Theo

My name's Theo Thimo. Hope you enjoy reading all of this stuff. [email protected] @theoooeooo

[theothimo]

Greek easter

My niece is watching ppl play catch w a football "I wanna play," she says "sure but u'll prob hurt urself" the two girls on one side r throwing to two boys on the other "I wanna play w the girls, because I'm a girl, and u can play w the boys bc ur a boy" "Uhm well u don't have to just pick the girls side" "how come" "Uhm" lol, "well like u can just do whatever u want I mean" "yea but that side is girl's and that side is boys" "it's just a coincidence," lol, "well it's not it's just complicated Jesus christ Avery I don't know what to say"

[theothimo]

just had the best interview of my life

love just how everything is

ive never had someone actually try and sell me in an interview

wrote like 20 pages on the subway ride back home

saw someone breaking up weed on the subway and i was just like yes this is how things should be

[theothimo]

4/10

Have a social media interview in a few hours but cant sleep Immense feelings of, i dont deserve this, i wont get it, failure, etc. Cant even sleep my body Thinking about being stupid Going to a coffee shop in williamsburg for this thing Its going to be a disaster Dont even kno if i want this Really want to die I never feel like myself in williamsburg Hopefully that turns out to b a good thing i guess

[theothimo]

4/6/15

not being conscious is my fav thing i do atm

i hope no one irl follows me on tumblr

keep thinking about dying in a “as the world turns” / “cycle of life” sort of way

my manager got mad at me bc a coworker gave me a 30 dollar gift card when she learns i dont eat some days

i keep thinking about things being different and it makes me feel good but i can only imagine things with a “different” filter over them, nothing specific

feel like, if i could do anything, i would but i can’t so oh well

there’s so much i could say about how not happy i am all the time

it feels like i am on the cusp of being a real IRL kind of person

i can b having a conversation w someone and it just pops in my head, “u should die,” “u should kill urself”

on the train the other day, i just started crying for no reason, and all i could think was how tired i was, just so so so tired, “exhausted” just kept thinking that word, “exhausted”

dont even feel like myself when im talking to ppl anymore, half of what i say i dont even think about i feel

was talking w A** and she mentioned her medication and our mutual friend was in the bathroom

and i was like “im so glad we’re talking about this bc i have been feeling that way so much too, just today i was wanting to die, and then i had so much energy and like faith in my future and 30 minutes later i was just crying again and im so so tired”

and she started suggesting her medication and it seems so scary to just have to take these things which will literally turn me into someone different but then i would take it for so long that soon that would just be me, all the time, and like if i dont take it, then like i’ll consider the sober version of me the ‘unhealthy’ me and it doesnt seem right

anyway the new ep of mad men tonight was so nice, rly happy that show exists and i can torrent things, this laptop barely works anymore but anyway

a girl asked me out on a tinder date for today, she followed me on twitter, and we’re gonna go to the new museum, i wonder if she thinks i’ll buy her things, that will be awkward lol i can never tell when ppl wanna have sex w me, is a museum date = no sex? we’ll see i guess, i mean i can’t imagine having sex in a bathroom thats playing steve roggenbuck videos but i might b interested

[shabbydollhouse]

the april issue is out now !

subscribe here

[theothimo]

Hey Theo, how come I cannot read your blog on desktop?

I kind of gave up on tumblr but it makes me feel bad

[theothimo]

i never go on here anymore but it's so comforting to see my feed still filled w so many familiar faces :)

im currently visiting family and i wanted to share a story i told my brother about how i got lost in the met,

i was on xanax and i spent maybe an hour in the end just trying to find my way out of the museum. i'm sure u guys kno the met is fucking massive, i spent maybe an hour just lost in all this thousand year old eygptian art. and after a certain point, i felt drained walking in a maze of all this fucking art and culture.

while telling this story it kind of reminded me of when im online for a long period of time, scrolling through social media, news aggregators, and truthfully uh clickbait articles which is beginning to share an embarassing large spot on the pie chart of every day

welp cya next time i wanna say something longer than a tweet not on facebook

[electric-cereal]

Tweeeeet Tweeet Tweeeet

Something cute is happening in front of me and my manager’s roommate while we smoke weed in the back of the bar.

I ask, “Did I hear John say you two recently moved?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Oh, where you living now?”

There’s a lovely pause in our friendly conversation.

“Park Avenue.”

