6/6/17
i'm thankful that yesterday at 7:02 i realized that the dinner plans i thought were for today (tuesday) at 7 were actually for yesterday at 7 and that i was late. i'm thankful that this rarely happens to me and that i usually know when a particular thing is. i'm thankful that though i had already eaten dinner and was catatonic on our couch wearing only a pair of underwear with a hole in them, i managed to send an email saying that i was coming, get dressed, and get to the restaurant on my bike by 7:09.
i'm thankful that my old coworkers, who i was having dinner with, forgave me for forgetting/being late and i'm thankful we had a very nice time. i'm thankful for the wheat beer i ordered, not because i wanted it but because i felt embarrassed that i had already eaten and wanted to order something (i'm thankful to have the money that this was not a big deal). i'm thankful to be excited for the visiting lecturer, who is moving to another state for a teaching job. i'm thankful that it will be sad not to live in the same town as her but i'm thankful for how excited she was to go somewhere else after having lived here for the past ten years. i'm thankful for my coworker, whose digestion is much better since her gallbladder surgery.
i'm thankful to have had a nice facetime conversation with my parents. i'm thankful that though my dad has some bulging disks and a partially herniated one in his back, the doctor thinks they can handle it with physical therapy and he won't need surgery. i'm thankful that my mom takes solace in knowing that she is going to eventually quit her job sometime in the future, which helps here deal with the shittiness of that job and the terrible rich people she has to deal with at it. i'm thankful to hope that she and my dad are able to find jobs that pay them enough to live and don't make them feel terrible. i'm thankful to them for going through a lot of years of jobs that made them feel terrible in order to raise my brother and i and pay for the places we lived and food we ate and things we needed. i'm thankful that that when i called, they were playing the PS4 game until dawn together and i'm thankful for how they've rediscovered a love of video games in the past year.
i'm thankful for the elton john song "goodbye yellow brick road," which i had never really listened to before this week. i'm thankful that up until that point, "bennie and the jets" was my favorite elton john song and i'm thankful that though song is beautiful and joyful and full of bounce, "goodbye yellow brick road" is a masterpiece full stop. i'm thankful that the song is composed of all catchy parts and is structured in such a way as to be constantly pulling you from one catchy part into another catchy part, which in the mode of masterpiece pop songs never lasts quite as long as you want it to, leaving you needing it again, waiting, while it slides you into another catchy part. i'm thankful for the falsetto line that streaks across the sky as the chorus kicks in, for the crunchy drum fills and the rich, full piano.
i'm thankful for the season finale of the americans, in which this song played over a resonant and affecting musical montage. i'm thankful for how when you first hear a song in this kind of context, when you hear it in the future, outside of the show, it can carry some of the leftover feelings you have about the show into your listening. i'm thankful to have so many leftover feelings about the americans and am thankful to live in a world where it exists. i'm thankful for [redacted] making eye contact with a small child and for [redacted] getting her lip split by an errant punch and being happy about it, a battle scar, and for [redacted]'s anguished decision over how to handle the family's future. i'm thankful for the decision [redacted] made and how [redacted] reacted when told about the decision, even if the moment was like a punch that knocked the wind out of me.
i'm thankful for video clips of jeremy corbyn, who i understand i don't have the full context on as a dumb american but whose presence inspires me and gives me hope that it still might be possible to remake the world to be better and more just. i'm thankful for this funny article about not having kids. i'm thankful for the descriptions of food in the book of game of thrones, which i am reading for comfort while d is in ohio and which are like if garfield wrote a fantasy novel. i'm thankful for how victoria legrand's voice intentionally gives out at the end of the lines in the verses of "space song", for the massed unison vocals and the squiggly synth arpeggios. i'm thankful on twitter to tap the like icon on and off, thankful for the little bit of vibration under my finger which feels like a tiny heartbeat. i'm thankful for my tiny heartbeat and for yours.
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