*This piece first appeared in [Volume Six of our magazine](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-six-garbage). If you like it, you’ll probably like the [whole issue](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-six-garbage).*

My baby only recently grasped the concept of object permanence. Before this, anything out of her line of sight ceased to exist: her favorite rattle, her own hand, me. What is lost is lost forever, she seemed to say, although this didn’t hurt her; she didn’t know what it was to yearn. She lived in her own world, one in which she was everything, and everything was her. If I had stepped out of her life in those early days, there would be no spectral shape of the woman who carried her, birthed her, kept her alive. The parenting books suggested rubbing your scent on a piece of cloth or a stuffed animal, but my baby didn’t give two shits. 

Time has changed this. Object permanence starts developing around four months and is fully integrated into a baby's  psychology by age two. We never lose this capacity: we might become forgetful, egocentric, but there is the bowl, the cup, the spoon. Even if we forget their name, or their purpose, we don’t deny their existence. 

Object permanence implies that a thing could exist in perpetuity, and yet we know this is a lie. Nothing lasts forever, not the bowl, or the cup, or the spoon. Not the rattle, not her hand, not me. What I feel for this baby is the closest I’ve come to understanding the divine, but I know even that will go when I do. A slow vanishing awaits all of us, if we’re lucky. The baby forgets again, is delighted when I reappear. I try to cement myself in her consciousness. I’m trying, in my own stubborn way, to obtain permanence.
![planet3](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4SqoqjF22DlP4Yd3kAJvj4/d3f95802d6347e9586e8a892d0bd6714/planet3.jpg)
Earlier this year, an amateur radio operator in Canada caught the faint song of a ghost satellite. You can hear it on YouTube: the pitched hum of a radio dial between stations, an eerie, slightly grating ululation. The noise is insistent, trilling. It makes my cat’s ears flatten against his head.

This particular satellite, known as LES-5, was launched in 1967 by a research lab out of MIT. It was decommissioned in 1972. It should be silent. When a satellite has completed its objective, or when the technology has been outpaced, it is “sent to its death” either by gradually lowering its orbit until it burns up on reentering the atmosphere, or by being deliberately sunk in the Spacecraft Cemetery, an empty, untraveled stretch of the Pacific southeast of New Zealand also known as the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area that is home to more than 250 spacecraft.

These maneuvers are intended to reduce the risk of space junk. Humans like making garbage; we’ve gummed up our land and our oceans, so it's little wonder that we’re cluttering up space, too. In the parlance of Earth, space was “clean” until 1957. It wasn't, of course. Space teemed with debris, as space always has—planet dust and the forgotten light of dying stars, meteors hurtling calmly through the darkness—but we didn't start junking it up until we began visiting. The first man-made object in space was Sputnik 1. 
![Mobile](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/147iwZPzgHJj37shDsO9tA/1d91319bfc14a82583eea84dd7db4682/Mobile.jpg)

A short list of what's currently hanging out up there: human urine, human feces, human bones. A toothbrush, a camera, a briefcase. Flecks of paint and hunks of metal. Most space junk is accidental. Astronauts aren’t unthinkingly tossing their Solo cups out the window, but once it’s there, it’s there for good. 

It’s also becoming a threat: researchers are currently testing everything from lasers to space harpoons to figure out how to minimize the potential of collisions between space junk and spacecraft—or, worse, between space junk and us, here on Earth. In 2009, two satellites collided while traveling at a speed of 42,000 km per hour and created thousands of pieces of debris. This was the first crash of its kind, but it won’t be the last. Junk persists.

So even in space, garbage is a problem. Objects lose their utility, or are outpaced by something newer, flashier. That's  what happens to satellites. There are an estimated 2,900 “dead” satellites hovering above us, and those (like LES-5) that are in geostationary orbit—the highest orbits satellites use, about 36,000 km above Earth’s surface—would require too much fuel to be safely brought back. Instead, these satellites are told to take themselves to the graveyard orbit.

Graveyard orbits are at least 300 km above any other known spacecraft, too far away to pose a threat of collision—a sort of forgetting zone. The satellites are then instructed to “passivate”: they drain themselves of excess energy, destroy any remaining explosives, and, finally, shut themselves off. It’s a gentle death. There, the satellites can orbit indefinitely, forever—or whatever forever means in space, where there is no one to catalog time.

These satellites are ostensibly dead, and yet. Every now and then, someone—usually a hobbyist, scrolling the night sky—catches one singing. LES-5 hadn’t been heard from in 48 years before a fragment of its song snagged on an antenna as it cartwheeled in the dark above British Columbia. There’s Transit 5B-5, a nuclear satnav craft, launched in 1965 and no longer under the control of its operators, still somersaulting through space, bullishly broadcasting. LES-1 is a 1965 Air Force communications satellite that never reached its orbit and disappeared for 40 years before independently resuming transmissions in 2012. There’s no official explanation for why this happens; some scientists suggest that certain solar-powered satellites pick up enough juice to reboot as they tumble through the starlight. No one thinks about them. No one is calling them home. These ghosts just aren’t ready to go.
![Ghosts](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1L4naAYVLbJD5zrLZI7ZVZ/e66f77e23c72327062e57eea268cf2a1/Ghosts.jpg)

When an object ceases to be useful here on Earth, we give it away: recycle it, repurpose it, leave it on the curb, pass it to a friend, throw it in the trash. It can take a piece of plastic up to 1,000 years to decompose, even subject to the forces of Earth—water, wind, bacteria. These forces don’t exist in space: there are solar flares, geomagnetic surges, the lightning-strike possibility of a collision with another piece of space junk, but even under these conditions, ghost satellites are expected to continue their procession in graveyard orbit for millions of years.

I've been thinking about these satellites since I learned about them, about how an object doesn't stop being merely because we've stopped using it. Ghost satellites, graveyard orbits—even our language tries to erase them. We told those satellites we were finished with them, but they’ve resisted our directive. They nag at us, a reminder. We have words like *forever*, words like *endless*, words like *permanence*, but we can’t apply them to the things we want most: love, and life, my daughter’s small hand tight around my finger as she nurses, saying stay, stay.

