not as smart

June 23 / Paris

This afternoon I lingered a long time in a brasserie on Rue Jacob where I’d been psyched to order something off the comparatively cheap menu like what everyone around me was tucking tastily into but — because I wasn’t assertive enough with these gelid French waiters — as advertised — it’s just breathtaking, their disregard — and the kitchen closed — couldn’t and instead talked a long time, through my hunger, with the guy lunching at the next table avec ses enfants who was very smart and interesting but not as smart — not as much a purveyor of revelation — as I realize I was trying to lead him to believe he was, doing that thing I do where I act like whoever is talking to me is the first person to talk to me ever in my whole entire life, like everything they say is just blowing my sweet little mind so sweetly, like they’re just with every word bestowing this terrific cognitive gift.

I guess the thinking is that if I flatter someone with my synthetic ingenue idiocy and awe they’ll keep talking and like me and other good will come of it.

one swimsuit bottom

an affliction of the bourgeoisie

I said,

Remind me of how squeamish you are

She said,

Just nothing bugs

I said,

Okay well today one thing I had to do was ride in a circle and go back a ways and inspect what was indeed a hedgehog smashed all over Rue Continière

She said,

Tell me why you had to

I said,

I guess because I was like, Is that a hedgehog?

And everything I am ever doing can wait

She said,

This is an affliction of the bourgeoisie

I said,

Well what the fuck was I riding to?

My actual intention in setting out this morning was to find a starfish

And so I had time to circle back for maybe-a-hedgehog.

And look at it from various angles

And take some pictures

And try to identify some of the organs on the road beside it

Does that even make geographic sense, that it might be here?

Where are hedgehogs?

If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have guessed Texas

Actually maybe I have an idea from somewhere that they are très français

And now I know!

Also today I plucked a billion sea snails from sea rocks with the idea that I would cook them for dinner

But then I got back and Sylka didn’t want me to

So now there is an olive container full of dead or dying sea snails in my backpack

I feel bad on many levels

She said,

I wish that you didn’t feel bad at all

I said,

Thanks

I guess I just don’t like killing things for no reason

I thought about walking right out of the door and messaging one of my stupid Oléronaise Tinder matches to be like, Can we make escargots de la mer at your place tonight?

I have been carrying White Noise

I said,

I have been carrying White Noise since Brooklyn

And Iʼm not sure if Iʼm not finishing it because I donʼt feel like reading it or because I donʼt feel like reading at all or because I do feel like reading, and badly, and Iʼm afraid of what will happen when I finish it

She said,

Donʼt donʼt donʼt read it right now

The world is falling apart

I said,

But is it?

I’m trying to imagine a future in which our capacity for happiness is less than it currently is

Are we standing in a bread line?

Am I dead of infection from a coat-hangering?

Lice?

Is everyone we know and don’t drowned in the rising sea?

It’s easy for me—with my sunburn and sack of discount bruised apricots and only a vague uneasiness at how the friendly fisherman affirm, to each other, “Juif” after I introduce myself—to be like, Everything is fiiiiine

But, like, everything is not fine

It’s terrible

It always will be, in various ways, and as things change, we will make changes, and we will go on

I don’t know what else to say

I’m not saying don’t care

But, like, run for office

OR find a way to keep enjoying the new and increasingly horrific world orders

As much as you’re capable of enjoying anything

I am the engineer of a small-scale sea snail Holocaust

My knapsack is soaked in their seawater, which leaked from the olive box while, presumably, I biked home, but my journal is dry

Yesterday Sylka told me that her mother — 90 or 95 years old, I guess — had a dream about telling me, Rachel, remember me

I guess I will

Anyway, I promised I would

overrun with my physical self

I said,

Everything about yesterday was exhausting. I left Pilou before the meal of snails because it became too much work to chat with him in French. I got into the house okay and ate the rest of my cheese and seven apricots and three carrots and half a loaf of bread soaked in coconut oil because it was what I had.

Today I’m a little overrun with my physical self — yesterday I got barnacles embedded in my foot and I have a good surgical needle, carried with me, but man this is a job, and on account of the IUD I had placed in New York I find I bleed from my reproductive organs in a newly voluminous way — like, a leaving bloody handprints on Sylkaʼs bathroom walls way. What a burden is a body.

I am redrawing ma pancarte now, and after this I will go buy barres énergetiques, and then I will go to the beach.

A seagull near me is having a hard time eating a whole ice cream cone.

France

not as smart

I guess the thinking is that if I flatter someone with my synthetic ingenue idiocy and awe they’ll keep talking and like me and other good will come of it.

one swimsuit bottom

an affliction of the bourgeoisie

I said,

Remind me of how squeamish you are

She said,

Just nothing bugs

I said,

Okay well today one thing I had to do was ride in a circle and go back a ways and inspect what was indeed a hedgehog smashed all over Rue Continière

She said,

Tell me why you had to

I said,

I guess because I was like, Is that a hedgehog?

And everything I am ever doing can wait

She said,

This is an affliction of the bourgeoisie

I said,

Well what the fuck was I riding to?

My actual intention in setting out this morning was to find a starfish

And so I had time to circle back for maybe-a-hedgehog.

And look at it from various angles

And take some pictures

And try to identify some of the organs on the road beside it

Does that even make geographic sense, that it might be here?

Where are hedgehogs?

If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have guessed Texas

Actually maybe I have an idea from somewhere that they are très français

And now I know!

Also today I plucked a billion sea snails from sea rocks with the idea that I would cook them for dinner

But then I got back and Sylka didn’t want me to

So now there is an olive container full of dead or dying sea snails in my backpack

I feel bad on many levels

She said,

I wish that you didn’t feel bad at all

I said,

Thanks

I guess I just don’t like killing things for no reason

I thought about walking right out of the door and messaging one of my stupid Oléronaise Tinder matches to be like, Can we make escargots de la mer at your place tonight?

I have been carrying White Noise

I said,

I have been carrying White Noise since Brooklyn

And Iʼm not sure if Iʼm not finishing it because I donʼt feel like reading it or because I donʼt feel like reading at all or because I do feel like reading, and badly, and Iʼm afraid of what will happen when I finish it

She said,

Donʼt donʼt donʼt read it right now

The world is falling apart

I said,

But is it?

I’m trying to imagine a future in which our capacity for happiness is less than it currently is

Are we standing in a bread line?

Am I dead of infection from a coat-hangering?

Lice?

Is everyone we know and don’t drowned in the rising sea?

It’s easy for me—with my sunburn and sack of discount bruised apricots and only a vague uneasiness at how the friendly fisherman affirm, to each other, “Juif” after I introduce myself—to be like, Everything is fiiiiine

But, like, everything is not fine

It’s terrible

It always will be, in various ways, and as things change, we will make changes, and we will go on

I don’t know what else to say

I’m not saying don’t care

But, like, run for office

OR find a way to keep enjoying the new and increasingly horrific world orders

As much as you’re capable of enjoying anything

I am the engineer of a small-scale sea snail Holocaust