Graham Irvin
5:30am woke up thirsty and drank the last ~25oz of water next to my bed. I rolled around, kicked blankets off my legs, pondered whether I should take off a shirt or socks to feel more at ease, briefly imagined in all my rustling I was pummeling the 1-3 cats who occasionally sleep on the bed but, after softly heeling the clumps of blankets, discovered they were sleeping somewhere else.
5:34am messaged Molly on Instagram, “Gettin started,” laughed to myself at the idea of annoyingly updating Molly in time throughout this project as if I didn’t understand the directions or concept or even how it was being published, as if I thought it was just something Molly wanted to know personally about 366 people this year, even though the last thing she messaged on Instagram was directions for where to submit my entry for this project, thought I wanted to communicate this joke immediately but it was 5:34 and I’d probably only talked to Molly ~10 times in total in the past and, well, she would read this “by Sunday” 2/25, so what’s the rush.
5:53am decided to include a brief flashback, partly because I couldn’t sleep, of writing about my day in a similar way in 2016 or 2017 for a creative nonfiction workshop.
I was a fan of Megan Boyle’s Liveblog blog (still am) and had read a book called One Boy’s Day by Roger Baker, a study in behavioral psychology, wherein eight social scientists watch a kid for one full day and record his minute to minute actions in an effort to present his objective psychological habits. The boy’s psychological habits seemed to suggest he was mostly just grappling with the reality that he was being watched by eight social scientists. I wanted to write something like that for my first essay in the creative nonfiction workshop.
My day, and my essay, consisted of going to a performance of touring pianists playing selections from Liszt, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, maybe Mahler, maybe Brahms, maybe Tchaikovsky that evening, but spending most of the morning and afternoon up to that point messaging various people asking if they had any Adderall to sell, in an effort to better write about the day and, maybe hopefully, experience some kind of insane euphoric bliss during the concert/ recital/ piano pageant.
The Adderall never came through, which was a bummer in the moment but made for a more dramatic essay, so I ended up drinking 2-3 beers. The funniest part about that experience though, just to wrap up this flashback, was I went to the concert with an acquaintance who was also in the workshop but didn’t tell him I was writing about that day. Or, if I did, didn’t tell him how I was writing about that day. And didn’t tell him I was trying to buy Adderall all the hours leading up the concert, not in an attempt to hide my search or fiendish desires, but because I didn’t get any Adderall and I was bummed. I didn’t want to talk about it. So, when the creative nonfiction workshop workshopped my essay and the instructor both wrote a disclaimer on the essay, and announced out loud before we began, that buying / taking prescription medicine not prescribed to me was a felony and could lead to fines or jail time, depending on the circumstances of an inevitable arrest if the habit continued, the acquaintance who went with me to the concert, who did not know he would be included in the essay(somewhat unethical (sorry Russ)) was implicated in a crime and probably lost some of that instructor’s respect (it’s for the best Russ, that guy was a narc).
Also no one liked the essay lol. There was “no point” and it was “exhausting” and “boring” and, again, “what [was] the point.”
And for that reason, for having bad taste in writing, those people weren’t allowed to participate in Molly Gorelick’s A Year in Philly.
6:45am stopped reminiscing about graduate school and took a photo of my cat Trout.
9:33am woke back up and imagined a first draft of this sentence, “woke back up and went downstairs to feed the cats” but only wrote the first draft of that sentence in this sentence because, as of 9:36am, I had not yet gone downstairs to feed the cats.
9:47am I fed the cats
9:59am made a cup of coffee, nothing special, Eight o’clock brand coffee Keurig pod, sat on the couch and made up a grocery list since I had the day off and had been struggling, over the past few days, to quickly walk into the kitchen or open the refrigerator and find food quickly. I had food but it was getting less visible. More conceptual meals instead of obvious types of caloric energy. Mostly, just missing snacks.
Below is my grocery list, in the language I would write it, though usually I write grocery lists on paper and carry the paper in my jacket pocket, rarely referring to it. In parentheses next to the item on the list is what I purchased.