I watch the baby now. She grunts “egh, egh, egh”; pitches herself at what we’ve pulled out of reach; cries when we leave the room; jolts in surprise and delight when we duck out from behind the door. I think that there is not a world for her without me; I am her earth, her pivot point, her orbit. Her world is both infinitesimal and infinite. I know that it is loss that makes the having worth it; I know too that I would trade all this life for a graveyard orbit of my own, an endless circling above her. As she sleeps, I lie in bed and listen for the ghosts as they slip through space, singing their eternal, stubborn existence.
![planet4](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6Chg1XPMvDkTZkYUutpBe/7b6304df106b012b017a7f6a38e4536e/planet4.jpg)

*Words by [Meghan Nesmith](https://twitter.com/megjnesmith?lang=en). Art by [Ancco](https://www.instagram.com/ancccoo/?hl=en).*

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Ghosts of the Machines

Growing up in Newark, often it’s about which hobby or which extracurricular is going to save you. 

When I say “save you,” I mean keep you distracted from all of the outside world that could harm a young person. Early on, the thing that grabbed me was poetry. I got the opportunity to be raised in the hood as a performing arts kid. My life was about memorizing and performing poetry, and debating, particularly against white performers and writers. That is a strong memory that I have from elementary to high school—always being involved in oratory competitions, and enjoying winning them.

![20210224 Mans 8991 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/52qSUzUkGiSqVT0QoZoRy6/88fc8ca0f32b353413e1ed71da4edf8f/20210224_Mans_8991_LR.jpg)
>Growing up in Newark, often it’s about which hobby or which extracurricular is going to save you. 

The first poem I was ever asked to memorize was “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou. But I gravitated towards energies and literature and writing that sound rather militant. One of the first pieces that I ever wrote was about burning the American flag. So even though people wanted me to listen to or recite or be like Maya Angelou, I gravitated more to, like, Tupac, or other people like him. The things I wrote were very, very militant. My family was concerned about it. They were like, “She’s writing and we love that she is writing, and she’s engaged in these things, but we are unsure about how we should feel about it.”

I don’t think my family started honoring my career as a poet until I created *[Black Girl, Call Home](https://www.jasminemans.com/)*. Because they didn’t truly understand. They were like, “Well, you’re a poet, but you’re not Maya Angelou. So don’t you think you should get a job?” That’s literally like what it is. You’re either a broke poet or you shouldn’t be one or you’re Maya Angelou. They were just like, “You should probably figure your life out.” But I stopped trying to get them to understand, and focused more on just becoming. It wasn’t until maybe the last three or four months that they were like, “Huh, you really do got a book coming out. Oh, okay. You really are all right. All right.”

Sometimes your parents just exist in a smaller world than you do. Like my mother doesn’t have an Instagram or anything like that. So saying, “Mom, I have a book deal,” and then being able to help your family in a way that you weren’t able to before, I think that they do see the shift. I’m supportive in a different way. But then they saw Amanda Gorman and they were like, “But you’re not her.” My mother probably won’t think I’m *truly* successful until I sit down with Oprah. 

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>My mother probably won’t think I’m *truly* successful until I sit down with Oprah. 

I wrote *Black Girl, Call Home* as a poem and put it on Instagram. It was just one line. It was years ago but I knew it was something to come back to. I didn’t know how I was going to come back to it, but I was like, *Doesn’t it feel like something? Doesn’t it feel warm? Doesn’t it feel inviting? Doesn’t it feel emotional? Doesn’t it have gravity?* That’s what I wanted. 

When I was asked about a title for the collection, I immediately knew it was *Black Girl, Call Home*. There was no question about it. Usually when you’re meeting with publishers, they may change the cover or the title. That’s always up to be changed. And you have to look like you are okay with that. But when we presented *Black Girl, Call Home*, no one ever questioned it. It made me feel special as a creative—we don’t all get the opportunity to get what we want. I’m so grateful and happy that they saw my vision. 

We don’t view art as a trade in this country. We don’t even teach it as a trade. We imply that there has to be something incredibly special or that it’s this 1% thing. But I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to engage in poetry as a trade where I not only write poetry, but I perform poetry, I teach poetry, I direct poetry, and I create voiceovers. I get to engage in the craft and break it down into bits and pieces. But that’s a whole different part of poetry that so many people don’t get to experience.

![20210224 Mans 8852 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2t6fcR34c0SwQ2af2EWVbI/f02b1d1d5e38ef89850c74d52f06b64a/20210224_Mans_8852_LR.jpg)
>We’ve seen how poetry has shifted so many cultures, but sometimes the commercial world forgets to value us.

A friend of mine, Rudy Francisco, was the first poet on *Jimmy Kimmel* maybe two years ago. The poetry community is at home cheering each other on and waiting for these moments because each step forward is an opportunity for people to honor poetry. When we see Amanda Gorman at the inauguration and then later at the Super Bowl, it’s like, let this be the moment where people start honoring the story of the Black woman, honoring Black girls. 

We’ve seen how poetry has shifted so many cultures, but sometimes the commercial world forgets to value us. And then we have these moments where now everybody is reminded and I love it. And so when Beyoncé puts poetry in her albums—like Lemonade—that’s for the culture. The same for when you see something receive a million likes on Instagram, and it’s just one line. These things are moving the message and the storytelling forward. I’ll always support it.

My mentor in high school built this funnel relationship that allowed creative artists to go from New York City to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to engage the fine arts. At the time, I was one of the first students to pilot the program. In turn, I got to go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a five-year scholarship that allowed me to engage in poetry while studying whatever I wanted. If it wasn’t for that program, I wouldn’t have gone to college. I stayed there for five years.

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I knew I eventually needed to leave Madison. I’d been living around all these white folks and it was cold as hell, so I was ready to go home. When I got back, I wanted to be an artist and also a businesswoman. I began to think, *What could I do, what communities could I belong in?* And the Newark art community is and has always been so amazing and robust. I was welcomed by the community to create and build and curate. Newark is a big part of how I have been allowed to both sustain my career and be creative.

