(L)(9)

I’m thankful to meditate on the nature and value of creativity as I go through one of my periodic ‘i should get a tinyletter, but what would i write’ phases. I can write. I can’t write poetry, because I don’t know what makes poetry poetry, even though I know it when I read it; I can’t write fiction, because I worry it will be terrible; I can’t write songs, because I remember circa 4 chords on the guitar, and try as I might I doubt woodwind-based songcraft will take off

What I can write is the academic paper, or the personal essay confessional. The former seems an awkward fit for the newsletter format, and my life feels way too standard-issue for the latter. Lots of people

are anxious

are prone to situational depression

are inhabiting some sort of space in the haunted forest that is academia

are wondering what exactly to do with their lives

all of the above and more, concurrently

and so throwing my hat in at this point feels a bit presumptuous when so many people do it already, only better.

I’m thankful for the guy who called me an intello précaire the other week, even if it was meant as snark, because the idea of the ‘precarious intellectual’ makes me think of Foucault falling off a tightrope, and because if hacking my way through the haunted forest like an inexpert version of Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty has granted me anything, it’s the ability to call myself an intellectual with wildly varying degrees of irony.

I’m thankful for Julie in Lady Bird

I’m always thankful for Agnès.

- L (3/31/18).