Graham

8:35am

Forgot to turn on the alarm the night before. Fell asleep to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel after eating Van Leeuwen ice cream, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants instead of getting into bed.

A hoodie and sweatpants are kind of a type of bed you wear.

I don’t know how I feel about the Mrs. Maisel show. It’s a little too punchy. A little too cringe. Feels like there is not much of an emotional center to it and, for a comedy, if it is a comedy (it’s about comedy), it rarely makes me laugh.

But I think I like the way people dress. And there’s something exotic about how wealthy the family is while still being portrayed as old and outdated. Hate to sound neoliberal and/or like some backwoods yokel here, but Ivy League professor of mathematics sounds, maybe not cutting-edge but for sure, worldly. Metropolitan, dare I say.

I think conflicting thoughts every time I watch the show. What is missing. What are they unable to speak about. Does the glossing over of any particular topic make The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel an evil piece of media. I think a few combinations of these thoughts. Then I eat 2-3 bites of Van Leeuwen ice cream and fall asleep in my hoodie and sweatpants, which are a type of bed I can wear.

8:50am

I feed Trout, my cat and best friend and roommate. I prepare coffee in the Mr. Coffee. The Marvelous Mr. Coffee. That’s a show I would watch and have no questions about. The Marvelous Mr. Coffee would never be an evil piece of media.

Currently the coffee I use is Full Circle Market Breakfast Blend. I think Full Circle Market is South Street Market’s store brand. I add a small splash of Chobani Sweet Cream creamer to every third cup of coffee I drink.

Trout eats 2 Tbsps. of Weruva Paw Lickin’ Chicken Chicken Recipe in Gravy, Canidae Pure Goodness Premium Recipe with Real Chicken dry food (a few dashes around the wet), and 3-4 Feline Greenies Dental Treats. Trout is only slightly a picky eater. He only likes plain chicken wet food. Not pate. Not chicken and [any other meat]. He won’t eat it if it’s not plain chicken wet food. The dry food, he has no qualms about. He likes all dry food. He doesn’t care for human food.

If you are ever over at my apartment, now you know what to feed Trout.

9:15am

Searched for who I thought was a country musician but turned out to be a British DJ who spun exclusively country records. Listened to ~20 minutes of his set then gave up. Found a DJ set with Fred Again…, Four Tet, and Skrillex in Times Square.

Highlights of the Times Square set included a Taylor Swift song transitioning into a Roddy Ricch song, Fred Again… talking to the crowd, calling people his friends and/or brothers. I liked that.

Then ~40 minutes into the set, Skrillex started teasing the crowd with the kind of BIGGG bass drops that he specialized in circa 2012 brostep moment. I enjoyed imagining the work he put in to win back a certain portion of electronic music enjoyers. To become so popular making one kind of middle register bass blast that his name is synonymous with murdering EDM, then put out that 2023 album, Quest for Fire, and, I think, redeeming himself. That album was probably my favorite of 2023. It felt like true cultural hegemony, playing that song in the kitchen I worked in, the mean little chef jumping around excitedly asking Who’s this?

Dude, it’s Skrillex.

He’s back.

Fuck yeah, dude.

This rips.

Then walking out into the dining room and the bartender is playing another different but equally banging track from the same album.

Listen, you hear that.

Etc.

Killers in the jungle.

Etc.

Skrillex did all of that, released that album the day prior to the Times Square show with Fred Again… and Four Tet, and then still fucks with the crowd by dropping bass so ugly it sounds like a giant city long jaw gurning rock ice.

Very cool.

While listening to the DJ set, I edited a poem I wrote a few days before. I typed up a second poem that I’d written long hand a separate day. I felt more confident, proud about the first poem. I felt it was doing what a poem should do. I felt I was, lately while writing, intuiting the direction of a piece and not trying to force some obvious purpose or goal. I have always had an internal fight with myself about some of my writing. Is it didactic or is it not. Didactic writing is horrible. I tell myself. I am anti-didactic writing. I chant in the mirror. But my books, both of them, kind of guide the reader toward a conclusion of sorts. They are, at the very least, if I’m being completely honest, semi-didactic books.

A story teaches the reader that a character exists and in dilemma. Is this didactic. Yes. Is this evil. Absolutely.

