Instagram story viewer> @nic.goode> Tagged

Nicola Goode

@nic.goode

858

followers

718

following

Curious Camera, Urban Explorer, Style Sleuth, Movie Still Photographer

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Insane Aged Sculptural
Brachychiton rupestris Bonsai Tree in a Vintage French Concrete Bowl
Photographer; @nic.goode
#thetropicshollywood #thetropicsinc #brachychitonrupestris #bonsai #vintagefrenchplanter

377

13

FIFTY SHADES OF GREEN (Pt. 2)

…the one that took so many of the prettiest + most gifted—Hugh’s porcelain, Adonis face is already ravaged, dark eyes bitter. The sensuous mouth curls down. I haven’t heard the joyous Hugh laugh in years. But his paintings are sharp-edged + shattering,. Brilliant. He plants day + night without cease.

Zwischenzeit. That’s the word. The time between times. When people of Twilight pass people of Dawn. The time when liquid desire is birthed.

As I write, the sky suddenly darkens, rumbles. A violent gust of wind sweeps Loo’s papers and the Crane Hawk feather to the floor. Then the heavens open.

There is no ending today. Maybe ever. Only rain.

52

8

FIFTY SHADES OF GREEN Pt. 1

“You mixed erotica + recovery,” says my ex-therapist. “No one’s done that before.” The year is circa 2009, when my last published book, the memoir Love Junkie, came out + changed the trajectory of my life. I still relish his generous words. Especially when I feel doubt, like now.

Fifty shades of green. What are the erotics of Nature? I write this wrapped in a pareo, after frolicking in ocean surf. Never mind the red flag—Peligroso. Dangerous. I steel my thigh muscles against the rip current, dig my feet into mutating sand as the waves break over my body, turn to foam.

Back at the Treehouse, I shower outside, surrounded by green. Neon mint. Teal. Lemon-lime. Olive. Hunter green. I feel hydroponic. Tidal. Lush.

The last partygoer left at 4:44am this morning. I got up at 5, having barely slept. The new renters in the adjoining Airbnb threw a blowout after party from 2am on. Blasting blaring honking skidding thumping. Cars, music, chatter, motorcycles, laughter, shouting, bodiesbodiesbodies—ripe as the fruit that drops from the weeping fit + monkey pod trees.

I remember being the one who partied all night, coming home from some castle or club in Rome in my early 20’s with friends, picking my way over cobblestones, guided by the scent of fresh-baked cornetti we’d buy + eat at the back door of the bakery, chewing while we watched the early morning people rush by on their way to responsibility land, + we’d laugh.

There must be a word for this path-crossing, like there must be for ecosex.

Maybe it’s the mango juice dripping from my lips, or how tropical wood feels under bare feet, or the way the rain makes everything glisten, but one day, a current of liquid light coils from my root up my spine + lightning-bursts through my skull until I pulse a thousand hibiscus petals.

Flowers fall from my mouth.

Rip tides roll through my body.

None of this would thrill me though without the work. The writing. Finding my new voice.

“All that matters is the work,” says my Yale classmate Hugh Steers. It’s the early 90’s, a few years before he will die of our generation’s scourge…(continued in Pt. 2)

20

7

IT ALL STARTS WITH ELLEN (Part Two)

“Ellen recommended you,” says college classmate Erik Kulleseid, a lanky Scandinavian swimmer I remember not well from college, except for a perhaps imagined vision of him sculpted like a Greek god wearing a black Speedo, skin slick with chlorinated water, holding the starting block in a middle lane of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium pool in that stretchy moment of anticipation before a race begins, Erik motionless with his broad shoulders draped over the block, and didn’t he come out as proudly gay senior year and dash our horny co-ed hearts? “to be the Program Chair for our 25th Reunion.”

I shake my head as if dislodging pool water from clogged ears. Me? I’ve never even been to one of our reunions. Never donated. I flinch every time I open one of the official letters from Yale, and read that stuffy faded blue ink that reminds me I never belonged, with the stink of serving dining hall food forever on my skin, along with the stain of my background.