Cheese
Mac and cheese
Cheez-its
Other snacks
Cilantro
Onion
Shallots
Tomatoes
Tomato paste
Crushed tomatoes
Bacon
Chicken nuggets
Other frozen foods
Cold brew
Meat of some kind
Maybe bagels
Sausage dip?
Sausage
Salsa
Cream cheese
Tortilla chips
I don’t always get exactly what’s on my lists. I treat them more like a guide. This one was big and made me nervous. but I would get paid the coming Friday, 2/23, so maybe it wasn’t a big deal.
10:20am told my group chat about this project, that I needed some ideas for what to do to make this more interesting. The group chat includes the writers Crow Jonah Norlander, Zac Smith, and Troy James Weaver. The group chat is currently called “Tiny Gun Club” because Crow once sent a picture of his son’s tiny LEGO gun. In the past the group chat has been called the Isaac Brock Blow Job chat, because we created the group specifically to talk about Modest Mouse, more specifically to talk about how much we disliked Modest Mouse’s most recent album The Golden Casket. We even recorded a podcast about the topic. Though we talk about more things than Modest Mouse, we still sometimes refer to each other as “The Blow Job Boys.”
Here’s the chat:
10:22am Graham: I’m doing this thing today for a project called a year in philly. A Year in Philly Basically live-blogging the day but I’m trying to find ways to make it interesting
Troy: that’s cool
Zac: nice dud3
Troy: Can I read it on that website or where
Graham: Yea it’s going up probably by the end of the week or beginning of next week
10:50am after drinking cup of coffee, reading 7 pages of Antwerp by Roberto Bolano, I walked upstairs and woke up Kaitlin, asked her if she wanted anything specific from the grocery store
“Chocolate chip cookies”
10:51am back to the chat, briefly
Troy: Hell yeah
Graham: Y’all give me some ideas to write about. So far I just fed the cats and wrote a grocery list
Troy: Go down to tgat fucked up street where all the junkies live and try to score som h
Troy: I’m bad at this
Graham: Hahah
Graham: Yea honestly that would be the best thing to do
Troy: Do something that might get you arrested Then go home a bake bread and be like see I’m just a normal bread baking kinda fella
Troy: I would just lie lol After me and Alex G ate cheesesteaks he showed me his monster truck
Graham: Go to K&A, score some h, bake it into bread, then make a sandwich with the bread
Graham: Serve the sandwich to Alex g
Troy: Haha
Graham: Drive his monster truck while nodding out
Troy: Spend your day trying to locate and then stalking alex g in great psychotic detail
11:05am walked to my car, heard neighbors playing “Little Bitty” by Alan Jackson from the album Everything I Love. Was surprised because I’ve never heard country music played in my neighborhood or really many places in Philly, at least not in the out loud party context loud enough to hear a block away type way, especially Alan Jackson who I’m a big fan of. He was one of my parents’ favorites when I was growing up. Though, I don’t think they had the Everything I Love album, they probably had Greatest Hits Volume II. Imagined, briefly, doing an album review of Everything I Love, writing about memories of the time in my life when I heard those songs the most, what Alan Jackson and that type of music means to me but I had to get groceries. So if you’re reading this, just check out the album.
11:06am back to the chat
Zac: include the bj chat verbatik
Graham: I was thinking about putting in snippets from it
Troy: 10:00 troy said something funny
Troy: 10:01 troy said something dumb
Troy: 10:02 back to being funny
Troy: 10:03 zac sent a picture of buttcheeks
Troy: 10:45 crow sent a pic of a sandwich
11:47am finished grocery shopping and walked back to car. Only spent $102 for three large bags of food. Felt accomplished in my ability to get necessities and treats without spending frivolously. Did not get cold brew, tomato paste, or bagels.
My usual grocery store, the ShopRite in Whitman Plaza on Oregon, looks like this on a Google map:
12:13pm feeling somewhat tired from my busy morning of remembering, writing, feeding cats, getting groceries, remembering, writing, chatting with the Blow Job boys, I slowed down considerably. I unloaded the groceries and went back to the couch to look at my phone.
12:20pm scrolled through Instagram discover page and tried to find a meme of some type to send to my friend Garrett for the purpose of including that meme in this document but felt I was scrolling / pre-choosing in a performative way. Like I wanted something that demonstrated the type of meme Garrett and I often sent to each other without feeling the actual propulsive urge to send the meme when I scrolled past it.
