Sometimes an unexplained grief passes through a void within me, knocking the wind out of my chest. Sometimes it wakes me up, my eyes blinking open slowly, wet with tears I didn’t know I needed to shed. Sometimes I slip into it during my waking hours…slowly, without realizing or understanding what is happening – like when you jump into a pool, your body adjusting to the temperature within the time it takes for you to rise to the surface for your first breath.

This void of grief is endless. I’ve been wading through it as long as I can remember. It’s like the ocean, with wave after wave arriving despite the tide predictions of my consciousness miscalculating their power.

I feel it choking me. I feel my lungs expand and contract. I know I can breathe, and yet I’m gasping.

This all encompassing consumption disappears with the same lack of notice it uses upon its arrival. At least it’s consistent. Loss is proof of life. How lucky must I be to experience this at all?

What does it take to love your country whilst it destroys itself?

I’m a patriot, I love my country, I love its people. I find bits of myself in all of us. I want us to survive, I want us to thrive. I want our people to have access to healthcare, clean water, affordable education, the mountains. I want neighbors to look at each other with empathy, not fear.

This world doesn’t revolve around one, it revolves around all.

We see these tragedies, they’re documented, “real”. They get reposted, accompanied by exclamations of rage, wrongness, then the world moves on.

How much tragedy can we move through before understanding that maybe we really just don’t care to begin with? Empathy with our world is more finite than we would ever admit.

The change we wish for, we expect somebody else to accomplish for us, while we cheer them on from behind our screens. Are our phones our barrier to entry, or our excuse?

Better days exist on the other side of our black mirrors, but only if we admit who we are first.

Books I read in 2024, in the order that I read them! Maybe you’ll want to read them too.

1. Little Jewel by Patrick Modiano - I recommend anyone read Modiano at every chance

2. Second Place by Rachel Cusk - I also recommend any Cusk, she’s amazing and this is no exception!

3. God I Don’t Even Know Your Name by Andrea Mcginty - simply mid erotica

4. Ariel the Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath - I understand its importance

5. Amyntas by André Gide - is it dated? yes. it is stunning? also yes.

6. Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima - SO GOOD, started my obsession with Klima

7. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu - honestly super interesting, worth the hype

8. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters - I remember thinking this was simply meh

9. Against the Written Word by Ian F. Svenonius - a fun, playful read

10. Playboy by Constance Debré - I’ll read anything she writes without question

11. The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve, My Life Behind the Camera - interesting look at some important cinematic moments, but also it’s just okay

12. Vito Loves Geraldine by Janice Eidus - fun, easy read

13. Hanna Arendt - Martin Heidegger by Elzbieta Ettinger - super interesting! would rec!

14. THE VALLEY a void by Vanessa Roveto - makes the san fernando valley interesting

15. So Sad Today by Melissa Broder - a friend gave this to me, and it’s just not for me! but I get why people like it!

16. Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman - sexy, if you like Babygirl this is the book for you

17. Urban Lament published by Kyklàda - a book about mourning in all its broken beauty

18. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books by Georges Perec - another author who I will read no matter what he writes

19. Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors - fashionable, I get it. an easy airport book

20. The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier - fucked up in the best way. if you like Funny Games, you’ll love this

21. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain - would recommend to listen to this audiobook, hearing it from him is amazing

22. Middlemarch by George Elliot - I love this book, it’s a classic for a reason

23. Sátántangó by Lázló Krasznahorkai - good enough that I may actually sit through the 7 hour film adaptation one of these days

24. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison - a collection of essays that sometimes hit and sometimes miss

25. Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz - he’s a genius, duh

26. Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light by Ivan Klima - Klima does it again, love him!

27. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus - I have a personal connection to multiple people in this book and have put off reading it for this reason for 10 years, but I must admit that I really enjoyed reading it!

What in the world have I learned this year? As 2024 is wrapping up, I’m finding nostalgia in the strangest parts of my memory. This year, more than any other, I have learned that I honestly know nothing! Almost less than nothing actually, if that’s even a possibility.