“It’s incredible how you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps,” is what another pedigreed classmate—the exquisite alabaster-skinned former champion iceskater + gifted painter Hugh Steers, when he was still vibrantly alive + shimmying on the dance floor wearing my black wool pencil skirt better than I ever could—used to say, which at the time filled me with hot shame.

The year is 2010. For the first time, I feel the warm embrace of Yale, + plunge into the Program Chair role with the gusto of an outsider unexpectedly invited to the table. I put my experience as a P.I. to good use as I pore through info about our class of 1,200, marveling at the wild range of lives + experiences.

The reunion theme I choose: Inclusion. I’m determined the usual suspects won’t dominate the events with long-winded tales of achievements.

With all my years of teaching writing, drawing forth people’s voices, encouraging the raw + real, surely I can come up with a way to give everyone the chance to share their story.

The Morpho butterfly flutters through my fevered mind, transforming the faded ink of Yale into the most iridescent electric blue. In this way, the One-Minute Memoir is born.

27

25

IT ALL STARTS WITH ELLEN.

“I saw a blue butterfly as big as a baseball glove,” Ellen says about a recent trip to Costa Rica, eyes glittering with mischief + wonder. In that moment, my obsession is born. I too must see a Morpho.

The year is circa mid 90’s. Before cell phones. I dream about the electric blue butterfly instead of consuming a thousand numbing vids of dreamy blue wings + poreless nature influencers in skimpy hiking gear grinning with self satisfaction on a tiny soul-sucking screen.

I know Ellen from college. She’s striking with her perfect ski slope nose, curves + a razorsharp wit she serves up with a dimpled smile + Southern accent. She’s well-read well-bred, charming + bubbly as a flute of champagne. I’m more like a bracing shot of cheap tequila you down after getting bad news. Unlike me, she got tapped to be a member of a secret society. I feel blowsy + rough around the edges next to her. We’re not close, but we could be. If I didn’t feel like a loser.

I might know my way around a piazza in Rome after slumming a couple years there after graduation, but I’m no sophisticated eco-adventurer like Ellen. I’ve always been secretly afraid of camping + the wilderness what with ax murderers, snakes + all.

Cut to a few months later: my then boyfriend + I land on a remote beach in Corcovado National Park, where Capuchin monkeys hurl nuts at us + a flock of scarlet macaws cuts through the sky above like a ribbon of blood.

“Where’s the Morpho?” shouts one uncouth tourist on our jungle walk the next day. “When will we see a capybara?” whines another tourist. “If you’re quiet, there’s more chance we’ll see something. No guarantees in Nature,” says the cheerful guide. I stride ahead, practically run, to escape the group. I have a feeling.

As I plunge forward through the dense shadowed jungle + a cacophony of strange whirring grunting chirping rustling sounds, I spot an opening to my left.

I duck in, + there I see it: a Morpho, flying erratically through the sunlit grove, like an iridescent blue silk kimono a courtesan just tossed into the air. I stand rooted, utterly spellbound. Time dilates. (To be cont.)

30

19

EXPANDED LOBSTER CLAW is the name of this jungle plant. Or maybe it’s Hanging Lobster Claw. I’m no botanist. I am obsessed with what the Universe is trying to tell me if I get my head out of my screen or arse long enough to hear. To see.

To remember.

Lobster claw…

I’m a freshman at Yale. I don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing here. I alternate between thinking I’m hot sh*t—rocketing out of public high school in small town Alabama where I lived with a foster family— + wanting to drop out. English Lit is the only thing I have going for me. How did I get placed in a mid-level English class with a quiet, jaundiced professor? I’m ashamed.

I remember the stone gargoyles laughing. I remember the prep school kids lounging on the grass of Old Campus, smoking clove cigarettes, bored with the easy classes + slower pace. I remember the distinctive stink of food from dining hall work I could never scrub off.

After pleading my case, second semester I join the elite English lit class. The sharp-tongued professor keeps the shades closed. Perhaps he is an erudite vampire. We have two weeks to read Ulysses. The prep school kids yawn. They’ve already read it. I am drowning.

One day, after we turn in our first papers, the professor takes me aside.