“Oh,” I say. Our eyes twinkle and shine toward one another. “Very cool.”

“Yeah, we moved around two weeks ago.”

“It’s funny,” I say, “You have more money right now than I’ll have my whole life. That’s very nice for you.”

He thanks me and expresses profound humility.

“Yeah,” I twirl my thumbs. “I just realized I can’t relate with your life in anyway whatsoever. Have a great day!”

There is something nice about me when I meet Paul near Boston Commons.

“So, that made me feel really emasculated,” I remark to her.

“Stop it.”

“Do I smell bad to you? I haven’t showered in a while and all my clothes are dirty.”

“No, I don’t smell anything.”

We sit in front of ducks or geese.

“I just want to remind you that you can be completely honest with me.”

“You do smell but it doesn’t bother me,” she divulges to me in confidence.

A grand jury recently decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the murder of Michael Brown.

“That’s terrible,” she says.

“I agree.”

We order what we would later agree to be two “very delicious, and especially cheap cappuccinos.”

“That will be $8.89,” the barista smiles at us.

Paul investigates her pink purse.

“Oh no,” she says. “I don’t have enough money.”

Our eyes transpose with the cashier in the shape of what my imagination made-believe to be the Bermuda triangle.

“This is very embarrassing,” I say.

We accumulate our money, reaching six dollars.

“You guys are straight,” the cashier says.

“I just want you to know I feel like a terrible human being,” I confide in her.

Outside the cafe, “We deserved that shameful experience to happen,” I say.

“We are horrible and deserve this.”

We begin our leisurely stroll towards the train station.

“Can you spare some change,” a human being asks us. “I’m very hungry out here.”

Paul asks me what’s new.

“Well, I was talking to my friend about post-modernism yesterday. I just don’t get it, I think.”

“Did you know I was once in a Model UN?” she asks me.

“Yes, you’ve mentioned it before.”

“Oh, and did I tell you about how–”

“You locked your classmate out of the hotel room because he said something misogynistic.”

She explains how she has a number of preset anecdotes that she will tell people.

“Yes, I have those things too!”

“Isn’t it great that we compile these experiences in our life, and willfully highlight certain events to paint this picture of ourselves to the people around us.”

“And that’s who we are, I know. It’s crazy.”

“And we chose to see each other.”

“Yeah, and we pretend like it’s a casual thing but it’s really because we feel this impulse to see each other.”

“It’s super weird,” she says.

“Can I use your phone for a second? Mine just died.”

I trade my friendship for her smartphone.

“so happy with being happy and friendly,” I tweet.

A man in a suit walks by us while we sit and smoke weed on a bench.

“Smoking weed is something people do,” she says.

“It’s super fun. We can do this and nothing bad will happen to us even though it’s illegal.”

I’m still using her phone when I accept a friend request, and like some statuses.

“Can I see it for a second?” she asks. “Jesus christ, Theo. It’s at 3%.”

“I feel terrible, Paul.”

“Theo, it was at like 60% when I let you borrow it.”

“Look,” our legs stumble in front of a window pane.

“Wow,” she says.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a 3D-printer,” she says.

We marvel in wonderfilled gaze.

“I love technology,” I say.

“It’s making a turtle.”

The storefront shines light on our cute faces. Just then, I catch a glimpse of myself in the window’s reflection. “It looks like it’s pooping,” I say, surprising myself with a little wink.

—

Theo Thimo lives in Brooklyn. He has been published in Metazen, Press Board Press, Shabby Doll House, and Everyday Genius. He can also be found on Twitter and Tumblr.

Theo has five stories in Electric Cereal.

http://www.electriccereal.com/author/theo-thimo/

[shabbydollhouse]

What was your favorite book that you read this year?

2014 edition

KRISTINA MAHLER: Cunny Poem Vol. 1 by Bunny Rogers & Brigid Mason. I did a reading with Bunny in Vancouver and watching her perform affected me for a long time after. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the tone of her poems and her voice, the way her language can be juvenile and flippant but also brutally dark and heavy. The aesthetic of the book is also basically perfect, I am a serious Bunny Rogers fangirl now.

ADAM J KURTZ : I really enjoyed reading Meg Wolitzer’s “The Interestings,” which I bought only for the bright cover, because its subject matter caught me in a weird funk and had some good lessons. It was a fun, easy read. Also I enjoyed reading Spencer Madsen’s “You Can Make Anything Sad,” which I read.

