Everything is Personal Newsletter

Cole, one of the beauties of Warren Street in our community. YOUR FACES IN THE BOXES. I mean the people at Saturday’s Zoom conversation. I mean all of you reading this post. We are making something together, and we are feeling less alone. Four years ago, when I started the stack, the fun of what it could was a conversation with Richard. The fun of everything is a conversation with Richard. I used to have a partner at the gym I went to on West End Avenue.

AFTER RICHARD AND I GOT MARRIED, we had happy hour drinks in town with our friend Kam. For the first few weeks, we imagined the marriage dividend was we wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves as much as before. Then we started getting on each other’s nerves the same amount. That was 18 months ago. We feel a tighter squeezing of the hands as we slip off the surface of the earth. Our marriage is a party just as the power is shutting down.

“Coffee” 1959 Richard Diebenkorn. GOD, I LOVE WALKING IN A CITY. I remember times with a disappointment, all I could do was walk. It helped and it didn’t help. There’s no outwalking some feelings. I love walking through Central Park with Richard, who has things to say about this idea on his mind or that book on his desk. Lately, he’s been reading Virginia Woolf’s literary essays, collected in the two Common Readers and other volumes.

RYAN GOSLING’S HAIR. What a bunch of hair. The highlights. The back view swirl. The way it looks sexy and boyishly surfer dude even after pulling off a baseball cap. I loved Project Hail Mary because it’s a romance. A romance is basically what makes life worth living. The romance between Walter White and Jessie Pinkman is the reason Breaking Bad sustains itself. (A lot of other great stuff, too, not for here—Vince Gilligan is a genius visual artist/comedian).

Screenshot from photograph in One Sings the Other Doesn’t” by Agnes Varda. I’m republishing a piece I wrote a year and a half ago. Not a word has gathered dust. The stack has lots of new readers, and I want to make this writing available to everyone outside the paywall of older posts. Part of the piece concerns Edmund White, who subsequently died on June 3, 2025 (not because of the piece).

Dear Subscribers, Here is the best thing about writing Everything is Personal on Substack: No one can censor or cancel or rephrase or delete a word I write. This is the only email I have ever sent asking you to upgrade from your free subscription to a paid subscription. The offer for new subscribers and gift subscriptions is a 50% discount, meaning a year is $25 with all benefits and a month is $2.50. If you have been enjoying the stack for some time, please take a turn at support.

The sensational Tatiana Maslany in the ride of her life. I LOVE THIS SHOW. So far, seven out of ten episodes have aired. I love the star, Tatiana Maslany, and the supporting cast, all of them, there isn’t a clunker in the batch, and the jangly pace of the plotting and directing. I love it all. It’s funny and deathy. Big stakes all the time.

ON DECEMBER 30, 2019, MIKE THOMSON REPORTED ON BBC RADIO 4 that cats outnumbered people in the town of Kafi Nabi, situated in Syria’s last rebel-held province. Forty thousand people had once lived in the town. By the end of 2019, fewer than 100 people remained as bombs shredded the area. People were feeding the cats that were crying from the noise. Each remaining resident was caring for between 12 and 15 animals.

WHEN I LIVED IN THE CITY, each morning I wouldwalk down Broadway and up Columbus Avenue, and on Broadway guys sold things passed along to them by the supers. Things left in basements. Art, books, records, rugs, clothes. In this way, the city is a river. I knew guys I would talk to. One day, around 73rd Street, this Hockney is leaning against a wall of books. $10. It lived in my apartment on 99th Street, and now it lives in our house in Hudson.

When you see yourself coming and going. I LOVE THE WALKS WE TOOK IN THE DESERT. I love the pink powder of red rock that coats you on the trails. I love the rocky emptiness and sparse vegetation. When I tell myself to leave, I don’t leave. I can’t tell you what movie my life would be if I left when I told myself to leave. Maybe the novels of Thomas Hardy or the movie with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, where she winds up hit by a car.