i'm good at all the narcissisms, pt.2
the word "apricate" which means "to bask in the sun or sunbathe." as a person who has resisted sunscreen for sensory reasons my entire life having found the only sunscreen i have ever truly loved shiseido's clear sunscreen stick. deborah catching a wave her first time boogie boarding. prescription sunglasses. rash guards.
uber driver in LA playing free jazz. hannah calling the dare STD soundsystem. somehow baffling myself i didn't have to pee on a five and a half hour flight, but thinking about it in my head i heard the song "breaking the law" by judas priest but the lyric was "breaking the seal". for years now any time i am reminded of the body keeps the score, in my brain i immediately hear, to the tune of "bodies" by drowning pool, "LET THE BODIES KEEP THE SCORE".
learning that our friends were concerned about deborah and i when we were out of town because we weren't posting to instagram that much which makes me feel seen 🥰 and also makes me feel seen 💀 (also: 9/11 jokes in the group chat). i thought our dyson vacuum had finally fully actually died because after charging it repeatedly it kept dying almost immediately and then i realized that the power toggle had been flipped to MAX and it can't do MAX for longer than 5 seconds even though at normal it's still enough to do most of the house on one battery.
trying to make myself write on a sunday night when i'm not in the mood but also not not in the mood (but also don't really have sunday scaries this week, though we'll see how i feel after a full week back rather than just a half). realizing that though the title of the previous notes was "i'm good at all the narcissisms" i had cut out the paragraph that contained that line to save for later, which is a list of books i read the last couple of weeks that you can now read:
hum by helen phillips (literally everyone should read this short sci-fi novel about a mother who is laid off after training an AI to replace herself), liars by sarah manguso (while i find it wild that she does not have one friend with a not even happy but just not-horribly-fucked-up marriage, i also realized how i am #notallmen-ing and doing narcissism of small differences (i'm good at all the narcissisms) and recognizing fucked up traces of my (🤞 not horribly-fucked-up) marriage and anyway regardless of the literal truth/"emotional truth" this book was impossible to put down and holy shit her ex-husband is psychotic!!!), horror movie by paul tremblay (deborah started reading this and i immediately pivoted because it's nice reading the same books—very entertaining horror novel about an imaginary film (house of leaves vibes but without like upside down pages)), a city on mars by kelly weinersmith (fun but not dumb pop-sci book about how impossible space settlement is), bottoms up and the devil laughs by kerry howley (amazing lyrical nonfiction about the american surveillance state) and thrown by kerry howley (because i liked her previous book so much i immediately followed it with this one, which is about MMA and phenomenology), plane flying over a monster by daniel saldaña paris (essays about how different spaces behave), and health and safety by emily witt (writing more about this soon). today i started the new novel from vigdis hjorth, if only which is good so far (her run-on free indirect prose enacting obsession)
partial list of nice things people said to me since i came back to work on wednesday (which has been, predictably, perfectly fine): "Welcome back! You just got back and already brightened up the day 🌞", "I wish (for my own sake) that you had to catch up on this much slack all the time cause the commentary is giving me life", "Though you are probably sad to be working again, I am happy to see you here again", "oh man this is awesome thank you", "Huge, huge thanks to @justin for building the app", "We are lucky you joined [new team] :dancing minion emoji:", "omg i love you justin"
new season of survivor started and will now provide reliable serotonin every thursday dinner (the harbinger of the weekend). chasing the utter nothing waste of space that was this season of love is blind UK with the secret lives of mormon wives (hulu), which starts slow and is too short but absolutely hits starting with the girls trip in episode 4 and just keeps going from there, withdrawal from which has me trying watching a real housewives for the first time in probably a decade (also sarah hagi is recapping the current season for vulture).
after years of wondering, we finally got to see miso playing with another shiba inu (it was...not a success lmao). s.m. and l.d. were in town to see mitski and came over the night before for pizza and deborah's margaritas and we played around in the studio recording a song about tetris (success). the video game i have been playing the most lately is peglin, which i think can put my brain into an alpha wave better than those brain entrainment apps that i also still desperately use inside my noise-cancelling headphones. "double bagging" which is what i call putting foam earplugs in under my noise-cancelling headphones (i never wanna raw-dog anything except sex).
Previously on this day:
- 2016 (stayed out late, the way she holds onto my arm for balance when she's wobbly with inebriation, the sensation of stepping out of a way-too-loud bar into a quiet warm night)
- 2017 (to accept, though i have been trying to hold out on this new medicine, that it just seems to be making things worse, not just not ameliorating my anxiety but increasing it; this old elizabeth gumport essay about insomnia that s sent me; little yeti ching ching)
- 2018 ("i'm thankful, after an afternoon shower, for the drops of water jeweling the spiderwebs in the grass across the street")
- 2019 (pizza party on friday night at kh's with all my best fronds before s went back to australia, that every thai restaurant i eat at here is better than any thai restaurant i had ever eaten at before moving here, it seemed for a bit like i was getting sick but it has mostly passed )