this is love

Love is getting up at six a.m to spend a few hours with family living outside the US, jumping a ditch, sitting in the sun and cold wind, sharing donuts and ginger beer and delicious cake, making bracelets for the fam.

more of what I'm reading: slightly boring thrillers

I have some exciting reading news to pass along soon, but in the meantime, I blew through two new-ish thrillers that had fast-paced, intricate plots, but were ultimately a bit boring.

Who is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews featured an unlikable protagonist who is ultimately and  for me, unsatisfyingly, redeemed. I wanted Florence to stay bitchy and one breathless step ahead of the Moroccan law. Instead, she just seems insufficiently evil to make a career out of it. Boo.

Same for Laura Dave's, The Last Thing He Told Me. I truly enjoyed it until the last couple of chapters, when I realized how things were going to end. A dramatic moment of selflessness. With a breath of hope. Nah. 

If 2021 has taught me anything, it's that the world truly is a cruel mistress and it's best not to entertain thoughtless delusions. Proceed with deliberation and all due clarity.

13 documentaries

I ran across this gem of an online film festival: the BBC's Longshot documentaries.Thirteen movies from thirteen different countries: so far I've watched movies from Israel, France, and India. If we can only travel in our minds right now, this is a pretty wonderful way to go. (Note: the video is from 2020. The 2021 video autoplays and I'm too lazy to figure out how to turn it off.)

the great re-masking

It's feeling like 2020 again. Existential dread (the climate this time), packed hospitals and ICUs, clown time in politics (again! still!). And indoor mask requirements. I'm not surprised. Part of me is relieved that all the mouth breathing jabronies will again be required to corral their spit and their far-flying aerosols within the confines of their own face.

Why my employer is dragging folks back to crowded, poorly-ventilated offices in a month I do not know. Capitalism and the Delta variant appear to be winning, which means we're all losing.

smaugust

Dexter avenue smaugust sun

Smoke season is a thing now in Seattle, in the sneaky yet dangerous way that Ride the Ducks was--it's there and you know it isn't right but it takes a catastrophe for everyone to realize it.

The catastrophe of wildfire smoke sending us running indoors during a heat wave AND a pandemic seems obvious, but cars continue to inch along I-5 and airplanes belch out jet fuel fumes overhead every sixty seconds. So.

We used to joke about Smoketember. And now, Smaugust.

in the dream house...wisdom

I read Carmen Maria Machado's memoir, "In the Dream House" in June.

I must have snapshotted a half-dozen pages. She wisely structured this painful story of abuse into snackable short chapters, constructing a narrative that builds a story with plenty of cracked windows and ajar doors to peek through. 

Here are a few passages I want to keep here and in my heart.

Anyone who knows your name can break you in two

the necessary sacredness of private space

memoir is an act of resurrection

a rather brilliant white guy

I wanted not to like Kevin Wilson. This is year 2 of decolonizing my bookshelf, and here's this white guy I didn't want to read, much less like.

But the fact is, he's talented and sharp and wildly creative. I've read 3 books so far. First, Nothing to See Here, which tore me apart with its absurd wit and ungrudging heart. I also blew through The Family Fang, and Perfect Little World. 

To give you an idea of what drew me in and kept me enthralled, here's a paragraph from Perfect Little World where a pregnant woman is musing about her child.

 

 

communal grief or I feel this so deeply in my bones

 

your future self is watching you right now through memories

 

tumblr

same, taped up walk sign, same

 

don't remove asshole this is loud + broke

a tale of 2 visits

Last Saturday I took my shrink's advice and got out of town for the day. Two friends have been inviting me to stop by their waterfront houses and the heat and smoke in the city have been getting me down.

After some Zipcar confusion--at 6.30am the car wasn't parked in its space, but I used the "honk" feature to track it down 3 entire blocks away--and an early morning massage, a pal and I hopped the ferry to the peninsula. We won't worry about ferries or traffic, we promised ourselves.

On the Kingston side, we stopped at Borrowed Kitchen Bakery for deliciously flaky berry pastries and some cookies, and drove a few more miles to friend 1's beach cottage. We'd been texting. Come on by, they said. After proceeding down a narrow, tree-lined driveway, I parked and we got out and walked up to the house. There were two doors, so I knocked on one, then the other. Called my friend's name.We could see the water just beyond--was she on the beach? Or were we at the wrong house, and trespassing?

Finally my friend emerged and she seemed oddly nervous. After all the e-mails and texts, I felt like we were intruding. We stayed outside, did a little walking tour of the yard and down to the beach, admiring the water and trees and enjoying the cool air, then back up to the deck where an elderly dog barked vigorously. We gave her the cookies and left after less than thirty minutes, fleeing to a nearby gas station to use the bathroom, wash our hands, and hit the road.

Visit to friend 2 was later in the afternoon, on the return trip to the city. More texting, more directions, this time with a bottle of wine in hand. Another leafy drive, but this friend was waiting in front of her house when I drove up, smiling ear to ear and waving. There were hugs and exclamations--it was our first in person hangout in 16 months--and excited barking from the house: a general feeling of welcome. We got the tour of the property: yard, upstairs, downstairs, shop, greenhouse; and met the dogs, two big black eagerly-licking canines. we shared some wine, chatted and watched a spouse preparing guacamole, and left, feeling happy and welcomed.

Since last week, I haven't heard another word from friend 1. Friend 2 has been messaging all week. It reminds me of how much we need the lovers and carers. I don't have time anymore for the begrudging, the reluctant, the distant. 

seen on a Saturday night

 

so I searched on Naturally Tan and...

Is it weird that I searched on "Naturally Tan" on powells.com for my previous post, and this came up?

voices from our collective past

I recently read Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha M. Bain's Four Hundred Souls. It was a Peak Picks at the library--which means a 2 week checkout instead of 3--so I grabbed it up and immediately began reading. Each chapter was written by a different scholar, and is just two to three pages long. Altogether these 80-some chapters trace 400 years of slavery and white supremacy in the United States. It's a heavy narrative, and interestingly told, with each author's voice and approach varying, from poems to historical essays to first-person narrative. This gives the book a quilt-like feeling: the sum of many parts, beautiful and powerful in each piece, and overall. 

It put me in mind of the Instagram account Girl Gone Golden, which posts photographs and narratives of Black folks from the late 1800s and early 1900s with a great deal of context--noting the bruising on a nursemaid's face, including videos and recordings of former slaves' stories about their lives, transforming history into something immediate and present. If you're not on the gram you can search online for excerpts (here for instance). 

I also read Naturally Tan, by Tan France of Queer Eye fame. While I enjoyed the book, it's a quick and easy read, it also left me wanting more. It's a glossy breezy tale and I am happy for the author's meteoric success, but I suspect there's a deeper, more interesting story to be told.