Sunday, January 31, 2021

Syllabus #90

And just like that, the first month of 2021 has slipped through our fingers like sand through an hourglass, if the hourglass was actually a cylinder, and the cylinder was the size of a 50 gallon oil drum.  It feels like so much shit happened this month, because it did, but it has felt like it passed in an instant.  Maybe because we actually had a Very Big Deal event that we have been anticipating for, oh, the last 4 years, to mark the passage of time.  The inauguration was such a profound relief and the fact that it went forward as scheduled with some level of fanfare, of pomp and circumstance, made it feel like the world is still spinning.

So what else flew by us this week like a train with the conductor passed out drunk at the switch?

---

 What a mensch, that Doug Emhoff 


Speaking of mensches, the OG - Bernie cashing in for Meals on Wheels 


I love all of these but especially this one (below)- this is what (most) people mean in practice when they say Defund The Police, but "reallocate bloated police budgets" doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.  Reinvest in other community resources that address the root causes of crime so that police aren't simultaneously the first and last line of defense at a crisis point.  Mental health services and programs that help people in high-poverty areas obtain employment at a livable wage would be a great start!

via Streets Department

This is creepy and perhaps intellectually and financially dishonest on the part of the university, but it also speaks to every kid's fantasy of their teacher being dead.  Maybe not in a literal sense, but what kid hasn't gleefully sung about barbecuing their teacher's head and flushing her body down the potty?  That's just real life, man.

Stay home, wash your hands, if you gotta go out, wear two masks, and maybe also just like, professinal meth cooker, but make it fashun.  



The long read - a fascinating deep dive into the world of phone scams.  Apparently 22% of people surveyed admitted to losing money to a phone scam.  At first I found that number shocking, and I'm going to choose to think optimistically about the critical thinking abilities of my fellow humans and posit that there's probably an overlap between people who answered their phone to take a survey and people who answered their phone and took the bait in a phone scam.  The article didn't state by what methods the survey was conducted, but yo, I never answer my phone unless I'm expecting a call or you're in my contacts, and even then, if I pick up for you, I must really think highly of you. [Ok, edit, it was an online Harris Poll so my theory is incorrect, y'all people are just gullible, I guess]

And finally, if you have time to read only one thing this weekend, edify yourself with this brief treatise on cube-shaped wombat poop.


Analog Reading:

Still, you guessed it, nibbling on The Best of Me by David Sedaris.  I think 'nibbling' is the most nauseating word to use here, or anywhere, now that you mention it.  Go nibble on something moist is probably the filthiest yet least profane thing you could ever say to someone.

Finishing up The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig for my book club.  I will not deny that this book has been entertaining, but there are so many plot holes and unexplained metaphysical and cosmological rules that I would find acceptable in a middle-grade fantasy novel but not a book written for adults, unless those adults want to suspend their critical faculties and read the time traveling chronicles of the spiritual love child of Bridget Jones and Oliver Twist.

Read The Sea Wife by Amity Gaige.  The first half = let's throw caution to the wind and buy a sailboat! and the second half = it's hard to feel sympathy for people who know better but constantly act against their own self interest.  That sounds harsh.  I really liked the book, and the way that it wove the wife's hindsight perspective and the husband's real-time captain's log together to tell a suspenseful narrative.  I just thought both people were insufferable asshats.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Syllabus #89

Did you feel a huge weight lift off your shoulders on Wednesday?  I feel like the impenetrable ice shield I erected around myself to get through the last four years is slowly melting.  Is it maybe okay to feel things again?  



I know there's SO much more important news to focus on, but let's just take a moment to savor some frivolous joy.  I love all of this so much.  From the monochromatic power ladies to Amanda Gorman's ray of sunshine coat on down to Bernie's mittens and Janet's blanket (and let us not forget Liz's PP scarf).  All. of. it.  God it feels so weird and delightful to be able to enjoy some political-adjacent story without a hint of irony or schadenfreude, and to know that there's totally normal, productive, progressive stuff happening while I'm sitting back gaping at some low key coat porn.  

via Teen Vogue - Which Inaugural Coat Look are you?  In my dreams I'm an Amanda Gorman but I know in my heart I'm a Bernie.


This feels like a big win for LGBTQ equality.  Way to go, Joe!  


 George Saunders and the Russian masters on the craft of the short story.  Putting this on my reading list for the near future. 


That's a lot to unpack, but you know what, pal?  Keep it in your suitcase and hit the road. 


People avoiding Trump's "Farewell Party" like I avoid Facebook invitations for MLM marketing sales "parties" Melania's probably gonna have to eat the cost of all those shitty Lularoe leggings but whatayagonnado?


