3/5/17
i'm thankful that usually we don't have plans that require us to leave the house on sunday. i'm thankful to know that i woke up in a stupid grumpy mood because instead of getting to stay home and do nothing all day if i so choose, i need to finish these notes quickly so that i can get in a short run and shower and then we are going to see a matinee of get out and then having lunch out and then going to the country house where we are house sitting in a few weeks and then when we get home i'll need to sort the recycling and make dinner. i'm thankful to tell myself that all these activities are perfectly fine things, some of which (like seeing get out) are nice things i really want to do, and to try to fight the mental script in which i see the day planned out in front of me and it feels like it's over already before it's even begun, because everything is scheduled and there is no free time. i'm thankful to remind myself that the day is not over by far and to remind myself to be present in it right now, my fingers clicking across the keys as i lie in a warm bed in a quiet room. i'm thankful to know that today has the potential to be a really great day and the primary thing keeping it from being a great day is the way that i frame it in my mind. i'm thankful to breathe this moment in and out and work in my mind to reshape the frame.
i'm thankful for horizon zero dawn, which i had similarly unfair and wrong feelings about that have changed. i'm thankful that i had been looking forward to playing horizon zero dawn for a long time and bought it on the day that it came out, which is something i don't often do. i'm thankful that i started playing it and was enjoying it quite a bit when suddenly all the media coverage of how the new zelda is a perfect masterpiece started and then people at work were talking about the new zelda and suddenly this game which i had been so excited for and was enjoying seemed like a waste of my time, like, why would i be playing this very good game when i could be playing the best game. i'm thankful that the switch is sold out in the places i would buy one, since i probably would have gotten one as an impulse buy (i'm thankful to have gotten my tax return) and left horizon zero dawn on the shelf unfinished maybe forever. i'm thankful that didn't happen and that i continued playing horizon zero dawn, which has gotten better and better. i'm thankful for the perfect difficulty of fighting the giant robot dinosaurs, which is challenging enough that i really have to focus and still die fairly often and feel very satisfied after defeating a giant robot dinosaur, but not so challenging that i keep dying and get discouraged. i'm thankful for the slow motion feature, which makes it possible to make complicated and satisfying shots even if you don't have the best controller dexterity, which i don't. i'm thankful that at first i was annoyed at the game's use of checkpoints to save rather than allowing you to save at any time, which felt like an annoyance, but i'm thankful now for the way that it makes staying alive feel more important and makes the game more intense because of it.
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or, rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different."
i'm thankful for this poem about the color red. i'm thankful to still be reading john berger's portraits and highlighting parts i like to share with you and then realizing that i am basically highlighting the whole book. i'm thankful for his chapter on bosch, which you can read in its entirety here, and thankful for my favorite so far, which is his chapter on bellini and the conceptual and artistic progression apparent in four paintings of the virigin mary he did, how the depiction of the virgin gradually moves out of flat dark spaces into deep open ones. i'm thankful for berger's description of his focus on daylight:
"Of course we couldn't have painting at all without light; without light we can't see. But what engaged Bellini was not light, which, destroying darkness, enables us to distinguish one object from another; it was, rather, the way that, when light is diffused, it creates a unity of all the objects that it falls on. This is the reason, for instance, why a whole room, or a whole landscape, looks quite different at eleven o'clock in the morning from what it looks like at three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Bellini's real interest was daylight. Light in this sense implies space. It isn't just a spark or a flame; it's a whole day. And so the struggle in his life was to create in his paintings the space that could hold and contain all that we mean by daylight."
i'm thankful for this poem about the color red. i'm thankful to still be reading john berger's portraits and highlighting parts i like to share with you and then realizing that i am basically highlighting the whole book. i'm thankful for his chapter on bosch, which you can read in its entirety here, and thankful for my favorite so far, which is his chapter on bellini and the conceptual and artistic progression apparent in four paintings of the virigin mary he did, how the depiction of the virgin gradually moves out of flat dark spaces into deep open ones. i'm thankful for berger's description of his focus on daylight:
"Of course we couldn't have painting at all without light; without light we can't see. But what engaged Bellini was not light, which, destroying darkness, enables us to distinguish one object from another; it was, rather, the way that, when light is diffused, it creates a unity of all the objects that it falls on. This is the reason, for instance, why a whole room, or a whole landscape, looks quite different at eleven o'clock in the morning from what it looks like at three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Bellini's real interest was daylight. Light in this sense implies space. It isn't just a spark or a flame; it's a whole day. And so the struggle in his life was to create in his paintings the space that could hold and contain all that we mean by daylight."
i'm thankful that yesterday afternoon it was so sunny out that i wanted to go on a bike ride and i got dressed up and packed a water and a granola bar in my biking backpack and headed out and got about three blocks before i realized that despite the warm colors of the afternoon light it was too cold and turned around and went home and ran on the treadmill instead. i'm thankful for march fadness. i'm thankful for jens lekman. i'm thankful for this nice painting of 2 chainz. i'm thankful for the movie tickled (and the short sequel, the tickle king), which is apparently a documentary about a subculture of videos of men tickling each other and the shadowy figure funding these "tickle cells." i'm thankful it is on hbo go if you want to watch it. i'm thankful for terrace house, which we only have a few episodes of left and which is just the best show; i'm thankful for the bizarre discussions the panel has, like the one in a previous episode where two of the older panelists reminiscence about the excitement of young love and one of the women touches the breast of a younger woman to try it absorb her sexual energy. i'm thankful for the subsequent episode, where the same panelist talks about ointment fetish and confesses to wanting to give a man an enema. i'm thankful that the hilarious and strange conversations the panel has about the show are juxtaposed by these incredibly powerful and tense tiny human moments in the lives of the young people in the terrace house, which we are able to witness on the other side of the screen. i'm thankful for time crystals. i'm thankful for thelonious monk's solo rendition of "these foolish things (remind me of you)."
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