everything else: ordinary unhappinesses
as a preface to this letter: if you can, i hope you'll consider donating to medical aid for palestinians or other similar organisations.
a perfume samples website told me to try a new scent, ode to dullness. yesterday well past noon i lay in bed reading the new lydia davis. i think the mundane is beautiful, pausing mid-narration of an anecdote with no plot to ask if it’s okay that the centre of my garlic pod is green. often someone will tell me a fact, almost apologetically, that i will hold in my head for days: the word for a ship’s cook is Smutje, sharks are older than the north star. the taylor swift eras tour movie didn’t make me cry but i came home and wept through a series of dreams. it’s silly to think of yourself as a kind of person, we’re changing all the time, and anyway when i talk to my friends i realise over and over how we might see each other better than ourselves, even though i think of myself as a person (a kind of person) with clarity of self-perception. i used to believe syntax was about rules and not pleasure. i used to stand on the top floor of my apartment building looking out towards the reservoir, and each time, shockingly, the boats would shoot ahead seconds before the sound of the starter gun was carried to me by the wind.
love,
t