Anais Ninâs house in Los Angeles, the house was built by Eric Lloyd Wright, the grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright. She lived there from 1962 until her death in 1977
The library contains first editions of Ninâs work.
In the living room, a Steinway piano handed down from Lloyd Wright beside a collage painting by Varda. An accordion door closes off the bedroom.
A painting by Varda hangs in the bedroom, which is separated from the living room by a folding partition.
âJune sat filled with champagne. I have no need of it. She talked about the effects of hashish. I said, "I have known such states without hashish. I do not need drugs. I carry all that in myself.â At this she was irritated. She does not realize that, being an artist, I want to be in those states of ecstasy or vision while keeping my awareness intact. I am the poet and I must feel and see. I do not want to be anesthetized. I am drunk on Juneâs beauty, but I am also aware of it.â
â AnaĂŻs Nin
About once a year I attempt to read AnaĂŻs Ninâs diaries. I think it might stick this time.
In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge companyâs site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.
Personal homepages and weblogs have long since faded from the popular trends. Theyâre no longer hip and nobodyâs launching the hot new startup to reinvent them or make them better.
Most of the interest in writing onlineâs shifted to microblogging, but not everything belongs in 140 characters and itâs all so impermanent. Twitterâs great, but itâs not a replacement for a permanent home that belongs to you.
And since there are fewer and fewer individuals doing long-form writing these days, relative to the growing potential audience, itâs getting easier to get attention than ever if you actually have something original to say.
Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work, is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time. Itâs why, after ten years, my first response to anyone just getting started online is to start, and maintain, a blog.
One day Tumblr will be gone.
Giving my pores the swiss kriss treatment tonight.
Iâve just noticed this crest on one of the neighboring buildings on my block. It features⌠a mushroom? And a beehive in the upper left quadrant? Whatever these are and whatever this means, I am most likely in support of it.
I got to enjoy the Indoor Weekendâ˘ď¸ of my dreams, in which I went nowhere and did nothing and saw nobody. The weather was perfectly cold and shitty to help facilitate this. I cleaned my humidifier with white vinegar. I did a mediocre amount of laundry. I thought about scouring my stovetop and oven but then decided I didnât want to. I watched at least an hourâs worth of clips of Amy Sedaris on various late-night talk shows, along with this incredible Debi Mazar kitchen tour from the mid-â00sâI think Iâm getting very nostalgic for 2008-era content when everything was more earnest.
I made breakfast smoothies both mornings. One green and one purple. I made delicious Persephone Dip out of some very wilted parsley and spooned it on top of my baked halibut with blanched veggies and farro and had it for dinner two nights in a row (and one more night tomorrow). I baked a dark chocolate-peppermint cake and have already had one slice.
Iâm on a 52-day streak of learning Greek through Duolingo, and I may have to make flash cards to help me retain some of the subtleties. Greek is a hard language to conjugate. But I am getting better at reading it. May try to start typing it. A fun way to remember how to say âmy name isâ is to simply remember âme lene Melanie.â
I decided to stop reading The Electricity of Every Living Thing even though I read about 3 hours of it this weekend and am 64% of the way through (says my KIndle) because I simply do not care about anything thatâs happening in it anymore. I instead listened to a lot of podcasts in which various British women interviewed each other about being single and childfree and of a certain age, and I found this soothingly mind-numbing.
Alone again, naturally. Enjoyed my little Friday night spinster ritual of taking myself out for sushi and sake. On this visit, I grabbed the coveted spot by the open windows and watched as passerby began their weekend while I sat in content silence.
This morning, I wrote in my journal: âAlthough this relationship was brief, I was never lying to myself or acting in a disconnected, unconscious way. And that may be why I donât feel any of the "broken-nessâ that seemed to haunt my previous breakups. So, yes, I am single again, but I really feel no different at my core. Thereâs no muted self or stifled essence or wounded heart to repair. The aftercare in this case is contemplation and self-inquiryâthe continuation of an ongoing practice that Iâve never ceased.â
From Last on the Menu by Sister Eleanor Quin
I always return to this interview when Iâm losing my verve.
âAmelie has no boyfriend. She tried once or twice, but the results were a letdown. Instead, she cultivates a taste for small pleasures: dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brulee with a teaspoon, and skipping stones at St. Martinâs Canal.â
A sampling of sights and moods within ten thousand steps along 36th street today.