Biden isn't the smooth orator that say, Obama is, but he speaks from the heart.  He's a little sappy, a little corny, but you have to admire his sincerity.  I like the guy. 


This really hits me in the void where my feelings used to be. 


Analog Reading:

Finished James McBride's Deacon King Kong.  Superb.

Will finish Little Eyes by Samantha Schweblin today.  It's dark and prescient but full of humanity.

Still savoring an essay or two each day from David Sedaris's The Best of Me.  This book is as good as a master class on the art of the short, humorous, observational essay.

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Syllabus #88

I'm hopeful for the changes this coming week might bring.  I want to be optimistic that Biden and Harris will be able to accomplish their plans and help us move forward.  The past four years aren't going to just disappear from our collective memory on January 20th, and they weren't just a brief aberration of history.  The animosity and violence we've seen come to a head over the past couple weeks is just one pustule of deep, cystic acne.  It's been brewing beneath the surface for a long time, and it's going to leave an ugly scar.  Trust me, I know the difference between a low-key pimple and the kind of zit that emerges from the depths and takes over your life.  You gotta make some serious life changes to overcome the latter.  Cut out processed sugar, stop consuming white supremacist conspiracy theories, you know, all of it.

What are we really talking about here?  Why do I always make it about me?  Is it because only my mom will read this, so why not indulge in the navel gazing?  Probably.  But like, send some good vibes out into the universe to keep Uncle Joe and Aunt Kamala safe on Tuesday, and every day thereafter.  It's a sick, sad world out there.



---

But wait, there's more!  


Long but important


Ew.  Not the overall concept of sperm donation.  But the underground jizz network is a little seedy.  Pun most certainly intended. 


Oh my GOD.  I almost couldn't read this, it was too stressful.  Guy seems pretty chill about it, though. 



Just because you can, doesn't mean you should (This covid lockdown jewel heist movie and the freakin' space one, I mean good on you for making a movie that doesn't have a comic book character in it for a change, but did you have to?)


Florida man finally goes way to goddamn far 


Glad we can finally flush these turds away in a couple days 


Analog Reading:

Finished Cleanness by Garth Greenwell.  I probably shouldn't admit this publicly, but I read the whole damn thing believing, mistakenly, that it was a memoir.  I mean, I discovered it on a list of books that were mostly memoirs, and it was written in the first person using only first initials for other characters instead of their names, so it wasn't an off-base assumption.  However, as the book went on I became increasingly uncomfortable with the guy's radical transparency.  First I was like, good for you for presenting life and the vast spectrum of human sexual desire as it is (whips, gag balls, and all) but by the end I was like are you suuuuuure disclosing this doesn't stand to blow up your life and possibly make you sound pedophile-adjacent?  Boy was I relieved to check and see that, nope, it was fiction all along.

Still savoring David Sedaris's The Best of Me

Finished Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh.  What a strange journey that was.  An isolated old widow so caught up in a story of her own invention that her reality starts to mirror it in horrifying ways.

Utterly enjoying Deacon King Kong by James McBride.  Vastly different from but sharing threads with Death in Her Hands - a guy succumbing to the voices in his head, carrying on full conversations, arguments even, with his dead wife.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Journaling Challenge - Day 10

 Day ten.  This is the end, my friend.  

January 10. The Last Page, by Jonathan Miles


Your prompt for today:
Write the ending to your story. By this I don’t mean your physical end, your deathbed scene, no—that’s creepy. Rather, try to imagine the moment at which the plot threads of your life are tied together, when the arc of your story resolves. Where will you be and who will be with you? What dreams will you have realized? What mysteries might you finally have solved? What will you deem your greatest achievements? And what do you fear might still be left undone or unsaid (because, remember, all great endings are slightly ambiguous)? Write the last page of your story, the pebble in the pond silt. And then after, with God’s grace, start swimming.

---

In education, they call this backwards design.  Begin with the endpoint in mind.  Identify all the disparate threads and figure out how to weave them together to form a tidy knot at the end.  Life doesn't always work like that, like an episode of Seinfeld, a cast of characters converging in one hilarious scenario.  But it could, right?

-

"Ahhh."

The dentist grabbed the tip of her tongue with a piece of gauze, yanking it side to side, then ran his gloved fingers over her gums.  He pulled her lips back and nodded approvingly.  "Beautiful teeth," the dentist murmured as he prodded an old filling with a metal probe.

"Hank oo," the patient managed, involuntarily squirting a stream of saliva onto the dentist's goggles.  'Ha-ee."