MIRA GONZALEZ: my favorite book i read this year was ‘nobody is ever missing’ by catherine lacey. i liked it so much that i’ve been too nervous to email her and tell her that i liked it. it’s one of those books that made me feel simultaneously inspired and deeply insecure about my own writing abilities.

BOB SCHOFIELD: Everyday Is for the Thief by Teju Cole. Because it’s good to take the occasional peek outside your bubble, and remind yourself that the world is always so much bigger and more complicated than you assume.

MASON JOHNSON: Decided not to read any books by straight white dudes in 2014, which led to me being angry that no one (a teacher or anyone I look up to) had forced me to read Eileen Myles’ Inferno earlier. Same goes for Amiri Baraka’s The Autobiography of Leroi Jones. As far as books that actually came out this year, Sara Woods’ Wolf Doctors juggled energy and beauty in ways that make me envious, but in a very good happy feely kinda way, not in the “I’m going to murder you for your power” kinda way.

JAMES GANAS: my favorite book that i read this year was ‘brief interviews with hideous men’ by david foster wallace. the book sets up stories that are cohesive and logically tight in their examination of modern neuroses. i feel like i audibly said ‘oh’ multiple times while reading each story.

TRACY DIMOND: My favorite book I read this year is Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting. Every story used bizarre context to show what women have to do to survive. Sometimes it feels like destruction is the only option, this book put the feeling to page.

GILES RUFFER: i’m going to go with ‘vault’ by david rose. this “anti-novel” is a short (under 200 pages) and existential book. ffo camus and cycling lol.

GUILLAUME MORISSETTE: I just want to recommend, in general, the novels of Elena Ferrante, pretty much any of them. A good starting point is probably The Days Of Abandonment, which is from 2002, and is both pleasurable and distressing to read.

ASHLEY OPHEIM: The best novel I read in 2014 was Clarice Lispector’s Near To The Wild Heart. My heart understood the words in this book better than my mind did, and that’s what I loved about it. Lispector has a way of writing about the invisible worlds that exist within us in a way that shows how human flaws can fuse with divine perfection.

MATTHEW BOOKIN: "Wolf in White Van" by John Darnielle. It has all the puzzle pieces. I probably won’t ever read another novel again.

SEBASTIAN CASTILLO: my choice is easy! I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. Unlike anything I’ve read. I Love Dick changed my relationship with books and reading.

MARK CUGINI: Alexis Pope’s SOFT THREATS. It’s venom. It’s a piano string. It’s everything I’ve ever needed.

STACEY TEAGUE: the secret history by donna tartt - i read a lot of it during a 23 hour flight and it made me forget bad and weird things, which is good. i lent it to my boss and he lent me donna tartt’s second book, the goldfinch which i’ve nearly finished. also very a++

SAMANTHA CONLON: mine is How Should A Person Be? by Sheila Heti because it’s the first book i ever read that feels really for women. it’s unapologetically feminine and there are things in that book that are truly original. the relationship between sheila and margaux is one of my favourite relationships in a story so far. i feel like its a life changing book and fills me with a lot of nice feelings about being female and makes me feel extremely lucky for having so many brilliant female relationships in my life.

ALEXANDER SEEDMAN: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I’m not a huge fan of Murakami (I’ve read three other novels by him, one of which, Kafka on the Shore, I adored, and the others I found boring…too symmetrical and predictable). But this is really stand-out brilliant to me because I identified with a really complicated pain in the protagonist’s insecurity with feeling unspectacular.

EMMIE RAE: the miracle of mindfulness by thich nhat hanh because it’s a truly precious book to read at anytime and over and over or when you know your perspective needs to change, even just slightly.

COLIN DROHAN: I read the poet Tim Dlugos’ collected poems, A Fast Life, this year, and have not been able to stop raving about him ever since.

DAVE SHAW: The book I most enjoyed reading this year was, I think, Erna Brodber’s Myal. Reading it felt sort of like having a slightly insane older person whispering gossip at me on the bus.

MEGGIE GREEN: my favorite book i read this year was “nobody is ever missing” by catherine lacey. i miss it and i wish i hadn’t read it yet.

THEO THIMO: Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon. I never actually finished this book but I really enjoyed the first few hundred pages. I would have finished it if my kindle didn’t break. 

TIMOTHY WILLIS SANDERS: my favorite this year was “A Short History of World War I” by James L Stokesbury. i like history and the author is funny and engaging.

