@sophiaemeloni

21/61: The irreconcilable place where Aunt Michelle conga lines with Rondog Millionaire fresh off a drunk confession and the high school girlies play Rock Paper Scissors over my various high cheek boned Italian American distant cousins and family friends. Where I share a moment with my Dad’s ex boyfriend and take back a shot with a friend group of married men who maybe wish they were my Dad’s ex boyfriend. Where my Mom slips into just Sherm remaining loyal to the disco, 40 years eclipsed in a single hip gyration and the other Moms, in the heat of the moment own up to the time that they may or may not have done a bowl of cocaine with Elton John that one time in Milan. Where the ominous chatoyancy of the night meets the brilliant chaos of intergenerational partying and it all manifests in the image of a life long family friend k-holing in on the dance floor in a belly shirt. I see the ghost of Nights Out future. It is impossible to keep the feather boa from catching on the sequins and indiscernible where silk ends and the polyester begins. The distance between the dance floor and my exposed right nipple on a times square sidewalk is a single tequila soda. Chucky waits in excited anticipation. At the stroke of midnight he turns 21 and discards his trousers revealing the tiny gold jiggalo shorts he dawns beneath his clothes. The conga line snakes around the bar and back again, the party rages on, I turn another year older and I feel loved. [April 2nd]

20 was for removing the guard rails, for the graceful swan dive into What’s the Worst that Could Happen, for the gorgeous place before What’s the Worst that could happen becomes the Worst that could happen, for if not then when, for it’s really yours now, for negotiating place, for the ache of home, for the realization of I Can’t Take You With Me, for coming into Oh So That’s What that Feels Like, for the cadence of the city, for the club floor, for the dinner table, for going, for doing, for returning, for a continued becoming. I get rejected by 4 different bouncers and throw a pre adult tantrum just days before my 21st birthday. These events are unrelated to one another. Today, champagne out of the bottle or in the lemonade sippy cup to pregame Best Buy. The 4th grader on a leash and the strip mall frappuccino make my day. Talismanic lines play on my mind: I change in the sameness of change. I embrace the night and get gone.

back in hollywood a french producer takes me for a drive in the mercedes. Two seats; top down. Mamma, I’m going to be a star. On the other side, Veronica takes down an airplane shooter in a Fort Lauderdale motel parking lot as a gust of wind rips off her pink cowboy hat. She laments the loss of her vodka orange juice seized too early by TSA. Early onset hurricane season. rupture and home. I’m collecting the fragments.

Veronica is the siren call. Veronica is the brilliant mind. Veronica is the Epic I’m trying to make sense of. Veronica is the character that remains ineffable. Veronica cannot be caught. Veronica cannot not leave me breathless. Veronica is the love that takes it out of you. Veronica is the feeling I’m intent on claiming. Veronica is a deep cut. Today, Veronica is 21 and, sadly, she is not in Atlantic City.

Dear Mom— This time I have run to Paris with a pipe dream of assimilation. Like many, I bare the scar of having been scorned by the city once before. During a tweenage romp in the BHV I wielded my slender grasp on French like a bludgeon mistakenly saying “nice ass” to a prickly sales woman in an attempt to thank her kindly. Still hot with the shame of the trauma, this time around I smile and “oui” with the reserve of an American martyr baring the lashes of cultural inferiority. Most notably, I have alighted to the graphic European cigarette box—endlessly horrified and intrigued by their deterrent pictures. I was provoked and puzzled by the game. The amputated leg sockets were easy to come by— unsightly but not all together obscene; for me, it was a yawn. The blackened lung, however, now that was the money shot— elegant and to the point, cheekily on the nose but not as gauche as the cancer baby or the septic foot with yellowed veins. My first instinct was to collect them for display— hoard them like pokémon cards until I was invited to trade in the elite Parisian smoker trading circuit. My mind raced with the possibility of how I would play it << deux pre mortem neck holes pour un rotting teeth in a decayed mouth>>. Of course, this is only the beginning. In a moment of symbolic youthful meloncholy I went to take a rainy walk through Cimetière du Père Lachaise. A barricade had been put up around Jim Morrison’s grave. That’s when I realized that the whole world was American. But mama, lying somewhere between Henry Miller’s Paris and David Sedaris’s Paris I have discovered my Paris. In the freezing cobblestone street, among the smog and the trash I double fist crepes and plot my next cigarette box trade before I allow the melancholy take hold and cast myself into the Seine with the only phrase my high school french teacher ever spoke to me echoing in my mind— “Sophia, n’importe quoi”. As always, more to come. Love, Sophia

2021 was no rules, shock and awe, comedy of the obscene, variations on restlessness, impending consequence, pursuit of [the place], cultivation of self and (continued) becoming. I have a sneaking suspicion that 2022 will bring more of the same. Tomorrow I get a tan and tackle the 2021 backlog.