The dentist, fluent in the mouth-full-of-fingers dialect, nodded in acknowledgement of the thank you and sorry.  "Don't worry, happens all the time."

He spun in his chair to face the computer, and scanned through the x-rays transferred from the patient's previous dental practice.  "So Katie, you're a new patient today but I could swear I know you from somewhere.  Are you and your husband club members?"

"As in country club?  Hah, no way.  I mean, no offense.  That's just, ah, too rich for our blood.  Not our scene.  Do you have kids?  Maybe I taught them?"  Katie thought she knew damn well why she seemed familiar to him, but she wanted to watch him grope for the answer.  

"Nah, never married, no kids, that's not it."  He pulled his mask down and grinned, revealing prominent buck teeth.  

Could he possibly recognize me after all these years?  Maybe not, I mean, different last name, it's been like, what, 30 years since middle school?  But I'd know those buck teeth anywhere.  What kind of dentist...whatever, who cares.  

"I got it!  You wrote that book!  That hilarious book."

"Oh, wow, thank you.  Yeah, guilty as charged, that's me."  He can read?  I'm shocked.  I mean, he is a dentist, but still.  Who would have seen that coming?

"Yeah, I'm not a big reader, but I was dating this woman, and she couldn't stop raving about it, so I had to see what the deal was.  Your stories about growing up, oh my god.  So funny."

He's read the book and still doesn't know?  Jesus he's in it!  Names changed for privacy, yadda yadda, but come on dude, have a little self awareness.  For years, I thought of this jabroni every time I put my retainer in at night...

"Well, I guess I'll be seeing you in another 6 months.  Thanks...for everything."

Thanks for the memories.  Thanks to you, thanks to all of them.  Katie got in her car cackled until her sides ached.  She pulled out her phone and texted her mom:

Oh

My 

God

You will never in a million years guess who COMPLIMENTED my teeth today...

  


Syllabus #87

Boy, talk about a slow news week.  Like watching paint dry up in here.  If by watching paint dry I actually mean the last week has at times felt like watching paint dry on one wall while the rest of the building is on fire, and snakes are raining down from the sky, and you ate a bad oyster so you've been projectile vomiting on the painted wall and why won't it hurry up and dry?


Call someone who cares


This woman whose life is bookended by the Holocaust and Covid is the same age as my grandmother.  Losing a year of your life after all you've been through in 87 years is no small thing.  This whole mess didn't have to be so prolonged.  Lack of government leadership and support coupled with countless individual selfish actions have dragged this out way longer than necessary.


There are three light switches in my house that aren't a double or triple, but gosh darnit one of them is about to be replaced by this guy.  Now that I'm thinking about those double and triple switches I feel like that's an opportunity to design a human centipede inspired switch plate cover.


Aw shit I gotta fuckin' watch this.  You're damn right we did watch some of it, bitch.  It's funny, of course, but I feel like I learned a couple interesting things, too.


I'm not about going on a crash diet or setting deprivation-related food goals or anything that isn't sustainable for the long term, but it can't hurt to be aware of all the sources of added sugar  that are sneaking into your daily food intake.  Making a few small changes like switching to seltzer from full-calorie soda will MELT 85 POUNDS IN 48 HOURS AS SEEN ON SHARK TANK.  Wait, that's not it.  It will uh, maybe reduce your risk of diabetes, help you feel more satisfied by cutting out empty calories, maybe help your skin look clearer?


"This is America. This has always been America. If this were not America, this would not have happened. It’s time we face this ugly truth, let it sink into the marrow of our bones, let it move us to action."  Can Democrats pull off real and lasting change?


So we're not supposed to punch Nazis, but rather, punch down at Nazis by mocking them relentlessly?  I have a pretty weak right hook so I'm on board.  


10 Day Duolingo streak?  Try 664.  Who's the n00b now?


Analog Reading:

I finished all of these books over the last week, and then my reading momentum slowed.  They were all good!  Coincidentally, Fleishman is in Trouble (from the prior week) and Kim Ji-Young both centered on the ways societal pressures on women across cultures and generations can drive you literally insane.

Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Rich and Pretty:  A Novel by Rumaan Alam

Now I've just started Cleanness by Garth Greenwell and The Best of Me by David Sedaris.

Saturday, January 9, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 9

 January 9. Forks in the Road, by Jedidiah Jenkins

Your prompt for today:
Identify two turning points in your life. Describe what led up to them, why you chose the path you did, and how it led to now.

---

A Spork in the Road

A fork implies clear, sharp, separate tines, each one a distinct path forward.  A spork is a little more nebulous.  Choice seems illusory.  Will this lead anywhere, or will I slip right back into the bowl where I started?

