Tomatoes on the brain.
Our tomatoes are internet famous.
Oh, hi. I am Meaghan O'Connell.
if you need to email me, that's fine (depending), just send it on over: hereissomeone@gmail.com
I have been writing and reading here since 2008. (For proof: see all the Tumblr posts I've liked here). I actually worked at Tumblr for awhile, in the early days.
Here are some of the more, er, extensive things I've written.
For more extensiveness, you can buy the Coming & Crying e-book, which is a thing I spent a long time co-editing and -publishing and -rallying around in 2010, here. If you like sex and feelings and have $8, well, you're in for it!
You can also follow me on Twitter if you want, you pervert.
Life is hard. Here is someone.
This book is strangely compelling. I did not know who (Lady) Antonia Fraser was before this. I know very little about Pinter besides he’s allegedly great and great at pauses. (pause) A few days into reading it I said to Dustin, “I think Pinter is…British or something.” （＠´＿｀＠）
I still don’t know why I bought this, off the shelf at a used bookstore on Mercer (aptly named: Mercer Books), when I don’t really give two shits about the people in it. It’s a damn diary of Lady Antonia Fraser that sort of traces her relationship w. the big P from beginning to end. It’s mundane shit, too. Parties they went to, cricket games they played. But little fascinating bits like what Miriam Stoppard wore to opening night or that Harold recited Eliot when visiting his gravesite or that he worships Sam Beckett (who doesn’t?). Why read anything like this? In a way it’s obvious: it’s a way into how other people do life. Their daily frustrations, the way they think about their families, their homes, their career moves. To see how they make sense of all of it, and when they don’t bother trying.
It’s also unabashedly about their falling in love, and their relationship. And who doesn’t want to know about that, start to finish? Let’s map it on out.
I find it really calming — which is a really second-rate way to describe something: “calming.” It’s the same reason I like reading cookbooks cover to cover. It’s banal at times but predictable in its banality. It’s not trying to be anything else, and you figure you must glean something useful from it by the end of things. Which probably isn’t even true. :/ But Beckett cameos!
There’s a lot going on here to unpack.
- This is me in the basement of my apartment building on Sunday afternoon.
- This mirror is right below where someone spray painted — in bright red, I might add — NO PAIN NO GAIN. Soon after, our landlord started locking the basement and hiding the key in the shadows of the doorway. It was hidden in plain sight, wrapped in a piece of black trash bag so it blended in to it’s surroundings. The basement isn’t locked anymore, and anyone can go down there. But really only we do. And yet: NO PAIN NO GAIN.
- We have this comically successful tomato plant in our backyard and it just keeps producing these wonderful, beautiful, yellow fucking tomatoes which in six short weeks have gone from being our magic earthly inheritance to a major stressor.
- WHAT THE HELL DO YOU PROPOSE WE DO WITH ALL OF THESE TOMATOES?
- We’ve made tomato jam. Mark Bittman’s. Jalapenos, lime juice, sugar, chili powder. It’s very…specific. It’s really great. But really how much can you eat? Don’t tell me to can it in the real way! I do not want to put it up. I don’t want to boil jars multiple times. In fact I have literally everything you need to can/pickle/preserve. I have tongs, I have a funnel, I have Ball jars, I have the huge stainless steel pot that I requested for Christmas. I STILL REFUSE.
- The tomatoes aren’t even the story. The story is that there is a colony of mosquitoes in our backyard and they have one thing on their (collective) mind: total annihilation of the human race.
- I am not one for bug spray. It seems cancerous, poisonous, onerous, odorous.
- I still use it. The organic natural kind but still: I use it.
- That should tell you all you need to know.
- Not really.
- WE HAVE TO PUT IT ON OUR FACES.
- We spray the bug spray into our hands, rub our hands all over, and then rub this noxious crap into our faces. Our eyelids!
- This is what I wore outside on Sunday. I felt like I was finally getting wise to the situation. Button up buttoned all the way up. Leggings and socks and sneakers. Only my face and hands revealed. We went out and it was a lovely day — not even that hot. I felt fine in my mosquito repellent uniform. Bug spray sweat was not even dripping into my eyes. There were so many tomatoes. Too many. The plant is starting to die (it’s not one plant, it’s a few. We don’t even know anymore how many. Just this great big bush, really, climbing and collapsing and overgrowing everywhere. We are on the one hand terrible tomato stewards and on the other, really fucking good at growing tomatoes. I think it’s a fluke. Benign neglect. The tomatoes feel empowered! And useful. We have confidence in them to figure it out for themselves.) and I feel very sad about that, though D has assured me this is the natural course of things.