CASSANDRA DE ALBA: the book of joshua by zachary schomburg. it was the first time in a while when i had the sense of forcing myself to read slower & take breaks so i could really appreciate it instead of rushing through like i wanted to.

PAUL RIZZA: the luminaries by eleanor catton: against the backdrop of the new zealand gold rush, 12 men try to extricate themselves from a conspiracy veritably dostoevskian in magnitude, involving possible murders and thefts of massive fortunes, each behaving according to the astrological houses the novel assigns them and the real-world planetary movements of 1865 and 1866. stop me when this starts sounding incredible..

JOHN MORTARA: my favorite book that i read this year is called NEXT STOP ADVENTURE! and it’s a book made up of zines about this guy biking and hitchhiking and dumpster diving across the united states and it’s just really positive and motivating and hilarious and fun and it makes me feel brave.

LUCY K SHAW: Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz or Women by Chloe Caldwell. I read them back to back this summer and they both made me feel inspired to write more honestly. 

ROSHAN ABRAHAM: my favorite book that i read this year was black life by dorothea lasky. i liked it because it gave me lots of feelings and then i felt all of them! here are some of the feelings….whoa….wow…hm…..whaa…haha…uh. holy sh**..wow..prayer emoji… It is written in the voice of an inner child that we have all been trained to suppress but it’s the inner child dealing with pain, embarrassment, existential dread, perpetually delayed gratification, love, terror. i get all worked up just thinking about it! gosh.

RACHAEL LEE NELSON: May-Lan Tan’s “Things To Make and Break,” because every single story was original and interesting, every sentence was perfect, and when I put it down I couldn’t stop wondering how a person could kill it so hard.

ALEX MANLEY: Sorrow Arrow by Emily Kendal Frey - Sorrowful, piercing, vibrant, unexpected. Poetry the way we feel, like shards of concrete pointing up to the sky after an earthquake.

PANCHO ESPINOSA: My favorite book I read this year is called O Alienista (“The Alienist” in English), it’s in Portguese and it is written by Brazilian novelist and poet Machado de Assis. In this book I found a great synergy between prose style and content, one unable to be grasped without the other.

EVAN LEED: my book is The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1. This was making long-overdue amends for idolizing Henry Miller in my early 20s and I feel like a dumbass for not reading it years ago and I think it’s been a long time since I’ve tripped out so much on something new (to me).

CHRIS DANKLAND: This year I fell deeply in love with The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich. I’ve read it twice this year, and I want to read it again soon. It’s about hobo vampire junkies. I love the complexity of this book, and I love the way it talks to me. An excerpt: “There is something about being 17 and being immortal, like wishing you could turn into a magical being and then waking up, looking into the mirror, and seeing that you are. Cuz you can’t see shit and you know it happened, you turned vampire.

SCOTT LAUDATI: "Murder City" by Charles Bowden details the current state of Juarez. There are about thirty murders per page, so much cocaine, and no happy ending. Plus, he just died, so R.I.P.

KEEGAN CRAWFORD: Endgame by Samuel Beckett was the most memorable work I read this year. It was kind of funny, kind of nightmarish. It’s a really unsettling play.

OSCAR BRUNO D’ARTOIS: my favorite books of 2014 as far as i can remember were sprezzatura by mike young & hill william by scott mcclanahan. (can u pick 2 if one’s fiction & the other’s poetry? well anyway that’s wat im doing.) Here’s my reasonings: sprezzatura i found myself halfconsciously repeating phrases from in my head (normal for me), reciting bits & pieces of out loud (less normal b/c less socially acceptable) & even accidentally memorizing the first poem of (dont think ive memorized a whole poem, intentionally or otherwise, since the 4th grade). as for hill william, it sort of ‘sold’ me on scott’s writing, & i think in comparison to say crapalachia it felt a bit ‘underrated’ to me, like there is one kind of weird scene where 3 of the characters r watching porn & one of them ‘whips it out’ & the other is upset by this & well anyway u can read the book yrslf if u wanna find out wat happens, but the point is this scene the buildup to it & its aftermath just seemed to kind of ‘justify’ the whole sometimes dramatic sweep of scott’s writing, & made me feel understood & fricked & filled w a kind of, ah, sense of the tragi-comico-erotic nature of life? or something.

