Idiots have more fun

and make their friends soup

I need to get soup out of mink. Debating whether I should do it myself or take it to the laundromat, but I have a bad habit of letting stains sink in while being indecisive.

I got an email from my friend

Sarah Chait

the other day, telling me about an event in her life. I email the people I’m closest to. I only text to make plans. And then I use our chat when I want to say something just to soundboard it or get it off my mind.

So Sarah emailed me and I was thinking about what my Grandma said about the Presbyterian church, on our podcast. How they used to be there for each other. They brought food and checked in on one another and gathered together regularly, you know? And I’ve been thinking about how love isn’t something you can just have and eat it, you have to give it back too, like the potlucks her church would have where I had my first cup of coffee around eight.

So I called Sarah and left a voicemail saying I would come over and make her dinner tomorrow, if she’d let me. This morning, I was rushing to meet my best friend

seanzi3

who brought soup, which made me laugh because he knew I’d be out all day and he brought soup anyway. And then I realized that I could bring the soup to Sarah’s and Sean not only offered another soup, but gave me a whole sleeve of saltines, too.

“The economy of friendship” I say, when we dine and travel together. I’m decidedly not stingy, especially with those I love. Like with time. I’m an overscheduler and psychotic about my weekday routines, but when your friend needs you you drop everything and go to their apartment for dinner and trust that you can make something or find something, and maybe, just maybe, your best friend will bring you soup that you can bring to another friend.

Sean, if you’re reading this, the soup was delicious. I’ve been telling everyone about Sean’s soup, which he somehow always delivers to me in a Hooter’s takeout bag, even though there isn’t even a Hooter’s in Manhattan.

And I was really tired today. I had a long day. It was cold and I’d gotten my hopes up one too many times and I’d forgotten the intention I set this morning. Surrender and release. Surrender and release. If you read it closely, in the right light, after a day where you’d maybe gotten your hopes up one too many times, and maybe you’d forgotten that you’d promised yourself that you would stop entertaining the thought(s) of giving up, then you’d see that the Bible has a lot of sections that say “you can’t know it will all work out because then what would be the whole point of the play.”

And so you just have to keep going. And I’d forgotten a few times today. Like when the man on my way to work asked me for a coffee and I realized we were both so cold, but I could take shelter and he couldn’t, or when the old man who gives me all of my dating advice told me maybe I wasn’t right about this one like that last one and the one before, or when a devastating fling who reaches out after 5 months of instagram reel DMs and furtive messages with miscellaneous emojis says that he’s “glad you’re well” because you’d given him the impression that you were well (add to this collaborative playlist “For when a devastating fling reaches out after five months”).

I’d forgotten to forget my lines and the scenes were not going. And I got really bummed out around 3 pm like I always do and by 6 I wanted to chew my own mouth up from the inside out to let more life in there, to scream, to cry, to tell my Mother I loved her without looking away. And I went to the train and got on the train to bring Sarah Sean’s soup, after dropping off this book at a place where I’d borrowed it 4 hours earlier.

And I got to Sarah’s—a beautiful apartment with vintage kettles and dishware and a vinyl sound system even better than the gorgeous Moroccan man’s who used his to lure me into his apartment last summer. And Sarah didn’t say that she liked that I ate slowly or that my laugh was sexual and I didn’t have to worry about whether or not she’d call me back after I let my guard down.

And I heated up Sean’s soup, insisting that she eat because that’s what friends do. And she listed out some gorgeous teas and made me one. And as the soup simmered she read me this list that she’s going to read at a salon I am going to host soon on the Upper West Side and the list was so beautiful and her Woo record played in the background and I started crying into her teacup because Sarah makes me remember that there are people in the world, like me, who aren’t good at pretending because we refuse to or never learned how, and that at 3 pm when I want to crawl inside of my own mouth and slide down my throat into my heart like I’m 5 and not afraid of big waterslides yet, that there are still artists in the world who know that the only way to move throughout the world, really, is with the honesty and naiveté of a child.

And as we ate Sean’s soup, we talked about how you can tell a business is scaling when the language becomes a little more canned and a little more dishonest, and this is a business sometimes, but it’s also one woman. And I forget that sometimes. I forget that a business can be one woman like he writes in The War of Art, which was given to me by the bartender at my favorite bar who is the reason I started going back to the library and who will only let me order a Vesper.

One of my biggest flaws and strengths is that I wake up every morning believing whole heartedly that everyone has the power to change the world. Sarah, with her comics. Sean with his soup. Me with my honestly and tears and “newsletter” that is more for my own catharsis and sanity than anything else on nights like this.

And sometimes around 3 pm when I’m almost at my worst, I get what feels like a wink from God. Like an inconvenient errand turning into an invitation from a gorgeous waitress in a little green apron to have an “event” at their restaurant on Friday morning.

If you’re around Nolita, come!

Or like a friend’s list being the slap you need to remember that life is happening all around you in everyone’s own mind all the time, or that active friendship is the purest kind of love, all choice, no obligation.

Or like a strange time in America being the perfect time to fall in love with it and the people who comprise it.

Or like starting a new podcast because one sweet Hot Literati had some questions about Princeton (and an interview tomorrow!) and you figure it would benefit anyone who has the same questions.

Life is trying things and making mistakes. Art is the mistake part that gets refined a bit. I’m trying to treat the blog blog as more of a space for refined work. Pieces we spend a long time with, editing, trying to make them good. But this is an inbox. This is a rumination at the end of the day, when I’ve figured out how to rejoice in something.

People will tell you that you have to settle for a life that makes sense over and over and over. One of resignation and calculation and conformity. I’m hear to try, as a living testament and a walking testimony to tell you that you don’t have to settle. That you can wake up and fall in love with each day over and over and over. That you can set ridiculous goals and make them realistic.

My most recent one is that I want to walk in NYFW because a woman at Torrisi told me she thought I was a model, and when I did go to fashion week last time I was 19 and gawky and hadn’t learned how to love myself in the active way yet. I’m ready. If anyone has tips/leads/etc I want to document the entire thing, for posterity and accountability if not for entertainment.

Life is about dreaming. About honesty and kindness and friendship and vulnerability and faith and belief.

“What matters most is kindness, honesty, and truth, not cleverness or calculation. But the world values those things more. And so, they call me an idiot.” - dostoevsky

Living life like that can hurt, sometimes. But it’s nothing you can’t handle. It’s the soup on a mink coat at the end of the day. Something you wince at until you realize that vintage clothes are cheap in the midwest or that you have the type of friends who bring you soup, even when you don’t ask for it.

I’m working on a profile on

Sarah Chait

of Silly Girl Life Comix. It will go on the blog first once I’ve had real time with it. Consider this a few scribbles between the lines.

xx

hailo

ps.

seanzi3

, one of your Tupperware containers is still there, but I’ll make sure it gets back to you. <3

and if anyone does know how to get soup out of mink, pls let me know …