Archive • Ordinary Corner • Buttondown

Portrait of us in our downtime, borrowed from Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo. Things we imagine, not yet photographed: a dog leaping over a puddle Asian grandma...

As Guildenstern says: "We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell...

Imagining spring. The house with the flowers (from Day 3 of our project) have cleaned up their front yard. New plants are appearing outside my window, but...

🌡️ 03.28.21

Room-bound, again. Unfamiliar surroundings, familiar sunset. I love how the lamp, in its reflection, is pretending to be outside. Guilt is tricky. This past...

A pit of doubt, sweaty pits, sweaty utility pole. I've been seeing more and more reminders lately, stickers posted up on billboards and company slogans...

It's easy to fall into the pit of doubt; comfortable, even, given the state of the world. Sometimes I mistake worry for rationality, as if it would grant me...

Naming feelings as they come up. Letting them take up space instead of judging them. I've been finding some comfort in Rilke recently. I remember people...

I have always loved anecdotes about William Blake, born in a small flat above his father’s hosiery shop, this strange little boy who glimpsed angels in...

👼🏻 03.23.21

Spirituality is a list on my Notes app. Joan of Arc having visions of Archangel Michael at 13 y.o. The "be not afraid" angel meme A healing circle on Zoom...

Stretching, serpentine. Some nights, I fall asleep while learning how to tie different types of knots with a piece of shoelace—motions to keep the hands from...

Lots of sun today. Thinking about this fluffy insulation (installation) I saw in an empty storefront and how it's preparing for the incoming warmth....

First day of spring and the branches are already plump with nesting birds and buds. On a late afternoon jog, I passed someone who half-screamed to the river,...

Fear leads me to distraction, evasion, forgetfulness. I've been trying to look more closely at the rituals of repetition that I've let in from a place of...

I dream more during the daytime. Moments of catching myself lingering at the kettle, or staring at the lip of a dusty windowsill. Perhaps it's more...

You will carry your dreams with a belly full of porridge and scallion pancake, some sleepiness, and hopefully, a little more space to collect ceiling...

🛏️ 03.16.21

Ceiling thoughts, which often end up as fodder for dreams: secondhand joy, genesis narratives, paraphernalia, angels that boogie, remembering a face you've...

Blouses and sweaters hugging the hangers and shadows lounging on the wall. I love the process of presenting and unpresenting. The times that require me to...

Slices of pie (π) in a slice of light. My fondest scent memories are often of baked goods: sugar cookies, sourdough, buttered pie crusts. The tricky thing...

Springtime is all for precarious still lifes of the morning, full of fresh, wet fruit. I think my mouth waters more at the literal motions and movements,...

Does your mouth ever water when looking at still life paintings? Sometimes when I'm in front of them—Cézanne's apples, or Vollon's mound of butter—even...

I like to think that magic is found when I'm emphatically enjoying life. The corners and folds of my own small viewpoint are torn open to hold a little more,...

〰️ 03.10.21

Magic! Swimming down the stream, spread across a field, buried in a nook—where do you find it? I came across this parking structure with a wiggle of light in...

🗝️ 03.09.21

On a sunny walk, I followed a group of friends who were all wearing Doc Martens. They walked into a house and I turned and walked into a yard of a church....

◻️ 03.08.21

Their names have escaped, but I remember their shapes and how they felt: the one with dragonflies. The one in which, supposedly, someone had drowned. The one...

Magic slinking down the stream. Now, to cast my net. Do you remember the names of every body of water you've been in? I can only recall the names of a...

Mitski: "You learn your craft as much as you can so that when the magic comes swimming down the stream you have the net to catch it." Thinking about...

I went to a cute yarn store in the East Village today to start some knitting projects. The yarn looked like sticky candy on a taffy puller. I've been...

I remember tracing tablecloth patterns at holiday parties, hands sticky from melted ice cream—a type of sweetness that felt indulgent and playful, the type...

More stretching out of the confines. Leaky trashbins right next to an eager vine. Even sweetness can't be contained from the rest of the world. — y

What if the string belonged to an absurdly long window shade cord, wrapped around the building because it wanted to feel beyond the confines of its room?...

This red brick building around the corner sits side by side with a pink house that clearly gets more attention between the two. Still, the roof of this one...