When I graduated, I started touring as an artist. In order for that to be sustainable, I knew you had to have merchandise. One of the key variables was to create something that was both affordable and thoughtfully “Jasmine.” I didn’t have much money at the time, so I was trying to spend no more than like, $500. Everything I created had to be black and white because I didn’t have enough money to do anything more complex than that. 

One time I was playing around with designs and I came up with the idea, “[Buy Weed From Women](https://www.buyweedfromwomen.com/).” At the time, the closest I was to the cannabis industry was just, like, buying weed from my homies. It wasn’t like I had plans on working in the cannabis industry. But one thing that creating poetry merchandise taught me was that you only have a few characters to create a finite message and it has to be strong because you only have a second. That’s what we’ve been [doing on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/poetjasminemans/?hl=en) for maybe the last six years now with poetry. And that’s why poetry is having this resurgence. 

![20210224 Mans 8969 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/3co8LSr26S7nxPgXBvMTLm/3e4b13400b4cc5a89a8944eef93edfe7/20210224_Mans_8969_LR.jpg)
>What makes “Buy Weed From Women” so beautiful is the words; the brand is the words.

On social platforms you see these one-liners that are poems, thick and heavy. They hit you straight in the chest, and people see them within seconds. They move around the world because of how relatable and how much depth they have. I was realizing the same thing applied to people buying my products and merchandise: They’re buying it because they’re not going to find this message anywhere else. What message are you giving them? It’s on a cup, so you can’t give them the Constitution. You have to give them something that holds the weight, and makes them fall in love. That’s what I was learning by creating poems on Instagram and creating pieces of merchandise. 

What makes “[Buy Weed From Women](https://www.instagram.com/buyweedfromwomen/?hl=en)” so beautiful is the words; the brand is the words. It’s four letters. It’s sharp. But I found it very, very unique and rather brilliant, that these simple words can come together and represent an industry because of how it falls off the tongue. It’s the words, it’s the simplicity, it’s the quickness of the lettering. I think that that’s something that I learned poetically over these last years, where you’ve seen poetry evolve from this long form and become shorter and shorter and more accessible on different platforms. “Buy Weed From Women” was a gem that stumbled out of all of that. 

All these leaders in the cannabis industry started responding to me because I just put some words together.  I had this moment where I was just like, *If I stop focusing as much on designing products and merchandise for Jasmine Mans, and instead focused on Buy Weed From Women, what could that become?* The industry was responding faster than I was, essentially, because I’m just a poet putting my art on product and not truly a designer. 

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Now I’m trying to sharpen myself up and straighten my tie and learn as much as I can to engage in the industry and to know where my brilliance lies. I have the beautiful opportunity to study the cannabis industry through product, design, and mantras like  “Buy Weed From Women.” It’s a slow and steady process, of course. It’s something that I’m still learning, and it’s so much fun. I think I have two really, really fun jobs to engage with every day.

It’s funny, when I got to college, I was the girl who was like, “I will absolutely not smoke weed with you in the dorms.” But then I started with my roommates and some of my friends. Then it became a way of coping with my anxiety around my art and poetry. One of my first poems was almost like a public coming out, and it was like, *If they hear that poem they’ll know you like women*. This created a wealth of anxiety, which made me smoke even more. It’s not necessarily a creative thing, but it’s definitely a part of how I function. I can maintain my creativity, but I’m not like, *Oh my gosh, I got high and did something magical*. I wish, though. I definitely wish. 

![20210224 Mans 8912 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/tvixf7CTZ71EkF2dVyvuZ/f7a63617d156d559c978fba4dac95f07/20210224_Mans_8912_LR.jpg)

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I really started engaging with cannabis as an industry. The cannabis industry is polarized, specifically by white men. There are so many people who just get to buy into the industry because they have money. Those people are deeply disconnected from the people who have been arrested and incarcerated for weed. 

Even with Buy Weed From Women, I still don’t have enough money to afford my way through the industry. Women have to work extra hard to be able to participate and compete with men. But there is a sisterhood in the industry, and these women are giving back. Women like Gia Morón, the [CEO of Women Grow](https://womengrow.com/), which is focused not only on just women, but women of color. They’re teaching each other, and they’re not trying to run a monopoly. They are trying to become wealthy business women. And then they are trying to teach all that they know. These are the women who have integrity, who are standing outside the gates of the industry who are like, “Yeah, we can work together, and here are our intentions.” 

People are becoming very transparent, and people are asking for transparency. Buy Weed From Women is the mantra that represents this. I’m trying to build this company up in a way that shows that level of integrity, that level of charity, and that sisterhood.

![20210224 Mans 8977 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4KNpKqnk8UjP03Y5EDrYVD/6e125d5c78c6502e109c456c1148da3d/20210224_Mans_8977_LR.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Jasmine Mans](https://www.instagram.com/poetjasminemans/?hl=en) photographed by [Meghan Marin](https://www.instagram.com/meghanmarin/) at her home in Brooklyn. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Jasmine Mans, poet and Buy Weed From Women founder, on art as a trade, being functionally high, and sisterhood in cannabis.

20210224 Mans 8928 LR

![20210224 JasmineMans 03 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/IMQrJIGBLjCFwFZDH9Tyh/c36b92b19b9e3a40e690c8a440665293/20210224_JasmineMans_03_LR.jpg)

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![20210224 Mans 8873 LR](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6QvdVFNKOS24QdE8aHnJRQ/bc42cf91f41ec5c554838989d407029d/20210224_Mans_8873_LR.jpg)
>[Smoking] is not necessarily a creative thing, but it’s definitely a part of how I function.

20210224 Mans 8891 LR

The poet and and founder of Buy Weed From Women on art as a trade, being functionally high, and sisterhood in cannabis.

Jasmine Mans

When we first started brainstorming concepts for our fashion editorial for [Volume Six](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-six-garbage) with contributing editor [Rajni Jacques](https://www.instagram.com/rajni_jacques/?hl=en) and photographer [Ekua King](https://www.instagram.com/ekuaking/?hl=en), it was six months into a global pandemic and in the midst of a long overdue—and ongoing—racial reckoning. 

