Syllabus #31

Probably the last time I will be warm until May when it will suddenly go from still being winter to being 137 degrees

I guess I'm feeling something this week.  I give you one mildly amusing and several seriouses.  That doesn't work as a plural but I'm doing it.

Do you even reduce, reuse, or recycle, bro?


This feels important, somehow.  I think it's in the willingness to accept someone who isn't perfect but is open to correction and dialog.


Let's consider the space we occupy, or what others allow us to, or what we allow ourselves:

They're Not Your Husband short story by Raymond Carver (appeared in the collection Short Cuts)
Roxane Gay unpacks a journey of shrinking, Mary Cain nearly disappears, and Raymond Carver's short story, They're Not Your Husband is a tale of a man's brutal violence against his wife, without ever raising a hand.



An interesting take on what I at first thought might be a progressive move.  I guess neutrality can be erasure as easily as it can be inclusion, if we don't approach it the right way.

Related - how much do pronouns matter?  To some, a great deal.


Racist people paying large sums of money and putting their children in sub-standard schools on purpose just to keep them away from black people sounds absurd and yet there it is.   It's just one instance in a long historical pattern of people acting and voting against their own self interest just to spite another group.

Analog:

Raymond Carver's Short Cuts story collection  -- Oof.  Good writing, rough content. 

Jenny Slate's Little Weirds -- At first I was like this is...weird.  But that's clearly the point and after a few...chapters? sections? I am fully into it and some of the absurd metaphors are just perfect.

Tegan and Sara's High School -- Read it in a day and a half.  Loved everything.  It made me nostalgic for the high school experience I had, which was exactly like theirs minus the cutting school, doing drugs, living in the arctic chill of Canada, having a twin, and growing up to be a lesbian and rock star.  Otherwise, exactly the same. 

The sloth is all of us