housekeeping: i had this thought that maybe i need to have a schedule. how often am i going to send this thing?, people will want to know! except also, probably no one really cares, and at this point in my brain-life i'm trying to let go of scheduling things that don't need scheduling, so it's going to show up when it shows up.

here we go.
 

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🪄 it took me 2+ months to read Elissa Washuta's WHITE MAGIC, which i finally finished recently, and somewhere in me there is a personal essay on the practice of slow reading and slow reading that book in particular, but right now i'm distracted by other thoughts, so all i will say is that it is a book well worth the time it will take you to read it, especially if you are interested in post-traumatic meta-narratives that include references to things like the Oregon Trail and Twin Peaks and Stevie Nicks and what it means to be Native, all of which i am most definitely interested in.

👀 i can't stop thinking about this piece my colleague Danika wrote, "The Danger - And Necessity - of Paranoid Reading". i wasn't familiar with the framework of reparative and paranoid readings (coined by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whom i must absolutely now read) until recently -- both Danika and i first encountered it in the excellent Vox piece "How Twitter can ruin a life" (which is also a longer read that's well worth your time if you would like to be thoughtful about the impact of social media on our conversations and identities that's also not dismissive of the value of social media for conversations and indentity formation). i hadn't really come to grips with the theories or applying them after that first mention until i read Danika's piece, and i'm so grateful to them for diving in and bringing me along for the ride. in particular, i might end up printing out this bit and putting over my desk:

The takeaway, though, is not that either reparative or paranoid reading are the *right* kind of criticism. Instead, they are most effective when used in concert.

it's particularly useful to me right now in a pop-culture context because, for the last year, the excellent Preeti Chhibber and i have been re-reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which is a fantasy shibboleth adn a whopping 14 books long, and which are being adapted by Amazon, which is in my Top 5 Least Favorite Companies On Earth. we've been documenting the experience on a podcast (Tar Valon Or Bust, if you like close-reading and structural dissection of fantasy shibboleths), and we have many critiques. his use of a M/F gender binary is tiresome and actively offensive in many cases; he appropriated willfully from cultures around the world without thought or respect for what it would mean to mash those cultural elements up; his writing is regularly flabby and his pacing sometimes mystifyingly bad; i could go on and on. this is unsurprising if you've read a lot of fantasy written in the '90s (or, like, yesterday, in some cases), but the reason we're giving Jordan the time of day is that for all these flaws, we love the books in part because they were important to us in our teenage years, and while i absolutely hate that Amazon is producing the TV adaptation of it i'm also absolutely going to watch it, and this framework is helping me make sense of all that. we're engaging in both reparative and paranoid readings of these books, in real-time, and i'm hoping that helps my brain develop the muscles necessary to bring this to more fraught and weighty areas of life.

🐡 "third time's the charm" chiropractor update: i am pleased to report his office is full of plants and everyone masks and he isn't attempting to get me to cook fish, unlike the receptionist at the second place i tried. we talked about INFINITE JEST and also the Stoics this morning, and while it wasn't a conversation i was exactly prepared to have while my spine was being aggressively manipulated, at this point i will take it. the jury is still out on whether chiropractic adjustments will mean i don't absolutely have to do at least 30 minutes of yoga every single day of the rest of my life or suffer the consequences, but i'm hopeful.

🪴 thank you to Emma for the "plant cage" naming suggestion -- the Shrub Shrine it shall be! still in the market for the right plant to enshrine, but we did get two succulents last weekend that have been christened Mo and The Honks, pictures coming once i'm done repotting them.

👋 i hope wherever you are, whatever you're working on and through and with, there is hot chocolate (or the equivalent cozy beverage of your choice) in your near future, damn i love Fall.