(kiss and) make things up

2024: a play in 12 acts

I went on a date with a man that told me there are three kinds of people in this world. The first, he explained, have absolutely no appreciation for beauty. These are the people that live for years in apartments with bare walls, don’t care for music, and get bored at museums. The second are those that appreciate gifted artists, but have no skills themselves. These are the people that will notice when the lighting is good at a restaurant and admire the artistic eye of their aesthetically inclined friends. The third type of person, which is how he sees me, is the type that appreciates the gift and has the gift. The type of person that can’t help but surround themselves with beauty and create it in return.

I used to be annoyed at the fact that my creative expression was sprinkled all over instead of singularly focused. I can pick up a hobby and sprint with it for about two weeks before I burn out and move on to the next one. I think every Sagittarius must have a cemetery of attempted passions though: Here lies Julianna’s fiber arts phase, the assorted beads she bought when she thought she was going to make Susan Alexandra bags, a few tabs still open on her computer about screen printing classes. If I could just stick with one thing, I thought, maybe I could be a serious artist.

Eventually I let go of the idea of being an artist, or at least being a serious one. I’ll be completely unserious. Frivolous. Frothy. I’ll ask for crayons at nice restaurants and take up woodworking for the summer. I’ll doodle on postcards and send them to friends and be kind of good at so many things that eventually I become stupendous at everything. I’ll write a million newsletters and the only measure of success will be that I thought of something and then willed it to exist. This is how I will decorate the world. This is how people will think of me, and this will be kind.

. ⋅ ♡ ‧ ₊ ˚ 〰. . ・゜ ゜ ・

June: Imagination

Playing pretend, exploring your space, visions of grandeur

• Make things up. Not in the Anna Delvey way, but in the anything is possible, put on a talent show with your friends at a 6th grade sleepover way. It’s fun to create a story or a character and maybe you do that by doing some creative writing or maybe you put on a fake accent and flirt at the bar. You do you.

• Act with whimsy. I try to do this 12 months of the year, but June really lends itself to whimsy. Everything is sunny and people get looser with humidity. Maybe you finally make friends with that person you’ve been admiring, or maybe you start wearing the color orange.

• Don’t take yourself too seriously. Now I detest it when a guy asks you to do that in his Hinge prompts, but I’m not named Kevin and I’m not saying I hate women. Instead of punishing yourself for a misstep or inhibiting out of fear you’ll look silly, KNOW that we all look a little silly sometimes and it’s usually where the magic happens.

• Surprise a friend. Send them a letter, pick up their favorite chocolate bar on the way to meet them for drinks. Host them for dinner, draw a picture of their cat, make a playlist of songs you used to blast in High School. I’m a true romantic in my friendships and I highly recommend platonic wooing.

✩ Alter your reality. You can do this without moving a muscle. Look around the room you’re in right now and imagine something has changed. Now it has.

✩ Tell people about your goals. I think it can be a good first step to acting on them if it’s felt unattainable and abstract in the past.

✩ Laugh in the face of boredom. Your mom was right all those years ago…interesting people don’t get bored.

. ⋅ ♡ ‧ ₊ ˚ 〰. . ・゜ ゜

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where I want keepsake to go. Like it or not we are about halfway through the year, and it feels like it’s time to do a temperature check. I started this concept back in December of 2023, originally thinking I wanted to print a seasonal zine and eventually landing on a digital newsletter.

Jo March would’ve completely abused her notes app. It’s such an incredible power to be able to dump all of my thoughts at a moments notice, and for some of those thoughts to go on and become things? Wild! Plus you don’t have to worry about your little sister burning your manuscript when it’s in the cloud.

I focus on emotional keepsakes in my writing, but lately, I’ve been thinking about physical keepsakes too. Some people carry their most prized keepsakes with them every day while others never touch them. I wonder what this says about a person and the way they love. Do you still have your childhood blanket even though it’s threadbare from being gripped too tight? Do you let the things you love coexist with you, or do you keep them out of harm’s way?

The internet’s favorite thought daughter Orion Carloto posted a series of vintage photos she collected from antique malls across America for her project A Room of One’s Own. The black and white photographs depict people across time and in various states of being in their own bedrooms. I thought about how strangely intimate it was to take these pictures, give them away, and have them end up in the hands of a stranger. Some of them show children praying in their pajamas, or women reading with a pile of clothes in the background. Perfect stills of the every day reconstructed now by the artist’s perception.

I think about all the keepsakes on the shelves at such antique malls. I’m always drawn to the glass display cases with hundreds upon hundreds of cherubic statuettes. They are miniature and they are beautiful. They are hand-painted and the characters look kind. Someone took the time to find an entire set and kept them pristine. It’s this type of care that tells a story about the person who collected them in the first place.

I imagine a woman newly married and decorating her first home. She is careful and exact. Everything has its own place, and everything is in order. There are plastic covers on the sofas and absolutely no elbows on the table. She has no taste for expensive jewelry or lavish gifts. All she wants is to keep a good home for her husband. That, and more statuettes. Her house is completely devoid of clutter there is a shelf overflowing with these figures. Each of them are lined in a row, but she’s careful to switch their positions so the sun fades them all equally. It’s become something of a game to find the next one. They’re always in the most unexpected places. She sees one in a shop on vacation in Nantucket and has to bring it home. A friend gifts her the one in green for her birthday the following year. It’s embarrassing to even think it, but she feels a strong maternal instinct for them. She loves them more than the family dog.

When she passes away in a different house in a different state all those years later they are returned to the universe. They are bubble-wrapped and carefully spaced in a cardboard box and they are marked ‘donate’. Some of them are taken together, but most of them live their second lives separated from the rest. Their expressions are painted eternally amused, but I’d wager they’re a little sad to have lost this woman. How lovely it must have been to be kept for the sake of keeping.

⊹₊ may favorites ₊ ⊹

I went back to The Met Cloisters for the first time since High School. I love being able to see something old and beautiful whenever I want in New York, and the unicorn tapestries remain incredible. I also highly recommend scaring the shit out of yourself in the gothic chapel by looking in the tiny mirror that reads ‘Everything will be taken away’. Did you click that link? Can you believe how chilling??

I also got back into scrapbooking this month. This might be where you’re thinking ‘Julianna is this another one of your abandoned hobbies’ but NO. It’s fine to take breaks once in a while, that’s the great thing about having a bunch of half-finished things to do. As soon as you get bored of one thing there’s another to pick up.

Absolutely delighted to share I saw Uncle Vanya (Steve Carrell, William Jackson Harper, Alison Pill) at Lincoln Center. Not only was it a brilliant adaptation, but it was also staged to complete perfection. One actor may be delivering a monologue to the other side of the house while another is carefully clearing the table in front of you. It felt fated that I saw this play for the first time right when I’d been spiraling about my purpose in life. Could I be greater than I am now? Is greatness worth pursuing? What am I and what will I become?

“When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing.”
― Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya

I don’t think your life needs to be wanting to create illusion. You can have everything you’ve ever wanted and still make up a reason you’re lacking. You can have a wonderful day and still go to bed dreaming of ways to make it better. You can escape from your fulfilling life in books and in movies and dream of being very very far away from the people you love. Unfortunately, the depth of misery in Uncle Vanya doesn’t suggest illusion was a positive outlet for him, but I really think he could’ve turned it all around just by watching a little Spongebob.

Have some fun with fiction,

xo Julianna