12/5/15
i'm thankful for unexpectedly canceled plans. i'm thankful for [redacted] juicy gossip about people i know. i'm thankful for gossip in general, even though i know it's probably bad to be thankful for that. i'm thankful i'm not perfect and that none of my friends are either. i'm thankful for complicated relationships and i'm thankful that i'm not in one.
i'm thankful for kimchi. i'm thankful for the last of the gallon jar of it i've been eating portions of at work this week. i'm thankful for how filling and satisfying it is and how much easier my life in korea was made by the fact that i like it. i'm thankful to have clementines, which i use strategically after eating kimchi to try to erase the smell of the kimchi. i'm thankful that though several people commented on the smell of the kimchi, they were not rude or unpleasant about it. i'm thankful for the faculty member whose office is closest to my desk, a kind man who, when i brought kimchi in the past, made goodhearted jokes about the smell. i'm thankful that, unlike the last few days, when he was clearly in a lot of pain (he is about to have surgery on his femur), a fact which was emphasized to me by the fact that we did not banter about my kimchi, on friday he made a joke about the smell and then, after i told him about my clementine strategy, told me about how his wife simmers oranges and cloves and other aromatics on the stove all day in the winter. i'm thankful for the warm distant glow in his eyes as he related this anecdote which made it seem as if he was partially transported there just by describing it. i'm thankful for the way language can erase space and time.
i'm thankful for proustian flatulence. i'm thankful that when i farted while in goddess pose, the resultant digested kimchi smell reminded me viscerally of every elementary school classroom i taught in when i lived in korea. i'm thankful for the ivy league names that were assigned to rooms in the school where i taught (i’m thankful i mostly taught in "oxford" and "harvard"). i'm thankful for the elevator i took up to the school, which was on at least the tenth floor, and i'm thankful for the one time a troublemaker climbed out the window onto the balcony and i was able to pull him back in before something bad happened. i'm thankful for the time when i was spinning one of my favorite students, "harry," in my office chair and i spun him so fast that the chair went off axis and fell backwards onto the hard floor. i'm thankful that, after a brief second in which i was sure that he'd cracked his skull and maybe died, as i leapt down to help him, i realized that that because he was so short, he was completely cushioned by the back of the chair beneath him and was fine and smiling and ready to go again. i'm thankful that sometimes accidents don't happen.
i'm thankful that, while putting up posters promoting our department's graduate program around campus yesterday, i found open bulletin board spaces. i'm thankful i didn't run into anyone i know, which i was not in the mood for. i'm thankful that i got a break from being in the office, even if it didn't improve my mood very much. i'm thankful that when i got home, instead of listening to a podcast as i usually would, i put on music on the bluetooth speaker. i'm thankful that even though the speaker is mono, it still sounds very present. i'm thankful that singing along to "hey jude" while scrubbing plates scrubbed away my bad mood, so that by the end of the song, as i danced along to mccartney's improvised howling over the massed outro chorus, i felt like a different person who was myself, the version of me i wanted to be inside. i'm thankful to sing along with music on speakers, which is a different experience from singing along with music on headphones.
i'm thankful that after dinner last night, i ate an entire package of chips ahoy rainbow m&m cookies. i'm thankful that the cookies were on sale for $2.49. i'm thankful that i almost stopped myself halfway through the package, but continued to binge, even though that was terrible and unnecessary and made me feel gross later, because sometimes it is nice to treat yourself to affordable excess. i'm thankful for the dry, reliable crunch of the cookies, for the processed chocolate, for the brightly-colored candy shell.
i'm thankful that it's almost ten o'clock and i'm still laying in bed. i'm thankful that i know it's grammatically correct to use "lying" in that context, but i'm thankful that i prefer "laying," which, with its opening syllable, conjures the sense of laziness that is essential to laying. i'm thankful to lay, to have lain, to be laying.