you should have attainable fantasies

things that might actually happen

Hey — these days I almost exclusively do my writing on trains, because the white noise and window moving by makes me think it’d be a nice thing to do, and because the white noise makes me think, period, for hours at a time, which is probably not healthy, but is, however, occasionally productive, since I almost always think to myself, I have not been writing and probably should write. So here we are.

The train, too, has recently become a place where I can indulge in fantasy uninterrupted, which has revealed something interesting to me lately, which is that the fantasies that I obsess over the most are the ones that might actually happen. Realistic fantasies. Attainable fantasies, as my friend D coined, after I told her about an aspirational fantasy to eventually drape a cloth over the one of the corners in my apartment and devote it to painting.

I read somewhere once that the reason we obsess over things is because of uncertainty, in that there is a possibility that they could go wrong, but also that they could go right. The constant, waffling tension between the what-ifs is irresistible. Maile Meloy, in her short story O Tannenbaum¹, describes this tension as “both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything [you] wanted, all at once.” Attainable fantasies, too, are things I obsess over, maybe because of this tension between how I can, with a bit of work, make them come true, but because of some kind of minor barrier — time, energy, that work is busy, that work is always busy, that I’m feeling pretty good and that things aren’t bad just yet, the ratio of items out in the living room to items tucked away neatly, general avocado ripeness, the fact that it’s 11:37am and not 11:30am, a feeling that an extra task at work is incoming, that my phone is dying and always has been, that I need to buy new socks, that it’s not a good time, and when is it ever a good time?

daily comics from september - it is now DECEMBER if u can believe it!!!!

One of these recent fantasies, which came from a Facebook Marketplace crawl while on the train, is about brightly coloured wooden chairs; more precisely, having brightly coloured chairs in my kitchen, born from a less attainable fantasy of living somewhere with wall murals, or painting murals on the wall of somewhere that I live, or of having very expensive, oddly shaped, and colourful furniture. I was playing the usual IS THIS AVAILABLE - ignored - yes - wonderful when are you available - sorry this is sold - game on Marketplace but I loved the little blue table they were selling, with a set of scuffed green and blue chairs that I was already imagining warmly lit in the evening, how they might look next to the refrigerator, or with a glass bottle of flowers set on the table’s lined surface, or holding a plate of hot pasta with tomatoes (though I prefer pasta with white sauce.² ) with steam curling leisurely in the light, and I thought, why don’t I just paint them myself? And then because it was the train, and I had the time, I thought about the challenges that might appear while painting chairs, and then thought that I should ask for more help, in general, but also specifically, for these chairs, and that the words ‘community chairs’ was an alliteration that was cute without being too corny, and if I was going to ask for help painting them, which reminded me of group-class kiddie art projects, and then what if I just asked my friends to paint whatever they wanted on them, because it had been a long time since we had done any sort of playful kiddie art project, because we weren’t kids anymore, but the urge to play had never gone away, and why should it have, because we will always want and need and love to play, and then I was like, how beautiful would it be to have chairs that my friends had painted and scrutinized and thought about very closely and lovingly, and then I thought that I may as well just get it done.

chairs-in-progress

Another attainable fantasy — making friends with the Granny³ next door, going over to her house for meals and helping her with the groceries and asking for ingredients and sitting down at her table with hot water. I had tried to do this once last year by bringing over a loaf of banana bread that I had made, as a sort of offering of friendship, and found out she had returned to China, maybe forever, and, flustered, gave the banana bread to her granddaughter instead. Imagine my shock and delight when, one evening, months later, I open the door and she is standing there, arms full of orange packages, which, she explains to me, somewhat harried, are rice noodles, and I am not to eat them with the entire packet of chili oil because it will be spicy as fuck.

On the way back from the grocery store, I went to return a bowl to the Gramps next door and he opened the door, dry and friendly, immediately asking me if I had eaten (I hadn't — time had gotten away from me while I was painting my new $10 chairs) and he was like, I'll get my wife to boil you some dumplings. Immediately I was laughing, which I think is my automatic reaction for delight and thankfulness these days, incoherent as it is; no, don't, it's too much work, I can figure something out on my own real quick.

“It isn't any work," he said. And went to call his wife. She came to the door in her pajamas (amazing) and told me to go take a shower while she made the dumplings. I said okay and then sprinted into my apartment to try and beat the boiling pot she’d put on so she wouldn't need to wait at my door with dumplings. It didn't even occur to me to not listen to her. She told me to shower; I was gonna shower. Minutes later, at my door, pot in hand, she told me the dumplings were bland (they weren’t) and to eat them with sesame oil and vinegar and that I may as well have the soup the dumplings were boiled in if I liked them that way.

And other fantasies recently attained this year: coming home from the gym to freshly baked bread (my roommate C and good, never-been-made-before focaccia, and homemade roasted bell pepper hummus, a dip of butter, glory of flavour etc etc); kissing my friends on their cheeks as a greeting (wanting, very badly, to share physical affection with my friends, particularly in ways that seemed, to me, to be reserved for romantic relationships); to be someone who jumps rope (in the basement over the holidays, dropping the screws used to hold the rope handle in place). It goes on.

There’s not much else I have to say, really — just that there seems to be a lot of joy in wanting to do something very small, and then doing it. 💗

the gallery

Messy piano recording from this winter break of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin.

reasons for staying

More train rides where the car is blissfully warm and rocking, passing out and drooling, next to my seatmate, who is working or reading diligently, almost always; more chances of getting a typed out note lovingly attached to a big, still-warm jar of minestrone (which, to my delight, I learned that I have been pronouncing wrong my whole life) that says, ‘jess, / hope you feel better soon / — d’; more mornings to wake up to a smoothie and a hot breakfast from my roommate C; more chances to talk about poems; more time spent standing in a circle outside, freezing, riding that sweet gleam of conversation; more laughing stupidly over the phone; more chances to say goodnight to people I love, every night. It goes on.

from my dear friend D (name kept for privacy)

1. from Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, which RUINED MY LIFE from how much I liked it and how much I still think about it. I think she used like one metaphor in the entire collection she is SOOOO precise.

2. I recently had a conversation with my roommate’s mom about how we both prefer white pizza over pizza with tomato sauce. I will be eating this pizza (they had leftovers) at some point during the writing of this newsletter. This is important. 2 me. (Dec 31 update - I ate the leftovers.)

3. I call her Auntie in Chinese. I am polite.