Given the freedom to tell whatever story they wanted, the two decided to forgo fashion and instead create a quiet and hopeful visual representation of the world they wanted to see, for themselves and for others. “Rising Son” pays homage to generations of Blackness, past and future, through King’s soft imagery and Jacques’ hand-painted layers. 

In Rajni’s words:

“Honestly, photographer Ekua King and I both didn’t have the capacity to create a fashion story. We were, simply put, over it. We started talking about the state of the world (again) and the heaviness of being Black. We are always heavy and never light. We are always traumatized and never soothed. It came about via a conversation on wanting to feel joy despite it all.

“Visually, I wanted this to feel calming. I wanted this to feel like a vacation from the world these young boys live in. I wanted the paintings to sit on top of a photographic visual that evoked serenity.”

Join us on Friday at 1 PM ET [on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/gossamer) for a discussion of “Rising Son” as well as Rajni’s work with [Building Black Bed-Stuy](https://www.instagram.com/buildingblackbedstuy/?hl=en), a foundation that aims to protect and preserve the Black community in Bed-Stuy and beyond by providing financial relief for Black-owned businesses and organizations. __Help us meet our goal to raise $1,000 for Building Black Bed-Stuy by [donating here](https://www.gofundme.com/f/building-black-bed-stuy) ahead of Friday’s live conversation.__

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***

*Photography by [Ekua King](https://www.instagram.com/ekuaking/?hl=en). Art by [Rajni Jacques](https://www.instagram.com/rajni_jacques/?hl=en).*

Rising Son Mobile

Rising Son

*In which we gave carte blanche and 12 pages of the latest issue of* [Gossamer](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-six-garbage) *to a creative we admire, thanks to the generous support of our presenting partner, [oHHo](https://weareohho.com/), a cannabis and botanicals wellness company dedicated to bringing you [Plants with Benefits™](https://weareohho.com/).*
[![Untitled (1)](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/X6jqPs0hq7RcBIq4Df4VY/9a71ef5443fef4595924f160f8670259/Untitled__1_.png)](https://weareohho.com/)

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10 Arielle Bobb-Willis 7477 copy

10 Arielle Bobb-Willis 7477

I’m motivated by healing and the release of fear. A big theme in my work is finding healthy ways to be yourself. Freedom is important to me. Working on getting to know myself allowed me to find the confidence to create whatever I want without the imaginary limits I had once accepted in my life. It took a long time for me to give myself permission to be who I am. People will project their fears onto you and my work is a physical representation of what it means to reject that in every way. 

Through depression, what I see around me can be very under-stimulating … very muddy, very dull. Photography allows me to control my environment and create the world I’d like to live and thrive in. It’s therapeutic and it’s a place where I can completely be myself … there’s no judgement, no rules. That tension of recognizing your past mistakes while pushing to be better is something I keep returning to in my work ... learning to embrace who I am over and over again. There’s always something sweet in that uncomfortable feeling, if you are looking for it.

There’s immense power in sensitivity, vulnerability, and imagination.

1 Arielle Bobb-Willis 9944

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Violet Mangoes

This July will be my eight-year New York City anniversary. But I’m originally from San Diego. My parents are both academics—they teach at UCSD. My mom’s a visual artist, and my dad is a Chinese film historian. Growing up, I was really passionate about books, music, art, and film, and when I went to university, those were the topics I was interested in and studied. Cooking and food were far from my mind.

When I moved to Montreal in 2009, I had this fantasy of going to grad school for a PhD in Ethnomusicology. At the time, my parents were living in Singapore. I’d gone to visit them, and reached out to this amateur ethnomusicologist. He took me to flea markets and I learned about how he excavated all this really interesting ‘60s local girl group music. I was really fascinated by that, thinking about pop music coming out of East Asia in the last 60 years, so I applied to grad school, but I was rejected from every program.

![1](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2zNLXKBmkPbunTDlMKC9GF/e7f3e9ec196175346276cacccb5a71e9/1.jpg)

I stayed in Montreal but I had to work under the table because I’m not a Canadian citizen, and restaurants and cafes definitely run on that kind of undocumented work. I was really lucky that they took a chance on me. I didn’t have any experience but I pretended I did. I just needed a job. I fell deeply in love with the craft. Not just learning the technical skills, but also the culture and community that existed in restaurants, discovering new food—I loved all of it.

But I was never going to become a chef in Montreal or be legitimately hired because I was undocumented. I was tired of working under the table and not having a bank account. Everything I did was out of cash I kept in an envelope literally under my mattress. I loved pastry so much I decided I wanted to keep getting better at it. So, I moved to New York to work at Marlow & Sons and Diner.

Eventually, I was hired as executive pastry chef for a restaurant group called Matter House. We opened Cafe Altro Paradiso in February of 2016, and then Flora Bar and Flora Coffee in the Met Breuer in October. Two openings in one year. It was really hectic, but it was also super beautiful and rewarding. 

![3](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5L6QUa5RZ8KskID6Tn2Cxe/6249a658109bb991b357b54a3c2ddb7c/3.jpg)

As someone who was super demanding and really wanted the restaurants to be the best that they could be, to go through that process twice in one year, was just a giant amount of pressure. We’re definitely at the point today, in 2021, where we’re re-examining the efficiency and purpose of that kind of pressure. It almost feels quaint to think back on that and the pressure of those openings, because it just seems so unimportant now. 

I didn’t do any professional culinary training. I studied English Lit. A lot of people who are thinking about pastry or cooking in restaurants ask if they should go to culinary school, and while I’ve had great experiences with all the different ones in the city, it just wasn’t right for me. It’s hard to justify the cost of it, and some people simply can’t afford it. What I tried to do was seek out restaurants whose chefs I wanted to work for. Developing mentors in the restaurant industry is really challenging. I wish I had that one person, but I was just trying to work at restaurants where I was able to learn from somebody who knew a lot more than me.

