Nina Perlman

told a girl on the subway I loved the cropped sweater/shrug she was wearing and she was thrilled to tell me her mom made it and I hope she texts her mom immediately

"To me, writing is an act of listening. I listen, of course, to what I have already written. And then to something unknown, somewhere out there. The writing is this listening, to write is to listen. I don’t plan anything. Writing happens."

—Jon Fosse

should I get a pair of carsickness glasses so I don’t feel nauseous whenever my uber turns out to be a Tesla or should I just throw up

may the different group chats never cross-reference your messages and discover you’ve been workshopping your quips

men in suits and ties sprinting next to priceless horses

so far least favorite part of corporate life is microsoft outlook and my favorite part of corporate life is that I made emojis of my cat on slack

want to cut up all my art to make books and want to cut up all my books to make art

Find Out Why Health Insurance Denied Your Claim You likely have the right to access records that explain why your insurer denied your claim or prior authorization request. Use ProPublica’s free tool to generate a letter requesting your claim file f...

I don't know who needs to know this, but Pro Publica has an online thing that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial. (which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases)

projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

Writing is fine. It's literally the most embarrassing thing on earth to emotionally put yourself on full display for rejection or validation, but it's good. I enjoy it. I find it therapeutic to horrify myself.

“Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described. They should teach you this in school, but they don’t.” —Sigrid Nunez, THE VULNERABLES

as a writer, it's amazing how deep and intimate my relationship with language is—and yet how difficult i find it to say things to, uh, people, anywhere

I think about this poem so often that I now also keep my accumulated nail clippers in a wooden bowl

wandering around my apartment at 3am without my glasses on & got spooked by my own shadow against the wall in my peripheral vision

my decades-long commitment to the messy clipped-up piecey bun/swoop bangs forever validated by the girl stepping off the train as I was getting on who shouted “your hair is so cute!” as the doors closed between us

Very specific but the feeling of making jewelry by disassembling and reassembling necklaces my grandmother made, and remembering her teaching me to make jewelry at her old dining room table. Something with a slight metallic/stone quality but ultimately cozy

thrilled to be a part of the latest issue of DIAGRAM

In the latest issue of @eldiagram.bsky.social :: an image/text lyric essay about living in New York, pigeons & my pet parakeet, and finding fluidity in structure.

thediagram.com/23_5/perlman...

Hey there new DIAGRAM issue 23.5: thediagram.com/23_5

I’m getting married tomorrow

love that I’ll write full paragraphs while at work or riding the subway, scattered between notes app/notebook/emails to myself/the end pages of the book I’m reading and forget them there for months until I finally think to myself “didn’t I write a scene of this happening?” and have to go on a quest

It’s a gross day so I’m drinking cinnamon tea and making lentil soup with every warming spice on my spice rack

at the stage of revisions where I want to cheat on my manuscript with my plans for the next one