But, the two new poems I edited and typed up. I felt that they were not very didactic. And that was a good feeling.

A few lines from the poem I was more confident about read:

They’re walking the discontinued bridge

To the only open deli it’s Christmas

It’s Kwanzaa it’s a brand new celebration

10,000 feet above it doesn’t matter

A few lines from the poem I was less confident about read:

All the beer in the city

Was frozen overnight

I can’t make this up

I saw half a bottle

By Trinity Baptist

10:45am

In another, shorter poem, I changed the word “letters” to “disco” after searching “synonym for dancer.” A great example of how I intuited the direction of the piece.

11:00am

I coughed loudly and for a long time and decided it was time to get medicine.

Sure, I was pissed, but maybe it would be worth it. Maybe, I thought, the medicine would give me some kind of new lease on life. Or a new perspective I was incapable of experiencing without the medicine. Imagine all the books written by philosophers who said yes to 200mg of Aspirin. Their third eyes finally opened. If you gave a Reign Sour Gummy Worm energy drink to a thick tongued French King, he’d probably do something freaky. There were avenues the CVS cold medicine might direct me toward that forever changed my life. Turn me into the 2023 Times Square Skrillex of writing a journal about Christmas Eve.

Metaphorically.

Juxtapositionally.

Juxtapositionatude wise.

Juxtapositionatudinal.

Juxtapositionatudinality.

Ah ha, my name is Graham Irvin and you’re engaging in a thought war with me. Tonight on Juxtapositionatudinality.

11:15am

You had to press the call button to get anything in that dumbass CVS.

Because CVS was out of the store brand version, I had to pay $36 for Mucinex and pseudoephedrine. Were the store less crowded, not Christmas Eve-stuffed with angry relatives doing last minute morning shopping to stock their AirBnB, or get out of the guest room they were sharing, I would have found another, cheaper pill card to bring to the pharmacy. But that’s what I did the first time. And who knew if the second card I grabbed would also be out at the Christmas Eve CVS. I was fucked regardless. I put the rest of my groceries on the counter and paid for them as well.

I got:

1200mg Mucinex / 120mg pseudoephedrine pills

Peppermint castile soap – Planet Essentials Brand

Benzedrex inhaler tube

4 energy drinks because I didn’t know if stores would be closed for Christmas and the day

following Christmas and I didn’t want to be be out of energy drinks

Reign Sour Gummy Worm

Reign White Gummy Bear

Monster Ultra Vice Miami

Monster Ultra Fantasy Ruby Red

11:45am

While walking back to my apartment, passing the South Street Market, I thought about a conversation I had with Molly a few days prior. Both of us eating a lot of apples lately. Honey Crisp. Gala. McIntosh. Never Red Delicious. I thought about, but ultimately decided against, buying a lot of apples just to write about eating apples.

Thought about Austin, who had also been eating a lot of apples, calling it “apple mode.” It’s fun to go apple mode.

I might go apple mode.

About to go apple mode.

Etc.

If you haven’t eaten an apple lately, eat one today. Eat one right now. Turn your life around. There are so many great types of apples and, I think, you’re allowed to eat them all. You should, everyone, go apple mode, for your own sake. Be happy and go apple mode.

11:50am

Wrote about my day from 8:35am until 11:00am. I forgot that I told Molly I would send her these days. Felt a new purpose boil up in my stomach and chest and heart. Rise into my throat. Emerge from my mouth like a burp that no one was disgusted by. A burp that no one hates was telling someone you love them. Spontaneous declaration of love. The burp that no one hates.

1:00pm

Walked into the kitchen to take my daily vitamins and supplements. Felt the burp of love echoing from my mouth and ears. I wanted to record the names and quantities of each. I listened to the second half of Horrible Occurrences by Advance Base while taking the vitamins and supplements.

Start with the song “Little Sable Point Lighthouse” and swallow these pills as I list them off. Experience my experience. Meld with me backwards through time. Bring me into the future with you, right now, reading this.

