This Is Actually So Creative I Can't Even

“Calm and queenly, comes the summer nymph, July—crowned with azure, clothed with splendour,”

— John Critchley Prince, from Dreams & Realities In Verse and Prose; “July,”

"but there is something that happens when you are told you are too much. you begin to ask everyone, "how small would you like me?""

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

"Read Banned Books" a new full page cartoon essay published in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section today.

you can love him, but you can't keep him, tumblr user @/pencap / mother mary, badflower / the burning, venetta octavia / bastards and betrayal, pinterest user @/soupenthusiasts

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen Chen

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism.

I made a list. It's incomplete. Working title:

The pre-apocalyptic "omg moooom" phase:

- ww3 memes

- organising climate crisis protests at 14

- Not knowing the "before". Before the housing crisis. Before 9/11. Before Reagan laws. Before debt.

- no going out. No dates in cute restaurants. Do I look freaking rich.

- Amazon or Nestle owning everything you have ever had

- America just.... I'll just say America.

- Being 5th grade when Trump came into office

- No being able to turn off the ads. The manipulation. Ever. The deep psychology approach to making me despise myself since I learnt to decode information

- constant exposure to violence and suffering numbing us until we're called ignorant and heartless for not reacting

- social media algorithms specifically designed to crush and turn me into an addict. Since before I got my period.

- no more girlhood. You know how to pull an eyeliner and perfectly curl your hair in 7th grade or you die.

- no public spaces. There's Sephora, there are some chain restaurant. And if you feel like feeling a drop of relief you buy a Starbucks.

- Cyber. Bullying. Being on your own. Your parents have no goddamm clue.

Where's My Fucking Teenage Dream but it's real. Where's my fluffy 90s hair, my glitter hair combs, my shopping-as-a-hobby, my milkshakes, my prom? Where's my "my favourite colour is yellow?" Yellow like Butter Flowers, not like toxic waste. Can we talk about growing up in the years before a global system snaps? I was 7 when I read a picture book about Anne Frank. Who knew the early knowledge of how to spell 'death' would be so handy.

you worry the cardboard sleeve around the coffee and think about landfills and the future without straws. you are worried about prion disease and deer. you are worried about the rising temperature of mushrooms. you are worried about teflon and microplastics and carcinogens and whatever else you're being quietly lied to about.

your mother used to jokingly say you are "a worrier," which always kind of oddly hurt your feelings. you feel like a person. and besides, you've been told one-million-times that this is normal. examples get trotted out in a pony show each time: everyone gets nervous sometimes. they talk about public speaking and picturing people naked and how when they get nervous they just-get-over-it.

you run your hands down the grater of your life and feel the sharpness. you started holding your breath in tunnels as a kid, worried that if you relax, the ceiling would cave in. like years of architects and engineers weren't responsible - you, and your faith, you were responsible for the success of infrastructure. if you slipped for a moment, your whole family would be swept away under the ocean. and the problem is that it worked - no tunnel collapsed.

you once broke a coffee carafe and even though you didn't drink from it after, you worried that there had been some previous invisible micro-break that had made you drink glass particles. you stayed awake for 24 hours, constantly dreading each swallow, waiting to taste blood.

you hate being late, you worry about it. you go to grab literally just lunch with a friend - no pressure, no emergency - and you still park the car an hour early and just sit there scrolling on your phone aimlessly. maybe you just don't like surprises or change. you triple-check you locked the doors, and then go to bed, and then get up out of bed to check twice again.

a worrier. like a strange and dreadful bingo card, you collect weekly experiences. someone tells you that you're overthinking, that's 2 points. you have to physically turn around and go back in your house to check you unplugged everything, that's 1 point. spiraling about climate change or politics or the state of the world is a free space, that's basically every evening.

you worry you're being selfish and not a good person because how come you're worried about your dog's health and the itch in your eye when you know people who are really very ill or who have it worse or who are genuinely struggling. then you worry that you're being annoying by infantilizing them. then you worry that your priorities are wrong, that you should be infinitely more worried about the state of a dying planet.

you wanted to be a person, is all. you wanted to go through life in a softness, to hold the world gently and have it whisper past you. and instead you are a worrier. everything that touches you is hard and raw and sharp like diamonds.