Tiny Cabinet: banality

A Note: Mass shootings are anything but banal. This visual essay is meant to explore the experience of living alongside a rapid news cycle when a mass shooting occurs. In the fall of 2022, I began to realize that my depression and anxiety manifested in a fear of everyday, public spaces where mass shootings have occurred in the last ten years. Some of them, like the 36th Street subway station, where I got on and off the train for work, are actual places where mass shootings occurred. Also supermarkets, movie theaters, concerts, schools, places of worship, bars. I began to wonder what it means to live out the contours of my "banal", everyday thought patterns in the shadow of terrible brutality. This project is nested in the experience of receiving a news notification while frying an egg for breakfast or learning about a death count while scrolling through Instagram on the toilet. How can one reconcile both the tremendous pain and horror of such events with the knowledge that, once the news cycle moves on, it won't take long for another mass shooting notification to pop up on your screen?

i am watching a rat crawl around the third rail from the platform at 36th street. it is rainy and December and my feet hurt, i am thinking about Dana who leaves the lights off when she comes in to work because she does not like the fluorescence and now twice the owner has reprimanded me: “The lights are off.” i am thinking about how badly i wish not to be thinking about these things when i go home for the day from my minimum wage job where i am micromanaged from my bosses’ vacation in hawaii. the platform is not crowded but enough that i notice each person’s face in the dim light. new york city winter makes people so tired. i am excited to go home and eat my jungle curry and say hello to my cat

i look at my phone and feel embarrassed telling johanna i do not want to go to the concert but the truth is i have no desire to be near all those bodies and in general i am a 24-year-old grandma, so no, i will not go see rosalía even though the part of me that aches to be a cooler, better version of myself wants to, so much, desperately

lily orders tea before the movie starts and i wonder if i should order a chicken sandwich or if it will be too many calories since today is day one of my Noom weight loss journey. i went to the bar and ordered a ginger ale before the movie and they ended up giving me club soda by mistake but i didn’t mind i was just proud of myself for not ordering tequila. i truly do not even know what this movie is about but lily is such a good friend, drawing me out of my depressive episodes to come do something together and for that i am grateful. shhhhh it is getting dark, the movie is about to start

in the wake of my most recent heartbreak i wonder if i really truly am finally over men. every time i pass the gay bar i think, i should go inside. but i don’t. rosie texts me she needs to have sex but everyone is awful and what’s the point, and i text her back, you need to go to The Woods on Wednesday. a return to queerness would be welcome but i also find myself not ready for anything, my instinct is still to fold inwards, the effort to extend my body or even my heart toward another being gay or not just feels too hard. so i do not go to Ginger’s but i reckon someday soon, i will.

i always feel like supermarkets are the pinnacle of American capitalism and it never fails to amaze me these piles of lemons and limes and oranges, these stacks of herbs and spinach and chopped mushrooms. here i can find tampons, here i can find frozen beef. i used to think the ACME my dads took me in New Jersey was possibly the most marvelous place, the pinnacle of suburban normalcy that a part of me craved, so different from hot concrete in Brooklyn. always abundance in the supermarket

my moms call me to tell me shabbat was FULL of young people, all my age and a bit older, i really should consider coming next time. i think they feel bad for me because i am sad and hopeless and in a rut but truly i never was one for shul. i guess i could try but for some reason i do not really want to, maybe it was all those boring Saturdays spent waiting for the chanting to finish so i could wriggle free, i should give it another chance, if i were being good i would

sometimes i pass my elementary school during recess, if i could go back and tell my younger self something, what would it be? my therapist wants to do this inner parts therapy thing with me and when we tried doing it the other day i just randomly started crying so much for younger me, for how alone she felt. i have become the person she always needed – she needed me.

today i am so tired

i try to remember what got me out of the depression in the past but it feels fleeting, or that the answer is just good things began to happen and life got better. or maybe it was Zoloft? Wellbutrin? a new relationship? being alive in the world even when it feels so hard and that’s a triumph in and of itself? i feel so useless when i wake up in the morning, such a waste of space, when i was younger i had so much potential and now i am just a depressed waitress trying to drink less. but i have to believe something will change, that something will get better. i have not yet lost hope and if it got better before then it will happen again. for every thing i experience i swear, it’s going to happen again

PANIC IN BROOKLYN SUBWAY: POLICE HUNT GUNMAN WHO SHOT 10

SUBWAY ATTACK PROVES CITY’S RESILIENCE AGAIN: ‘WE DON’T HAVE A CHOICE’

LAS VEGAS CONCERTGOERS SAY GUNFIRE WENT ‘ON AND ON AND ON’

LAS VEGAS SHOOTING: 59 KILLED AND MORE THAN 500 HURT NEAR MANDALAY BAY

MAN OPENS FIRE INSIDE MOVIE THEATER IN MINNESOTA

LAFAYETTE MOVIE THEATER SHOOTING: 911 CALLS, VIDEOS REVEAL MOMENTS BEFORE, AFTER SHOOTING

GUNMAN KILLS 5 AT LGBTQ NIGHTCLUB IN COLORADO SPRINGS BEFORE PATRONS CONFRONT AND STOP HIM, POLICE SAY

WORST MASS SHOOTING IN U.S. HISTORY: 50 SLAIN AT ORLANDO GAY NIGHTCLUB

THE BUFFALO SUPERMARKET SHOOTER WILL DIE BEHIND BARS AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO KILLING 10 PEOPLE

‘LIKE EVERY OTHER DAY:’ TEN LIVES LOST ON A TRIP TO THE STORE

‘I LOOKED UP, AND THERE WERE ALL THESE DEAD BODIES:’ WITNESS DESCRIBES HORROR OF SYNAGOGUE MASSACRE

‘I’M ALIVE’: HE SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST, AND THEN THE MASSACRE AT THE SYNAGOGUE