I love

a fourteen-pronged Valentine

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I don’t have someone special to flutter eyelashes at over a candlelit dinner. That’s fine. I feel pretty full of red-hearted love, regardless.

Below, I have composed a love letter to fourteen objects of my most tender affection. I’ve done my best to describe them so that you might understand why I love them so horribly. To paraphrase the insight from Lady Bird, I find that paying attention to something is symptomatic of loving it. I hope that the following details suffice.

xoxo,
Gaby

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The moon

I spent most of 2022 convinced that the full moon was actually magic. That I was, in some way, beholden to the subcutaneous workings of storybook logic for one night every month.

Magic is impossible to talk about outside of its moment. And I mean magic, not illusion, which is when merely something appears where it hadn’t been before. Illusionists take great pride in revealing a surprising object to an audience. But when it comes to magic, real magic, we witnesses know that something special is present, though we don’t know exactly what it is, where it is. It’s sensory, but not enumerated. It is neither deliberately hidden nor revealed.

Real magic coats the moon: its light, its moods, its distant surface, in every phase, in every angle in the sky. Big and cookie-buttered, hanging low in the pregnant night. Pale and portentous, half-full in the midday sunny blues. A sharp crescent, half-tilted; a sliver, invisible. Shadow play like a candle flicker, a body’s silhouette dancing in a window. Magnetizing, neck-craning companion. I need only look up and I am no longer alone.

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Morning coffee

When I was a child, my mother invited me to smell a coffee bean as she was grinding them up for her morning French press.

In a sweet, clear voice, she cried, “Noise!” as she always did to warn me of the oncoming whirring of the electric grinder. I had sensitive ears back then. That morning, as she declared, “Noise!” and the machine made its noise, I sniffed hard at the bean in my little hand. By the time the coffee stopped grinding, the coffee bean was lodged high up in my nostril, and the pleasant morning was interrupted by an impromptu visit to the pediatrician, who had to ply the bean back out again.

I’ve held down my barista job for a year now. The hole-in-the-wall shop in Sherman Oaks has facilitated some of the genuine worst experiences of my life. But it has not killed my love for coffee.

I only have to work about one shift per week now. I feel actually happy, sometimes, performing my cashier script for the redundant clientele. My customer service smile sometimes veers into a real one, my polite laugh sometimes develops notes of heartiness. They love coffee, and I love coffee. We get to watch the sunrise together. That’s something.

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Almond croissants

I tasted my first almond croissant the summer I turned 13. That summer, I stopped starving myself, read a lot of books, and rode my bike around under lush leafy trees. I didn’t hang out with the friends that hated me. I chose a favorite chair in the living room and started perching there to watch the sky change through the window. I began devotedly reading the Arts & Culture section of the local paper. I wore a pair of little jean shorts with flowers embroidered on them. I had an iPod Touch.

I had the best almond croissant ever in Nice the morning before I had to catch a train to Barcelona. I watched the sun rise over the stone beach, listened to Fiona Apple, and theorized about which hotel my parents had stayed at during their late 90s Eurotrip. It had to be that one, with the puckered blue umbrellas.

If you are in Chicago and you want an almond croissant, I suggest you go here. If you are in L.A. and want the same, I recommend you go here. Si vous êtes à Nice et que vous avez envie d’un croissant aux amandes — je suis désolée, j’ai oublié le nom de cette patisserie :’(

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My old playlists

I am no good at making mood playlists. I know those that curate their streaming apps like gardens, planting “chill vibes” here, “throwbacks” there, cultivating “party time” in yet another pocket. I have tried to become one of these patient pruners, but my music library has always read more like overgrown brush than greenhouse. For the sake of chronology, I dump all the songs I like into erratic era-specific playlists. I have been doing this since I was seventeen.

These playlists are time travel. I can be any age I ever was all over again whenever I want. I can bristle again through crowded plazas, stuffed dance floors, dusty festival fields. I can feel distant sunlight streaming, the motion of the train car, a cold pillow on my cheek. I remember you, how this song made me think of you, of us. All the life I’ve already lived is waiting for me, but safer, now that I know how it ends. Even the worst can’t really hurt anymore. Though the best doesn’t feel as good as it once did, the bittersweet redux creates its own sanctuary. More perfection and destruction is up ahead, anyway. Grow, grow, grow, as far as I can go.

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Black eyeliner pencil

Any creditable looksmaxxer will tell you that I have inferior schleral show; my gaze is always going to look a bit droopy, sleepy. Mine are sanpaku eyes, phrenologically tragic. I discovered this truth within my first year of L.A. living. I swiftly deteriorated into a pathetic stint of facial yoga and green tea bags over my eyes — but that was only a phase, thank God, and black eyeliner pencil is forever.

It’s the little things, the little confidences, that make me feel pretty. My favorite skirt, my favorite sweater. The necklace I wear when I don’t have to work. The perfume I spritz although no one gets close enough to smell it. The right shoes for the outfit, the right socks for the shoes.

And the black eyeliner, every time. Getting the line to the perfect degree of thickness. Wearing the pencil down, using a sharpener to get some more life out of it. Smudging it when I want to go out, thinning it when I’ve got to be more professional. Variety in consistency. That’s me, as much as anything is.

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Driving under a liminal sky

Choosing to live in L.A. meant choosing to marry car-life. Driving is never just a means to an end. It’s hot and smelly and dangerous. It’s cramping and trapping, it’s a void into which endless hours of precious life must be poured.

