Over 15 years ago I have a dream where I am starting a business endeavor with none other than Kim Kardashian. I have never seen more than 2 minutes of any KardashCo production, never watched an interview even, and everything I learn about that family I learn against my will. I have a baffling history of famous women on the bleeding edge of my periphery making it into dreams*, and I bring it up to my Jungian Therapist only to be met with shrugs and a sage “sometimes dreams are weird.”
Our business is a line of geodes that are also mugs, or mugs made out of geodes (the word made here is perhaps a bit strong — you hold the geode like a cup, the ol' "simple-as-possible-but-no-simpler" — Shaker principles, really). Otherwise light on details, dream logic being what it is, the image of a cocktail straw extending from what is, again, just half-a-geode clutched in Kim’s hand, stays with me. Dream Kim pronounces lapis lazuli as lashpish lazhuli. I tell all my friends at the time, and now we all pronounce it lashpish lazuli so yes, even in my wildest dreams Kim is ✨influencing✨.
Couple notes here:
1. To my knowledge lapis lazuli does not form in geodes, perhaps we can sub in sodalite?
2. In general, many crystals are surprisingly soluble, and prone to leeching their constituent minerals at varying degrees of toxicity into whatever they’re dissolving in and
3. I should talk to Kim to talk to Gwen and see if that can be repositioned into a benefit statement, what did they do with that yoni egg business? Can we consult with Mehmet?
Being more of a punch-up, final mile guy, I’m confident this was her idea, and indeed feels aligned with that uniquely Kardashian flavor of sheisty. Drinking out of a geode probably adds nothing (slowly dissolving volatiles notwithstanding) more than drinking out of, say, a Stanley. Presumably quality control would vary wildly from geode to geode, crystal to crystal. Candidly, this whole enterprise feels tailor-made for the cash-wrap impulse shelf at Urban Outfitters or Anthropologie.
Today this is absolutely primed for TikTok shop hay making, a dozen gen-z hopefuls tapping a geode shell with their acrylics for the ASMR benefits, their “creator earns commission” badge winking in the corner.
Gobsmacked therefore to read this morning that there is an actual, IRL, geode drinking vessel scandal brewing on the actual Tiktok shop, where some scammer, presumably not Kim(?), has been hawking geode mugs with imagery generated by AI that apparently fails to be sufficiently representational of the actual product, and the girlies are pissed. Kim may be influencing, but I am manifesting.
This disappoints me greatly as: 1. another million dollar opportunity missed by my failure to act; 2. the end products are indeed ghastly and incredibly dissimilar to the site image; 3. my geode drinking vessels were much, much more elegant - again I cannot stress how much they were simply actual geodes with a bev sloshed in; and finally 4. I could have done much better even at just the AI generated image bit, consider exhibit b & c, your honor:
* 24 years ago I have a dream where my mother, while going through my sock drawer, finds not pornography, but a letter I’ve written to Jennifer Garner, then starring on Alias, formally rejecting her offer of marriage, on the grounds that we live in very different worlds. I do not, at that time, even know her name, and the letter is actually addressed to Alias. Had I just not sent the letter yet? Why was it in my drawer? Is she still waiting for my reply? Ms.Garner–Affleck-Garner–Garner, I politely decline!
The last photos I’d ever take in John’s folk’s house. We have our standard Christmas fete, the whole family on the day of, a big dinner. Before folks trickled in I stand in the foyer and snap a pic of one of John’s mom’s paintings in the hall, I post it to IG. It’s a house that holds zero bad memories for me. Every moment has been one where, since meeting John and accompanying him home some nine years ago, I have felt welcomed, loved and embraced. It is a magical home that feels like a museum, chock sky-high with art-major retiree bric-a-brac and books and antiques and mysteries. Tapestries. Relics. The backyard houses John’s dad’s cactus and succulent collection - the fruits of nearly 50 years of labor and passion. Scraped together on a civil servants wages.
It’s all gone. The Eaton fire ripped through the whole neighborhood and in a single night it all went up in smoke. Everyone is safe, we were able to get docs and heirlooms out the night prior. They have only the clothes they had on their backs. John sits up at night muttering he should have been able to save more. “I will never not be able to see the flames coming down the mountain.” he says.
The folks somehow in good humor. “The site recommended a coat that was on sale and I thought “Oh, that’s cute, but I already have a coat just like that one.” Wait, no! No I don’t! I have zero coats! I don’t have anything! Hahahaha”
A little breakfast buffet for my little sisters.
“This is cyberpunk,” I say as I unload the dishwasher wearing mirrored Oakley shades, my full bicycling strap bag with pouches, a giant d-lock, and my phone mounted next to my head in a day-glo mesh phone case. All because I am half-way out the door the gym when I realize John will be home before I get back, and I want him to come home to an unloaded dishwasher.
Today it strikes me that the future is here, has been here, and I barely ever notice. Not just Thee Future but My future, the weird projection glimpsed briefly and imagined as a child, a teen, a miserable college student. Is this a gratitude journal? Not quite, but just trying to take the time to say “Oh, hello.”
Daily I step away from my little home office in a house I own, with my dog, my partner, in a place that’s not Utah. That alone is several assorted dreams fulfilled, and somehow I don’t wake up each day freaking the absolute fuck out about it, jumping for joy, kicking down the door, etc. I step away from my little desk, in my little home office, and make make myself a little lunch. Fresh greens blanched and roasted in the oven. Make myself a garlicky little yogurt sauce with lemons I pluck directly from my tree in my back yard, mixed with seaweed from a tin bought on a trip to Wales, fried spicy shallots from a neighborhood shop, and pistachios I split with birds each morning at coffee at the shop down the river from my house.
And yet no “holy shitting” myself, constantly, endlessly, until I am hoarse? How did I get here?
While I am picking my lemons I dismiss a spammy phone call from the watch on my wrist, and respond on the same to a text from a coworker. I do some drawings while I eat on a sheet of glass and the ghostly white facsimile of a pencil that has more computational power in it than the computer I grew up playing Lode Runner on. I am frustrated that the little voice assistant I can talk to to turn my oven on and off is a little too chatty. You never saw the Jetsons ask Rosie to politely shut the fuck up, and yet I’m confident now it would be an almost daily utterance. “Your timer is cancelled Mister Jay! And by the way, Mister Jay, if you’re curious about the weather you can say “Hey Rosie! What’s the weather tod—” “Jesus Christ, Rosie, can you please can it? No one asked for the play by play.”
I message some friends from a couple continents away, I will see them in two weeks I say, and I look forward to the third 10 hour flight in as many months I am taking for fun and my own money with more a mix of boredom and annoyance than sheer fucking wonder.
A quick jaunt to the the Trixie Motel.
Recent Books
Great news — it turns out I can wear clogs. Scored some Roa Fedaias from Mohawk a couple weeks ago.