The next time I leave your side will be when my body's burning
I woke this morning to the smell of coffee and the bright angles of autumn light around the edge of curtains. It made me think of staying with my grandparents for the High Holidays; I had a very distinct picture of their kitchen with its dark cabinets and the blue-and-white-checked oilcloth on the table and rye toast and bagels on willow-pattern plates. I was on a couch belonging to Michael and Farah and their Halloween kitten Herman, a traditional ginger Persian who is four months old and composed primarily of caramel-brindled fluff. His enormous plume of tail curls over like a skunk's. He has an insatiable desire for shoelaces and also my braid, which he chewed appealingly whenever he caught it outside the blankets.
Despite the extremity of yesterday's travel shenanigans in which the regional Amtrak was almost three hours late by the time it pulled into Penn Station, I made it to Queens just in time to grab an enormous platter of chicken and rice from King of Falafel & Shawarma and shotgun at least half of it in my hosts' kitchen before we fled to Q.E.D., after which the evening was deeply enjoyable. Andrea Wolanin, Fiona Maeve Geist, Livia Llewellyn, teri.zin, Carrie Laben, LC von Hessen, and I all read by turns in a nicely bohemian black box space with an overkill of spotlighting and an audience we really appreciated showing up for reproductive body horror and Planned Parenthood. I saw Sandi Leibowitz and Gabriel Mesa. Michael took a photograph afterward in which we all look impressively punk rock:

Today was supposed to include a visit to the Museum of the Moving Image, but I am sufficiently dead on my feet that what I appear to be doing is listening to Farah and Fiona drink coffee and talk to the cat. I am pleased to note that the Criterion Channel will in fact run a bundle of Val Lewton for Halloween. I read a bunch of Mynona and Albert Ehrenstein and Albert Sanchez Piñol before bed and I don't think it did anything to my dreams at all.
Despite the extremity of yesterday's travel shenanigans in which the regional Amtrak was almost three hours late by the time it pulled into Penn Station, I made it to Queens just in time to grab an enormous platter of chicken and rice from King of Falafel & Shawarma and shotgun at least half of it in my hosts' kitchen before we fled to Q.E.D., after which the evening was deeply enjoyable. Andrea Wolanin, Fiona Maeve Geist, Livia Llewellyn, teri.zin, Carrie Laben, LC von Hessen, and I all read by turns in a nicely bohemian black box space with an overkill of spotlighting and an audience we really appreciated showing up for reproductive body horror and Planned Parenthood. I saw Sandi Leibowitz and Gabriel Mesa. Michael took a photograph afterward in which we all look impressively punk rock:

Today was supposed to include a visit to the Museum of the Moving Image, but I am sufficiently dead on my feet that what I appear to be doing is listening to Farah and Fiona drink coffee and talk to the cat. I am pleased to note that the Criterion Channel will in fact run a bundle of Val Lewton for Halloween. I read a bunch of Mynona and Albert Ehrenstein and Albert Sanchez Piñol before bed and I don't think it did anything to my dreams at all.

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So glad that the Grey Funnel Landline delivered you in time to enjoy this.
Nine
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Thank you! It was worth the tsuris.
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We've been suffering from late trains a lot hereabouts too!
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I'l tell Michael!
We've been suffering from late trains a lot hereabouts too!
Sympathies. I thought Boston's MBTA was just cursed, but I am gathering it is a widely shared problem.
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Thank you!
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I really need to get the Criterion Channel. I don't know if you've seen that Val Lewton documentary, but it's great.
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Thank you!
I really need to get the Criterion Channel. I don't know if you've seen that Val Lewton documentary, but it's great.
I have not! I tend to read books about movies more than I watch documentaries about them.
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That Albert Sanchez Piñol novel looks very intriguing; would you recommend it?
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Thank you!
That Albert Sanchez Piñol novel looks very intriguing; would you recommend it?
Yes, I would. It starts off with a kind of B-movie survival horror premise that complicates rapidly into existential horror; content warnings for sexual violence if necessary, but I thought it was great. There appears to be a 2017 film adaptation and I'm trying to decide if I want to track it down. It's one of the novels where the claustrophobia of the narrative voice seems to be so much the point, I have difficulty imagining it told by anything as external as a camera.
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Thank you!
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Also hell yes to fundraising for reproductive rights and planned parenthood.
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We often still address our cats as "baby cat," "kitten," and "kitlet," even though they are grown and no longer chew on every button I own. It is a sign of affection.
Also hell yes to fundraising for reproductive rights and planned parenthood.
I was so glad people showed up! Apparently we got a shout-out in Gothamist on the day.
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The lighting really helped.