Sarah Kellogg

My day was a Saturday and thank goodness because otherwise you would have had to read about fluorescent office lights and housing and the way this city tries to take care of people but how it fails, or doesn’t try hard enough, or can’t succeed because it is the poorest big city in the country, after all.

But lucky for us both, my day in Philly was a Saturday that started with an unusual (for me) 11 am movie… and not just any movie, the original 1999 MATRIX! What a classic! The camera angles, the outfits, the soundtrack! And two of my friends had never even seen it! Can you imagine? Getting surprised by the twists for the very first time?

Walking out of the Film Society theater afterwards, into the brightly lit, trashy at times, highrise, chaos of Center City Chesnut Ave was jarring to say the least. Is it all just a simulation? Did the architects of this city choose to include suffering because they knew the minds of the workers wouldn’t accept a utopia?

Sometimes, the best you can do is enjoy a sandwich. So we left behind our existential quandaries and waited in line for lunch. My sandwich was a BBLT ringing in at a whopping $22, but since the second B stood for BURRATA, it was worth it. And damn did I enjoy it, also the topo chico, also the cold brew, also the vanilla limeade. Look, I’m a bisexual, ok?

I skipped Matrix 2 and 3 and had my medium distance relationship low-commitment long term polyamorous boyfriend summarize them for me. We planned to see the Matrix 4 RESURRECTION in the evening and it was going to be a lovely date night that would make up for the time he wanted to go see it in the theater and I said no because I didn’t think it would be lovely to watch the Matrix 4 RESURRECTION. But that was then, this was now, why not go see the Matrix 4? A redemption for resurrection!

And in between? There was time for a fruitless drive to the Fairmount Park SWIMMING POOL!

I have yet to go to a Philadelphia public swimming pool. I love public pools in general, but when I first moved here I overheard some kids talking about how they always pee in the pool and I just haven’t gotten over it. So Saturday, on a whim, my friend picked me up to finally challenge my fear. Unfortunately, the pool was closed due to a POWER OUTAGE! DRAT!

We rebounded and went to that pop up beer garden on the Schuylkill River trail and drank a beer out of a plastic cup in the shade and had a nice conversation about AI and urban planning.

When I got home, I took a shower. I live with 3 sweet and slightly unhinged girlies and the combined mass of our boobs would create a tit amalgamate so big it would cover an entire coffee table. Our bathroom is pink and the tub is blue. When I was done showering, I took a beat and hung out with our combined squishmallows, cats, and the giant, ancient, entirely too loud and potentially moldy window a/c unit in our living room.

I think a lot about the window units… I’m from the south where central air is a given. I’ve also done a lot of work around energy and housing and energy efficiency and climate and justice and environmental justice specifically, so of course it’s easy for me to see the window a/c units as a horrifying symptom of a lack of investment in infrastructure that disproportionately affects low income Black and Brown people in a way that is a cycle where the air pollution gets worse and the heat gets worse and the electric bill gets more expensive and the heat gets worse and the people get sicker and damnit WE NEED TO PLANT MORE TREES.

There are not enough trees in the Matrix. I don’t think they were too worried about heat waves in 1999. But in all seriousness, blocks with tree cover are up to 30 degrees cooler in the summer than blocks without tree cover. There’s less flooding and asthma too. Sometimes, the best you can do is join the Philly Tree Tenders.

7 pm came around and me and the boyfriend (who low-key looks like Keanu Reeves, for real) headed back to center city for our DATE NIGHT. Our usual get drunk on sake spot was surprisingly closed, so we pivoted to an Indian place near the theater that was DELICIOUS. I truly am so lucky to eat so much good food all the time. Honestly, I can understand why that guy in the Matrix missed his steaks so much, even if they were just a simulation.

Ok, so the Matrix 4. It was a lot better than I was expecting. I really enjoyed the video game plot and that half of the Sense 8 cast was in it and also that Neo and Trinity got a second chance. Where the Matrix 1 got 5 out of 5 stars, I give the Matrix 4 3.75 stars which is pretty good all things considered.

The day concluded with much agreement from everyone involved that it had been a particularly fun day in Philadelphia. And while my bedroom window ac hummed its sweet coldness into my room, I drifted into a dream of cities and waking up, and I snuggled in closer to my cats.

Skellogg is a nonprofit cog by day and a ceramic artist by night. She wants everyone to practice imagining utopia more often. You can check out her sculptures and cauldron creatures @threemoonclayworks