Loren took a phone call and went into the other room, so Mariya and I ended up talking to her husband for at least half an hour. I can't think of another scenario in which I would have ended up talking to Loren's husband eye-to-eye for that long. Though, I do like him. He's funny, and he was wearing the Selena Gomez t-shirt I put on The Verge's holiday gift guide in 2016.
Last winter I went to New Mexico for eight days alone and free-cried in the mountains, six weeks off of the worst break-up of my life or of anyone's life—so I believed! So it felt, so who can argue differently! I read a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe while I was there because it seemed like the thing to do. One thing I learned was that her husband obsessively tracked her periods because he didn't want to impregnate her and ruin her career as an artist. She actually wanted to have a baby, but he said no. He slept with other people a lot, sometimes in the same home as her. Her husband died when she was, I don't know, something like 45, so she had to live most of her life without him, and she traveled widely after he was gone. That's when she did all of the cloud paintings. But then, when she was in her eighties, living in isolation in New Mexico, she was seduced by her 20-something home aid and he more or less succeeded in shutting her off from all of her friends, then stealing much of her money and many of the paintings that had been promised to public institutions. I also went to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum and literally gasped for air. Now I follow at least four Twitter accounts that do nothing except tweet screenshots of Georgia O'Keeffe paintings, and I have a cow's thigh bone tattooed on my right bicep. If I'm choosing role models for a creative life, I think I'm obviously choosing one who succeeded in changing the course of modern art while still permitting herself to be dragged down at every possible turn by boys she wanted to kiss.
I live by myself and everyone is telling me that I should be completely alone for the next three to six months. That's interesting. I notice that each of the women on Twitter saying "Don't even walk to one friend's house" has a live-in boyfriend. Nobody here is going to steal my legacy or the modest fortune of approximately $1,200 I will have left after I pay my taxes. But I'm going to continue to walk to the Crown Heights apartment I lived in for three and a half years and in which my most intimate social support still resides, because I have a key and because being tied to even these three other people is a great motivator to make choices I might not make if it were only me I was protecting.
Today in the park I said, I don't care about anything I cared about a week ago... like tech monopolies. And that's my job, to care about that. Now I'm like, "Instagram is great! Everyone post your faces for me to see!" As everyone knows, I'm seeing this boy who is tall, and it could absolutely turn out that we date for three months in utter private, like Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn, except then we break up and no one in my life ever knew him. I don't write a pop album about him. Or we could accidentally get engaged—due to The Bachelor precedent, where being in close confines for 10 weeks and experiencing high-adrenaline situations together makes you believe you're in love when you're not. It will definitely go one way or the other.
Remember when Vox Media gave everyone Vox Media-branded web cam covers as a holiday bonus? Haha.
"If I'm choosing role models for a creative life, I think I'm obviously choosing one who succeeded in changing the course of modern art while still permitting herself to be dragged down at every possible turn by boys she wanted to kiss." Is there any other way?
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