June in Review

Parts dying, parts blooming

Early Hour, Unmade Bed (2006) by Sally Strand

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status: setting summer resolutions

EBIE: i will start by confessing that june was confusing and i haven’t written a word i really loved in months. in my first iteration of this status, i tried writing about my first memory of a good summer, the summer of 2010 when my family took a trip to a beach and i learned how to ride a bike before sunset. i wrote about realizing that the secret to riding a bike is to be brave and let go, look up and not fixate so much on your hands, trust that your bike will take you where you pedal. but is that too cheesy? do you understand it’s a metaphor for love?

i also wrote about my family eating at a pizza place by the ocean at nightfall, the sound of my dad joking with the chef. i wrote about my mom bargaining for a dress, setting a price and walking away. i wrote about holding her hand as we walked away.

in truth, the summer of 2010 was enveloped in sweetness and i ultimately tried to connect it to my resolutions for this summer -“here’s to more brat-themed spin classes, shopping with mom, exploring places with dad, tanning by friends’ rooftop pools…” but writing this felt simplified, a watered down comparison of joy.

in another iteration, i discussed the song hotel june by chelsea cutler. it goes like i think about you when we would get away / go up to hotel june and forget for the day. june is escapism, the beginning and end of wishful thinking. of course, i remember that time we went on a hike and raced towards the edge of a cliff, the kind you warn kids about. when we realized it wasn’t a cliff, just a steep hill of rocks and small bushes, we started laughing. it’s funny because we couldn’t fall even if we wanted to. / laugh that malibu is everything we’re not.

anyway, here’s to more clarity, sunshine, and writing in july!

status: with people

KAI-LIN: in june, i celebrated my anniversary with ava (two dinners and a wheel-throwing pottery class), got my first two tattoos, rekindled more than a few old friendships while i was back in texas, signed a studio lease in lower haight—coincidentally, the first neighborhood i visited where i truly fell in love with san francisco—and brought back home a suitcase full of my mother’s long italian linen skirts and silk dresses from the 90s, a gesture of vulnerability, generosity, and connection from her that i wasn’t sure was possible anymore. i’ve had a marvelous summer so far, full of shimmery, serendipitous moments that only reveal themselves to me in retrospect when i sit down to write.

getting tattooed was a big deal to me, on account of the historically complicated relationship i’ve had with body modification. it took me eighteen years to work up the nerve to just pierce my ears—and even as i was waiting outside the parlor with ava earlier this month, my heart practically lunging out of my chest, i couldn’t hold back a wash of relief when my artist texted me that she’d mixed up my appointment date with somebody else and we would need to reschedule. this is a sign, i thought to myself. i’ll accept the security deposit she’s offering to return to me and pretend this never happened.

for somebody who’s thrown her body around carelessly all her life—sunspots, STDs, permanent marks from scraped knees and cat scratches, pitted acne scars on my back—i was surprisingly prudish about this. would i look less intelligent? would i seem crass and sexual, more than i already do? what if i changed my mind? plenty of times i’d looked back on a younger, more naive conviction, and shaken my head in disbelief. nothing i stood for at sixteen held true now, at twenty-three. at thirty, would i be shaking my head in disbelief again?

in some ways, i’m the most consistent person i know. i’ve loved the same thing, writing, for literally twenty years. the other day, while playfully commenting on the similar dynamics we share with our respective partners, rishi laughed at me, saying, ‘you are such a petty bitch. playground politicking has never left you.’ and that’s true! i was petty when i wept thunderously to a teacher within earshot of a girl who i felt had wronged me, and i’m petty now, sulking in my room after a bad hang, going on about ‘the principle of the thing!’ i’m braggadocious, a people-pleaser who wishes she were a crowd-pleaser, terrified to make the first move yet always longing to be cool, too impatient to ever convincingly play coy, too sensitive to ever take the heat and laugh it off.

but if i had to cite one manner in which i have, in fact, meaningfully changed, it’s that i’m not afraid to be touched by people anymore. i used to love summertime for the escape it could offer me: when june came around and school let out, i routinely shut myself out from the world. while the temperature in suburban dallas cranked up into inevitable triple digits, i read thirty library books cover-to-cover inside my house with the curtains drawn. before bed, i closed my eyes and pretended i was somewhere else, hoping that if i laid enough vivid detail into my visions, i’d wake up the next day actually being there: in a big faceless city where beauty was essential and connection optional, or an exotic fantasy land where grandiose things drowned out the banal, frightening sounds of daily life. growing up, there was an ideal of life that i fenced off and kept separated from my real life, which i considered a failure and disappointment. i wrote that blurry, ambiguous ideal into stories, tried disappearing into them.

but as i’ve discovered, there can be no good writing without real pain, real love, and real connection. being touched by people is a frightening thing—you may make poor decisions, or invite a world of sorrow into your life for months and years after. when you speak, you risk being wrong. when you love, you risk being humiliated. you are also, in a sense, giving up control over what becomes of you and your reputation. i’ve never understood people who long for company for this very reason—it is much, much safer to be alone. yet, in these last five years, i’ve learned to not only occupy the position of a historian bearing witness to life as it unfolds, but to begin to participate in and engage with it, too: to actually be one of those beautiful bodies dancing in the center of the room, submitting herself before the motions of culture, the incomparable joys and dangers of craving community. and now i see the beauty in company, too.

now, come the summertime, i am ravenous for fun. yes, everything really is romantic: bad tattoos on leather-tanned skin / jesus christ on a plastic sign / fall in love again and again / winding roads, doing manual drive. i light bonfires on ocean beach with my new friends, i worship stylishness like a simpleton. i freely explain to people what my tattoos mean, as long as they ask in a nice tone; i am not greedy with my inner world any longer. i admit to shameful things. i am honest with my friends. most of all, i have found that taking myself less seriously and down the pedestal—my private worlds, my deep-down feelings, my solitary intensities and selfishnesses—and replacing it with other people, has liberated me from so much self-consciousness and regret.

