I bought my first pair of cowboy boots a week ago. It felt distinctly the impulsive thing I needed to do for myself, after years of eyeing secondhand options and hoping one day I would come across the pair for me. When I was born, my aunt remarked that I had “skinny, narrow feet” and boy, is it hard to find a cowboy boot built for a narrow foot. Fate graced me with a selling that was exactly what I was looking for. I had three conditions for the ideal boot for myself;
Looks like it’s had a life, not new (but the sole isn’t going to fall off)
Deep brown in the color
Knee length
You would think these are easy qualifiers, but with my narrow feet, it took some trial and tribulation. I haven’t been able to live down being 15 and coming home from school one day and my mom off handedly saying she moved along her and my dad’s pairs of cowboy boots. I guess I hadn’t vocalized how much I would have loved to inherit them, so it was a deep guttural, material upset. I’d spent many a nights while my parents got ready for bed, lingering in their closet eyeing those boots and putting them on my too small feet at the time, longing for a day I could be cool enough to own my own pair. One small heartfelt, unvocalized condition among my list was for the boots to remind me of my parents too.
Everything reminds me of home or feels oppressive of it, because I am home. I have gotten used to my routine, and sometimes I do put on the cowboy boots now just to go to the store to get some limes for a Paloma in the evening (when I feel deserving of it). Windows rolled down, driving past my high school, blasting BRAT, meandering the aisles of my town’s Salvation Army, nothing yet everything feels real this summer. Excessively — between agonizing days of applying to jobs with no response, trying to understand how to build a portfolio and find inspiration for making work again, and drinking coffee until 5pm — I am understanding myself better in the now.
I finished a journal in a month, that I started May 1 (a new record for even me), and I had to get another box to store my collection in since I have now been consistently journaling for 6 years. I read back through some entries and was astonished at my deliberate insistency on noting detail. Days that have gone by that I otherwise would not remember are accounted for in a painstaking manner, from names, to times, to locations, that soon will be a distant memory, and in some cases, already are.
I get asked a lot about the habit of daily writing in my life. I had journals as a kid, but they were not well kept in the means of a diary. I often wrote stories when I was younger. I was not as interested in the keeping of reality.
Joan Didion wrote rather on the nose in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and re arrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” I have since gotten rid of some of the poorly kept “diaries” of my youth, which I don’t regret, but now having two boxes full of daily writing from ages 16-22, the weight of that quote sits with me in a newfound way.
Writing and documenting comes a lot with the idea I presented in my first post a month ago about the possessiveness of experience. As with graduating, and starting a new phase in life that is yet to be determined outside the shell of my childhood bedroom, I am inclined to possess experiences no matter how far gone or in the ground they are. Writing daily, but also in recollection, allows me a consciousness and authority over these experiences — and deeply, reflecting upon them to understand myself better.
To drop another Didion quote shamelessly, “Some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do…on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there…” To say writing has felt grounding and even more necessary in an unstable time, personally and politically, is understating it.
Despite having the chance this summer to see, engage with, and think about art, I have to say beyond writing I haven’t gotten a crack at it yet again. I’m “waiting for inspiration to strike" however far off that feels right now. Not having the privilege of a studio space and encouraging community to find support in around the corner is a change that I am learning to adapt to.
I am lucky to have many friends who understand the rut of art making and shared these spaces and thoughts with me, but I am pressed by the passing of time and if I’m serious about anything, I have to start making again even if it’s experimentation in the visual sense. I am getting there. Some days I wake up after a night of writing, and an inkling of ‘it would feel so good to work with my hands right now’ hits me as I’m pouring coffee, but it often dissipates again. I blame the heat, but I know it’s more of a mental block than just the changing climate.
Not to dissect myself, but I fear lately this rut is because of the reflecting and cycling through experience that is coming so heavily through my writing — sometimes entirely nonsensical and mournful — it’s almost hard to articulate where that takes my visual art. The balance of adapting my practice, in not only the space, but where I am mentally and what I aim to reflect of myself. I reckon it’s a good space to be in. I just need to get working at it. July seems like the month to get at it.
If there is anything my art making has resolved me on, it’s that I am bitter and have reason to be for more experiences than one. It no longer bothers me. Time passes, I recall. For now, that is where the sureness in the process resides. Initially, this post was going to be entirely about the presence of bitterness, and how it informs me, but that one needs a little more time to settle in its intention.
Something that has stuck out to me in my own processing and placing of self post grad so far, and from other friends’ daily or weekly check ins, is the sense of community we all crave. There is the resounding loss of that community, and indication of those who are clawing for what it used to be — but I fear it will never be the same. Without a guide, it is difficult to conceive how to form community, nurture it, and find it in new locations and life experiences. It is daunting to have the rest of your life so unknown to you. I know that now. No one warned me what it would feel like. At least I find comfort in that being a shared experience for many of us now. I wish I had the answer for how it’s going to be. It’s a very different world even for creating community than when most of our parents had to find it at our age.
On another note, I’ve started to embrace my the curls of my hair. It was a hard truth during the semesters dealing with wavy hair on the day to day, and straightening has like journaling become so habitual for me in routine. The oppressiveness of the humidity this summer has humbled me, however, and it is with a little less caring I nurture my hair — to some extent still — as it is. I am more indulgent in embracing that vision of myself, as I have bogged myself down for years in self image — and now, I feel like at 22 I’m coming full circle back to what younger me could have only dreamed myself of becoming. I am trying to be the cool girl of my dreams.
