illustration by Kate Moss
self portrait in lipstick 

detail from a Kestos ad, c. 1930s

They're shooting some promos for the magazine. They've only been here for 20 minutes but the room, when I walked in, was already a disaster. There are magazines and clothes and bottles of nail polish everywhere.

You'd think it would be a chaos of chattering, but the girls are as quiet as mice. All I can hear from my office is a murmur or the creak of the wood floors, the soft clicking of a camera shutter. I'm steering well clear. I am a senior editor and fifteen years older (at least) and I think I intimidate them. Too much scrutiny, whether actual or perceived, makes for bad pictures.

Now I can hear them. They are getting comfortable in this new space. When the cat is being adorable they coo in unison. I think these girls must be the loveliest, cleverest, silliest, most promising creatures I've ever seen. I remember someone saying of 20 year olds once, that at that age even if you're not beautiful, you're beautiful. It couldn't be more true. I remember being 20, but only from the inside. It was lonelier there, much more insecure than these hipster elves make it look.

If they weren't so respectful of me, they'd have me completely fooled.

g. 

illustration by Cassandra Rhodin, Sweden

One of the reasons I eventually abandoned my last one was that I started feeling this enormous pressure to perform. Not that my little blog was ever a fuss. It certainly wasn't a regular xanga feature, nor did it have thousands of followers or hundreds of comments. But it wasn't a three sentence "what do you think" blog, either. I put a lot of myself into it and once it started getting a certain level of traffic, it became a very precious fishbowl. I miss it, though. For a few years, it was home.

I don't handle attention very well. Sometimes I think I want it and I want it and I want it, but as a soon as I get it, I flee. It's the same with commitment - expectation of any kind, really. I guess it's good I'm a writer and not a person with a real job.

But now I have to get to the office. And before that, I have to do something about my ridonkulous hair. Which is a surprise, because I would have thought it was a couldn't miss - giving myself a complicated haircut at home with the kitchen scissors and YouTube instructions.

I wonder what could have gone wrong.
g.

illustration by Cedric Rivrian
for Maison Martin Margiela

I have had it with my shitty hair. Over the last couple of months it has been good for nothing outside of short and occasionally painful French braids. Of course, it's not suited to either the braids or the aforementioned mullet (which, as far as I can tell, works best with nice hair). But if these modern times have taught me anything, it's that I should not let actual, provable, corporeal limitations dissuade me from making dubious and impulsive decisions.

So I hacked at my hair for an hour and now I have some sort of shag thing happening. It's not awesome, but at least it's other. You know what they say - a change is as good as a rest.

And a new mess is better than an old one.
Probably.
g.

illustration by Raphael Vicenzi
aka My Dead Pony

It reads like an Edward Lear poem. I am consumed with the idea of space. I scrutinize my allotment of the world, obsessed with distances, proximity and access. I feel like it ought to be fun - new apartments! New eyeglasses! But it's mostly desperation and compromise on both fronts.

The eyeglasses thing has been going on for years. At some point it became hard to see when I was tired or in the dark. One night I considered (and used) an overhead light, rather than my carefully eclectic lamps with their red and amber 25 watt bulbs. I bought a pair of utilitarian reading glasses at a book shop. I put them on in the morning as I sat down to write, feeling the overworked muscles in my eyes rally in gratitude. I didn't need them all day. Later, I bought a second pair at a drugstore. I kept saying I would make an appointment and get a real prescription. It only took me two years and 49 weeks. 

Infirmity concerns me. I understand I am getting older, but I hate the idea that I might be getting weaker. Seeing the optometrist felt like ceding territory. At a certain point, though, you have to be able to see things.

And then searching for frames, and then searching for apartments.

I have been in this place for eight years. The landlord is getting crazier (and drunker) annually. He seems to have decided I don't need heat.

They're surprisingly similar activities, these utilitarian tasks. Both are fairly straightforward, both have a profound effect on the world around me. And both are borderline scams controlled by insufferable subhumans who think they are doing me some kind of favour. You know, by taking my money. 

Apartment listings alone are enough to send me into fits. Why does "spacious" usually mean less than 300 square feet? Why does "bright" only describe basements? And between "laundry mats" and "in suites" I weep for the English language. 

So yeah, it's been weird.
g. 

It's intimidating, like walking into fresh snow or a first date. It would have been simpler to stick with the old one, all tramped down as it was, but you know what they say: [insert adage here].

In any case, it is begun.
g.