That's how I feel about many of the diverging paths I've come across in life.  Choosing something just because it's different, not because it's a clear better option.  Choosing something else because, as sporks are wont to do, that tine snapped right off and will probably lacerate your mouth if you keep trying to make it work. 

One such choice presented itself 7 years ago.  We had moved from Utah to South Carolina for Andy's job.  I left behind cold air and dry skin (enthusiastically) and a burgeoning career as an academic librarian (regretfully).  Without many viable options, I ended up with a dead-end, low-paying job in a certifiable loony bin in a library department at a university that I coyly will not name but will suggest that this university has a very popular football team and their name rhymes with Blemson.  

The least weird thing that happened in the 10 months I worked there was learning that my cubicle neighbor, a woman in her 50s who had never lived anywhere outside of her mother's home, had filled her work hard drive to capacity with pictures and videos of Benedict Cumberbatch.  The most weird thing was also the reason I left:  Some pretty epic sexual harassment that involved a lot of hentai (Google it if you must) and capitulated with a butt pen.  Let your imagination fill in the blanks, but just know that at no point was the pen in my butt.

About 45 minutes into my first day of this job, I was already scheming about other career paths.  When I wasn't discretely streaming episodes of Sons of Anarchy on my phone while pretending to organize boxes of Strom Thurmond ephemera (which felt like punishment for something I did in a past life) I was scouring job postings.  

One day, I opened a box of love letters from "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, written to his wife on mental hospital stationery.  It was time.  I was finally desperate enough to look into a program for an alternative route to K-12 teacher certification.  "Kids are awful," I thought to myself.  "But when they try to access porn on a school computer, at least you can actually yell at them."

I was relieved to get accepted to the program, and found a job as a school librarian right away.  My paycheck doubled overnight (which says less about how much teachers earn and more about the astonishingly low salary of the other job) and my will to live increased by about 37%.  My new coworkers - I could have hugged them all.  They were so normal, or at least they were weird in all the good ways and none of the icky ones.  The kids...were...it pains my younger self to admit...kinda cool?  Okay, fine, the kids were great.  It turns out I like 'em.  Not enough to invite them permanently into my home.  But I'll take them in small doses, and 7 years later, I still actually like my job.  

So I chose to leap.  I climbed out of one mutant-shark infested cesspool and jumped blindly, into what, I wasn't sure at first.  There could have been more sharks!  But at least they would have been different sharks.  I got lucky, though.  

The other choice was just now, choosing to excuse myself from probing any deeper to find another pivotal moment.  It's cold outside and I have a series of other important choices to make.  Ginger tea or lavender?  Which book will I read, and which cat is gonna colonize my lap for the rest of the afternoon?  Anything can happen.


Friday, January 8, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 8

 January 8. Playing in the Sandbox, by Scott Frank


Your prompt for today:
Imagine yourself in your childhood backyard, playground, schoolyard—wherever you would play. Write about that place. What toys or tools are you playing with? Are you alone? Is anyone there with you? If so, can you make them talk, but without thinking about it? Does something happen, say, inside the house, or across the yard, or up in the sky? Stop writing the minute it feels like work!

---

Whenever I'm stuck on a prompt, I just ask myself, "Self, WWMD?"  Well, actually, I used to Google that, but Google was always like, "Did you mean WebMD?  You are typing like you're having a stroke."  So now I just think it.  Because we all know it stands for What Would Madonna Do.  And she'd start by quoting herself:

This used to be my playground
This used to be my childhood dream
This used to be the place I ran to
Whenever I was in need of a trip to the ER friend

And on the playgrounds of my childhood, I was probably just on the verge of breaking a bone (it happened thrice - wrist, elbow, and nose at ages 4, 10, and 18, respectively...).  Just about to endure a massive splinter from one of those marvelous wooden playgrounds of the 80s and 90s.  Just about to encounter a massive wasp nest inside the tire tunnel on our elementary playground built out of old tractor tires, which was, except during very hot weather, much less conducive to injury than the tetanus-fest it replaced.  Playgrounds are fun, but the real fun lies in the very real potential for catastrophe.

I don't think playing on the playground as a kid was ever as fun, though, as a clandestine adult trip to the playground.  I might be conflating two separate nights, but my last fond memory of a trip to the playground involved two carloads of friends on a hot September night.  

It was Labor Day weekend, and we had all graduated college earlier that summer.  As was our habit throughout our college years, we swung by a Dunkin' Donuts after closing time and one of us (usually me) hopped in the dumpster in search of the garbage bag full of ever-so-slightly stale donuts they toss at the end of the shift.  This particular night, we drove to a park and spent a riotous half hour slingshotting the donuts across the parking lot.  

