11/26/15
i'm thankful that i am finding time this week to unsubscribe from all of the junk email i receive. i'm thankful that i have the time now to save time in the future, and to save the mental energy that seeing a new email and assessing it for its importance sucks from my heart. i'm thankful for the ridiculousness of the unsubscribing process, for the tiny fonts of the buttons and for the flagrant abuse of checkboxes.
i'm thankful that i meditated for an hour straight yesterday, which is my longest meditation ever. i'm thankful for the way it actually got easier the longer i went. i'm thankful i didn't try to do it in full lotus, which made my legs go numb the last time. i'm thankful for the dark, quiet room i was in that helped me focus.
i'm thankful for the narrator by michael cisco. i'm thankful for the kafkaesque in his work, the complex world of arbitrary rules which are not understood by the narrator until it's too late, and also for the mieville-ishness, the creation of strange creatures and the precision of their description.
i'm thankful for the opportunity to have a hot bath not because i'm dirty or sweaty, but just for the pleasure of the warmth on my skin and the chance to read uninterrupted. i'm thankful that the bathroom has a glazed window that lets in warm sunlight in the early afternoon.
i'm thankful for the economy-size bag of store brand honey nut cheerios i bought. i'm always thankful to have a bowl of cereal for breakfast. i'm thankful for my memories of my dad eating what he called a "jethro bowl" of cereal (a large metal mixing bowl) when i was a kid. i'm thankful to read recently, i can't remember where, about christina tosi doing the same thing.
i'm thankful for the useless lattices of cheap duct tape i've applied to try to attach a sheet of cardboard i covered with soundproofing to a microphone stand. i'm thankful for how hopeful i feel each time i erect it anew, for the cross-braces and support lines of tape i apply, for the way i try to solve the problem again, and i'm thankful to be reminded, when i hear the cardboard fall in the other room, of how i can't control everything. i'm thankful for the idea i had last night, to cut a slit in the cardboard which should seat it into the joint of the microphone stand more neatly and securely. i'm thankful that the likely failure of this scheme will not upset me too much.
i'm thankful that even though i burned the grilled cheese i made with the last two pieces of cheese in the fridge, i was able to scrape off the charred bits with a sharp knife and it was still delicious. i'm thankful for the sweetness of anjou pear in our salad, and for grated carrot. i'm thankful for strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
i'm thankful for the issue of the new yorker i read in the bath, which has emily witt writing about the founders of erowid and adrian chen writing about megan phelps and a really interesting longread about the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
i'm thankful that in a reading i was listening to while doing yoga, john ashbery mispronounced “libido."