COVID has been incredibly hard on everyone in hospitality. When restaurants in New York closed down and I lost my job, I was like, *Well, what now?* In that moment, when you’re living it, it can feel like you have no options, that the world is falling down around you, and you have no way of figuring out what a path forward looks like. But it’s like getting out of a bad relationship: eventually, enough time goes by that you see all the ways it opened you up to other opportunities or to do other things that were better for you anyway.

![4](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2P6K80FP6Kt7CuTdigA5n0/bb92140df0caa4e1156717f205543ebe/4.jpg)

I’m so glad I didn’t go to grad school, too. I’m grateful that I feel like I ended up somewhere that is actually better suited to who I am as a person. But coming from an academic family, that’s what was what was marked as being successful, so of course I thought it was my destiny. I think there’s a lot of value in looking back on your past and seeing it from a little bit further away and feeling more grateful that everything worked out the way that it did.

The last year has definitely reframed the way that I think about what I do. When you’re working in a restaurant, you kind of put your head down and then you look up and five years have gone by and you’re like, *Wait, I’m in my 30s, is this really something that I can keep doing? Is this really sustainable?* Going back to over a year ago now, the last day that we were open I had worked two weeks straight. We had just wrapped Fashion Week, and all the events and shit that go with that. Plus, I was still not rested and recovered from the insane holiday season. It’s just months and months and months of anxiety and move, move, move. I’m so lucky to have been okay when everything shut down. It was scary and stressful and I didn’t know what was going on, but it also gave me the chance to just stop and rest. To be outside during the day and go on long walks and eat better and sleep for as long as I wanted.

[[1]]

A book agent and I had started working together on a proposal the November before, but because of how much I was working it was always the last thing on my list. I just could not get to it. After the shutdown, my agent called me and was like, “Totally take as much time as you need, but now could be a really good time for you to get some work done on your proposal.” And she was absolutely right. I finally had the gift of time. That said, I didn’t have a computer. I haven’t had a computer for many years, I don’t have TV, I don’t have Wi-Fi. I was always at work and I live alone in this little apartment so it just never made sense to me. Wow, it is so hard to write a book proposal on an iPhone. A friend loaned me an iPad so I kind of went back and forth between the two. But I did it. Like a 40 page proposal—it’s insane.

Finishing it felt like a huge accomplishment. It scratched this itch that goes back to before I’d ever thought about food as a career—the idea of writing, of being a writer, and publishing a book. It’s a dream I never thought would be a reality outside of academia. 

>It was scary and stressful and I didn’t know what was going on, but it also gave me the chance to just stop and rest.

The whole process was so overwhelming because, at the same time, the pandemic was unfolding in this absolutely sickening way. The way it was mishandled, all the question marks hanging over everything that everybody did all the time. And then, of course, George Floyd was murdered and with that came the wave of the BLM movement. Simultaneously, we started seeing these other reckonings within the food industry, at other restaurants and with *Bon Appétit* ... just all this garbage swirling together. 

I started to wonder, even *if* there was a job for me, would I ever want to go back to that? Is that really the work I want to be doing? Working for a man at a fine dining restaurant that none of my friends can afford to eat at? Like, is this my life purpose? I ultimately didn’t have to make that decision because I was terminated in June, but it helped me contextualize all these things I was already grappling with in my head about the systems of the restaurant industry and how healthy or toxic they were for different kinds of people.

I’ve spent the past year untangling those threads, and having really profound conversations both privately and publicly, like, “If I choose to work in restaurants again, what are my terms? What does that look like? What kind of role do I have? What kind of space is it going to be and who are they going to serve? What are the values at the heart of this business?” Now, I feel like I’m established enough in my career where I can, instead of being grateful for the scraps, for the $45,000 a year salary, have a little more agency over who I’m working for, who I’m working with, and the kind of things I say yes or no to. 

[[2]]

One thing that I’ve gotten really back into in the last year, that has also been incredible for my mind and my peace, is drawing and doodling. A big part of that is because I’ve been working and collaborating with my mom on my Never Ending Taste pop-up. One of the things I love about it is that it’s in such opposition to the polished perfection of a Manhattan restaurant, at least the kind that I was used to working at, where the cutlery’s perfect and the glasses are polished. The pop-up is a little rough around the edges—things aren’t quite perfect. I would draw the menu and my mom would do the poster that I would use to promote it.

It’s created this new relationship with her. My mom was in art school when I was little; I remember her getting her MFA at CalArts. Our house is full of her art. But it was never something we did together. It wasn’t until I started doing my pop-up and thinking about creating that digital language with her. I think it also helps her understand and be more interested in the pastry work that I’m doing, too. 

I think a lot of people were feeling like this but I’ll only speak for myself: how scary it is to think about your loved ones getting sick with COVID, how fragile life is, and how it’s ripped so many people from their families in a horrible way. I live that fear, too. Part of collaborating with her was being like, “We need to create some stuff together. I want to have this chapter with you.” That’s brought us closer because it’s not just the same mother-daughter stuff that happens when we talk on the phone. Like, “Do you have enough vitamins? Do you have enough socks? Are you seeing anybody?” That kind of laundry list where you feel like you’re just checking in, rather than maintaining a relationship with someone.

[[3]]
>Edibles have come so far—everything from aesthetics to the ingredients.

When I first asked my mom about using her illustrations for [this collaboration with Gossamer and Rose Los Angeles](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/cbd-rosin-edibles), I was actually expecting her to have something critical to say, but she was so excited. I was blown away. She was like, “This just looks so cool. The website’s amazing. The boxes are little works of art.” She already has this plan for how she wants to frame them in one of those shadow boxes, like a little installation. I think the attitude from our parent’s generation is changing a little bit around weed culture in general, and I really feel like it’s because of work that Gossamer and [Rose Los Angeles](https://roselosangeles.com/) are doing to bring weed into a more inclusive space. 

It’s been really fascinating to see it all unfold. It’s not a subculture anymore. For me, the best part of where weed culture and products are at right now is that there are so many alternatives to smoking. I didn’t smoke weed at all growing up. I was a competitive athlete. I rowed in high school and at Cornell. It’s a really demanding sport and we had to sign contracts that said that we wouldn’t drink and do drugs during the seasons. So it’s all new to me now! Edibles have come so far—everything from aesthetics to the ingredients. It feels cleaner, it feels healthier, it feels less stigmatized by society, and that’s really exciting.