He is probably drunk cooking or hitch hiking or befriending a street dog or starting a party or breathing fire or cracking a coconut with his bare hands or on a motorcycle or in a treehouse or with a princess or under a moon rainbow or on a volcano on an island looking at another volcano watching a flaming sunset as he brushes his single beaded dread behind his ear and asserts, with complete earnest, that happiness can be quantified by the amount of silhouetted palm trees one sees in a lifetime. He is always in Elsewhereland. Happy Birthday🌟

I celebrate my first halloween with abs. Like one’s first easter with boobs or one’s first labor day with class consciousness— it was something that fundamentally changed one’s engagement with the holiday. I was clear headed and intentioned, reinvigorated by the true meaning of Halloween. I reevaluate my priorities to fit the execution over concept model. But, of course, there’s still my ego to consider. Should some terrible fate befall me like freezing to death or facing a medical consequence of having too much fun it was important to me that I did not go out as a slutty nurse, an erotic Alice in Wonderland or any other costume that necessitated my wearing assless chaps. When the campus report or local media outlet reported the statistical carnage of Halloween weekend it was important that my persona remained intact. I continue to fantasize: “We found 3 trashy mermaids in a gutter, 4 sultry pirates puking in the street, 8 fetishized children’s book characters passed out in a backyard, 18 ambiguously spooky freshmen suffering from alcohol poisoning but this vaguely feminine yet strangely ripped Salvador Dalí face down in the trashcan is quite clearly not like the other girls” The cast of Jersey shore and I seize the night with an unmatched love for “Snookie where’s the beach”. I cannot keep my mind off the clocks.

Averse to organization, inept at scheduling sensitive to distraction, charmed by whims and generally unconcerned with time— I play the unlikely AD. I cuff the sleeves of my black A24 t-shirt and pull on my screen printed Taxi Driver dickies and try not to die of self loathing or worse yet unironic self satisfaction. I’m a junkie for the feeling of being out of my depth, tempted by the siren song of “what’s the worst that could happen?” and so unattractively self reverent of that blind confidence thing. Apparently there’s meaning behind the red light so I try not to fuck up the red light but of course I end up fucking up the red light. I’ll parse that allegory some other time. A film school hostage of the theory thing but I much prefer the hands on thing. Maybe I just like to call action.

Hometown hero poses for a statue after saving a local boy’s drowning croc. October 15. Local color fiction.

I am taking in all the glitz and glamor of the ivory tower and experiencing the particular masochism of taking a film seminar. Professors that diverge from the canon and then queer the capital “I” Intellectual tradition of diverging and then issue a statement that confronts the expectation of academic conventions within the context of divergence and then interrogate the constant need to expatiate on said divergence and then verbally footnote their own initial sentiment with a dozen iterations of the same sentiment in different synonyms and varied syntax until the lecture collapses on itself into one triumphant cumulative heap of academic shrapnel, fractured theory and reimagined iterations of the word “juxtaposition”. I hold steadfast to the belief that this semester could have been an email. I am looking for a respite from critical thought. I am looking for a sojourn from nuance. I am looking to experience fat brush stroked, blissfully inarticulate, monosyllabic emotions. I am still searching. I get an unrewarding A on the paper. It’s a masterpiece of mimicry but it’s dribble. The emperor has a thesaurus and a wicked wit but she’s got no clothes.

Back to school. Creating memories! Creating meaningful relationships! Creating nostalgia for tastes that linger like shots of jagger on a frat house porch or half digested fried mac and cheese bites on their way back up. Lily comes of age and then Chloe comes of age and then Beatrix comes of age. I am facing the tame indignities of the good old days like walls that sweat and grubby freshman hands fondling a sheet cake. I am thinking deeply about the University position.