- On Sunday I found myself somewhat frantically trying to tear out all the dead leaves and vines with my bare hands. Just grabbing and throwing and yanking and a little shameful, wanting to get it over with quickly. Like when you’re eating something really bad for you and you eat it even faster so it goes away and you can forget more quickly that you ate it. But there’s always more.
- Then suddenly mid-vine yank I felt overpowered with HISTAMINES. Like some threshold was reached and all of my body from the waist downward suddenly itched with such force that I jumped in the air and shook all over.
- When I shook, a sea of mosquitoes flew off my body. I saw them fly out in all directions.
- I had the immediate urge to slap and scratch and SCREAM, really.
- In my leggings.
- “Baby, I have to go in.” “Okay, can you take the tomatoes?”
- I stopped, though, to take a picture.
- I got upstairs and realized I didn’t have a key.
- I ran back down frantic and scratching, adrenaline pumping through my body.
- “I NEED KEYS. I’VE BEEN EATEN ALIVE!”
- When I got through the door I stood in the kitchen and yanked my pants down around my ankles, stepped out of my shoes and RAN to my bed, scratching furiously.
- I laid face down on the bed scratching and rolling around and finding new bites and just losing it.
- D came in. “OH MY GOD!”
- He immediately grabbed my phone from me to take a picture of my bare ass and legs, COVERED in mosquito bites.
- We counted 36. All swollen and red and huge.
- I really wish asses weren’t a thing you aren’t supposed to show people. How hard it is to have this amazing picture of my ass covered in these insane bites, and not really have anyone I can show it to.
- I mean, I showed it to Halle.
- I don’t think I can send it to my mom. I keep thinking about that, though.
- Halle says it seems like something I can show people. I said no, I don’t need everyone to know that my thighs are bigger than my ass.
- She said she thinks maybe everyone’s are when you’re lying down.
- I’m not sure I believe that. Like at all.
- I realized later why they only bit the back of my thighs and my ass.
- That’s where the leggings were stretched thin enough that the mosquitoes could get through to me.
- Thanks, Uniqlo.
- Thanks, ass.
- Thanks, universe.
- You’re welcome, world.
Places I've Lived
Do you guys read The Billfold? I am weirdly obsessed with it. I say “weirdly” because it is a website all about money and while I am older than I once was, I don’t think I would’ve predicted that a website about money would be something I’d visit every day (usually more). And yet! Weirdly obsessed. Mike and Logan do a great, great job.
Anyway they have a feature where contributors write about all the places they’ve lived. I find this series to be very voyeuristic-ally satisfying, and not one to miss an opportunity to disclose personal information, here is mine!
| 1: | "There is nothing in this world more sincere than your ass." |
| 2: | "You clearly haven't read This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life." |
“Intellect and emotion are not discrete tools, not for me. When I write fiction, creative nonfiction or literary and cultural criticism, I do so with both my mind and my heart. When I talk about books, I often feel ecstatic because that’s what reading brings out in me. When people deride enthusiasm, I cannot help but think, “How can you be anything but ecstatic when talking about a truly great book?”
Fage Greek Yogurts - 6oz - $0.99 (thru 8/9)
Forget the museums, the convenience of the subway system, the parks, the something’s always happening and you’re at the center of culture and industry —- the best part of living in New York in 2012 is that my GROCERY STORE has a Tumblr account where they tell me that their fancy Greek yogurt that I fucking can’t get enough of is on sale for 99 cents.
You Either Are Or You Aren’t. Brooklyn.
Sometimes he stands outside his storefront on Graham Ave. manning his permanent sidewalk junkyard him adorned in his ripped white t-shirt radio blaring fist knocking in rhythm on a stringless guitar as if jamming along to the song.
This guy is CONSTANTLY stealing our shopping carts. AND if he is indeed the owner of that house on Graham Ave, then this site is dedicated to him.
(Sidenote; It is interesting how tumblr can sort of be like a community message board at times)
This guy sat me in an armchair in his store/home and made my boyfriend sing an Italian love song to me. He whispered the lyrics — in Italian — to Dustin, and then had Dustin belt them out, one hand on his heart, the other raised high in the air. They often sang together. I sat in the armchair and laughed. The man was shirtless, sweat pouring down his face and chest in the middle of summer, pooling around all the crucifixes he was wearing. We bought a mirror from him for $5. It’s hanging in our bedroom.
But also this guy and his INSANE INSANE storefront have gone on for over a year and I have come to hate him. Just to be clear.
