Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “Heavy”

izzy's playlists!
noise dept.
occasionally subtle
One Nice Bug Per Day
Peter Solarz

Kaledo Art
cherry valley forever

blake kathryn

oozey mess
DEAR READER
Claire Keane
ojovivo
RMH
KIROKAZE
Show & Tell
Misplaced Lens Cap
Sweet Seals For You, Always
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

Andulka

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from United Kingdom

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Ukraine
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye

seen from United Kingdom
seen from China

seen from Argentina
@modern-sie
Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “Heavy”
sorry i never replied. everyday is blending together and i'm losing sense of time
Brooklyn, NY March 2026 Chicago, IL March 2026
The last three months I've been in a weird fog of depression. I've sat in therapy appointments trying to describe it and only been able to describe the symptoms: Only tolerating time in bed, watching hours of Succession. Walking to the Y to sit in the sauna. Feeling restless and anxious all at once, telling myself I "need to get my shit together" while staring at text messages of friends checking in and being unable to respond. I've gotten drunk here and there, but the best way I can describe it is that the effects have only been physiological (especially a hangover the next day) while mentally I've remained at the same frequency, waiting for whatever dopamine drinking offers to arrive.
Last month, I spoke at a conference. It felt like a significant moment in my career, and I worked myself into a panic about the entire experience. It took so much out of me in a way that felt incongruous with the task at hand. I distinctly remember sitting back in the audience afterwards and telling myself I had done a terrible job, going through a mental tick list of ways I had failed. And when I was met with sincere compliments by attendees, none of it permeated whatever looming dread I felt. I was relieved to come back to NY and crawl into my bed and have permission to put the whole experience behind me.
This week I put two and two together that maybe it has to do with my dad's Parkinsonism. Maybe this is hindsight speaking, and it's convenient to tie these two things together. On Monday, my mom texted me asking if we could talk, which landed as a gut punch. On the call she told me that over the weekend, my dad had had hallucinations, been disoriented, had a fall, and was just overall fragile, with an onset that was alarmingly quick. She took him to the doctor to get cleared and then I joined them later in the week at the neurologist to translate and to get more information on what caused this jump so suddenly. Both doctors were empathetic in their assessment: it could be a side effect of a specific medicine, a medicine interaction, or new symptoms (described as the cliff) that will stabilize. We're changing his medicine and monitoring him for the next two weeks. All in all, he's in good spirits, and in between the moments of fear there are moments of levity where we laugh about something or talk about something innocuous.
In my darkest moments this week, I chastised myself: "What were you doing at [random thing] while your father was struggling with [symptom] and your mother was dealing with it?" Like some perverse magical thinking that it's my fault my dad has Parkinsonism. Intellectually I understand it doesn't work that way. And I can't bully my nervous system into a sustained level of panic on behalf of my dad to trick myself into preparing for some unknowable future.
Outside all of this, I have my loved ones who both know what's going on and don't, all of whom have kept me afloat this week and this past winter.
Maybe two years ago, I had the capacity to hide this from everyone or to summon the energy to put on a front. And maybe it's a good thing that I no longer cope that way. I tell people about these experiences and even though it comes out as incomplete descriptions, it's something. Even writing this, there's something I'm looking for. Some resolution or a-ha moment to make me feel better. And there is something about formulating words about this experience in real time that gives me a sense of self. Like a self-portrait to prove I exist while this is happening.
Jacques Rivette
she was real as fuck for this honestly
there’s a part in joe brainard’s I Remember where, talking about childhood, he says, “I remember things were just as real then as they are now.” and it’s true – kids have lives and consciousness and the full range of emotions, and so many adults can’t seem to remember this.
and somehow it seems to also run the opposite direction too, where as people age above young adulthood, there’s often an assumption their lives become increasingly one dimensional and emotionally flat. like how people are shocked by the (non-MAID) suicide rate and SI rate amongst elderly populations, even though these are often extremely isolated people. the needs for companionship, connection, and meaning don’t magically vanish.