SARAH JEAN ALEXANDER: The best book I read in 2014 is Mark Cugini’s “I’m Just Happy To Be Here.” There is a poem in it titled ‘Appoggiaturas’ which is the best poem I’ve read this year. Here is part of it:

I don’t mean to leave you alone on this continent, but the truth is

there’s no such thing as a meaningful voice mail anymore—

there’s nothing left but silence in my pocket,

the 2 AM walks to the corner deli that

neither of us needed, and the 600 empty calories

that prove pain, too, is a flavor.

JOHNNY BRYAN: Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner – because it’s too good, it made me want to quit poetry… but then it also reminded me of whatever it was that made me write poems in the first place, whatever reason anyone could possibly have to write a poem… and I carry it around with me in my backpack a lot, and I keep going back to it like I keep going back to poetry.

FISAYO ADEYEYE: One thing I liked reading this year was Matthew Henriksen’s Ordinary Sun. It’s narrative was sparse but somehow also seemed pretty densely packed. Reading it felt like watching hundreds of angels fall from the sky into a lake.

MATT NELSON: i just read wittgenstein jr and it was fun! alexis pope’s new poetry book is wonderful.

EVAN BENDER: Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas , my art history textbook for the past year or so, It’s got lots of artist manifestos and excerpts from books, I guess its interesting to think that people I have met may end up in a book like this someday.

JENN KUCHARCZYK: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. While Atwood is this pillar of Canadian lit, I associated her novels with my mom’s book club circles growing up. I didn’t anticipate being so mesmerized by this book that was sharp and uncomfortable and presented an all-too-probable post-apocalypse that was clocking doubletime, looking at issues of sexual violence, class politics, our want to control but be free of responsibility… It felt like a good dose of honest therapy. And still managed to be funny enough. Really, I mean, there’s no one that’s entirely likeable, and you kind of see yourself in the one of many psychopaths. 

JACOB PERKINS: The best book I read this year was “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit, which I read last night front to back. While mostly about The Patriarchy as it pertains to women, so many (almost all) marginalized peoples came to mind. Books like this suck the blood out of the Darren Wilsons of the world, and the courts who protect them.

NATALIE CHIN: rly strong tie between Bark by Lorrie Moore — all eight of the short stories mostly abt trying to understand the end of desire, in people around you + yourself — & Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez — felt nice to sink back into a book with a heavy rolling perfect plot

P.S the new issue of SHABBY DOLL HOUSE is coming later this month. more announcements soon <3

[theothimo]

“They gaze at each other for a while, down here on the barroom floor of history, feeling sucker-punched, no clear way to get up and on with a day which is suddenly full of holes--family, friends, friends of friends, phone numbers on the Rolodex, just not there anymore. . .the bleak feeling, some mornings, that the country itself may not be there anymore, but being silently replaced screen by screen with something else, some surprise package, by those who've kept their wits about them and their clicking thumbs ready.”

Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge

[theothimo]

laughing

[theothimo]

[1ittlepeach]

pebble

you have been unable to shut your eyes for seventy-two hours for seventy-two hours you have been trying to figure out the difference between who you ‘are’ and who you ‘want’ to be you are unable to make out your true self whatever that means because you are rarely sober long enough to be alone with these pieces to put them back together and witness the moment before being thrust into this world you walk to the bathroom to splash water on your face to snap out of this cycle of questioning your purpose and your mother’s purpose and if you have your grandmother’s hands out of the drain, wildflowers sprout and live out lifetimes over and over beneath your faucet the pipe is clogged with roots that are a mile thick they snake their way down into the center of the earth underneath these layers of rock and civilizations both here and not is a tiny white pebble the scientists are wrong you are sure of it you wish you were this little white pebble because it is small but strong it hasn’t cracked or crumbled beneath the millions of feet walking above it it doesn’t have to worry about grandmother hands and knowing who it is because it is here and was here and will continue to be you walk back to your room and tape your eyelids shut and smile at this new knowledge of the world as you know it you curl up as tiny as you can and pretend you are the pebble at the center of it all hours and days and weeks and months and years all occur and reoccur the tape falls from your eyes you are asleep and safe and as pure as you will ever be

[62406-deactivated20150619]

what is it like to be relatively pretty and internet famous in New York?

[theothimo]

[theothimo]

Why are you so sad? Is that stupid question? I'm just curious why you're feeling that way.

Same

[theothimo]

THeo, I saw your story on ALG's tumblr and really liked it! big thumbs up. :)

Thaaankkkssssssss!!!!