling it. lol, L-O-L. Anyway my life is on a far better track for it. I remember thinking my life had ended that May, I immediately lost my temp position and it took me until the fall to find a new one, which is the one I mentioned above. Now I work 25 minutes from home, have an incredibly fulfilling relationship with a communicative and deeply loving partner, and every day at lunch I get to eat some of the best possible food around simply by working in a very busy district of the city. Also I live in Queens and it rocks.

Grateful to learn the lesson that sometimes things don't work out and it feels like the end of the world, but there's more and there's better if you just keep going and believing in your own value.

I'm grateful to be continually in the process of becoming more myself, more at ease, all of it.

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fuck now I need a comforter with electric peach stripes.

Caroline Walker (British, 1982), Just Visiting, 2004. Oil on canvas, 48 1/4 x 48 1/8 in.

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It happened to me, I came back from a work task to find another coworker lamenting to the person who used to have my desk that she missed her because I don't like to talk and "am always busy working"*

I do actively try to keep this particular coworker from engaging me because she seems to talk, and loudly, beyond the point of conveying useful information. I do avoid her if she is in the break room. I am not trying to be cruel, I just find pointless engagement really, really draining.

I have started to wonder if I have a dysfunctional personality because of how much I loathe idle chatter. I am also in the second month of full time 8 to 4 pm work, and as an introvert with a low social battery the adjustment has been...interesting. The majority of my complaints center around how loud people often are, how ineffectively they communicate, and how inconsiderate like 95% of people on the subway are. This reminded me that I have to charge my air pods if I want to make it home without killing someone on the train today. I truly walk out the door at 4, pop them in, and hit a playlist of white noise and crank the volume until I can't hear whatever bullshit conversations are happening around me.

But anyway, yeah, generally I am psychotically polite and considerate due to how I was raised (and generalized anxiety disorder), but underneath that I am also a warm and friendly person. I just don't have extra energy to spare! Zero. I come home and take off my shoes and lay flat on the bed by 4:30. I know my AUDHD sometimes gives off the impression of me being a blank NPC, sort of just standing and lightly swaying with an empty head. I am aloof but also at times unbearably aware, it's a tough equilibrium to maintain and also why I am very prone to total dissociation. 

anyway, I wanted to know if I was totally irate or if this was really a thing. Every month or so people pop off on twitter about how abhorrent and small minded it is to hate small talk. It's annoying as fuck to me, so I looked it up. 

 For most autistic people however, the point of a conversation is the content.  If the content is engaging they will connect, content leads to connection. It seems that for many NT’s (neuro-typical or non-autistic people) connection comes before content, so they connect with contentless conversation and if that works they will move on to sharing meaningful content.

Most of us autistics want language to be used to mean what it says not as a backdrop to an invisible social signal. 

So while in an autistic setting (or any setting where they feel safe) many autistic people will ask after someone else’s family or discuss how travel arrangements, because they are genuinely interested and connected. This can give the impression of being small talk, but in fact its meaningful because of the prior connection of the participants. The conversation does not create the connection it happens because of it.

and there you have it. Source is AutismMatter.org.uk

My contention is that NTs will talk about inconsequential matters to create connection while autistics will only do so when they already feel connected.  Social skills courses which teach people that should talk about the weather are teaching masking not connection.

If we repeat stock phrases because we've been taught that's what you're supposed to do it’s likely to feel unnatural, appear stilted and require lots of effort and energy leaving us feeling depleted and unable to actually listen and respond to the other person’s reply.

Should I just forward everyone this article? I promise I am not rude, and I do care! about you, your quality of life, etc. I'm just tired all of the time now and when I crop up against the reality of how I am perceived in reality I can't help but allow it to sting a little. I am trying!

*I am at my job??? working??? ok.

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Unknown , Sacred Place - Serge de Vries

Dutch, b. 1968 -

Oil on wood , 19 x 15,2 cm. 7.5 x 6 in.

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The Whitney and Little Island on the first day of September.

I feel so nourished by art and parks, and so grateful.

A surprisingly delightful little loop is The Whitney, Chelsea Market, Little Island, and then Gavensroot Peninsula (Manhattan’s only beach)

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Ridley Scott’s THELMA & LOUISE hit theaters across the U.S. and Canada on May 24, 1991.

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