This year I’ve learned that I want to be surrounded by breakable things. That I myself am a breakable thing, that is constantly being put back together in new formations that make me ever so slightly different from the last. I want to be surrounded by tchotchkes, colors (all of them), flowers, light. I want to be surrounded by animals who are naughty enough to look me in the eye whilst tipping them all over.

This year I learned that life is mourning, but it’s also looking at the sunrise and realizing that you’ve made it through another day. It’s waking up and knowing that you can make a really good cup of coffee and walk around the neighborhood. It’s discovering a new album that has cemented a now irrevocable place in your heart (Dog Detachment’s Best Kept Secrets I’m talking about you).

This year I learned that family is what you make of it, I cannot even touch the surface of the complexities of my family and its nuanced trauma coded dynamics. But what I can say is that I have found such fulfillment in the chosen family I’ve accumulated. This year I have learned that friendship means everything. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always valued my friends, but there were moments this year where I felt indescribable giddiness at the blossoming humans I was surrounding myself with. Their joy was my joy, their sorrow was my sorrow.

This year I learned that reflection is revelation when done well. These revelations reminded me that although my resilience is my armor, it can also be my wound. There’s nothing wrong with being wounded, in fact I believe it creates the most interesting people, but there is a danger in sitting with that pain for too long. Heal what you can, when you can, and remember that there will always be another wound, but that just means another lesson lies ahead.

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This week I felt free. A freedom I haven’t felt in so long. I was hurt, and my friends held me. My community gathered up the pieces and put them back together with the ease of their laughter and the sound of the ocean. They allowed me to free myself within my pain. I allowed myself to be freed.

What does freedom mean? I’ve long consider…

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Last summer never existed, it never had the chance. Restlessness was thriving in us. We searched the sidewalks for the smallest bit of social intrigue. We were starved for gentle caresses, and boisterous laughs. 

The internet is all we had. “Your generation is attached to your screens,” they say. Whoever “they” are. Our communities are in the clouds. In order to touch them we must transport ourselves through these black mirrors that make our heads and eyes ache, but our hearts full. Even the most temporary fulfillment and validation between virtual friends can feel like our whole world lighting up from a darkness we didn’t realize we had succumbed to. 

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Welcome. If you’re here, it’s likely you’ve been participating in this performance since you first saw my ass while scrolling down your Tumblr god knows how many years ago. 

It’s taken a long time for me to allow my voice to emerge. Academia that was so engrained in my brain from years of structured thought traps, brought me into  debt and away from my intended self. Apologies for the  tangled up way of introducing this new venture, but what can I say…I’m verbose, convoluted, hypocritical, and more often than not, quite confused.

The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the title of this adventure. My telematic performance. Couldn’t I just call this “my thoughts”, or “the way I see it” (if you know that reference, you already know too much).

The term “telematic performance” is typically used in reference to televised or streamed performances, i.e. covid concerts via zoom. But here, I am the performance. Letting you into the sometimes dark, but hopefully more often joyous parts of my self that those close to me get to experience, is the performance. 

My performance began on MySpace, but quickly transitioned to Tumblr, then Instagram, and now here. All of my adult life has been some type of public performance on the world wide web, and I’ll never know when this consumption of “me” became a defining part of my identity. I’m hoping that by giving you access to my words, images, and thoughts, I can take you along on my experience of trying to survive this web wide world. 

I will be posting words and images at least once a month, hopefully more, as well as curating at least one playlist a month, and adding to my list of recommended books/media randomly. My words and images will remain behind a paywall, mostly for my own sanity. The music and media, however, will be openly accessible. No judgement if you’re not able or interested in paying, I want this space to be collaborative and human. Ask me questions, tell me your feelings, send me pictures of your cat! There is a lot of hidden beauty on this network of electrical impulses under your fingertips, it’s time to tap in.