“You don’t belong here. You’re not going to make it in this class. Have you thought of another major?”

In that moment, instead of despair or defeat, a fury rises in me. A violaceous + righteous fire. I will show him.

The next paper I turn in, I go rogue. I write brutal facts about family horror + dark secrets + lobster claws scuttling across the ocean floor.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he says.

Here in the jungle, with the steady roar of the ocean + the riotous birdsong, I can hear + see the signs. Feel the stir of memories that rise.

I can revisit the memory.

I can reimagine the memory.

I can gain fresh insight.

Expanded Lobster Claw! Free from scuttling across the ocean floor, dragging seaweed + trauma-rot, now the lobster claw hangs out in the jungle, striking as a candy-colored art deco wonder, swarmed by iridescent hummingbirds—while I get delightfully walloped by waves + write my nex

18

17

"Acting Like Women" @actinglikewomen — a great new film by Cheri Gaulke @cherigaulke and Ann Gauldin @annegauldin is amazingly generous, a love letter to a movement in Los Angeles that cultivated a special and ongoing relationship between women artists.

Image 1: Glenn Phillips @glennrphillips , Cheri Gaulke, and Ann Gauldin in conversation.

Image 2, from left: Nancy Buchanan @n_buchanan_art , Barbara T. Smith, Ann, me, Leslie @leslieartlab , Cheri, Linda Vallejo @lindavallejostudio .

Image 3, Cheri Gaulke, photo by Nicola Goode @nic.goode

3

6

School for Revolutionary Girls (2024) is now on view at the @goldenthread_gallery in Belfast. For this project, @nic.goode and I commissioned a reading of original manifestos written by a group of teenage girls. Over the course of ten days, these young women explored their relationship to the 1916 Rising of the Irish revolution, linking historical events to the contemporary issues facing young women in Ireland today. The reading of the participants’ manifestos can be watched both in the exhibition and online (video by @conanmcivor). The exhibition originally previewed at the Cooper Gallery at the University of Dundee in 2024.

3

1

Starting March 14 we’re adding weekends! #litangels #morningwriting @villagewellcc

97

7

Thank you to everyone who joined us last Wednesday for The Porch conversation at the Annenberg Community Beach House. 💙

Nearly 50 community members gathered with 2025 Artist Fellows Frances Anderton, Nicola Goode, and Jona Frank to discuss the porch as both a literal and symbolic space—a threshold where community forms, creativity lives, and new conversations take shape.

Participants joined the Fellows in a conversation exploring the idea of the “porch” as both a literal and symbolic space—along with a discussion of the “third place” as a site where community forms, stories are shared, and new ideas take shape. The Fellows reflected on their creative practices, how their distinct work, conversations, and collaborations informed one another during their 2025 Fellowship, and wove images and ideas drawn from Santa Monica’s landscapes and histories.

Thank you for being part of this inspiring night by the sea. 🌊⭐️

📸: @HRDWRKER

#SantaMonica #CommunityByTheSea #BeachHouseBliss #PublicArt #CulturalEvent #SantaMonicaEvents #ArtOfConnection #PorchConversation #ThirdPlace #GatherByTheSea

3

1

Desire for the Divine Lit Angels November issue with work by @jylbonaguro @mollybendall @nic.goode and Daniel N Birnbaum link in bio! I love this issue! Thank you all

57

2

🌅 Join us tomorrow evening for “The Porch”—a conversation about community and the spaces that bring us together.

The porch is more than a place; it’s a threshold between worlds. A space for stories, reflection, and shared rhythm.

Gather with 2025 Santa Monica Artist Fellows Nicola Goode, Jona Frank, and Frances Anderton for an engaging talk exploring The Porch through the lens of Santa Monica’s people, places, and culture and share your own ideas for community gathering spaces in our beach city.

📅 Tomorrow, Thursday, November 13 | 6–8PM
📍 Annenberg Community Beach House
✨ Free + open to all. RSVP at the link in bio!

#SantaMonica #CommunityByTheSea #BeachHouseBliss #PublicArt #SantaMonicaCulture #SantaMonicaEvents #ArtOfConnection #PorchConversation #FreeEvent

3

0