I’d never really considered cannabis as a flavor. That was the most interesting part of developing this recipe: it’s not just about finding harmony between the grapefruit, kiwi, and celery, but also highlighting this fourth element. When you’re putting that much care into sourcing all of the ingredients, why wouldn’t that extend to the weed as well? It makes perfect sense to me.

[[4]]

I’m from San Diego, so winter in New York is always really hard for me. But California citrus was always this bright spot when there’s not much else to look forward to. I approached [this recipe](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/cbd-rosin-edibles) the same way I do dishes for desserts at a restaurant—what it means to build layers of flavor and how different things can create something bigger than themselves when you mix them together. Oro blanco is interesting—it’s not something that most people know by name. But I love how delicate and clean and restrained the flavor is—it’s not overwhelmingly bitter but there also isn’t a lot of sugar.

Kiwi is going to add that creamy, banana-like sweetness, and thicken the whole mixture. This is not a huge note in the recipe, but I love that there’s celery in there, too. I love using celery in desserts. It pairs really well with almost everything because it’s so refreshing. I like those more savory notes in sweeter dishes so that it’s not too cloying. There’s something a little more sophisticated about it. It’s not necessarily a pairing you might have thought of but if you try all those things together, like, cut up on a spoon, you’d be like, “Oh, it’s delicious.” You’d get it.

Sugar is not a flavor. It’s kind of like salt in that it can set off certain notes. It can make fruit taste more vivid or it can soften the bitter edges of something. But if you use too much of it, it dulls and mutes that flavor and sensation. The thing that you want to taste is the actual ingredients of the dish, not the sugar. So, I always try to play up some more of those savory notes, so that you’re getting something that’s a little sharper in focus.

In a way, this collaboration is like my homage to San Diego, because these California fruits really remind me of home. I’m homesick, and it just feels really cool to have something to work on with my mom that makes me think of home. But the story of the illustrations is actually really cool. I went home in September for a pop-up at Chino Farms. One day at home, I was sitting at a table and my mom just walks up next to me, drops this stack of notebooks, and says, “You can have these if you want,” and walked away. She didn’t say anything about what they were.

[[5]]

When I opened them, I realized they were her personal journals. They’re unbelievable. They’re her super skillful, detailed pen drawings of her observations or ideas, but with all of this dense text in Chinese characters embedded into the illustrations or with the text just wrapping around it. It was so intimate, so personal, and so beautiful. But also to get this gift, that peek into your parent’s lives and you suddenly see them as a whole person.

Adding another layer of mystery is the fact that I can’t read the Chinese. It was super enigmatic. I started seeing all these patterns, like six different drawings of an old man smoking. And then I started noticing every time she drew food, like a bowl of noodles, or fried chicken on a plate, or a fruit coming out of a school bus. The images had this magic to them because we don’t really know what she was thinking or how they relate to the text. 

But I treasure them. I probably sent 50 different photos of pages or passages of illustrations that stuck out to me during the design process for this collab. My mom loved the idea. She also liked that lack of context, that the drawings are a little bit mysterious. The ones we used are all from her journal from 1999. I would have been in ninth grade at the time. Was I thinking about this rich inner life of my mom illustrating these personal journals? No, I was probably thinking about something super vapid and self-involved. It’s so cool to now to know, “Wow, this is what my mom was doing in ‘99.” I feel so honored that she gave them to me, and that we were able to use them.

![0](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/59oPjel7Cc5nx1FbK0TQuM/8ad723a2a6997c18c80ebb323ca99870/0.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Natasha Pickowicz](https://www.instagram.com/natashapickowicz/?hl=en) photographed by [Meghan Marin](https://www.instagram.com/meghanmarin/) at her home in Brooklyn. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Natasha Pickowicz on surprise careers, a computer-free life, and working with her mom.

![9](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/3xPbIcWyGtj777AjfHjidE/ee98988da561e4640d07ad2688e7e0d7/9.jpg)

![5](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4cixfbf3TWgDdfOajKfiO9/0dbe1e1dca856b01e340cda1f48583b1/5.jpg)

![Cat2](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/8qul8dUaZW5azNMnT14AK/4b72f142c836b2ccb7b2d699c2737093/Cat2.jpg)
>The thing that you want to taste is the actual ingredients of the dish, not the sugar. 

Cat1

The chef on balancing flavors, a computer-free life, and working with her mom.

Natasha Pickowicz

Gossamer looks at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a green lens.

Open plan offices for new media companies, beautiful as they are, contain few physical pleasures.

There are no opaque phone rooms for naps or crying, just glass boxes with doors that don’t lock. No coffee pots, just a cumbersome robot that spits out diesel-scented “espresso,” and milk substitute. No room for a plant on your desk, which is more like designated space at a table.
 
The office I worked at in the summer of 2017, which was situated on two floors of the graveyard of Goldman Sachs, offered a few things worth having: narrow windows with views of the East River and the Stone Street meat restaurants, proximity to a neighbor’s helicopter pad, and an array of Fresh Direct-supplied snacks. La Croix in 10 flavors, single-serving discs of hummus and guacamole, pita chips of every stripe, slimey packages of hard-boiled eggs that came in pairs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, hundreds of dollars worth of cashews and almonds, apples and oranges and one or two rock-hard green pears, and, most importantly, Babybel cheese. I ate it every day.

I spent that summer thinking about a crush, and complaining about my job, which was to pay attention to Tumblr and *Game of Thrones*. I thank god that we are not all bloggers, and that we have not all spent time in Manhattan’s Financial District, but I imagine you still know what I am talking about: each day is the same. An iced coffee drips condensation next to your laptop, an idle conversation about going to the beach this weekend ends with no one making a plan, and a music video or two breaks up the hours by giving you something to tweet about. Mercifully, the day will end when the sun is still out, the way it doesn’t for three-fourths of the year. It’s not all bad.
 