There was one other car in the parking lot that night, and we assumed its occupants were off in the woods doing something illicit (drugs, sex, whatever, not our business). A couple of the frosted donuts mayyyy have skimmed the hood of the sex car and left a smear.

All the donuts exhausted, we decamped to the playground.  There were about 8 of us giddily laughing and bouncing on the jump bridge when a disheveled couple emerged from the woods.  The sex car.  Our laughter tapered off and, one by one, we paused our jumping as we watched the lovers approach their vehicle.  

They were too far away for us to overhear, but we could plainly see the guy taking pictures of his car and then...Oh no.  He was stalking towards our cars.  Photographing our license plates.  Dialing.  Phone to his ear.  Definitely calling the cops.  It was no longer a game.  It was no longer a childhood dream.  

And I'm now realizing over a decade later how much of that story is messed up.  I mean, dumpster diving, whatever whatever, but we were some assholes for making such a mess in that parking lot, and it was not cool to get our sugary mess all over a stranger's car.  But the seriously messed up part is how a bunch of middle class white kids got off with a warning; the cops were grateful to respond to such an absurd "problem" on a night when they were braced for bringing in a bunch of DUI's and the like.  Had we been black, brown, or of a lower socioeconomic status, we might still be experiencing consequences of that night of youthful idiocy.  Instead, we gathered trash bags and shovels, cleaned up our mess, and went on with our lives.  We should all be so lucky.  

Thursday, January 7, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 7

 

January 7. The Sacred Center, by Jasper Young Bear

Your prompt for today:
Imagine you are the center of the universe. Imagine that you are the creator. Imagine that your power and your prayers have no limit. Imagine all things moving and in motion and all things static and sitting are affected by your prayer. What would you change? What is your prayer? 

---
If you strip away the potential for a raging ego problem, there is something appealing about believing yourself to be the center of the universe, the creator of all things.  It would seem to impart a locus of control and a pride of ownership.  If every tree and river and bird and person belongs to you, of course you want the best for them.  Of course you take it upon yourself to strive for those things, because you believe you will succeed.

So if we're all a part of me, what do I want for us?  For starters, I want laughter, but we should probably take care of some of the basics first.  Let's promise everyone enough to eat, clean water to drink, and a comfortable place to sleep at night.  Let's promise everyone the dignity of a living wage if they're able to work, and monetary support if they aren't.  Let's promise everyone as much education as they desire, as much healthcare as they require.  Let's promise equality - equality of races, classes, genders, sexual orientations, religions.  Equality of opportunity, equality of privileges, equality of protection under the law.  Peace.  Safety.  All of it.  For all of us.

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 6

 January 6. Write What You Don't Know, by Caro Claire Burke

Your prompt for today:
Write what you don’t know. Take a song, or a news headline, or an Instagram post by an influencer you love to hate, or anything in between. Identify the parts that feel familiar. Probe the places that feel foreign. If it’s a song, you might ask, where does this story take place? Who haunts the edges of it? If it’s a picture of some famous person you can’t begin to relate to, you might ask, who snapped the photo? What were they thinking as the camera clicked? Then write the story behind it.

---

First I was like what are you asking me to do here, astral projection?  Like I'm some kind of wizard who can empathize with anyone existing outside of my specific lived experience?  Like I'm some kind of evolved human being?  And then I saw this Slate article about the alleged impending Kim and Kanye divorce and thought, "Well that sounds fun."  I know more than I care to about each of them, which is to say very little, so this is pure speculation:

"Daddy, daddy, will you have a tea party with me and my dollies?"

"Gimme like 15 minutes, North.  Daddy's working on his election night concession speech," Kanye replied as he paced the perimeter of his children's 3000 square foot play room, dictating notes into his AirPods.  "I know Imma lose, but it's gotta be the best concession speech of all time."  

North pouted and crossed her arms, then swatted a Regency china teacup onto the floor.  It shattered on the marble tile.  A maid silently rushed in and cleaned up the shards.  "What's erection night, Daddy?"

"Baby, I said e-Lection night.  It's the night that follows the day when people pretend like their voice matters and they have any agency in the world by picking an old white guy that will boss them around for 4 years.  What you said, e-Rection night, is what your mom has been withholding from me for months."

"What's withholding, Daddy?"

"Don't worry about it, North.  You know what, let's have that tea party right now.  I don't need to plan this speech, I can just program some beats on my Casio keyboard and mumble whatever comes to mind."

