fire bugout

HEY, ESSAYERS.

“Essayer” is the French infinitive for the word “to try,” according to verifiable linguistic fact, plus also a sentence with which I reminded myself of this in my journal a few months back, put the exact way as I just did. A slim three-or-so seconds later, a radio progrum I was using as a stand-in companion recited it back to me from the stereo, verbatim. I felt holy—and wholly corny—then back to sacral, because FUCKIT: When I was 16, I had an august older playwright friend who let me run away to his house and read his scripts, and the line “coincidence is God,” committed in one such set of plastic-bound printouts, wallpapered the heart of your frenzied-ass trylobite here for permanent. So essay that shit on for size, I guess.

How’s it all playing out of late? I spent the winter/spring feeling, myself, mad played out, which I think is unavoidably symptomatic of finishing yer book, especially your first. But Action is done, and now I’m back to my savage regularity. I can tell because I interrogated someone thusly on the morning before last, squinting at a massive and reflectively shiny hairball nearby: “Did I try to sleep in my wig last night?” It was hard to overlook the implications of “Man in the Mirror” chiding me softly in the background, but your girl essayed as diligently as she could, as I have zilch interest in changing that particular one of my ways.

Oh, yeah! I bought some wigs. They are a lynchpin of my summer style direction, which is actually a combo platter of two vectors:

1) ONE OF THOSE DOLLS WITH HAIR YOU CAN CUT AND OTHERWISE EDIT AT WILL. See:

Finally stopped fuckng around long enough to realize that having short hair means being able to realize the dream of wearing a different wig every day, aka the sartorial joy-equivalent of that new Jamie xx/Young Thug/Popcaan jam. I KNOW THERE’S GONNA BE GOOD TIMES.

2) BAD BOWLING TERRIBLE UNCLE. See: vein-skinny gold neck chains, intentionally grease-distressed muscle tanks, that one Kiko Mizuhara x Opening Ceremony collection, the old black T-shirt with a merit badge reading “GIRL SCOUTS GO BOWLING” stitched on that my bad-news cousin gave me when I was in seventh grade, dice-shaped cufflinks, eight ball–shaped cufflinks, wheedling my tablemates to the tune of letting me bet my own cufflinks after losing momentously at five-card-stud and being rebuffed, flame shirts. Catch you at the Saul Bellow retrospective later on this month.

So! I’m back, after far too long a time talking to the man in the mirror in the form of essays spewed into the book that I, momentarily, hate (extended proximity bred such a seething loathing in me toward Action, that demanding, longstanding buffer to real-life action), but also know so much more adhesively has re-wallpapered my heart in patterns complementary to the above exteriors, plus my life entire.

I HAVE BEEN TRYING WILD HARD FOR WILD LONG, AND IT’S OVER. Now, excuse me while I go attempt all manners of new shit. Look for the sleaze in the wig.

Yours of course,

ARS