I’m in New York City for a week to host a reading and give a lecture.
I was last here last November when I did a reading and went on Red Scare. Before that, I was last here in 2019.
On the plane here I wasn’t able to sleep. I read and watched parts of three movies.
The first movie was a Japanese movie about a relationship between people in their thirties. I skipped ahead after around an hour and saw that the woman had hid things about her past. I skipped ahead again to the end saw her in a wheelchair.
The second movie was a movie directed by Jesse Eisenberg. The mother in it seemed severely depressed. I skipped to the end at some point.
The third movie was Rush Hour 2. I watched the first 30 minutes or so, which I’d seen at least once before. This was my favorite of the things I viewed, in part because it didn’t seem pretentious at all.
For my reading tonight I’m going to talk extemporaneously about Nini, my cat. I’m going to talk about how he’s autistic. I’m going to play a Voice Memo of him licking himself loudly, and maybe two of him meowing. Then I’m going to talk about how he bit me three times last year. Then I’m going to talk about how he became paralyzed last year.
I already miss being in Hawaii with my cats.
I’m going to introduce the readers. I’m going to keep my introductions short. I’m going to tell people to follow Rebecca Grace Cyr’s Substack, “Urban Germ,” and say she’s from Seattle. I’m going to introduce Writers Life Tips’ agent—Peter Vack is going to pretend to be Writers Life Tips’ agent; it was Writers Life Tips’ idea—who will introduce Writers Life Tips. I’m going to introduce August Lamm as an artist and writer with two forthcoming books, a novel titled Lambing Season and a nonfiction book, and say she has an instructional art book on the method of drawing called crosshatching. I’m going to introduce Jordan Castro as the 25 percent Filipino novelist. I’m going to introduce Dasha Nekrasova as an actress, director, podcaster, and potential future novelist. This is good practice, typing it here.
I want to try to sell mandala prints at my reading to help me break even on this trip. I’m being paid for the lecture but not the reading and I was given an apartment but paid for the plane ticket myself.
I’m getting stoned on ingested cannabis—I ate some cannabis ghee around 20 minutes ago—for the first time in many months. I only got three hours sleep so it probably won’t be too strong.
Nini. I want to say more about Nini in preparation for talking about him tonight. I only need to talk for 10-15 minutes. I’m going to read some of my notes on Nini now to prepare. I’m going to read, take some notes, then go outside on the balcony and think about it a little, then I’ll be done. Then I’m going to work my near-death experience research and my lecture and then go to the venue for the reading.
Hey Tao, have you ever considered writing a post (or even better series of posts) on your lifelong experiences with cannabis? I think it'd be a compelling and entertaining read for many of your readers, myself included.
For example, there were events you alluded to (e.g. you cryptically posted a pic once of your dad crouched in the woods somewhere, about to hit a pipe for the first time) that would be really fun and interesting to read about. Also your notes about eating vs. smoking. For me personally, those are two highly variable experiences in terms of effects so would love to read how the methods affect you.
Anyways, just wanted to throw out a suggestion of something I've always wanted to read more of from you. Thanks for reading!
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