La Agnes Nuova

I am writing this on June 2nd—the second day of the rest of my life—and I am writing it in Brooklyn. I don't know if other people are like this or not, but I fetishize “new beginnings” and this one is no exception. But let me back up a bit.

On Sunday and Monday with the heroic help of the indefatigable Madeleine, I moved completely out of my studio. As one of my classmates said, this was a much more significant thing to me than graduation. Since the year began last fall there was not a single day that I was in New Haven that I did not go to that building, and there were many days that I left it only to take a shower in the gym nearby. And yesterday, although my access card would still have worked and although I was in New Haven, I didn't go back at all. I wonder when the next time I will enter that building will be? I don't feel any animosity toward it, but I don't want to go back there for a long time. I am ready to move on (Self magazine are you listening??? (Is Self magazine even around anymore?)).

I am also unexpectedly excited. Hooray for excitation. Now I am back in the city at a coffeeshop. I am sitting outside and everybody all around me is smoking. They are smoking and talking about quitting. That is the funny thing about cigarettes: they are a reification self-loathing. And the self-loathing is almost universal amongst smokers—even the defiant ones use these shadows to heighten the narrative of their addiction/pose. I am not smoking today. I quit.