where is everyone

i don’t like when people make fun of the people who stand around in long lines for brand activations or specialty drinks or whatever those lines lead to.

i sat next to a woman on a flight today who was going to los angeles by herself to see the hollywood sign. she was so excited for her trip and kept taking pictures out the plane window.

understand that i asked her a million questions, offered to take her picture, and then cried when we deboarded.

we are supposed to take care of each other. if you have the vantage point to make fun of someone, that means that you are supposed to protect them.

because their lives are as difficult, if not more difficult than yours. even at the apex of happiness life is strange and uncomfortable and society has clearly ushered agreeable people who may deserve better into lines. do you know why they wait in those lines also? because it’s fucking free. imagine talking to your friend for an hour and at the end of the rainbow you get a dollop of frozen yogurt or a lip balm. some ppl read substack, some ppl wait in a line. some ppl have vintage denim and read books by dead people. and really we all die

i wish parasocial things didn’t have that shame around them. where i live rn there is no nature to reasonably retreat into away from the drum of consumerism and all the little personal places that you visualize visiting in a city to forget your uniquely mundane circumstances for awhile have closed their doors in favor of more profitable outcomes and most people in america can’t afford to go for a nice lunch and then it’s supposedly a bad thing if someone feels empathy for the people on their phone, who make regular appearances in the free and infinite scroll of entertainment we all engage with for countless hours of our lives.

i can only speak for the zeitgeist i represent of course. but it seems like a lot of players are missing in action.

i wish there was a guy hanging around who was a little weird but he’s alright once you get to know him and everyone lets him come. only he can’t come because the drinks are eighteen dollars, and he’s festered into some niche creepiness that has left him ostracized, and he has to live away from society in the suburbs with his parents because he can’t find something he likes and is good at that can pay him enough to have a normal adult life.

i wonder if i have a superiority complex. we all share one mind and soul but some people receive more lucrative qualities for their lifetime. and of course our own subjective experience is the most rich and deep perspective we can access. for example my birthday is in july, and i think that july is the perfect month to have a birthday. but surely anyone born in any month thinks their birthday month is best.

i know i am on the upper hand of a certain ecosystem because i have been carried into some made up accolades.

and i think a lot about the version of me who didn’t get that way out of the lines, for whatever reason, and if she is okay. i don’t think she is dead in a ditch per se. but i wonder what she longs for, and where she lives, and what she does in her free time.

i know that every day i have to fight to live in a way that feels meaningful and precious and like i am making use of all that has been given. when i am sad, or tired, or discouraged, i can so easily live for nothing. and reader sometimes i am sad or tired until i forget to be.

the most genuine push i see against the regretful languid nature of our time is to be as kind to others as humanly possible. yes i’ll say it. kindness not where ur jeans are from. of course kindness is different from protecting oneself. but when i remember how everything sucks i try to be so friendly, so helpful and accommodating and earnest and encouraging that it makes people confused, or uncomfortable.

helping someone you don’t know figure out the subway system like you are their guardian angel. lurching to pick up something a stranger drops. smiling. asking the people in line what they are in line for. is my beauty secret.

and it lights me up to watch someone slowly realizes that i like them and am not trying to take anything from them.

if you have a minute, would you comment or message what you care about. be honest because i want to know. what do you spend the most time thinking about every day? what gives you fear and rage and hope? is your birthday month the best? i have a feeling of the answers but i have also been surprised before.

maybe no one is getting sicker.

maybe i am getting sicker.

maybe everything is as it should be.

i am posting this late at night depending where you are. i am about to start a silent retreat that involves no drinking water or eating for three days. i will tell you all about it the next time i write to you.

xo