the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 28
Oh hey! It’s been a bit! I made it a goal to write more during these oppressively cold winter months and then I just … didn’t. I wish I had more discipline, a lot of the time, but also I love sleeping and reading and cooking and eating, so, whatcha gonna do.
Anyway, the positivity rate has gone down so I’m starting to live my life again! I went to an actual movie theater recently and I saw Jackass Forever, which is unbelievably fun and so stupid. I didn’t really watch Jackass when I was younger — the name turned me off, I think, and maybe I thought I was above that kind of humor? Friends, I am here to tell you that I am not above an electrified dance floor, Johnny Knoxville being flipped by a bull, and seeing a dude don an athletic cup and then take a pitched softball directly to his groin. Oh, also one woman let herself get stung in the face by a scorpion in a bit called “Scorpion botox.” Holy shit!
The thing that is so lovely about this movie is that it seems like they’re all just in it for the love of the game? Like, I know this is a movie and they’re making some money from that, but they all really enjoy doing stupid things to make each other laugh. It’s also a movie, so I know they’re giving us the best takes and all, but it seems like they enjoy hurting themselves for each other. Anyway, I laughed *so* hard throughout the whole thing, so if you’re looking for something mindless and fun, get on it.
Debris
I went to see the excellent “Made by God,” at the Irish Rep, which is about as different from Jackass Forever as you can get. It’s a play about trying to understand and maybe change strongly-held beliefs about abortion.
Watch Abbott Elementary! It’s so funny and good. Kind of office-style work place comedy, but less awkward humor. It’s pretty earnest, which as a description makes it sound like it’s toothless, but I think it simultaneously eviscerates a lot of deeply held beliefs about public school. Also the kid actors are soooooo cute.
It was unseasonably warm last Wednesday, which on the one hand is Bad but on the other hand, I went for a walk and didn’t feel chilled to my bone and got to watch an absolutely stunning sunset in Prospect Park.
My Ukranian and Russian friends and their families are in my thoughts right now. I don’t have any interesting or unique takes on the invasion, so I’m not writing about it but thought it would be weird not to acknowledge. Here’s a primer that helped me understand the conflict a bit better, if you’re interested. Here are some resources if you also are feeling helpless and want to contribute somehow to the Ukranian effort.
Also the attack on trans kids and their families that is currently happening in Texas is absolutely horrifying. Trans rights are human rights. Here’s a thread on places you can contribute.
What I’ve Been Reading:
Good lord, this section is too long. I need to get these out faster so you all might actually read the descriptions. Some of these books are really good! I promise.
Currently:
I just picked up The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s sequel to The Sympathizer. I’m not far enough to know yet if it’s good, but if you haven’t read The Sympathizer, I recommend it so heartily. The plot is twisty and fascinating, the writing is absolutely gorgeous, and the end of it stayed with me for months. Also, the main character fucks a squid and then eats it for dinner. (He recently wrote a NYT Opinion piece about the current travesty of book-burning that is also worth checking out.)
Finished:
Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher
Grace, a secretive perfumer with a hidden past meet-cutes Stephen, a bereserker paladin struggling to find meaning in the world since his god died six years ago, as she’s fleeing the interrogations of a couple of suspicious guards. Stephen smells delightfully of cinnamon and is very large! They keep running into each other as Grace is accused of attemping to posion the Crown Prince of a nearby kingdom. Meanwhile, someone is running around decapitating citizens in the poorer parts of town! This is one of those books where all the characters are charming and quirky, but it doesn’t ever get too cloying. There’s also a really interesting thing going on where the plot that is occupying Stephen and Grace is tangential to a much bigger suggested plot that is happening just off-page, but since they are limited in their narrative scope, they only get hints of it.
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Daunis is a young woman trying to figure out where she fits. Her parents never married, and her life straddles between the white, upper-crust community in which she lives and the Ojibwe tribe that her father was a part of before his death. Instead of heading off to college, she sticks around town to help care for her dying grandmother, and slowly becomes aware of a web of corruption and drug-dealing in her community. I loved so many things about this novel. Daunis’ experiences as she balances the tension between her families, and how she feels to be included in some ways and excluded in others felt very poignant to me. The plot ultimately didn’t quite hang together for me, but that didn’t bother me that much, since it was such a rich text in other ways.
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
I’d read — and loved — Station Eleven when it first came out, and I’m not sure why I waited so long to read The Glass Hotel. It intertwines a bunch of different stories in ways that seem random or coincidental, but slowly coil together in a basically perfect (to me, anyways!) narrative structure. I don’t really want to give a lot of details, because that would rob you of being able to experience them as the story unfurls, but early on it’s clear that the center cannot hold.
Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms
Gosh, this was a beautiful, unsettling book. Misty is a small girl who is more at ease with the world than other people — she communicates with the crawdads and the trees and even her family’s old trailer in open, expansive, meaningful ways. She wishes she could talk with her family members in similar ways, but words are much more difficult than exchanging feelings. Then something Bad happens, and the way she tries to cut herself off from her world and her feelings is distressing and deeply familiar.
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
Ada and her best bud Corrine are hemopaths in Boston on the eve of Prohibition; they have a blood disease that makes them extremely sensitive to iron and also lets them manipulate people’s minds and emotions. Corrine can recite a poem that befuddle your mind and make you forget the last half hour; Ada can play the violin so beautifully that you remember your happiest childhood memory. They’re happy and safe at the Iron Cast Club, but hemopathy has recently outlawed, and the two of them have to figure out how to stay out of the secret prison that is the Haversham Asylum. It’s pretty twisty and fun, and the magic system is really inventive.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
A cute alternative history, in which a giant meteorite falls to earth in 1952 and wipes out all of DC and most of the eastern seaboard. Elma, a mathematician and military pilot, does the math and determines that this might be an extinction event, and that if humankind doesn’t figure out a way to get off the planet, they all might be doomed. There’s a lot of gender and race stuff in there too that is pretty interesting. It’s a very likable book but for some reason it didn’t fully click for me. Maybe I was distracted by the unending sexism? Also I kind of wish it wasn’t a series. I’m getting tired of series. (Even though I keep accidentally reading them!)
A Broken Queen and The Cerulean Queen by Sarah Kozloff
Speaking of series. I liked the second book of this quadrilogy (mentioned in my last newsletter) quite a bit, and the rest were okay, but nothing to get really excited about. The final one was interesting in that it was trying to really focus on peace-making and kingdom-restoration, but it got a little bogged down in trying to wrap up the queen’s personal affairs nicely. (And they wrapped up a little too nicely.)
The Invisible Library and The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman
I feel like I’m always going to be chasing the Murderbot Diaries high. (Maybe I do like series.) The Invisible Library was recommended as a similar-ish experience, and it’s not really, but it’s a series about an invisible library whose doors open into the multiverse, and librarians who venture out into those worlds to rescue/steal rare copies of books. It’s fantasy espionage! Also there are chaos dragons! Was this book genetically engineered for my brain? Maybe.
Long on the reading, short on the writing today. I love you all, so much. It will be spring soon. Stay safe out there.
love,
davida