Hi there.
It’s been two years, and a couple of weeks, since I wrote you last. It feels absurd to try to summarize that time in such a small space, but I feel I owe you that much. And isn't that the eponymous reason I started writing to you in the first place?
So here goes:
I released an EP, Maybe The Light. I am still so proud of this family of songs—the musical and writing risks I took, the incredible folks who made it happen, and the visuals that exist around it. (Listen here, see a music video here.)
I read tarot at a string of real-life events. Connecting with real people over the cards has been weird and awkward and also a huge honor. Some are skeptics; some tell me their life stories. I am grateful for them all.
I dyed my hair. Seems small, but I'd been dy(e)ing to since high school. First grape purple, then smoky blue, and finally a bright toothpastey mint.
I came back to New York. The fall of 2022 marked a whole decade of me in this city, of it in my blood. The anniversary tasted of anise, sugarbitter pride.
I put out an original Christmas song, a necessary salve for a ragged year.
I spent a year in deep job and life burnout. Work-sleep-eat, forget-to-text, cry-five-times-a-week, dissociative burnout.
I left the burnout behind.
There is so much more than this, obviously, but these are small histories, after all. And I do plan to talk about what isn't covered here in future letters.
So how do I start writing the history of this current season? With this: I’ve started walking again.
I’ve talked about walking before in this newsletter. It’s a habit I am re-forming, fragile as early winter ice, easy to break. I walk most mornings for about an hour. I walk west, the sun at my back as I get further from home. I walk east, squinting through gold, to make my way back. I walk at the honeyed close of the day, bookends of movement, watching the moon rise over Brooklyn. I’ve walked on bitter-cold days wearing four layers, my hands numb in my pockets, and on miserable wet days with my hood close around my cheeks. I regret to inform you that regardless of the weather, the walking has done wonders for my mental health and my usual vendetta with winter.
While I walk, I also spend a lot of time looking. I’ve taken up my old habit of putting on a podcast or a playlist as I walk, but I do try to keep my eyes off the pavement as much as possible. This is a neighborhood I know well, but I still manage to see things that catch me and slow my step. Here are a few examples, copied right from the list I now keep in my phone:
I pass a man on a bike who is shouting A las nueve, a las nueve into his phone. It is 8:51. He will be late.
Explosion of hard candies, lurid pinks and purples on the dark asphalt, some crushed into shimmering dust.
The strange barren spaces under the elevated rail, forbidden, hidden, even though I can see straight through the fence into their dusty broken-bottle interiors.
A worm on wet pavement, crushed bloody.
A woman walks by on the phone, face broken open by end-of-day winter sunlight. She says, with so much warmth that my ribs ache, Okay, I love you, be safe.
I try not to look too hard. I try not to embellish or metaphorize (hard, for a lover of words). I try just to notice. My brain works in two gears—nostalgia and anxiety. I am trying, these days, to shift into the middle one I never use: presence.
I now live about ten minutes from my first apartment after university. I pass by it, more often than not, at some point on my morning strolls. This means that I spend a lot of time remembering—and trying to avoid regressing. I think about who I was when I lived in that apartment: what my first real year of adulthood felt like, relearning New York as a no-longer-student. I think about the friends I knew then and the ones I’ve lost since. I think about how cyclical life is, rather than linear, because I am different than who I was at twenty-two—steadier, more worn-in, not so lost, not so bright either, but that’s okay. That’s okay—and still, I am still that girl. All repression and overlined eyebrows and overeagerness, under all the other me’s I’ve been since. I think about who I will be in a year, in five years. Will I cringe at what I wear now, will I be louder, sager? Will I recognize myself? I hope so, says one part of me. I hope not, says another.
I don’t know yet what this new iteration of Small Histories will look like. I might write you twice in a week, or once a month. As I’ve said, there are certainly things I’ve been wanting to talk about in a longer format, and I’m sure they will bubble to the surface as I reexplore this space. If there’s something you’d like to hear from me, or a resource you’d like to see included in future letters, please don’t hesitate to reply directly and tell me. I make no promises, but I certainly want to hear from you. Talk to you soon.
