12/19/15
i'm thankful to get let out of work a little early on a friday afternoon. i'm thankful to the faculty member who let me out of work a little early, and i'm thankful for the conversation i had with him in the men's restroom before, during, and after he used the toilet (he spoke from the stall) about the beauty of the northeast in general and portland, maine in particular. i'm thankful i unplugged the office christmas trees before leaving so he would not have to stoop to do so. i'm thankful for the joking rapport we have and for his good nature. i'm thankful for another faculty member's genuine enthusiasm, expressed to her colleague, about having found a two-for-one coupon for a low quality chain soup restaurant in her purse. i'm thankful that maybe she was genuinely excited about the low quality soup (i'm thankful that most people are not as snobby about food as i am), but i'm thankful that it's more likely she was happy for the opportunity to break bread (into soup) with her colleague, who had been out of town for the past few weeks. i'm thankful for their affection for each other and for the running joke she and i have about using various complicated technologies (a gps device, a notice board, a modified terror alert system, etc.) to track his whereabouts so she can locate him when she really needs him and he's not there, which is often.
i'm thankful for the annoying plants in our front yard which i do not know the name of but which are like larger and more fibrous sand spurs coated in sticky sap that bond together in thick clumps and which i always get stuck to me while taking the trash out, annoying me, but which, inevitably, i forget to avoid two weeks later when i next take out the trash out. i'm thankful for the moment when i got to work after taking out the trash this week and found a huge clump of them stuck to the leg of my black pants. i'm thankful that without thinking, i tried to pull them off with my right hand, which was clad in a cheap knit glove, and the fibers embedded themselves into it in many different places. i'm thankful for how my stupid 8am brain then led me to try to pull out the fibers from my gloved right hand with my gloved left hand, thus spreading them to my left hand while not removing a significant amount from my right hand. i'm thankful that i left the gloves on my desk for several days because the thought of removing all the tiny fibers seemed too painstaking and i'm thankful that i considered just throwing them away, since they only cost $6. i'm thankful i found a spare pair of cheap knit gloves from last winter in my sock drawer to use while i procrastinated taking action on the bur-ridden pair. i'm thankful for yesterday, when i paraphrased to myself my own lesson here about subdividing tasks as way to make them possible and endurable and convinced myself that it would not be that bad, that i just had to go one finger at a time. i'm thankful that it really was not that bad, that i just had to go one finger at a time, and that i actually kind of enjoyed the process, the same way i enjoy vacuuming thick carpet and seeing the floor beneath me transformed by my labor. i'm thankful that because of the annoying plants in our front yard, i now have two pairs of gloves for this winter.
i'm thankful that i spent a large portion of yesterday afternoon writing a battle rap imagining different ways to kill ted cruz instead of doing actual work. i'm thankful for my clumsy flow and my not letting the inevitable problems with trying to create political art (not to mention rapping as a white person) stop me from enjoying flexing my brain. i'm thankful for the most promising verse i came up with: "you think that's bad ted? now i'll really make you squirm / i'ma take a little egg and fertilize it with my sperm / i inject that shit inside, you feel it squirming like a worm / and you best fucking believe you're gonna carry it to term / no exceptions - my weapon's your rejection of a preference / for a mother to decide if she wants to ride or die / your body's mine now, you're my spouse, the bible says / it's my house, and when contractions start, the baby's / gonna rip your balls out. opinions are like assholes / especially from you, son, and if i hear another / i'll tear you a new one..."
i'm thankful for duets between louis armstrong and ella fitzgerald, which always make me feel like i'm in the happy coda of a nora ephron movie. i'm thankful for the christmas playlist that an old friend of d's made and that we are listening to now in our bedroom as the furnace pumps hot air up from the basement. i'm thankful for the flaming lips "christmas laughing waltz (including jingle bells)," which matches beautiful meditative close mic-ed jazz piano with a bed of delayed and distorted and reverbed wordless vocalizations. i'm thankful for the latest issue of new york magazine, which is my favorite magazine to read in bed on lazy weekend mornings. i'm thankful for warm matcha frothed in a glass bottle. i'm thankful that our favorite restaurant in town reopened last night and that we're going to eat there tonight. i'm thankful for all the possibilities which exist in the outline of the weekend ahead of us and in the vast expanse of space-time that will be our holiday vacation, which starts next wednesday.
i'm thankful for the singing bowl that d gave me as an early christmas present (i'm thankful also that she likes the hanging air planters that i gave her as an early christmas present). i'm happy that though i had trouble with it at first, i found lists of tips and a helpful tutorial video on the internet. i'm happy for the moment last night when, after seemingly forever fruitlessly rubbing the wooden wand around the outer rim, a piercing, clear tone started to sustain in the bowl and, as i continued to summon it, to rise in pitch and volume, seeming to float out of the bowl in front of me as a tangible object for several moments before my arms gave up and it disappeared into the air. i'm thankful for the way that the process felt like the sonic equivalent of starting a fire with sticks.
i'm thankful for "new world coming" by nina simone.