Some things I wanted to show you

Do you know that it snows in March here? We’ve had quite a bit of pot roast and grilled cheese and other cozy meals over the last couple of months. As I type this it is starting to feel like spring and my daffodils are just starting to push their way out of the ground.

Which unfortunately for me means I need to find the time to weed, clear out leaves, and in general get my very sparse landscaping ready for the new season.

I don’t have time for this.

I know I owe you a longer post, but the TL;DR is that I took a full-time job at the beginning of January without cancelling any of my author business deadlines, so I’m effectively working 2 jobs and my brain is very busy every day.

Editing deadline end of March. New book to write by end of April. And then… ? Maybe?

Thank you for sticking with me. I know I owe all kinds of posts and updates and I look forward to the day I have brain room to think big thoughts again.

How we came to depend on the week : “Among many collective discoveries during the pandemic confinement of 2020, Americans learned just how attached we are to our seven weekdays. As complaints about temporal disorientation mounted that April, we focused not on the clock – the classic metonym for the power and experience of time – but rather on the calendar, and specifically the weekly one.”

We can all use a pocket treat : “I may no longer be a child who believes in magic stones or paper fortunes, but I do take comfort in meaningful small gifts that can be passed along as a ‘thinking of you’, ‘‘I see you’, ‘it’s going to be ok’, or ‘I believe in you’. Thoughtful gestures that go a long way on tough days.”

The world needs more weirding right now : “Everything I have loved in art, in fiction, in film, in plays and in paintings feels like it adheres to that dictum: it’s excavating the future, or at least, an alternate reality that contains many futures. From Barth to Calvino to Saunders, to the Surrealists like Remedios Varo and Harue Koga, to filmmakers like David Lynch and Maya Deren; these are the artists that rendered the world strange, highlighted its ineffable nature in a way that even in its darkest iterations felt like a kind of holy optimism.”

On Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House Though the Lens of Childrearing : “Shirley Jackson’s most famous novel is The Haunting of Hill House. It’s about a sick house, sick with relentless reality, with the relentless fact of its realness. There is the realness of child abuse, of abusive religion, of the basic fact of family. There is the realness of relentless childcare, the care of elderly parents, of diminishing returns. There is the reality of loneliness. There is the reality of a hand belonging to—who knows?—cold-gripping yours at night for lack of a body of its own, a body of fiction, a body of magic, a body of dreams.” (I think my next mini-academic hyperfixation might be houses as culture in media)

The Consumption Pyramid (podcast episode) : “I live in the USA. I am a citizen, yes, but from an economic perspective—according to what I hear in the news—I am also considered a consumer. We have been referring to ourselves as consumers for so long that this label now sounds normal. It has become a neutral descriptor, almost scientific … But if you reflect on this word, it’s not only kind of weird, but it’s also quite narrow way to label a person. Yes, a consumer is also an ecological term… But economically a consumer is explicitly a mouth. An appetite. Something to feed.”

WATCHING :

Honey Don’t* (don’t bother); Bottoms* (so fun, I love Ayo); Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die* (love love love); Send Help (insane, violent and so good); Your Monster* (fun; pair with Lisa Frankenstein); Licorice Pizza* (still romanticizing age gaps I see); Bones and All* (what?); The Bride! (I loved it; but I understand why people don’t)

READING :

People Like Us* (strange and interesting); The Compound* (so good, I keep thinking about it); Maame* (tender but unremarkable); The Beach Club* (reading slump fare); The Wheel Truth* (Nova Nelson always for getting out of a reading slump)

( *these are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through any of these links I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you )