Syllabus #159

Hi hello how are you?  How would you rate your Sunday scaries on a scale of 1-10?  On a scale of "what day even is it?" to "I'd rather pop out my eyeballs and with a melon baller and feed them to a stray cat so I don't have to look at my inbox tomorrow"?  I'm at about a 3/"not setting an alarm yet but will almost certainly be awake before 6:00 am."

I like to think I'm not shallow or obsessed with youth culture, but.  BUT.  Yesterday an old man mistook me for the daughter of someone who couldn't be older than 45, and I was weirdly thrilled.  Let's ignore the fact that the man was either senile or had impaired vision, because the woman in question was also much taller than me with light hair and blue eyes, yet he said we looked alike.  Just let me have this one thing.

In case you've forgotten that we live in a hot tub full of jet fuel, just waiting for a stray ember from your redneck neighbor's random Tuesday night fireworks to blow us all to hell, here's a little reminder.  

I didn't have the time or energy to engage with any other news this week, apparently.

Analog Reading:

Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo was all of those adjectives you read on a dust jacket - transporting, gutting, brutally sad, tragically beautiful...you get it.  It was an excellent book and I couldn't put it down, but not in a staring at a car crash kind of way.  I just felt so invested in Mungo's journey, and despite the horrific violence that played out in the latter third of the book, it managed to end with the possibility of happiness?  

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris was, as ever, a treat.  He's a little more self-reflective and inwardly focused in this one, in contrast to the cutting and hilarious observations he's known for making about people he encounters out in the world.  That's in there, too, but I was surprised by the amount of introspection.  Despite some of the heavier subject matter, I still cackled out loud finishing the last essay with a beer on the front porch.  

Just started Memphis by Tara Stringfellow.  I feel like I might need to borrow some adjectives from Mungo before we're through - but don't the best books kick you in the teeth and teach you something about empathy?