Also, I had already included sections of the group chat above and felt that was exposing myself as a crass, uncouth, ribald type of person. I felt pulled toward gentler memes. Memes that were ironically sweet. Memes that somehow signaled that I was, in fact, a pretty good guy. Maybe a meme to Garrett about how drug abuse in unhoused populations was a horrible truth we all just ignored, something about how class protects both of us from those fates, but for how long? Or, like, some impact font that says, “Capitalism forces individuals to not only participate in their own destruction but beg for it,” over a screenshot of Brian from Family Guy.
12:44pm I couldn’t find anything like that on my Instagram discover page quick enough, so I put my phone down.
1:02pm Kaitlin came downstairs to work on her laptop and watch new Love is Blind episodes from season 6. The new season featured people from Charlotte, North Carolina, near where I grew up. Though, that wasn’t the main reason why I was interested in the season. There had been at least 3 wrong couples, 3 big flubs made by people just looking for love. Jimmy chose Chelsea over Jess because Jess was way more aggressive than he was used to, not to mention she has a 10 year old daughter. Chelsea chose Jimmy, even though Trevor, Chelsea’s other suitor, is like the sweetest dude ever. Also, Jeramey does not seem like he’s over Sarah Ann, plus he's got bad vibes. Like assistant manager who loves Reddit. Not into him.
1:38pm Made sausage dip near the end of the first episode. Imagined writing a review of Love is Blind season 6, episodes 7-9 but felt that is not my normal day. Not my normal type of activity. Then I wondered if I should be making the most of this day by writing about whatever came to my mind, saying yes to everything. Or should I do what my average day is? In the same way the boy from the case book One Boy’s Day did not behave exactly normal, because he was being observed, I felt that I was unable to behave exactly normal because I was observing myself. I was performing for the project of A Year in Philly. I think reality television is uniquely evil but, when I consider the ways in which producers manipulate actors, it is a layered drama that challenges what is real and what is fictional television. It’s boring to make excuses for why I enjoy reality television. Like I should be watching Chantal Ackerman films instead? Whatever we watch steals time away from what we should be creating. Whatever we create steals time away from how we should be living. Love is the search for an audience who claps after every scene. However people find that, blind or not, is valid. Probably.
To make sausage dip: Brown 2 lbs of breakfast sausage. I mixed a pound of savory sage and a pound of hot flavored sausage.
Then melt in 16oz of cream cheese. Then stir in two 16oz jars of salsa. I made double the recipe, so feel free to cut this in half.
Enjoy the dip with tortilla chips.
2:30pm Garrett replied to a meme I had sent the night before. I opened Instagram, knowing I would include what I had sent the night before and whatever he sent in response. I had hopes it would redeem my earlier behavior, maybe be something about intersectionality and leftist ideology. But, to this meme
Garrett replied, “hahahahaha”
4:45pm- 5:40pm after finishing the episodes of Love is Blind, I washed dishes I dirtied with sausage dip. I took a shower. I came downstairs and made Kaitlin, who, finished with work, had put away her laptop, a gin with Diet Coke and lime. The recipe was:
2oz Seagram’s gin
.5oz lime juice
3oz Diet Coke
I mixed the gin and lime together in a shaker with ice and shook it. Mainly to be annoying but, also, to see if it made the final drink any better. Then I poured over ice and topped with Diet Coke.
I made myself something like a French 75, though it wasn’t that exactly. The recipe was:
2oz Seagram’s gin
1oz lime juice
.5oz simple syrup
1.5oz prosecco (slightly flat)
1.5oz bubbly rose (completely flat)
~7:00pm watched the newest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Kaitlin.
~9:00pm watched episode 5 of True Detective season 4, fell asleep.
~11:00pm walked upstairs and laid in bed, fell asleep while Trout laid at my legs and Kaitlin watched Tik Tok videos.
Graham Irvin lives in Philadelphia. Some of his writing can be found at HAD, Joyland, and Hobart. He is the author of Liver Mush and I Have a Gun. His instagram is @_gram_irvin