But driving teaches me how to see things — fast as I can go, but still slow enough to process everything. When I drove from Chicago to L.A., I realized that I actually wanted to drive forever. I didn’t want to reach the end of the continent.

Sunrise over Las Vegas, waking up in the passenger seat. Sunrise over the Hoover Dam gas station: I’m exhausted, he takes a picture of me. My only memory of Utah is headlights in the dark.

Sunset over Iowa, fields of giant windmills blinking red. Sunset over Nebraska: I can see the storm hovering over the flat earth, miles away, before we drive through it. Sunset over Colorado. I’m in the mountains, snow in June.

Sunset over California — but it’s too predictable, too perfect, too wide. I want to go backwards now, deep into unambitious America. Turn each stone over and hide under them again. If I didn’t have to make something of myself, that’s all I’d ever do.

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Old movie theaters

Wily as Nicole Kidman may be with her sparkle-striped pantsuit, I am loath to go to any AMC for magic. Unless I am catering to a companion’s wishes, I don’t see any reason to watch a movie in a chain screener when I could go to an independent cinema instead.

Maybe I’m an aesthetically-preoccupied airhead, but I like it when something feels luxurious, transportive, escapist. I like supporting small businesses, and I like an activity that doesn’t feel out of my tax bracket. I like seeing pretentious movies nestled among other aesthetically-preoccupied airheads. Indeed — heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

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Low lighting

The light switch on my wall doesn’t function currently, which doesn’t impact my quality of life in the slightest. I’ve never liked broad, bright lights; even the noontide sun offends me. I prefer candles, small lamps, orange tones. I pull my blinds down in the afternoon, vampiric in the coarsest daylight. Too much darkness is perverse, but just enough lighting is romantic. I feel it golden all over me. I daydream into the night.

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Letters sent by snail mail

It’s irrelevant, sure. But I think human beings were built for less convenience.

There is an intimacy to a handwritten note. My handwriting is fairly ugly, blockish and scrawly. I used to care more about how it looked, but now I handwrite to get it down, get it honest. I write pens out of ink.

I’ve written letters to Bella haphazardly over the past couple years; ours is a unique, tenuous correspondence, and I wouldn’t be offended if it ended. I spent the pandemic writing letters to pen pals I haven’t contacted by smartphone since our mailing relationships ended. Things end, I understand. I kept every letter regardless.

We were, in a way, witnesses more than friends; I have a lot of friends, but few witnesses. Of course I kept the letters. I still check the mailbox, out of habit.

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Dreams

I’ve started recording my dreams lately, waking up and writing them down in the book I keep by my bed. Life feels more biblical when littered with messages from beyond.

I’ve dreamt of blood spilling out from the ceiling. My mother in a dress she never really wore. Instagram updates, lion eyes shining in a former coworker’s face, the pope’s own reluctance to believe in miracles.

I once loved a man who swore he didn’t dream. When we were breaking up, he told me about having a nightmare. As he described it, I was shaken to the bone, because what he’d dreamed had actually happened; I’d lived what he had feared. I kept this to myself.

I continue to wonder, as I’ve always wondered, why we dream, and what stuff our dreams are made on. These visions must be clues, puzzle pieces. I am determined to contemplate them until they become less opaque. The mystery, the meaning.

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Amber & sandalwood

This is the scent I love the most. It was foisted upon me when I was gifted a L’Occitane lotion ten years ago. Still, I love it. It makes me feel adult — mature, though not yet old.

I am drawn to bitter things. Black coffee, raw skin, extremes. I don’t want vanilla without cinnamon. I want fascination and absence.

I know how it feels to be alone, I know this intimately. I know that I do not know everything. I have known total euphoria, and I crave this again in my clearest moments. When I want to smell everything that ever was and everything that still may be, I smell amber and sandalwood. I know limerence. I want limerence.

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Intoxication

I am aware of exactly how I’m doing it wrong. I’m not eating clean, always too little, then too much. I’m not cutting anything out. I’m craving another glass, another puff. It feels so good when I get it. And it’s temporary, as all pleasures and tortures are, but the pleasure is collective.

Only when I am drunk can I touch the particular glory that resides in the domain of my drunkenness. Snow falling over storybook houses, ash falling off a cigarette, clouds blowing across a German moon. Dragons skimming across rollercoaster tears; a body is no longer a body but a ticket to ride. My own reflection in the bathroom mirror is a portent of another world. The sun is still out when I crawl out of the basement, eat a burger, and wonder, Can we do this again next weekend? Can we do this again all the time? I will never be scared again, so long as I can do this with you. God is one of us, and heaven is here.

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Restaurants

I love the ceremony of it: borrowing someone else’s immaculate, crowded living room to eat meals from mysterious kitchens. Restaurants need to be earnest, they need to try hard. Sometimes, I forget what city I’m in, latching across the table onto a set of wet eyes. Hidden under blankets of other people’s chatter, restaurants whisper shocking truths. I forgive you in the restaurant; I betray you in the restaurant. I want to kiss you, I want to kill you. I want to make a proposal, but I’m still deciding if my proposition regards a business or your hand in marriage. I want to get another round of drinks. I want to split dessert. I want, I want, I always want — and here, I can have it.

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Loving someone

It has been a while, now, since I have loved someone like that — the world-ending way. I have loved the normal way since then. I have loved family and friends, music, books, and movies. I have loved under control.

But I want to love that away again; it felt so electric. I would like to be so convinced that nothing else matters, so long as this one thing perseveres. I’ll willingly look stupid again in the eyes of others. I’ll be resolute while they mutter, wondering what I see in the sculptor’s stone. I would know, this time. I would see.

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