the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 24
During the winter, as the walls continued to close around all of us and every day felt achingly the same, I was talking on the phone with my grandma and she asked me where I might want to travel once restrictions are lifted. I listed out a couple places that I’m quite interested in — Iceland and the Azores Islands, in case you’d like to buy me a ticket — and she told me about her trip to Iceland, 20 years ago. (She was supposed to fly back to NYC *on* 9-11 holy smokes!) Then, I asked her where she would go.
My grandma’s quite elderly, and although she’s still in good shape, it has become harder for her to get around, especially after the past year. She told me she’d love to go to England where she still has some living relatives, but really, she said, “My dream is to go back to Brooklyn and see my old neighborhoods.” Kind of stunned by the achievableness, I said, “Grandma … we can make that dream happen.”
So a couple of weekends ago, we did. I woke up early in the morning, drove to her house in New Jersey, ate a few strawberries, and then piled back into the car and drove to Brooklyn! As we approached the city, Grandma lit up in a way that I don’t know if I’ve seen before, and started telling me stories. How she would drive along the Pulaski Parkway on the way to visit her in-laws, and how the tunnel used to only cost 25 cents.
A notable stop was Cobble Hill Towers — a building that Grandma and Grandpa lived in when they were first married. Grandpa was working at a nearby hospital. When we got out of the car, there was the gentle thrum of traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; Grandma turned to me and said, “You know, they were still building that when we lived here. It’s a lot noisier now.” (A one-bedroom in the building was selling for a chill 475k!)
It was really wonderful to go from neighborhood to neighborhood and rexperience them through her eyes. Brooklyn College used to only be three buildings — now there’s a whole campus. The brownstone that she grew up in used to be a Jewish neighborhood — now it skews mostly Carribbean, but she took my on a little tour of her still-standing elementary school. We took a picture in front of her old house, and a man, suspicious came up to ask us why. “I lived here 80 years ago!” Grandma told him, and then started telling him other stories, effectively trapping him for a few minutes.
I had worried, ahead of time, that I would also feel very trapped during the day; I haven’t spent a whole day with almost anyone in a long time, and I would be doing a lot of driving, and I was just worried about the amount of energy I would be expending. And while the whole day was exhausting, I’m so happy that I was able to spend this time with my grandma. (We only got into one fight! When I told her she was absolutely not allowed to check out the alley behind her old house where she used to play ball lol.) This has been a hard year, and letting my grandma relive some of these experiences she had so many years ago felt so special. I feel really lucky to have had this time with her, and really lucky in general to have her and the rest of my cool family. :) (Shout out to the ones that are reading this sentence!)
Debris
On my way back from New Jersey, the car’s brakes failed! On the highway!!! I was able to navigate off the highway, and the off-ramp let out into a little Staten Island neighborhood where I could easily make a right-hand turn onto a residential street and abruptly put the car in park in front of a fire hydrant. There was even a grocery within walking distance where they let me pee. The tow truck came within an hour and they towed me back to Brooklyn. I am the luckiest person alive, I think, that it happened at the best possible time in the best possible moment and no one was hurt and the car was able to get fixed.
I regret to inform everyone that I am still extremely introverted. I had my first post-vaccination trip a couple weekends ago, and I got to see a bunch of people I love dearly, and was *absolutely* wrecked for weeks. I may still be wrecked? Anyway I love everyone I saw, I’m just very tired.
It feels a bit like Brooklyn’s back! I am worried about the new Delta variant, but that just means I’m keeping my mask on if I interact with strangers, and still eating outside. But also summertime is the time for eating outside and sweating enough to make my face break out.
I think I am going to start doing some power lifting training again! All my muscles congealed into chocolate pudding in the past year, and I’m super ready to start feeling strong again. I can’t wait to write about my love of picking up heavy things and putting them back down.
The Bachelorette is back, baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbyyyy! A guy showed up in a cat costume on night one. The bachelorette was into it! They made out and got his cat makeup smeared all over her face! What an alpha move.
What I’ve been Reading:
Currently:
The Storm is Upon Us by Mike Rothschild
I am going to be honest; I may not finish this book not because it is bad (it’s good!) but because it’s about QAnon and goodness. I am tired. I heard an interview with the author on some podcast, and he seemed to have good, smart things to say about QAnon and I want to understand it better so if I ever have to deal with it in my own life I am better equipped to do so, but also please, loved ones, don’t fall prey to conspiracy theories.
Good Services: How to Design Services That Work by Lou Downe
I’m reading this because I think it could help me do my job better, which I don’t usually like doing job development in my free time, but it’s also a really beautifully designed book by the Director of Design for the UK Government, so it’s worth my time, I think! That said, it’s very short and I keep putting it down for weird murder mysteries so … we’ll see.
