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My favorite genre of book is and always will be NYC food & drink guidebooks from the ‘90s and early ‘00s.

May 2017. I remember this night. I arrived at this work event at a hotel rooftop pool in soho for a popular mattress-in-a-box brand feeling very sorry for myself. Just turned 27. Just got dumped. I was planning to have a free drink, eat some free food, grab my swag bag, and leave. But once there, I saw that a friend from the office was there with his roommate, and we all ended up staying way longer than any of us had ever intended, laughing loudly, gossiping, drinking rosé, taking silly pictures in a branded photobooth, and — doing what I didn’t think in a million years I would ever do at a work event — hopping onto a pool float with a glass of wine, still dressed in regular clothes. As posed as this might look, I did not know he was taking this picture of me. I was staring at the stars that were out that night, one of the first warm nights of the year. I wanted this moment to be a turning point. I wanted to be done with feeling sad and deflated. I wanted to be done with caring about being “good” and being the kind of person who would never do something a little oddball and spontaneous like this. I wanted to indulge in more “out of character” things: staying out late, not caring about “consequences,” welcoming the night’s unexpected turns, treating life as a party. I think about that summer a lot.

It feels like floating

In my dream last night, I had the ability to jump in the air and suspend for a bit before floating down. I was in an apothecary-type shop full of fragile things, and I would jump, gently touch the glass objects on the shelves, and float away. There were rolling ladders that lead to higher and higher levels of the store, and I would grand jete from one to the next as easily as taking a hop forward. Perhaps I was doing it to amuse the people around me, but I was mainly doing it to amuse myself.

This is a very different type of dream from the ones I usually have. My dreams are usually a disorienting, never-ending mystery of trying to figure out if there’s something wrong and why everyone is mad at me. There’s a clenched heaviness surrounding most of the dreams I remember. Apparently my subconscious felt light and airy and free last night - hopefully I can invite more of these dreams in.

le-corbustier