My First Real Sabbath

84. Little Deaths/Delights

Hello beautiful people of the Hot Literati Digital Universe.

I have taken up a mind to observe the Sabbath. My perceptions of the Sabbath are related to reading Little House on the Prairie as a child and identifying with the children's restlessness in the book. Now as an adult, I sort of like the idea of a day where you aren't allowed to work, or even think about work.

So yesterday, I went to church, sitting in my little pew surrounded by couples and I look to my left, realizing that I know that side profile. I sat by two former Princeton classmates. Then, leaving church, I walked down to street, squealing as I ran into a friend I haven't seen in months. We walked together, until I left him to grocery shop, and kept going on my way.

Sometimes in New York, especially when it's warm, you get these glorious, childlike days, where you're outside the entire day, just bopping from person to person, chatting, overhearing things, looking at faces and movements.

I ran into another friend and admitted that I was thinking about leaving New York because I felt like a failure. I have not yet published a book, and I've let my dilettante ways pull me in a million directions. I've done a lot of things. I was a background actor for exactly one day. I even had a union waver. I was almost a postwoman. I built an online platform for people who like real literature.

(I will not go into depth now, but I'm getting back on my high horse about how contemporary fiction is just not hitting for me. I read through 2/3 of Normal People and decided to put it down. Then I picked up Invitation to a Beheading, and the prose just sings in a way modern stuff does not.)

My friend reminded me that everyone feels like a failure in their 20s. And he told me not to leave New York.

I pewtered over to Lucinda's for my favorite open mic, saw some of my old friends, one pseudo-enemy, and met somebody knew who has one gig in Red Hook and walks from venue to venue getting gigs, the old way.

Your life is a lot of emails and I guess you should try to send the right ones. But last year in London, in the apartment of an Italian artist who had five copies of this one marketing book, I read the most interesting line I can't get out of my head. Whenever I'm staying in somebody else's home, I read their books, even if I've brought my own. And one of the pages talked about putting a motorcycle ad in a lingerie magazine and vice versa if you really wanted to do anything interesting.

I think you should always try to do interesting things. For breakfast this morning, I had ginger and radicchio, sautéed In a ginger cilantro chicken broth, with eggs. I love writing at my kitchen table. Not mine, I guess, hers. I tried to read her copy of Normal People. It was too sad and flat, for me personally. I don't want to walk around the world thinking that people think like that and I don't want to think like that.

At the open mic, I was number 19 to go. I played my little song, which I've since been more taken up with this version, than what I can humbly do on a piano. But it's good to perform. You get a little nervous and you get into the habit of working through your nerves. The best person at the open mic is hands down the host. But the host never gets to be the star, funny how the whole world works like that. Like Tyra Banks' downfall. Or a really good dinner party that I'll throw for other people, once I'm in my own place.

Do you ever think that God made people, to have something to watch. Or if you get into the nitty gritty of the covenant, to have something to guide. I would like to have three children, I think. I would like to have a thousand Literatis, first. If we hit a thousand by the end of the month, I'll plan an absolute rager for the summer.

Before I played my song and chatted with all the people, I went to find a coffee, because as I told my grocery-shopping friend, I'd skipped everything and went straight to God that morning.

I arrived at Ninth Street Espresso, which is playfully on tenth street, ordered an Americano as a beautiful twenty something wandered around the cafe as her boyfriend or something of the sort ordered a cappuccino. She kept her sunglasses on. I was her once, and all my friends in the neighborhood told me that my Armani sunglasses made me look like a bug. I have a bad habit of losing nice things, but then you remember that even if it is designer, it's still plastic.

I drank my coffee, fast, I love the feeling of a warm beverage sliding down your throat and into your stomach and cracked open my Nabokov and didn't let myself write because it was the Sabbath, and I started thinking about how Elon Musk microwaves his coffee again and again to drink it piping hot. I used to do that too, until I stopped believing in microwaves. I used to think I was a workaholic like him, doomed to a loveless future, and then I realized you can choose what you identify with, and that if I could go back, I probably would not read the entire 800 page biography.

I had a beautiful day yesterday. I met a lot of nice people, and sat on a bench for an hour, just chatting with a friend of mine as the sky teased rain again and again and again.

Here are my deaths/delights.

Join Hot Literati. So I can have three children.

Or more importantly, so you can hang out on the hottest, smartest corner of the internet.

What are you waiting on ?

Join Hot Literati

A thousand members before we cap it <3

xx

hailo

Little Deaths

• Rain, I love rain I just don't love what the humidity does to my hair

• Overconsumption of news! - to avoid this, I prefer the skimm

• Some light work stress - refer your friends to Hot Literati if you want to help lol

Little Delights

• These headphones - I love running with these, my only regret is not getting them in Pink

• Lucinda's Sunday Open Mic - my fav <3

• New members with taste - you all have been popping in the chat, stating ur fav books and hometowns, and I'm just really happy and excited to have a digital space that is ours and black and pink and smaller and intimate. So excited :)

Pop into the chat room to share your deaths/delights this afternoon

have a nice day

xoxoxoxoxox