Kanye pulled out a chair and sat at the child-sized reproduction of Napoleon's dining table.  North stood up and ceremoniously filled two teacups to the brim with what looked and smelled to be piping hot Capri Sun.  She pushed a cup toward Kanye, technicolor liquid sloshing into the saucer.

"One lump of stevia or 2?" North asked.

"You know I always want 2," Kanye answered, as North splashed 2, 3, 4, 5 lumps into his drink.  "Note to self," Kanye whispered into his AirPods.  "Tell lawyer to tell Kim to hire math tutor."

"One dropper of CBD or 2?" North offered, trying unsuccessfully to unscrew the dropper lid on the bottle of CBD oil.

"Better let Daddy do that one."  Kanye gently pried the bottle out of his daughter's hand, unscrewed the lid, tossed the dropper on the floor, and poured the entire bottle into his teacup.  He took a long slurp, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.  Everything is going to be ok.



Tuesday, January 5, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 5

January 5. A Memoir Is Not a Status Update, by Dani Shapiro

Your prompt for today:

Write what you would never dare post as a response to the question at the top of every Facebook feed: “What’s on your mind?” What has been welling inside you, concealed, ready to burst into poetry?

---

I've got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're gonna hear about them...

No, not that.  I mean, yes, that.  But not just that.  I've got a lot of problems with me, and nobody needs to hear about them.  Isn't that what social media is?  Self-effacing humblebrags that hint at our insecurities while hiding them under a veneer of visual or verbal filters that make your everyday shit sandwiches sparkle like caviar?

Monday, January 4, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Challenge - Day 4

 January 4. A Day in the Life of My Dreams, by Hollye Jacobs

Your prompt for today:
Imagine yourself at some point in the future—maybe a year from now, maybe five, maybe ten—living the life of your dreams. This is a normal day, not a holiday or a special day; rather, it is a typical and perfect everyday. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you taste? Who is there with you in your dream day? Describe the day in present tense, from the moment you wake up to the moment that you go to sleep. Creation begins with imagination. 

---

This is hard.  Admitting what I truly want means opening myself up for disappointment.  It means confronting the question of whether I'm too lazy or unqualified to achieve the things I want.  I learned a long time ago that the best way to avoid that is with defensive pessimism and settling for less.  If things work out better than I'd dared to hope, I'm pleasantly surprised.  If not, well, at least I was prepared.

A perfect day has more than 24 hours in it.  Perhaps the only area where I'm overly optimistic is in the realm of estimating how long a task will take, and assuming I won't get sidetracked.  

So let's say the perfect day lasts 30 hours.  Or I get better at time management.  I wake up early but rested, in time to enjoy the sunrise.  It's warm but not oppressive, so it's either late springtime or I live in some kind of paradise.  I do yoga on a deck that overlooks a body of water.  Birds are chirping and flowers are blooming, their smell drifting on a subtle breeze.  

After yoga, I go inside and feed the cats.  Andy is drinking coffee and reading before he starts his day in his woodworking shop.  He gets to do something dreamy, too, otherwise I'd just feel guilty about my own self-actualization and where's the perfection in that?  I fix myself a hot breakfast and read a book while I enjoy my oatmeal and coffee.  Then, I don't know, maybe I walk the dog?  Is there a dog in this fantasy?  Ok, sure, I walk Charlie, who has maintained his spunk over the years somehow, but has also been through some serious therapy that cured all his anxieties and he is now a joy to take out in public.  

Once everybody's morning rituals are handled, it's time to get to work.  I retreat to my workspace, which is a cozy library room filled with books and artwork, with windows overlooking the water.  I sit down at my desk, which is a huge butcher block table large enough to accommodate a writing area and a section for other creative work like drawing, painting, and making bizarre magazine cut-out collage greeting cards (a side hustle that I sell online when the spirit moves me).  I settle in at the writing end and open my laptop, which is conveniently not connected to the internet to avoid distractions.  I dive back in to work on my second book, a full length novel expanding on my favorite character from one of my short stories that was published in the New Yorker to great acclaim.  

After a few hours of productive writing, I push back from the desk and head into the kitchen.  Andy has his head in the freezer looking for something easy, but we're due for a grocery trip.  I suggest we go out for lunch instead, and we go for a walk to our favorite taco place.  We meander back home and spend time reading in our two-person hammock.  Inevitably, we fall asleep but wake up within a half hour feeling refreshed.  Nothing is worse than an unplanned nap that runs too long and leaves you disoriented.

