Joni’s q2 stick report
Big things happening in the space.
What you need to know about Joni is that she’s just a dog.
there is a ken burns doc for you
have you seen the one about the buffalo? 🦬
~~~~~~coming soon~~~~~~||
portal to: The God Journals
did i ever tell you i had a huge, years-long crush on a boy that would become a priest? can confirm: it’ll pass
welcome to The God Journals
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welcome to The God Journals 〰️
I’ve been writing a manuscript about my obsessive affair with Jesus Christ. In the process, I’ve created so much material, pages and pages of notes and jokes. The witchcraft of writing requires this messy generation, ideas with no homes in kennels of pinterest boards, playlists, and paper.
Will you foster them??
Do I have to get Sarah McLaughlin out here?
Ok good.
Welcome to The God Journals
dreaming of a world without CAPTCHAs
if I have to log in to one more goddamn account I’m going to lose it
thoughts from the center of the universe
10 years in nyc
Jalen Brunson is my doctor!
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He's my engineer!
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He's my mechanic!
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He's my subway driver!
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He's my pilot!
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He's my dad!
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Jalen Brunson is my doctor! 〰️ He's my engineer! 〰️ He's my mechanic! 〰️ He's my subway driver! 〰️ He's my pilot! 〰️ He's my dad! 〰️
all pics are mine, the people are part of it
Just happy to be a part of it for ten years and counting
Much has been made about what constitutes a New Yorker, transplants arguing their case for inclusion, JLo entering the fray, but this isn’t a title I’ve ever aspired to. I come from a crew of Okies who made home for many years now in Texas but by the most important measure (college football) have always kept their Oklahoman allegiance. I wear Texas on my tongue and chosen titles. I am happy to forever be a Texan (née Oklahoman) who lives in New York. It rings like a name I chose for myself, each root I put down strung together with words that bridge the distance between them.
But no matter. New York is home and it’s a hell of a time to be making it here.
I moved to New York City in the summer of 2016. My life was on a wobble and we thought a woman could be president. The decade since has brought every type of echo, as if we never learn on the macro level. On the micro, I’ve felt every cell inside turn over at least twice. (photo evidence below)
This city speaks almost every tongue. In my neighborhood alone, culture from around the globe melts into the layers of one another. Right now it is all hitting me like rich pastry, soaked in the syrup of summer. The park by my apartment is full of grass and grill smoke and girls’ birthdays. The voices that call to one another are often urgent or barbed but they are all protective out of love.
Sometimes you get lucky enough to be a part of something.
This city deserves a song (and another. and another. and another.) but I write prose and on this anniversary, two things I especially love about the city call to be etched imperfectly in this blog. Consider this a statement of intention to dwell in the greatest city in the world for a while longer.
city air breathes free
I saw the above quote attributed to Alexander Hamilton on Instagram. It rang so true. I sit here wearing what I want, loving who I want, writing where I want, and want in no way for freedom. The freedom from the narratives I used to survive being too sensitive in the South felt like a hollowness at first. The emptiness of my urges to carry on my performance of good girl whistled when I talked, like the gap in my front teeth. The freedom felt like a layer of concrete poured over my entire vine. Below the hardened layer, a singular node gathered energy and cracked through.
(((a prayer: may the fruit of this vine nourish you too)))
Turns out “city air breathes free” is an echo of that infamous Sinatra mantra in medieval terms.
When I investigated it’s actual origin, expecting to conjure a lyric from Lin Manuel Miranda, I could only find scattered reference and a Wikipedia page about German serfs gaining their freedom by making a city their home. This is what the AI summary emphasizes. It guides me to sources like a Swiss research magazine. It makes city air breathes free sound like a relic instead of a turn of phrase that describes much more recent history. Origin stories often obscure more recent history.
But it is true, that here in the city I’ve never felt more free. There was a time (close to that wobble) where I thought I might not like who I became if I let the city air get to me. I was worried my own desires might run too far out of my comfort. Because everything is available here, and because the city has a reputation where I’m from for being a chaotic modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Here’s one of a million examples: Once I found myself at a dive bar that was playing porn on the tiny tv in the corner. I thought this exposure might make me a porn addict. When it didn’t, the part of me that knows porn as a more interesting and complicated phenomena than just categorically immoral could unfurl. It didn’t turn me into a porn star, unfortunately for my bank account, but it did give me an inch more space to breathe.
I’m sure there are a million places to deconstruct an old self, but New York is where I did it.
2. godless in America
This brings me to the second reason I love this city. It has given me room to come out as an atheist.
I identify as an atheist because of the way God is so often defined in this country.
I know there are more capacious gods and spirituality practices out there, but the one steering our country (the one hiding behind the label evangelical) is steering us straight into hell. The origin stories that I tell are authoritative on this. My published work skirts around what I will say more freely in person and here on my own blog: that all of American Christianity is suspect of intense collaboration with a genocidal government. There are distinct movements and figures, but the push to entwine American identity with Christian identity has won out for now. Let me put it this way: there’s no America in which I can believe in God.
(((blog me baby)))
But here in NYC, nothing is automatic. The layer of concrete levels it all. Only what you truly want to do will be worth rolling the dice on it in a city that doles losses as often as wins. I needed the city to let go of God. And at ten years here, I think I’m finally coming to the end of the project I’ve been using to process my spirituality. Here’s a tiny little baby jesus taste of it:
“God came to me first as a season. Born in March, I didn’t see my first winter until after I knew the world as warm. The cold that blew through the small rural town of my birth must have shivered me. How else can I explain why I would reach for something outside my own tight bundle? The cold awakened something primal in me, a craving for a cave to crawl into. God was happy to be that cave.”
(from the god journals manuscript)
In other words, I love it here because:
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My mayor Muslim
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My bagels Jewish
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My Christian Dior
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Knicks '26 4ever
〰️ My mayor Muslim 〰️ My bagels Jewish 〰️ My Christian Dior 〰️ Knicks '26 4ever
what is copy/paste
Since 2008, I have blogged on and off under the title copy/paste. This writing has taken many forms. Well, I guess just two forms: a wordpress site and a newsletter. copy/paste has always been a slightly organized collage of rough sketches, collections of things, and memes.
If you’re looking for a regular ass website without a billion ads where someone is writing and linking and memeing everything (no chat), then this is the place for you. If you’ve ever been a part of a comment section horde, this is the place for you. If you’ve ever wanted to tell a website what to investigate, this is the place for you.
Here’s what it’s not:
an attempt to sell you something. (I like writing and I want people to read it.)
a polished product (see above, it’s like an art project)
static (updates abound)
So come hang out on the internet like old times when it was just us.
this is who’s writing your blogs. be nice.