‘you never really regret anything you do, after a long enough time has passed,’ my mother said to me over the phone. ‘it’s what you don’t do, especially if you really wanted to in that moment, that haunts you.’

cotton sheets, new leaves, rain puddles, blue ceramic glaze, untrimmed bouquets, mud stains, great gusts of wind, puffy skirts and boots, a window left ajar through the night.

EB: what i’ve read since we last talked, with ratings-

• tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin: 2/5, it had a strong start as a coming-of-age love story but ultimately fell short due to a sensationalized, meandering plot, cringey dialogue, and underdeveloped characters.

• just kids by patti smith: 5/5, unforgettable! i’d recommend it if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be a sexy, glamorous, starving artist in 1970s new york. there’s a scene where they could only afford one ticket to the whitney — robert waits for patti to come out and says, “one day we'll go in together, and the work will be ours.” :’)

• Ava
  ’s recent post “written in the body”: 5/5 duh, my body protests when it knows something’s very off. e.g., i miss my period, get my period for two weeks straight, can’t sleep, oversleep, can’t eat… i gain weight when i’m happy and i lose it when i’m sad. it ebbs and flows with my emotions, so i’ve learned to listen to it and try to self-soothe. it’s literally helping me survive! it’s sounding an emotional alarm! btw, pilates helps. it strengthens your breathwork while working out your core.

KL: i very much enjoyed henry miller’s tropic of cancer, which has long felt like the other side of anaïs nin’s henry and june. funnily enough, henry and anaïs are like my version of patti and robert: two free-thinking lovers who embodied what it meant to live fearlessly, to step outside social tradition in search of pleasure and beauty, to be as quaint and disturbed and in pain as any other human being is, but to possess a radical vision for what sort of art could be extracted from it. i feel that the history of the human condition has been made more vibrant, sensual, and exhilarating for what they’ve contributed to it.

anaïs’ preface for tropic of cancer

some other notable/exciting/stimulating reading: issue #6 of errant journal, good omens by terry prachett and neil gaiman, the bell jar, and (currently) part 1 of the lord of the rings.

EB: dear kai-lin, we’ve passed one year since our graduation. how does it feel? do you miss college?

KL: i know, how strange! i’m sure i’ve changed so much, but relative to the velocity and intensity with which college plunges you into the future, the rate of metamorphosis now feels non-noteworthy, disorientingly stagnant, spiritually unsatisfying. but i think it’s important not to conflate speed with progress. trees look the same day after day, month after month—yet inside they are perpetually churning and changing, parts dying, parts blooming. there’s also an overwhelming sense of ownership over your life that simultaneously excites and paralyzes. you’re never 100% sure what to do with your time, what opinions to rattle off to strangers at house parties and in lyfts, where to go next to feel exquisite and free, who to hang out with; somebody who can make you feel how your old friends did, you hope, but that never really happens. my final verdict is, i don’t miss being a college student, but i do miss how sure i used to feel, how i was just a teensy bit arrogant. there was a picture of life in my mind that hadn’t been contested yet. all that smoking, drinking, cursing, crying—but i was so innocent!

KL: dear ebie, help!!! everybody has a five-year plan, and i just have a summer pinterest board. what’s your plan? do you have one?

EB: i love planners, as you know, but i’ve never been much of a planner. i often write out everything i want to do and throw it all away the next day. i book my flights never more than a month in advance. i steal my friends’ itineraries and hope for the best. i, too, have a graveyard of pinterest boards that I’ve curated before a new season or big move, vibes above all. when i think of the next five years, though, i like the idea of surrounding myself with people i love, seeing my family on weekends, being in creative and diverse spaces, pushing myself intellectually. im not sure exactly how ill get there, but i am applying to law school which i guess helps with structure, intellect, monetary needs. i’m also trying to move to a city that’s more than 3% asian. the details will sort themselves out, hopefully. and whenever i feel lost or uncertain, i often think back to zora neale hudson’s quote, “there are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

EB: freshly squeezed juice at the dupont farmer’s market, yuyan’s picks on lewkin (it’s giving brandy melville x kpop), everlane’s organic cotton tee (rn it’s buy 2 get 1 free, across any t-shirt style! :)

KL: fresh sends for your girlfriend, season 3 of hacks, the marjolein delhaas journal 365, vintage loafers bargained off depop to wear to work, lip oils (ami colé for high shine and staying power, clarins for moisture and a subtle tint), and dickies cargo pants.

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Thanks for reading! Part collaborative writing experiment and part guilty-pleasure digital archive, My Brilliant Friend delivers thoughtful weekly dialogues on love, friendship, and culture to your inbox. You can subscribe below to receive new letters from us directly or visit us at mybrilliantfriend.substack.com.

My Brilliant Friend is co-written by Ebie Bao and Kai-Lin Wei.