addicted to reality
all fours by miranda july which i am constitutionally a person who when a bunch of other people experience something supposedly great before me and hype it up i tend to reflexively become contrarian and assume, even if people whose taste i respect love it, that the thing can't really be that great and usually avoid it until it is no longer in the discourse or perhaps forever but i gotta say this book is that great! great enough that when i was reading in the dark before bed and thought i was near the end of it (kindle probs) and read what seemed like a great final paragraph and turned the page and it was not only not the end but there were two additional sections of multiple chapters each and still hours left of reading to go such that i didn't finish till 1 am and there is the mythic (but maybe just a myth!) notion of the "new yorker ending" (from annette grant in john cheever's paris review interview: "It’s the classic story about what The New Yorker is rumored to do—'remove the last paragraph and you’ve got a typical New Yorker ending'") which is a tactic i would often apply if i had my way as an editor and think many if not all artworks would benefit from (he writes in another endless run-on sentence) and i kept having this experience where it felt like the book was ending on the last paragraph of a chapter and in my brain i would go "damn, that really nailed it, what a great book" and then "turned the page" and there was another chapter and i would have the thought "smh should have done a new yorker ending" and then the chapter would go on and i would eventually be like "oh actually you know that's important, she had to get there" and repeated this experience several times over the last two sections until the book finally ended and then i couldn't go to sleep because i was too worked up and in the vein of the book probably should have tried to masturbate about it but instead just had a midnight snack (a "bobo)"! if you're not sold yet my pitches to you (which like the book is sui generis but that's not a pitch) are a) it's the new lolita (imo there are so many resonances! looking forward to some academic writing about two paths for the horny motel novel) b) it sits in conversation with two books canonical to this newsletter remainder by tom mccarthy (the reenactments and recreations, the ideas about work and relationships) and the red zone by chloe caldwell (the deep honesty about the body and the mind and the complicated connection between the two, the chorus of sampled voices).
we inhaled the new season of couples therapy almost immediately even though we knew that meant it would be forever until there is more couples therapy (i'm thankful that a while ago we had a fight and it wasn't pleasant but it felt more productive than our usual fights which seemed to be driven by watching and thinking about the show together and i made this meta-comment about how if we had to fight it was at least a more "interesting" fight which deborah found meta-ridiculous). we finished watching the real world: key west (some interesting characters but kind of a flat bummer season) and started watching the real world: go big or go home a late period season (deborah pointed out that we were suddenly living in HD landscape aspect ratio) which has a weird add-on premise to the usual real world SOP wherein contestants have to do "scary" challenges (so far bungee jumping from a balloon and (men) dressing up in drag) and if they do not do them (i.e. "go big") they get sent home and replaced. idk how i feel about this component (if i wanted to watch a "challenge" show...that show exists, see also this great package about survivor eras (spoiler-heavy but planning to squint around it to find old good seasons i haven't seen)) but so far the cast is pretty wild and aggressive even by real world standards and the season takes place in las vegas and for some reason the producers decided to give the cast hoverboards and so large sections of the show have this additional ridiculous physical comedy of people constantly bobbing and gliding on hoverboards as they drunkenly bond and break with each other. i'm thankful for something deborah and i share, which is when you're watching a TV show and someone has written a document (either by hand or on the computer (love how in the pre-smart phone era a fixture of the real world is people sitting around a shared desktop computer to read and write emails)) and the camera briefly lingers on it such that there isn't time to really read what it says one of us will always immediately rewind and freeze frame and consume as much of the raw text as we possibly can, addicted to reality.
Previously on this day:
- 2016 (left my resignation letter in my boss's desk chair, the petit trianon, triple double oreos)
- 2016 (2) (from fsa) (cannabutter, "every night lying in bed she recounts the most eventful moments of the day for which she is thankful for and elects the 'wowest of them all'", summer is finally coming "for real")
- 2017 (doctor's appointment anxiety, list of things i take, upping my antidepressant dosage)
- 2018 ("my psych is having me schedule my next appointment 2 months out, which is the longest interval between appointments i've had in like a year")
- 2023 (my manager tried to reassure me, the ultimatum: queer love, deborah recording herself)