Plus, Babybel cheese. After breakfast, but before lunch, the same little red wax guy. Originated in France, manufactured at a factory in South Dakota, one of an estimated 1.5 million wheels per day. Driven to a 30-story office building in lower Manhattan at five in the morning. You can pop them like pieces of gum while you stew in the the languid but fizzy energy of waiting for a day to end.

It’s the perfect snack. For staring into space and dreaming of never returning another email. For doing something, anything, with your hands, while you recite a fraught iMessage conversation from memory to whomever sits next to you. For swallowing a low-calorie placeholder in two bites and, synched with the crouch to the trash can, subtly dipping your chin to find out if you remembered to put on deodorant.

 
The red cellophane wrapper makes the whole package look like a Valentine. The Valentine weighs exactly 20 grams every time, which according to some reliable-enough internet resources, is the same as a mouse and twice as much as a human eye. The wax shell looks like something that’s been hatched out of and discarded in a weird place, as chilling as a cicada husk dropping into an open pitcher of sangria. You can warm it in your hand and make a tight, shiny ball. But it’ll leave a pink film on your skin, so why would you?

The experience is sensual, like the slow drag of a zipper that you’re opening mostly for effect. The wax resists. It’s basically alive. Then there’s a two-centimeter gasp of bright white, appearing like a not-yet-tan belly peeking out from the narrow, moving gap between jean shorts and crop top. It is pretty much as close as you will get to a strip tease in a work environment.

The experience is also a little bit gross. Like peeling anything is a little bit gross. Like the word “peeling,” which is gross. Depending on your mood: a little bit like in *Black Swan*, when Natalie Portman peels back a frayed strip of the skin around her cuticle until there’s a bright red bloody line all the way down her finger.

And then there’s the cheese itself, which, bitten into, looks like an orthodontist’s upper jaw mold, and tastes like nothing.

***

*Kaitlyn Tiffany is a writer living in Brooklyn. She co-authors a [weekly newsletter](https://famouspeople.substack.com/) about terrible parties.  *

GreenBabybel

Babybel

The first time I fell in love, we bonded in the early stages through phone Scrabble. “Scrabble back,” he’d text me, if a few hours passed without my next move. This was pre-Tinder, and our matches got heated. We eventually spent enough years together to re-download the app for a burst of nostalgia in our long-distance monogamy.

As our relationship wore on, Newtoy’s then-wildly popular Words with Friends became available on my Android, like the Snapchat app we’d use to sext. Then came Scramble with Friends (renamed Word Streak), which really spiced things up.

To me, word games will always be kind of romantic: a throwback to simpler times. They’re nerdy, but nobody really cares that much if you underperform. There’s space to slack, to try too hard, or to embarrass yourself only in front of a bot.

On Wikipedia, a website predicated on people volunteering to write and edit words, “word games” [are categorized by type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_game). There’s letter arrangement (Scrabble), puzzle (crossword), structured (Mad Libs), or linguistic recreations (spelling bees).

These games predate artificial intelligence by eons, well before Siri had all the answers and Merriam-Webster Dictionary started dragging people [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster).

Words, one of the most basic forms of communication, can be primal. Like puzzles—or a budding relationship—they can leave us vulnerable or confused. Choosing the right word could win you millions of dollars, grant you acceptance to a prestigious school, or earn you 10 whole seconds of glory on a dimly lit stage before a crowd of boozing spectators.

We may be post-truth, but a word well-played still brings people together. On a recent Galentine’s Day, I watched a group of grown adults in a Manhattan speakeasy compete in a spelling bee. “French from Latin,” the moderator read. I sipped my beer. “Can you please define the word?” Plot twist! In line for the restroom, I learned one very good contestant spoke only English and Portuguese, the latter not much help here. More were eliminated. No mercy was spared. Only one speller—who asked to hear a word in a sentence—behaved as a “douche,” at least according to the moderators.

For the same reason I go to estate sales, word games have retro appeal. They’re a haven from the noise, and from a president who does not open books. They’re a cerebral flex in a society that keeps telling me how to fix my face, company for a “lonely generation.”

If we match in a Scrabble game, thanks to some algorithm that connects people all around the globe, your choices tell me something about you. Maybe you learned a word from reading The Hobbit as a kid, which totally changed your life. Maybe you’re really into Shakespeare, or you’re a jackass who keeps making two-letter combinations until one finally sticks.

People separated by time or distance or language can play word games. True to form, most Americans are unwittingly more limited: notorious for only speaking English, and often afraid to look silly. It’s a humbling thing to admit that you can’t make a halfway decent play in a word game.  

Maybe you’re like my younger brother, who at age 10 won a round of Scattergories, the 30-year-old board game that includes pencils and paper in a box. For the category of “medicine” and the letter of “M,” he chose Midol, much to our mom’s and aunts’ delight. Obvious victor.

Maybe work is boring and unchallenging and you’ve been entertaining fantasies of quitting, but there’s some temporary spontaneity in the daily crossword—or whatever the frequency, depending your source.

In a culture that thrives on superficial connections, when your next lay can be only a few swipes away, word games can be intimate. An opponent’s assemblage of letters is suggestive, tells me something different than the 280-character tweet you spent an hour crafting and retooling.

On a recent early-morning bus ride to Manhattan from Philadelphia, I passed time by redownloading the word game apps I deleted forever ago. Delirious from little sleep, I felt slightly self-conscious and rusty playing against random players or bots. I remembered that I preferred Scrabble, because the virtual instructor would tell me if I chose the best possible word based on the tiles given. Uncertainty can be thrilling, until it’s not.

I drag the tiles: “F-I-R-E.”  Best word! “R-I-D-S.” Best word! An analog-looking, starry popup appears on my screen, a form of congratulations.

Is this as hard as it gets? Maybe I’m taking the easy way out. Or maybe, I still got it.