By mid-afternoon, we're each back to work at our respective creative pursuits.  We're fairly compensated for our efforts and live comfortably.  Despite being self-employed, we don't have to worry about health insurance, because President Harris and Vice President Ocasio-Cortez enacted universal healthcare and a universal basic income so that everybody can live with dignity.  

I read through my writing from the morning and do some light editing.  It's not perfect but I'm happy with the progress.  Satisfied that I've done enough for the day, I close my laptop and go for a run on a path that follows the water.  I shower quickly and head downstairs to prepare a healthy dinner that Andy compliments by taking a heaping second serving and asking if he can have the leftovers for lunch the next day.  After dinner, we go for a walk together with magical fantasy Charlie, who only poops once instead of thrice.  We spend the rest of the night reading on the couch together.  When we are too tired to read another page, we go to bed with the windows open, listening to nature's white noise machine.


Sunday, January 3, 2021

Syllabus #86

 I'm beginning to edit this post on Monday, December 28.  If all goes as planned, it will publish on Sunday, January 3rd.  But if we've learned anything from the past year of life on this fetid blue marble, very little ever goes as planned, not really.

Fortunately for the exactly one of you reading this (hi, Mom!), we pulled it together and made it through the week.  I hope your year is off to a better start than the person who flipped their Jeep in front of our house the other night.  

copycat crime


Andy gave me the new David Sedaris book for Christmas.  I wonder if Sedaris would be so critical of this particular bit of his early work if it wasn't so popular still.  


My homeland is calling, and I must go.  


Well that's a familiar refrain.  


Do we have reasons to be optimistic?  He kind of glossed over the political realities that make the future murky at best.


Analog Reading:

Soon I need to publish my list of books read in 2020.  There were 64, which is a handful more than last year.  These were the last two I finished before the 31st:

The Joyce Girl by Annabel Abbs.  This book was kind of a metaphor for the year 2020.  It started off with a vibe of Jazz Age exuberance and ended with incest, rejection, and madness.  

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg.  Loved.  Wizenberg writes so beautifully and thoughtfully that even when she's writing about personal struggles, you don't feel pity or schadenfreude but rather, relatability.

Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner is the first book I finished this year.  It got off to a slow start for me, but I heard such good things and was intrigued by the narrative conceit after listening to an interview with the author a few months ago.  I kept at it and got to a place where I couldn't put it down.  Highly recommend.

Just started Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju.  It's too early for a verdict, but it's strange and I'm into it so far.

Your Body is a Horror Show: The 10-Day New Year's Journaling Challenge - Day 3

 January 3. Tender and Strong, by Nell Diamond

Your prompt for today:
Think about a time that you experienced a shift in your relationship with your body. What caused this shift? Did it last?

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From nearly the beginning of my conscious memory, I viewed my body as a place where I was trapped.  A vessel that betrayed me and held me captive, much like HAL, the spaceship, in 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  The first time I recall being aware of this, I was maybe 6 and had just had my fingers accidentally slammed in a car door.  I couldn't escape the pain and embarrassment.  I would only ever be me, I would only ever be awkward and clumsy.  It seemed like I was always sick or injured in minor but irritating ways.  A cold.  A scraped knee.  That's not unique, and certainly describes most childhoods, but it bothered me.

Already overly conscious of my physicality, puberty was buckets of fun.  I was so oily I was turning down invitations to OPEC conferences.  A close-up photograph of my face could have been mistaken for a topographical map of Appalachia.  Once, my history class got really out of hand and the teacher made us all put our heads down for 5 minutes.  I rested my forehead on my textbook, which was covered in the customary brown paper bag (do they still make kids do that?).  When we all raised our heads, I was horrified to see that my textbook looked like it had been used to line a basket of fish and chips.  

I was so sure I was the most disgusting human being alive.  I would have done anything to change that.  I would have free-based Accutane.  I would have promised my first-born child to the devil (joke's on him, though).

Mercifully, adolescent hormones don't last forever.  The rage and the mood swings and the physical indignities eventually subside, or you adapt to them, or you stop caring.  Fortunately, growing up with the objective reality that you are not conventionally attractive forces you to develop other aspects of yourself.  You might hone your sarcasm to deflect insults; you might develop a sense of humor so you can make people laugh with you instead of at you.  You might pull your head out of your own ass to realize everybody probably felt the same way about themselves, and nobody was wasting any time thinking about you.        

Saturday, January 2, 2021

The 10-Day New Year's Journaling Challenge - Day 2

 January 2. Living with Purpose, by Briana Nicole Henry

Your prompt:
Write about living with purpose. Write about the ways you do already, and the ways you hope to in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

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Look at me showing up for day two like a reliable adult human capable of committing to things, says the person who is on day 660 of a Duolingo streak and has done yoga every day since January 1, 2018.  I'm not sure if that shows my ability to commit or my tendency to do things obsessively, but either way, the outcome is the same, isn't it?

