i'm thankful that other people like the work of cormac mccarthy
1. i'm thankful that other people like the work of cormac mccarthy and that i am not required to do so (since i never really have, despite trying a number of times). i wonder whether i didn't read him at the right age, if there was some temporal window for me to best appreciate his work (in the way that, because of changing high schools multiple times, i didn't read the catcher in the rye until a class on banned books my senior year of college and was like "why do people care so much about this shit" or in the inverse way how i tried to read anna karenina, failed several times, but eventually came to appreciate and love it); for years in my twenties don delillo was my favorite author (early gratitude writing) and now when i try to go back to the well there's not really anything there for me either.
2. n sent me a picture of us in jk's apartment in bloomington a decade ago when i actually still was in my twenties, taken by n on a day when she and i were helping JK shoot her student film (and also just hanging out, because we were such a great friend trio at the time, a wonderful friendship era) on a hot summer day before i think i was going to go and meet deborah's dad and sister for one of the first times. i'm thankful to remember those grad school summers, which even though i filled them with writing and when not writing endless stress about the quality and volume of my writing and not writing more/better, were still so expansive and free and full of possibility (i remember that second summer was when i read anna karenina and it finally clicked).
3. e sent me a video of her sitting in her attic playing her partner's melodica on a day with "goldilocks" weather and told me she was 0 for 2 for people recognizing it and i also could not recognize it, even after speeding it up several times since she said one issue was she was playing it slow. i'm thankful she sent me a spotify link to the song and instantly i had this feeling of deep recognition, like the song was inside me and i definitely knew it and yet i had never heard of this band or this song and then i looked it up trying to figure out how i might have heard it and found out it was the theme song for the kids in the hall and everything made sense. i'm thankful for the sound of electric guitar in instrumental surf rock music, fender twin energy, spring reverb cranked up.
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