4/19/17

i'm thankful to remember how when i was in school, i was never a very good note taker—i either tried to literally transcribe every word the teacher said (which was more a device to escape the anxiety of being in the room with all these other people than it was a learning strategy, since reading through a full transcript isn't very efficient for retention) or else didn't take notes at all. i'm thankful for the sloppy mandalas and winding abstractions i would draw in pen in lieu of taking notes.

i'm thankful to remember in my AP european history class my junior year of high school how i didn't take notes but still got the best grades in the class on the tests, which was a fact that the teacher found interesting and liked to talk about on the days that the grades for tests came back. i'm thankful that he called me "nero" after nero wolfe, his favorite tv detective, and would talk about similarities between the two of us. i'm thankful that "loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or interfering with the gourmet meals prepared by his chef," nero's life sounds like the detective life i would most like.

i'm thankful to remember how my teacher was a conservative, which would sometimes enter into his discussions of european history, especially when they shaded into current events, but i'm thankful that the morning after the 2002 midterms, the first election i really was aware of or cared about the outcome of, when the republicans gained seats in the house and the senate and i was totally crushed, i was walking through the office of the school, very sad with my messenger bag covered in political buttons and my obligatory copy of michael moore's stupid white men in tow, he looked at me and seemed genuinely sad that i was sad and said, in a gentle tone (he usually liked to cackle and carry on), "i'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted it to, nero."

i'm thankful to remember e, the girl i sat next to in the back row of the left corner of the room in european history and who i was totally and completely in love with. i'm thankful to remember that for a brief period in the spring that year she stopped taking notes too and said it was because she wanted to use my strategy. i'm thankful to remember very vividly the way she smiled at me when she said that. i'm thankful to remember the rest of the class taking notes or at least pretending to and the two of us in the back of the class, our hands folded on our desks, occasionally sharing a glance.

i'm thankful that there is a french presidential candidate who is a communist who appears by hologram in many places at once, a fact which would have blown my 16 year old mind in 2002 and kind of still does in 2017. i'm thankful that jon ossoff got a lot of votes in the georgia special election. i'm thankful for this beautiful letter from evie about how we wear our work and how it wears on us. 

i'm thankful that recently d was on an impromptu video conference call with another remote member of her team and was talking about a third team member who was slow to join the conference and d speculated that maybe that person had to get dressed and the other member of the team said that sometimes when they are on calls without video she is "fuck-ass naked." i'm thankful for the pleasures of working from home.