50mg Zinc

2500mcg B-12

1000mg Beet Root and Mushrooms Powder

500mg Vitamin C with Rose Hips

1000mcg Biotin

1 Turmeric gummy

50 mg Ubiquinol CoQ-10

1000 mg Omega-3 Fish Oil

25 mcg Vitamin D3

1 capsule Horse Chestnut Extract

2500mg L-Arginine

1:05pm

After swallowing all my medicines and pills and supplements, I replayed “Little Sable Point Lighthouse” by Advance Base. I felt watery and quivery and weak at the part in the song when Owen says He was never seen again.

I replayed the song to make sure I had the line right. Tears came to my eyes as I wrote He was never seen again.

He was never seen again.

That’s how Elyse imagined him was the line before the line He was never seen again. I replayed the song to hear that line and wrote it down. A few tears fell from my eyes.

1:30pm

I left the apartment to do some last minute Christmas shopping for my family. I would not be able to get the gifts to them by Christmas day, but thought, maybe, it was the thought that counted re: when I bought the gifts. Also, it had been on my mind a lot over the last few days. It was the first Christmas I would not be spending at home in North Carolina. I usually drove but didn’t want to put Trout through the stress. He had only made the trip once and didn’t enjoy it. Also, the only person I could find on Meowtel to possibly watch him at my apartment was this person who I had met before, who I didn’t enjoy meeting, and who gave off depressing, manic, habitual liar energy. So, I didn’t want her to watch my son. I decided to stay in Philadelphia for Christmas and visit North Carolina later in January.

I stopped in Rittenhouse Park, found a dry bench, and made a note about 1) the snow on the ground and 2) all the people I would never be.

1)    Christmas Eve 2024 was a white Christmas Eve. There was snow over the cars and the streets and the sidewalk. It snowed over night and, by 1:30 was mostly melted. There was no new snow the rest of the day. The park benches in Rittenhouse were wet with post snow (water). Finding a bench to sit on, specifically to note the amount of snow still visible, was not easy.

2)    Before arriving in the park and finding the perfectly not too moist park bench, I walked behind a couple. The man wore fashionable leather boots and a Sherpa-lined corduroy jacket. The woman wore sneakers and a calf-length wool-ish coat. A winter hat with pom on top. I thought I will never be these people. Which just meant I judged them for being too normie. A few degrees more normie than I was. Or trad or whatever. Lately that had been on my mind a lot. My Alt-ness was no longer a choice or action. Often it felt like an affliction. That was maybe due to my age. Things felt less elastic. I was more conscious of my limited forever as a person who has no more growing “up” to do. But! Maybe it was the times! Maybe alt-ness was more and more performative. There were less real Alt dudes in the world. Maybe I was the last real alt dude to exist, especially in Philadelphia. It didn’t seem like a true thought, but I didn’t want to do the research. Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo had a great project related to Alt men and she lived in Philadelphia so maybe my feelings were incorrect.

At Ten Stone the Sunday prior to Christmas Eve, I watched a table, probably a friend group or family, maybe a combination of both, siblings who lived in the same city, all of them wore matching Eagles Santa hats and Eagles onesie pajamas. I couldn’t even pretend to think There but for the grace of God go I. I would never go there. I never even got close to there. At one point in my life, I could look at someone I disagreed with and think Couldn’t be me. But now it was like Yeah. It couldn’t. It won’t be you, Dude. It’s not. Good eye.

2:15pm

Did not find anywhere to eat on the walk from Rittenhouse Park to 5th and South. Stopped at Majdal Bakery for something easy to snack on, though I mostly wanted to just finish shopping and get popcorn at the movie theater later. I felt bored about the concept of food. Nothing sounded good or satiating. Probably because of the Mucinex and Pseudoephedrine coursing through my veins. The story I wrote was changing from within. What could the story have been if I had stopped at South Gate on Lombard. What could the story have been if I stopped at Ishkabibbles on South. What could the story have been if I went to Fat Tuesday and got the same drink I had from the last day I drank alcohol back on August 17th. What if I drank a 190ﹾ Octane again at Fat Tuesday. What would that story be like.

I didn’t do that, though. Instead I ate a labneh za’atar safeha and a matbucha safeha, which had eggplant and caramelized onions on it. I drank a pomegranate flavored kombucha. I liked the safehas. They were fine. I ate only half of each. I didn’t have much of an appetite so maybe it is unfair to judge based on my mood at that time. Check out Majdal Bakery.