Finished:
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
This was a cute and fun murder mystery! It kind of reminds me of An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good (see below) as a lot of it involves people underestimating older people. (And older people using that to their very great advantage.) A group of friends in a retirement community meet up weekly to discuss unsolved murders. And then, to their delight, they find themselves in the middle of an active murder investigation. In general, I’ve grown weary of narratives that involve cops, but this one is set in England so it gets a bit of a pass. I have been trying to stay away from crime because cop propoganda etc etc but it’s set in England! They call it the Murder Squad there which for some reason I find really cute? And also only bad people get murdered! One of them, I was really ready for him to be murdered! So that’s nice. (I may be tired.)
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
This book is kind of complicated! Demons and direct descendents of King Arthur’s court are in an ongoing fight. Bree, a 16 year-old going to an early college program at UNC stumbles across this world of magic and secret societies seemingly by accident, and gets swept up in it, despite early microaggressions from court’s ancestors. (Spiler alert; those microaggressions graduate by the end of the book to outright bigotry.) There’s a lot of very complicated rituals in this book, which was initially too much for me but I think is actually commentary on colonization and whiteness?
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
CW: suicide. There are things to like about this book but ultimately it fell pretty flat for me. It’s about regrets, decisions, and what makes life worth living. I found it to be a bit trite, but but it did remind me of this New Yorker article about the Golden Gate bridge, and people who jump from it. This article has stuck with me for nearly 20 years!
Zed by Joanna Kavenna
Okay a bunch of these books come from Paul’s great newsletter (this, An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, and One by One) and this is the only one I didn’t really enjoy, not because it was bad, but because it was SO STRESSFUL. It’s set in a slippery-sloped future where algorithms and a private company, Beetle, is watching you all the time. This particular dystopia that keeps the world bland and noncommittal because any deviation from blankness leads to negative outcomes in your lifechain algorithm. However, unpredictable outcomes start to occur. (Like surveillance robots murdering humans!!!) Guy Matthias, the Beetle CEO, starts taking more aggressive action to control the population because to him, it’s not that the algorithms are wrong, but human behavior. Gah! Thanks, I hate it. (It’s a good book though.)
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy
Maud’s an unassuming older lady who just wants to be left alone to live her life. She’s in her 80s, in perfect physical health, and loves to travel. But people can be so impertinent, or want to take advantage of a nice old lady, and when that happens, well, can she really be held responsible for what happens?
One by One by Ruth Ware
A start-up has an offsite retreat in the Alps. Almost immediately, tensions rise around an upcoming business opportunity and the avalanche later that day makes it even worse. It’s a breezy murder mystery that doesn’t make a ton of sense when you step back and take a breath, but it’s a pretty fun ride.
Juliet Takes A Breath by Gabby Rivera
Rivera’s book about identity and queerness and race centers Juliet, a young Puero Rican woman who comes out to her family right before flying to Portland, OR to intern for Harlowe Brisbane, a proclaimed feminist author whose book changed Juliet’s world fully. The failures of intersectional feminism are on full display as Juliet tries to navigate Portland and Harlowe’s well-intentioned White lady racism. I learned quite a bit reading it. Also there was a sexy, motorcycle-riding librarian! Thanks to Sam who recommended it to me!
Wicked As You Wish by Rin Chupeco
Chipeco’s world kind of looks like ours, but where every single fairly tale or myth ever told is true, more or less. It’s a bit messy, but it’s a joyous mess (for me, anyway) as the different stories mash together in ways that mostly work. It was fun to try to work out who different characters are, or to look up and learn about myths from different cultures. The protagonist, Tala, is a girl without magic … well, to be more precise, she negates magic, as her mother does, and everyone of her mother’s lineage. Her best friend Alexei, is actually the last prince of Avalon, who has been in hiding since the Snow Queen murdered his parents; the borders to Avalon have been impenetrable ever since. When Alexei’s enemies find him, Tala and the Bandersnatch, a crew of young but precocious magic users have to avoid ICE (which is just as evil in Wicked as in the real world) and the queen’s henchpeople. It’s a fun adventure, and I often found myself pausing to think about various clues and details along the way.
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
A novel in letters, this book is clever but not very interesting to read. The basic crux is that the little island Ella lives on worships the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” a sentence that contains every letter in the English alphabet. The island has the sentence inscribed in tile. The letter z tile crashes to the ground, which leads the island council to believe that Nollop, the original enscriber of the sentence and founder of the island (or something) was communicating that they should stop using the letter z. Anyone caught using it will suffer punishment, and ultimately exile or death. The council starts to engage in some fun fascism to uphold their decrees. And then, more letters start to crash down. It’s cute for awhile, but for me, became insufferable to read quite quickly as letters rained down the the ground, and while I admire the stylistic restrictions, I got kind of bored.
Okay babes, I hope you all are feeling healthy and safe and well. Stay cool, my friends on the west coast.
I love you so much!
<3
davida