🍰✨

“This is a standard meditation instruction that you can embody in the entirety of your life: do not act out and do not repress. See what happens if you don’t do either of those things. ”

“When you act out, the energy of your emotion goes into the action. In other words, you deflect the energy from the actual uncomfortable experience. I’ve found that when we do this, the energy comes back again and again and again.”

“When you repress what happens, the energy that you’re trying to move away from gets locked in your body, and it manifests as physical pain and illness.”

— Pema Chödrön, How to Meditate

You will refer to me henceforth as MÉLANIE.

Bangs by moi 🥖

Cards drawn for the full moon / int’l women’s day

The Primates: a ‘60s garage band from Astoria, Queens. Discovered their groovy song “Knock on My Door” via The Whig Out on (where else?) WFMU.

(image source)

Steps from each other on my epic walk from Queensboro to Ditmars today.

Looks like an unremarkable salad eaten in a heated outdoor patio on a Thursday night in February, yes? Well, note the small glass of wine to the left. One of the most transformative drinks I’ve had in recent memory. It was handed to me from a neighboring table by a woman whom I’d just heard described as “one of the greatest mezzo voices of our time.”

She had gotten up excitedly from her table to hug a friend passing by, and as she sat back down she apologized to me for the disturbance, which there was no need for! I told her I was in my own little world, which I was. I had been watching a group of early-20-somethings emerge from the SAG-AFTRA building next door and experienced a deep swell of nostalgia rise, churn, and fall within me, almost to the point of tears.

So, moments later, to be handed this small cup of wine from the mezzo soprano, whom I now saw had large, kind, open eyes and wisps of silver bordering her hairline like a halo, felt like a benediction. “Cheers to you,” I said. And the holy wine tasted like a reminder that I am alive here, right now, sitting literally at the hypotenuse of this familiar slice of city between past and present selves.

And I thanked her and the whole table once more before they left, promising myself that I would pay the kindness forward the soonest chance possible.

I accept the strange gifts of my life. I try to stay awake to it all.

“TELLUS [the Audio Cassette Magazine] is a program of Harvestworks, created in 1983 at the Rum Runner Bar on Canal Street in New York City.”

“Joseph Nechvatal, a visual artist, Claudia Gould, a curator and Carol Parkinson, a composer and staff member of Harvestworks/Studio PASS met to discuss the idea of a magazine on cassette which would feature interesting and challenging sound works.”

“With the advent of the Walkman and the Boom Box, the editors perceived a need for an alternative to radio programming and the commercially available recordings on the market at that time.” — Harvestworks website

Complete archive here.

(via NYT)

The way I understand it: In the junkspace culture, curmudgeons are those who have artistic integrity and maintain strong boundaries around their personal sensibility.

le-corbustier