2:30pm

Stopped by Walter Pine. Bought a gift for a special someone. I’ll never tell who. 

3:00pm

Stopped at New Wave Café Bar and Restaurant for possibly a meal. I was still not hungry but felt I should try to eat. Ordered an Athletic Brewing Nonalcoholic IPA. Looked at the menu. I didn’t want anything on the menu. I felt like a dickhead for being uninterested in all the food in Philadelphia. No one in Philadelphia, restaurant wise, was scratching my hunger itch. The wings and tater tots and cheese sauce and haddock bake at New Wave Café Bar and Restaurant were probably delicious. I’m sure they were so tasty and beautiful and nourishing. But I did not want to eat them. I imagined the terror I would be in if I did eat the tater tots covered in cheese sauce. Lord, salvation now. I did not want that terror.

I checked the movie times while I sipped my sipper. I wanted to watch Queer. I had never seen any of Luca Guadagnino’s movies except for maybe 25 minutes of Challengers. I had not avoided his movies for any reason but they did not come up organically in my free time leisure plans in the past. I had in the past been a very big fan of William S. Burroughs. The book I read that made me want to be a writer was Naked Lunch. I felt like I was somewhere else while reading it, at age 15, like my brain was both breaking and finally performing in a way it had never been asked to perform. At that same time, I read a lot of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. I read writers adjacent to the Beat Generation. Hunter S. Thompson. Tom Wolfe. Amiri Baraka. I thought that drugs and literature was something that had to be related. Literature was mind-expanding because drugs were mind-expanding. Getting into Alt-Lit and internet writing a few years later was an easy transition. Mostly I changed my mind about drugs and writing and drug writing. I thought it was whatever. I didn’t want to do drugs anymore. I didn’t want to drink anymore. I just wanted to write stuff that connected me to other people.

But, this movie, Queer. Hell. Two birds one stone. I could see a Luca Guadagnino movie and check back in on my old friend William Burroughs.

I closed my tab at the New Wave Café Bar and Restaurant and told the bartender I was not hungry.

She asked Was it the holiday music.

No.

This is great.

No. I’m going to see a movie.

What movie.

Queer. At the Bourse.

My friend saw it.

Did he like it.

Well if you don’t like Burroughs you won’t like it.

Oh.

Then. I’ll love it.

Good.

Yeah.

I’m a big fan of heroin and Morrocco.

3:45pm

A ticket to Queer staring Daniel Craig as Queer. A small popcorn and a box of Buncha Crunch and a medium Pepsi.

Fuck. The movie didn’t take place in Morrocco. It took place in Mexico City. The bartender was going to think I was stupid as fuck. She was going to hate me. And on Christmas Eve. Fuck. 

Overall. Fine movie. I kept thinking Why now. There wasn’t much difference, I thought, between Queer and Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. Like culturally. Or even filmically. Like, was there a new thing to say about William S. Burroughs. Did something new need to be said about him.

I thought Pastiche is back. A movie can have a gay love story without unspeakable violence and tragedy. No one gets Laramie’d. A movie can have drugs, and even addiction, without moralizing. I still felt bad for Lee when he got his heart broken. Even though he was a disgusting junky. I felt, leaving the theater, maybe I should reread Naked Lunch. It had been years. I had recently reread On the Road and Big Sur by Kerouac. I was rereading Hemingway. What was the difference. Maybe getting back to my inspirational roots would help me intuit more during my own creative acts. Maybe my brain would start working again and I would no longer even have to consider if something was didactic or not didactic. Was Queer didactic. No, I didn’t think so. Was popcorn didactic. It taught me that a light buttery snack can be oh so very tasty. So. Yes. But was that evil. Absolutely.

A meal teaches the eater that a fullness exists and on the plate.

7:14pm

Stopped at a.bar and ordered a Read the Room mocktail. Also ordered the Smoked White Fish Rillette but they were out. I ordered Tidewater Oysters instead. They weren’t amazing but I had been complaining all day. What was wrong with me. The grilled lemon juice came out brown and the mignonette was too chunky. Someone put me out of my misery I thought.