Cool girls regress. In the sense that all the media I liked as a 14-year old is still the media I like at 22. My music taste is indicative enough of that truth.
In line with the theme of this post, which is somewhere between apathy and empathy towards living, being literary and popping this quote from Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon I read in June, “Is this what it is like, she wonders, to be an adult; is this what it will be like from now on; will she always be so sad, so alone; will she always yearn this way for comfort, or for company, or —? What does she yearn for?”
I have such little recollection of my younger self I’m realizing. The me before familial loss and other hurt is increasingly hard to connect to. I recently found my digital camera from when I was eight, and flipping through the “vlogs” and pictures I had on it was mesmerizing to say the least. I can see now the early signs of my affinity for style and colors that now sit in my closet, and adorn my walls, were from. I can feel her imaginative, thoughtful streak piercing through any judgment or awaiting scorn. I embrace her captivation and joy. In my time at home, I have been connecting with people I knew in my youth. There is something validating, knowing those people have seen you at vulnerable, formative stages in life. And there is something equally validating and affirming to still be able to connect with them now at an older age, reminiscing but acknowledging the growth and perspective that now sits with us.
I’m going to say, on another hand, there is nothing more encouraging and uplifting these days than putting together a little outfit and going out and seeing the world. I realize how much I love putting together an outfit, and it motivates me to not wear the same jeans and t shirt for a week straight otherwise (although that’s a classic Emily outfit forever, never can go wrong). I remarked to my mom a few weeks ago I was thinking about trying to wear more bracelets, and she presented me with a bunch of silver bangles that I now wear every day. Every so often she’ll even say “I should have kept everything I owned at your age, it’s all back in style.”
Over a month out from graduation, I can say that I feel really grateful to have so many good memories of college to look back on. It makes it all a little more easy to stomach, and even though I feel the distance from a lot of friends on the daily, the reminder of their love and relevance in my life is not lost on me. I was so tired, disillusioned, and processing those last few weeks of college, but things have cleared now and I can finally make sense of a lot more of how I felt about the end of things. I’ve loved long phone calls with Courtenay and Sophie. I’ve relished the texts and TikToks Hannah and I send each other almost daily. Train rides with Izzy, debriefing our lives and being in awe over Kendrick Lamar’s artistry. Long convos with Bridget that remind me it’s all okay. All the invaluable Valley friends to check in with — Lily, Liam, Gen, Brianna, hi! To seeing Skye at the end of the month in DC. I am lucky.
Reminding me that the love I have for people is always there. Even if we are distances and experiences away from each other right now. And, as I made note of in my first post, I am proud of all the people I am lucky to call friends. In a few months, many of their paths will change even more, and they’ll pursue education and careers that I am so proud to witness them step into after tireless work in undergrad. I see it as reason to visit more ends of the globe too! And hopefully I’ll have some place other than here for them to visit me at too (please, I’m begging).
I’ve been talking about the writing I’ve been doing, so I want to wrap up with a piece I really haven’t put it out anywhere besides in texts to friends, but holy, was this a healing piece to write. A lot of the writing outside of journaling (which can sometimes include this type of writing, but is more entrenched in present thought) is about drawing parallels in experiences in order to reflect inward on myself and, well, point fingers, out of bitterness, out of unresolved situations or things unsaid. I want to share this piece, because I hope one day I can be brave and really put it out there. For now, for a select audience, it’ll sit here.
I’ve been thinking a lot about exhaustion and anger. That’s where the inspiration of this piece came from. With caring so much that you feel like you are gaslighting yourself again about something, about the way you were suspended in disbelief so to speak about something or someone. For me, graduating and really drawing in parallels for myself has been clarifying. I joke that I need to go back to consistent therapy. I should. Right now, the writing is more necessary in that process of healing than anything. Allows me look inward in a way sitting across from a licensed professional wouldn’t get me to do. Don’t worry — I am very well medicated in the meantime. I think my next post will be more about this.
Inspired by Chloé Williams, whose Substack I religiously follow (and I encourage you to follow if you’re drawn to thought provoking prose), I am ending this post with ‘things I’m mulling over lately’ or the idea of ‘slowmaxxing’ which she often ends her posts with. Essentially, things that have been on the mind recently, in terms of media and inspiration, if you care to know (which if you’ve read this far, I assume you do!).
Patti Smith performing “Summertime Sadness” live as a commemorative tribute to her late husband. I just finished reading Just Kids for the first time, so knowing her story, her perspectives on love and life, yeah this cover hits. I also feel like this is one of the first summers in my life that I feel these lyrics in my bones.
This tweet, no notes:
Every look that Chappell Roan has adorned in the past month or so — she is killing it. I admire her ability to reference other artists, drag queens, all these people in pop culture, and it is so authentically done. Gov Ball performance as the Statue of Liberty will live on in my mind when I’m geriatric, I swear.
This poem, among many others that I usually find at random at 2am on Pinterest and rewire my entire brain.
Going from listening to “Not Like Us” on repeat all senior week, to really absorbing the lyrics and artistry once the music video came out. Thank you, Kendrick — cheers to formative, inventive art, always.
For the political thought that weighs on the mind as of late
Reading I recommend: Jazz by Toni Morrison, The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne, Black Swans by Eve Babitz
Current reading: Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates and Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante
“Sweet” by Lana Del Rey
Signing off — until next time!
