12/3/17

 

i'm thankful that after lunch we took a long walk to an old park where we used to go a lot and that we swung on the swings on the mostly empty playground. i'm thankful to have a very vivid and lovely memory of a time there our first spring together as a couple where we laid out on a blanket and ate snacks and i read an issue of poetry. i'm thankful for the experience of swinging (i'm thankful to have preferred platform swings to bucket swings, though both are good) and to have told d of my fond childhood memory of spending hours in our backyard alone on our swing set dutifully riding my "sky surfer" (a surf-board-ish swing) and listening to AM talk radio. 

 

i'm thankful that d pointed out the hilariousness of me as a child enjoying doing a repetitive physical activity for a long time while listening to recordings of strangers having conversations, which is the same thing i enjoy now a quarter century later. i'm thankful when we got home to have raked the leaves in our front yard while listening to classic rock loud on headphones. i'm thankful to have thought of raking as exfoliating the face of the lawn and then as brushing its hair (i'm thankful for the resistance and give of the fingers of the rake moving through the scrubby grass in our front yard) i'm thankful that though the yard did not really need a raking and i liked the way it looked with the even distributions of leaves strewn by wind and gravity better, i wanted the comfort and satisfaction of the activity of raking it and so i did. i'm thankful for "ooh la la" by the faces.

 

i'm thankful for the weirdness of "jackie wilson said" by van morrison, which was playing in the supermarket and which later i listened to a few times while raking and which, because it isn't on moondance or astral weeks, isn't a song of his i know as well and so was delighted to learn. i'm thankful for the part where, in the small pocket of space at the end of the first verse, he says "watch this," like a child who has been swinging higher and higher about to leap into the air at the apex of a jump and then just starts singing nonsense lyrics ("ding a ling a ling ding a ling a ding ding, do dah doo dah doo"), then goes into this section where he's singing in unison with the horn section ("i'm in heaven, i'm in heaven, i'm in heaven when you smile") stretching out the syllables in the word "heaven" so it doesn't sound like heaven and yet also does. i'm thankful for music that is free enough to make you feel free.

 

i'm thankful that d and i watched like four episodes in a row of the first season of terrace house last night. i'm thankful that as a show it feels different than the later seasons because there's no sections with the panel—it feels, formally, much closer to the hills, except the people on it are people i like and care about, which is not something i'm sure i could say about the hills now, however important it was to me in my early 20s. i'm thankful for the wistful opening monologues from the host You, who for some reason narrates them from the back of a car driving on the highway at night while wearing a big coat, lit by the screen of an open macbook in her lap, which makes them feel even more romantic for some reason. i'm thankful that i have been reading ragtime, which is quite a good novel. i'm thankful for the chapters which are miniaturist prose portraits of historical moments real and imagined, stuffed full of image and detail and sound and sense.

 

i'm thankful that though it sucks that d's IUD came out, it was neat to see it and i honestly think it's kind of beautiful and should be a piece of jewelry. i'm thankful she had a nice conversation with a nurse on the phone about it and i'm thankful for condoms. i'm thankful that "literally half the world cleans their butt with water!!!!!!!" i'm thankful for when all of the dishes come out of the dishwasher without any crud on them, not even a fork. i'm thankful for this nice story from amy sherman-palladino about a brown extension cord. i'm thankful for this thread of videos of ingenious "bridges". i'm thankful for floor hands. i'm thankful for "no action." i'm thankful for this video about a special kind of regifting, which made me laugh very hard. i'm thankful that i did not use my fucking computer all day yesterday so i am going to send this and close it again now.