8:46pm

Walked to South Street Market for possible groceries. I wanted to make something substantial before I slept. The market closed at 7pm for the holidays.

8:51pm

Back at the apartment I found ingredients to make a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato. I sliced the bread and the cheese and the tomato. I salted the tomato while I melted butter in the pan. I listened to “Little Sable Point Lighthouse” again.

That’s how Elyse imagined him.

He was never seen again.

At the end of the song Owen sings Elyse squinted at the scene.

She remembered from a dream.

I listened to the song again.

9:02pm

Tweeted about listening to “Little Sable Point Lighthouse.” Kyle Kushbom responded Merry Christmas. I told Kyle Merry Christmas.

9:05pm

I ate the grilled cheese sandwich while watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I was in awe of the way the show handled (and didn’t handle) social and class-based problems. Like it was so funny that the titular Maisel dated a guy who was both an art collector and a surgeon. Just absurdly rich. Like even the contemporary character of an art collector is someone who doesn’t understand beauty or creativity. They just understand property. Capital. Investments. A painting is just a more expensive wall.  A painting is just forced reverence in the hallway to your bedroom. A painting is just [however much it costs] down payment toward not needing a personality.

I guess that’s a noble decision Maisel made. Being like. He’s too normie. And also. I must make the crowd laugh.

I read the chapbook Poetry is Not a Project by Dorothea Lasky (shoutout Kevin Costello for the suggestion) not long ago and one thing she says is Poets want to be visual artists. Because that is where the money is. Stand-up comedy is an art as well. I’ll say it. But The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel doesn’t want to alienate its audience too much. The creators still want to scoff at fine art and folk music and spoken word because the viewer is also afraid of those artforms. Stand-up comedy, to Mrs. Maisel, is athleticism. Ultimately, it’s entertainment. Which means it meets the audience closer to where they are. It drives to the audience’s house to pick them up. Even the parts of stand-up that could be shown as difficult/challenging art in the show, Lenny Bruce, who sounds like Amiri Baraka or Allen Ginsberg, who free associates jazz-like through ideas, is described as (one of the bests) but Mrs. Maisel’s act is surprisingly contemporary. She is described as equally great contemporaneously in the show to Bruce or Dangerfield or The Smother’s Brothers but the writers don’t have to come up with a historical act. The viewer doesn’t have to learn about context and why something funny in 1960whenever might sound like poetry to our ears on Christmas Eve 2024.

Mrs. Maisel’s anachronistic act is proof of her talent… which I don’t know… I guess that’s a good metaphor in the TV medium. Like in the reality of the show, Mrs. Maisel is the first female comic to say slurs on stage while flushing a toilet. Sure, that was huge back then, but a little boring to you and me. The lowly viewers. To us that’s a Tuesday night. That’s just Christmas Eve. We need to be shown almost a dream-like appropriation of Mrs. Maisel’s talent. It’s the same reason the credit music is always also anachronistic. The B-52’s B-sides hit so much harder than some doowop song called “Love Me Sweetly My Handkerchief Queen.” Or whatever they listened to back then.

Maybe the show is good. Maybe I should eat more.

9:40pm

I looked at pictures on my phone of the day I found Trout. December 9, 2023. He was so small and sleepy. Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I didn’t find him. If I didn’t live on that street. If I wasn’t walking home that night. It was a sadness I couldn’t put into words. Worse even than how I felt listening to “Little Sable Point Lighthouse” by Advance Base.

11:30pm or Almost Midnight

At some point my mom texted to ask how long it had been since I stopped drinking. I found the picture of the Fat Tuesday sign. The picture I took when I met Garrett for drinks. Drank a 190 ﹾ Octane frozen drink. Then PBRs and whiskey sours at Tattooed Moms. Then shots of Rumple Minze and Jägermeister at The Dive. Then blacked out and rode my bike home. I found the picture of the sign I walked past earlier while thinking What if I change today’s trajectory completely.

I took the picture on August 16, 2024. I used a search engine to find the number of days I had been sober. 132. My mom asked Are you counting.

Not really I just know the day.

What day.

August 17th I said.

Is there a reason you chose that day.

No. Just a bad day.

Why do you ask.

Oh. It’s funny she said.

That’s the day your dad died.

August 17, 1995.