hands/bed/nightstand
cowgirls, new yorkers, where i've been, + where i'm going
hi! don’t call this a comeback. i’m not really sure what this platform is to me anymore. i first started it as a place where my writing could live without me waiting on anyone else, and that’s still true, to some extent. i think it’s become more of a travelogue than anything, and travelogue you will get. i’ve got more life-shattering, meaty prose simmering on the stove right now (more on that in a sec!), but come, come, sit, much to discuss.
at the end of last year i was in and out of the hospital for over two months dealing with a kidney stone. like most major shakeups, it cleaved my life into a distinct Before and After. During, i kept churning on my novel. (no, not the paris one, this one is better.) it was the only thing tethering me to any normal feeling. maybe a darker, more capitalistic part of me wanted to feel like i was still capable of accomplishing during a time where most days looked like lying on the couch atop a heating pad in the fetal position, eating saltines and drinking ginger ale, trying not to throw all of it right back up. it was both a portal and a resting place. in bed propped up against fifty pillows typing away from my narrator odessa’s perspective, i got to embody her - she is a character who is learning to be in her body, and i take great pleasure in guiding her neurotic aquarius ass through it - and i got to remind myself that my body would not fail forever and my brain was still the lovely, imaginatively expansive place it’s always been.
i don’t want to put much else about the novel in writing yet, but if we cross paths at dinner or the water cooler, i’ll talk your ear off about it. just know it’s set in the kooky, mystic, gorgeous desert town of marfa, texas.
after i made it out of the worst of the After - taking most calls horizontally, EMDR, emptying bottles of zofran carried in every purse, phantom pain flares - i wanted to seduce my tired body, to shake off the heavy cloud of our bed-death. in march i flew to el paso, rented a sensible hybrid car, and entered a portal to marfa, where i would be honeymooning my restless joints and channeling my protagonist.
west texas is too cool. she’s gone to ayahuasca retreats, she buys everyone their first tarot deck. she rides a horse without a drop of irony greasing that saddle. i’m a gulf coast city slicker. concrete and city-convenience and drive-thru daiquiris. i need all my little specific products and my silk pillowcase and my african exfoliating net. i need, full stop. but i was pleasantly reminded that marfa wasn’t too cool to need me, and i had needs that marfa could fulfill. perfect lighting, and a long cat-nap in a patch of sun. art. donald judd’s meticulously organized 13,000-book library. a sandwich from bordo i have thought about every day since. being able to walk to the edge of town in ten minutes. being able to go on a free-wheeling detour ambling home in the dark, drunk off two hibiscus gin and tonics, under the stars.
(you may think: the horror! a woman walking alone at night! for one, it is a town of maybe 1300 permanent residents. two, while i was lost i stumbled across an altar of la virgen de guadalupe and was like, werk, i’m fine, i’m a confirmed catholic and a child of gorgeous genderfree God. never mind my transgressions. i did get back to my juddian concrete casita safely, by the way, and lived to tell the tale. gracias, mother mary.)
i kept meeting people who lived between marfa and somewhere else, mostly new york. shuttling between need and denial. i slept ten hours every night i was there. i rode a horse named Bird, and of course i listened to “a horse with no name” and the new harry styles album over and over. i sat at the bougie coffee shop in town for two hours and journaled about anything and everything but the novel - my crush, work, my body, geopolitical situations du jour - and began to poke at the Before.
october 19, 2025 - my first hospital visit was october 24 - i wrote in my journal: “new york city, that elusive mirage, the emerald city. i’ve always wanted it a little bit and was afraid to say it. afraid that it might chew me up and spit me back out. took well-meaning it’s not practical and so-and-so is 50 and still lives with roommates and did you hear they attacked another young woman on the subway too literally. trying to banish the thought that if i talk about something to too many people it won’t come true or it will somehow diminish the thought. but why not talk about it? why stay curled in on myself?”
okay DRAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!! but this is all to say i went to new york almost exactly a month after my desert sojourn, and reveled in the contrast, and said aloud that i might like to move to several friends who said, okay so how do we get you here and new york loves you back calista and please please please do. every day i shared meals and tea and ice cream with at least one beloved queer writer in my life and walked through the streets linking pinkies with bryn, observing the gorgeous array of faces, admiring chic old women, spending too much money on miffy merch at the MoMA store.
in marfa, i was invigorated, energized, excited by the quiet. on the opposite coast, the thing i fell in love with about new york was how zen and centered i felt in the chaos.
“is it crazy?” my mom asked on the phone, after i checked into my hotel room.
“what do you mean? i feel safe,” i answered, shower heating up in the background.
“no, like, is it just totally chaotic? people everywhere?”
“uh, yeah, but i love it. it feels good. no different than mexico city or london.”
(i was already fashionably late for dinner plans in chinatown, so i suppose i fit right in.)
bryn named this spiritual calm in me, too. (not long after, we had to reprieve ourselves from a long, overstimulating day at the met by putting our feet up on the wall and listening to healing frequencies on youtube, but that’s neither here nor there.) i think the idea of big, sprawling metropolises (metropolii?) is that they disconnect one from the body, but i’ve never felt more grounded. here are my hands, holding a fistful of books. here are my legs, walking me through crown heights, the west village, central park. here is my hair, getting stuck in my lip gloss in the chilly remnants of a long winter on the patio at the lesbian bar. i was very sad to leave. i will be back, at some point, in some permanent sense. it makes me want to throw up putting that in writing on a public forum but i will! (i’ll also literally be back in september for harry styles at MSG. DRAMA!!!)
in the After, i am learning not to take my body for granted. i am amazed at all the small things i can do. when i can lean further into a stretch, or hold my newborn nephew in the crook of my elbow, or really squeeze someone in a hug. and be squeezed back! and be touched back! other people’s bodies amaze me even more now, too. i sent these texts to catie and allison (good salt ) the other day:
i think i accidentally named the rhythm of my life lately: hands/bed/nightstand. holding me and my books and my gargantuan needs. from west to east. from the ER to my pink toile sheets to soft whites in marfa, and crisp whites in new york.
i hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and your own hands/beds/nightstands. maybe i’ll be back once the novel is done? no promises.
little loves from the last few months:
famesick by lena dunham… duh. the Sick Baddie manifesto that kickstarted this post
tabis (i am not on a margiela budget, got these)
the ethereal visions tarot deck, luna edition
CHOPPIN: the playlist i made specifically for chopping veggies that i ended up just listening to in my every day life bc it slaps
really specific sweet treats including but not limited to 💞mini💞 stroopwafels (i found them at tjoes), taiyaki, nutella with pretzel crisps, and the brown butter amaro cookies from tiny champions in eado
the community i feel from everyone in houston hating on the “quick!!!! let’s fix the roads 30 days from the world cup!!!” construction together <3
hitting 50K words in my novel
palo santo
long-winded dinners
talking to the trees about my silly problems (they know things! they deliver messages for me! just call me calorax, i speak for the trees!)
i think we both know i’m a city girl. cannot wait to add you to my list of friends to visit in nyc xoxo
Cannot wait for the Marfa book!!!!!!!!!!!!