In some ways, I think that might also be part of my purpose in life.  Being the steady, stable person who quietly shows up and tries to do the right thing.  How boring, right?  But the world needs people like that.  We can't all be the wild, fun one.  Sure, that person is entertaining, but are they reliable?  Do they make you feel safe?  Bad things can happen when you're having too much fun.  

Last night, I heard a noise on the street that sounded like a dumpster being dropped to the ground after it's emptied.  I glanced out the window and didn't see anything amiss, so I went back to sleep.  What could have been hours or minutes later, we were awakened by flashing lights outside our bedroom window.  I thought it was the street light malfunctioning and was about to get pissed that it would bother us all night.  

I lifted a slat in the blinds and instead saw two police cars and a flatbed tow truck blocking the street.  A couple cars that had been parked on the opposite side of the street were smashed up.  Two houses north on our side, almost out of view from that window, an SUV was flipped over on the sidewalk.  "Oh, SHIT!" I whispered to Andy.  "You gotta see this!"   

The Jeep was empty, save for the inflated airbags.  We never saw or heard an ambulance, which leads me to suspect that the driver crawled out and ran away.  We live on a relatively quiet, narrow street.  The speed limit is 25.  To jackhammer two cars and then roll over on the opposite sidewalk must have taken some serious effort.  That driver was having too much fun.  Bad things can happen when you're having too much fun.

Last week, we were playing a game of Mexican Train dominoes with our family.*  I was giving my liver the night off and was completely sober, but everyone else was...decidedly not.  The game was getting about as raucous as a game of dominoes can get (which is not very, unless you consider talking very loud and threatening people not to be playin' on your train to be raucous).  As everyone fumbled and yelled and kept drawing tile after tile, I was slowly expending all of mine.  When I was down to two tiles compared to everyone else's handful or more, everyone finally noticed that I was stealthily about to win.  Andy looked at me  and said, "Look at Katie, just over there quietly doing the right thing when no one is paying attention."  

And I won.  Good things can happen when you're quietly doing the right thing.

*I don't owe anyone an explanation, but I need the record to show that we all quietly did the right thing by isolating for 14 days and getting negative tests before gathering.


Friday, January 1, 2021

Dip Your Toe In (The 10-Day New Year's Journaling Challenge - Day 1)

The start of last year seemed momentous, for no particular reason other than that maybe we all like round numbers and repeating patterns and 2020 just had a nice ring to it.  We dove headlong into the year only to realize that the water was shallow and infested with electric eels and there was a rip current.  We dashed our brains out on the rocks and got shocked repeatedly as we were dragged further and further out to sea.  

But then the seawater disinfected our wounds and we survived.  Though mangled and perhaps forever disfigured, maybe we are washing up on a new shore.  Maybe we have a second chance.  Maybe this time I'll just dip my toes in the water and wade in slowly.

The creator of The Isolation Journals, Suleika Jaouad, is kicking off the New Year with a 10-Day journaling challenge.  I'm giving it a whirl.  Here's Day 1.

---

 January 1. Reimagining Resolutions, by Michelle Akin

Your prompt:
Imagine that you are the main character in a novel, the plot of which is going to unfold over the next year. Where will you go? What will you do?

Now write a summary of that novel as the jacket copy for the back of the book.

---

Advance praise for Dancing Cheek to Cheek:

"I thought there would be more doodoos in this one, but I'm into it." - Taro Gomi, author of Everyone Poops

"If you like to watch boring, awkward people seek liberation and find humiliation, you won't be able to put this down.  Exhilarating."  - F. M. Jones, author of 50 Shades of Beige

After a brief hiatus from, well, everything, the antihero of the critically acclaimed Full of It, or It Happens:  A series of unfortunate scatological events is back in action.  Never one to crave human interaction, much less tolerate a stranger's touch, Katie has undergone a curious transformation since we last checked in on her.  After months of forced isolation, Katie and her equally-reticent life partner venture out to their old favorite bar to sit ass-to-elbow with strangers and make small talk.  A mysterious young woman dressed in neon and covered in glitter takes a shine to them and brings them a round of drinks.  Will Katie and Andy stare into the bucket of truth and re-embrace the quiet life wholeheartedly, or will they dive face-first into rave culture, swingers parties, and occasional public nudity?  Readers will be at turns titillated and deeply uncomfortable.