as a 34-year-old, i realize i don’t get the worst of the ageism, but it is nonetheless hard when gender comes into it. i am stressed out by the narrative that “if you are a single woman over 30, your life just gets worse and worse and your body gets ugly and you fall apart” – and yes, it is completely misogynistic and asinine, but it still hurts to think of being perceived and treated that way, and it’s scary to think it will “only get worse.” but the opposite narrative, that “as you come into your prime, all your self-consciousness will vanish” also doesn’t seem helpful or realistic, and i feel like it’s made it harder to access any support for mood swings or social difficulties because i’m just treated like i should be over it.
maybe those two narratives aren’t opposites but two sides of the same coin that refuses to make space for the difficult fact that everyone is a full person at any age. at the end of the day, i’m okay with aging and with my life looking different than expected; it doesn’t have to cancel out other things that matter in my life. what i’m not okay with is feeling like i missed the window of opportunity to be fully human. and that is not something that should be conceptualized as having a window at all.
just so you know
2020
July 16, 2019 – Ten days after calling off her engagement, CJ Hauser travels to the Gulf Coast to live among scientists and whooping cranes.
Because it's Valentine's Day weekend, I'll share an essay by CJ Hauser that walloped me when I first read it in the summer of 2019. In my memory, that summer intertwines three moments: it was the first summer after the end of a long relationship, the last summer before COVID, and the start of letting others be there for me.
The first laugh I had in a long time, the kind where I couldn't breathe, came in the backseat of a Prius with two friends who invited me to Vermont. We sped past a sign outside a funeral home in the sticks. I remember our peals of laughter, me crying because I was laughing again.
I remember my parents visiting and helping me with the small repairs I had let pile up. Between love as acts of service, we talked about my sadness, and by the time they left, my apartment had transformed into something new. It was the summer I squeezed into subways and friends of friends' cars headed for the Rockaways to bake in the sun, listening to more than one boom box play Mojaíta.
I left NY to visit friends on the other coast who eagerly said "come visit!" I slept in spare bedrooms and on couches and let them fill me with new experiences until my world (and heart) got bigger.
In the time since, there have been other heartbreaks, other loneliness. Since reading that essay, I've learned there are so many different ways to describe love.
(via Air: Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube)
God, I love these French Gen-Xers.
Madrid, May 2025.
Fishkill, February, 2026.
I hate being sick. I get whiny when I'm by myself, all itchy eyes and sweating out a fever. I just want the whole thing to be over with. I dramatically sigh and complain that there is no one here to take care of me. Of course, I have loved ones who check in with me. They tell me what shows to binge watch. They offer to order things on my behalf. My mom very seriously offers to drive over from the next state to take care of me. I am not a person without care. But immediately as those offers materialize, I'm embarrassed. I tell myself I'm being a big baby and not an adult woman who can take care of herself.
Once, a boyfriend lived with me. I don't say we lived together because I didn't ask him to split the rent. I swear this made sense to me at the time. It wasn't for very long. Staying with me was a way to keep him in NY a little longer. Again, this is logic that only makes sense to someone without a fully developed frontal cortex.
It was a long winter and I had a painful toothache that would later turn into a root canal. I can't stand feeling less than 100% for a second. Having the privilege of medical insurance and living in a city means I'm going to use my deductible for all it's worth. My boyfriend had been sick with a cold or flu for a few weeks. He believed in toughing things out. As you can probably guess, these differences came to a head in a tiny studio apartment where one person wanted to stay and the other wanted to go. On this particular night, he was quite weak. I offered to go get medicine from the 24-hour bodega because he needed something and I needed some sleep. He finally relented and I skipped to the bodega in a haphazard midnight outfit consisting of pajama tops and jeans, buying them out of their marked-up over-the-counter meds.
By the time I got back, he had shuffled to my bathroom. My bathroom is too small to hold two people comfortably. I stood at the door frame and popped my head in to take in the image before me. He was wearing a shirt, no bottoms, sitting on the edge of my tub, crying. Like a six-foot, twenty-something Winnie the Pooh. It's the most I'd ever seen him cry. I didn't mean to laugh but I was in love with something so pathetic. I gave him the meds and put him to bed. The next day I cancelled my emergency dentist appointment and went with him to urgent care where they gave him an IV for hydration.
Not unlike Phantom Thread, I understand the appeal of caretaking as an act of love. When I resent being bedridden, really I'm resenting not having an audience. Someone to love me when I'm this pathetic. But with the benefit of hindsight, I realize it's not exactly healthy to count up all the ways you'd sacrifice yourself for someone else. I haven't taken care of a romantic partner like that since.
THE BEAR — 1.02
-Una vita difficile (Dino Risi, 1961) -Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)