***

*[Natalie Daher](http://www.nataliedaher.com/) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She co-authors a newsletter, [Clipped](https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=469667a58e33374cf748297f7&id=4e1050af80), about women's media.*

Finding common ground one letter at a time.

scrabble

Word Games

In 2016, I moved into an apartment outfitted with a panini press, a clunky appliance I used exactly once and which then served as an ersatz modern art installation for the remaining 364 days of my lease. Its worthlessness was solidified when, on a camping trip with nary a press in sight, my roommates and I placed hunks of cheese-stuffed baguette on a grill and flattened them with large rocks. Me, dependent on a single-use appliance? I scoffed as I bit into my panini. Please. I was practically Bear Grylls.


My ambitions — at least when it came to eating sandwiches — may not have been lofty enough to capitalize on a panini press, but its existence served as a gateway gadget, paving the way for what I now consider to be the holy grail of single-use appliances. It sits in my kitchen. It is small. It is sharp. It cuts without hurting and slices without contrition. Friends: meet the egg slicer.

 
Invented in the early 1900s by a German man named Willy, the egg slicer was created for the sole purpose of — this isn’t hard, folks — cutting eggs. The device itself is composed of two parts: a slotted base and a hinged frame strung with taut metal wires. To wield this contraption, all one has to do is place a peeled, hard boiled egg on the base and lower the top, allowing the wires to cut through the membrane and separate the orb into equal segments. As Willy was clearly aware, no one wants to accidentally coat their egg with fingerprints or deal with buckled whites, two common hazards of holding an egg and cleaving it with a knife. Best yet, these slicers transform the yolk (which I’ve always found slightly repellant) into manageable, aesthetically appealing ribbons of chalky yellow fat.

 
There is something pleasingly democratic about an apparatus that elevates an egg from an inexpensive, ubiquitous form of protein to a delicacy with one quick sever. The devices are also widely accessible, with myriad brands, styles, and price points from which to choose. While I prefer the bare bones, 100% aluminum version that sells for [$2.81 online](https://www.tigerchef.com/tigerchef-round-aluminum-egg-slicer.html), egg-eaters with upscale taste can purchase fancier instruments. Williams Sonoma offers a [$14.95 BPA-free "Egg Slicer and Wedger](https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/williams-sonoma-egg-slicer/),” which one online reviewer bought "on a lark" and then loved so much that she ordered another for the kitchen in her lake house.

 
The egg slicer may be my favorite, but a brief tour of my pint-sized Brooklyn apartment reveals that I now own a small army of single-use appliances, all honed to execute one task perfectly: there is a [milk frother](https://www.amazon.com/Bellemain-Stainless-Steel-Frother-capacity/dp/B010E1ZQVC/ref=sr_1_20?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576025&sr=1-20&keywords=milk+frother), which I use every morning and a [rice cooker](https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-SR-G06FGL-1-Step-Automatic-Cooker/dp/B01DGQVX46/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575340&sr=8-3&keywords=panasonic+rice+cookers), whose services I employ on occasion; on the table sits a [small wedge](https://www.amazon.com/Bobino-LATOFTQ-Laptop-Foot-Turquoise/dp/B0758161RQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575443&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=bobino+laptop+foot&psc=1) that serves no purpose other than propping up my roommate’s laptop and which she claims stands between her and a lifetime of carpal tunnel; and in the back of my closet is a [sweater razor](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015RN9JN8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), which I drunk-ordered last winter after reading that it would slice the fuzz off all my sweaters and, thus, “change my life.” I still believe this although I have yet to prove it true — in my aforementioned state I forgot that I own only one sweater and zero of the batteries the device requires.

 
The beauty of single-use appliances is that, unlike Pokémon or sexual harassers, it doesn’t behoove anyone to catch ‘em all. Unless you happen to inhabit a mansion of Versailles-style proportions, collecting these contraptions forces one to prioritize. Would you rather be greeted every day with the dead-eyed stare of a [hot dog steamer](https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-HDS248RD-Extra-Large-Steamer/dp/B01LVWIIVR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576752&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=hot+dog+cooker&psc=1) or a [strawberry huller](https://www.amazon.com/Chefn-27466-StemGem-Strawberry-Huller/dp/B002XOHZWC/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529575061&sr=1-4&keywords=strawberry+huller)? Are you the sort of person who values flawlessly [spiralized zucchini](https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Handheld-Spiralizer-Green/dp/B013KAW5IQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529682126&sr=1-8&keywords=zuchinni+spiral+noodle+maker) over a properly [scraped coconut](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D59NVXH/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07D59NVXH&pd_rd_wg=iz3Tv&pd_rd_r=SGF4GQ8K4JYKWNKRHBV0&pd_rd_w=PPENA)? At some point, the questions become nearly existential: in the vast scheme of things, do the rewards of a [banana bunker](https://www.vat19.com/item/banana-bunker-protects-bananas?adid=gshopping&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=1o2&scid=scplpbanana-bunker&sc_intid=banana-bunker&gclid=CjwKCAjwma3ZBRBwEiwA-CsblIot5ie4bOdhlrGp7z1XY6XwEvJyHjmvyPgJiWZMXMWQXpNZe5JBShoCsrcQAvD_BwE) trump the spoils of a [hamburger press](https://www.amazon.com/Weston-Express-Hamburger-Ejector-07-0310-W/dp/B000XB45DO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529576579&sr=8-3&keywords=hamburger+press)?

 
I was speaking with a friend recently who admitted that she has a rule against owning single-use kitchen appliances, her reasoning being that in most instances you could probably use a knife to accomplish the same task. Does she have a point? Sure.


But sometimes “good enough” just isn’t good enough. And if anyone needs me, I'll be in my own (slightly more crowded) kitchen, with my slicer, basking in that rare flavor of joy that accompanies placing a perfectly mathematically bisected egg atop an otherwise mundane salad.


***


*[Luna Adler](http://www.lunaadler.com/) likes to think of herself as an agreeable Scorpio. She lives in Brooklyn.*

Features

Ghosts of the Machines

Jasmine Mans

Rising Son

Violet Mangoes

Natasha Pickowicz

High Minded

Babybel

Word Games

Egg Slicers

High Praise

Turn Your Table

Don't Judge A Book By Just Its Cover

Go With The Stream

For people who also smoke weed.