12/28/15
i'm thankful for the nightmare in which my mother revealed to me, in a darkened upstairs bedroom, that i had had cancer for nine months and that she couldn't bear to tell me until now. i'm thankful that in my nightmare, the cancer was, i think, drawn from my memory of how radiation sickness works in outer space in seveneves, of this image of invisible particles passing through the air and into the body and lodging there to destroy cells. i'm struck by the weird sense of emotional scale in dreams, how this horror and despair seemed equivalent to the moment, earlier in the nightmare, when i "realized" that my christmas vacation was over and i had to get to work quickly. i'm thankful for the one happy moment in the nightmare, when i was able to give a bunch of unripe bananas to a faculty member i work with so that her son (the one who, in real life, i gave the miniature frisbee) would have something to take to school for a class project. i'm thankful that i briefly felt guilty for giving away our bananas without asking d, but then i talked to d and she said it was a nice thing to do. i'm thankful i woke up and that i do not have cancer and my vacation is not close to over (though we don't have any bananas, except for one very soft very brown one, because i forgot to buy them at the grocery store on saturday, and looking back this may have been the seed that generated the dream).
i'm thankful that though i generally hate running on a treadmill, it was raining all day yesterday and so i was forced to try again to run on a treadmill. i'm thankful that i used an old issue of the new yorker to cover the treadmill's display. i'm thankful that i did this because, when the display is visible, i find that i constantly check the time and the imaginary distance that i have traveled and the (very) imaginary calories that i have burned and doing so causes time to feel as if it's moving incredibly slowly and i am unable to cover distances that, when running outside, seem like child's play. i'm thankful that covering up the readout and watching something on my phone let the time fly by. i'm thankful i watched the first forty minutes of best of enemies, the documentary about the buckley/vidal debates, on netflix. i'm thankful for the snappiness of the editing and of the repartee. i'm thankful for gore vidal's sick burns. i'm thankful for how soaked my black tshirt was with sweat when i was done.
i'm thankful that mark hamill looks just like zizek. i'm thankful to imagine the amazing sci-fi film essay that might eventually result from this coincidence. i'm thankful for sophie fiennes, whose labor in making those great zizek films tends to be hidden by the volume of zizek's voice and beard.
i'm thankful that some mysterious thing happened and the seat belt in the passenger side of d's car has shifted such that the buckle, which for a long time was loose and would, when the belt was not in use, lodge in between the bottom of the seat and the door, necessitating that every time i enter the car and, by reflex, as one does, close the door, i immediately open the door again because with the door closed the buckle is out of reach, but now, something has happened and the buckle sits higher and is easily reachable with the door closed. i'm thankful that i don't know what happened but that something definitely happened. i'm thankful for mystery, especially when it provides solutions.
i'm thankful for the keanu reeves "whoa" epiphany that moonlight is just sunlight reflected by the moon, which seems obvious but is not something i'd ever thought about. i'm thankful for the last epiphany i had like this, while killing time in a mall in southern california, where, beside a decorative pool surrounded by stone statues of dolphins, a plaque informed me that "pacific ocean" means "peaceful ocean." i'm thankful to be occasionally mystified by the obvious.