thank you notes 10/6

i'm thankful that though it's supposed to rain heavily today because of the tropical storm/hurricane, it hasn't started yet. i'm thankful that i might just be able to get out and get a run before it really gets going. i'm thankful that natural disasters have never really scared me, that the fear of death that gets to me is much smaller in scope. i'm thankful that we have enough food and water and movies and books. i'm thankful for d's interest in the hurricane shutters that everyone is pulling over their windows. i'm thankful to have learned from my dad while driving last night that covering your window with x's made of tape doesn't actually prevent the window from shattering. i'm thankful for faux-prophylactics, for the engineering of hope. i'm thankful for sandbags, both conceptually and in reality. 

i'm thankful that i haven't gotten as much work done on personal creative projects this vacation as i wanted to, and i'm thankful that i accept this and am mostly okay with it, even if it is a bit disappointing. i'm thankful that i've still managed to keep writing this, even though some days i haven't been in the mood. i'm thankful to have stayed up past my "bedtime" last night so that d and my parents could watch the new episode of american horror story together. i'm thankful that while i really wanted to go into the guest bedroom and read in peace, i spent this extra hour with them, since i know there are only so many hours left for us to spend together (i'm thankful, though, to know that sometimes i need to be alone and that if i don't get enough alone time, the quality time i replace it with won't actually be quality). i'm thankful that before american horror story, we watched the purge: election year, which was not great but was still much better than american horror story. i'm thankful that the song over the credits was, of course, "i'm afraid of americans." i'm thankful for high concept nonsense.

i'm thankful for this essay about ghosts and poetry by dorothea lasky. i'm thankful for the cursed images twitter account—i'm thankful for the gestalt aura that can be generated by pairing a simple phrase with an image. i'm thankful that in the case of this account, the words "cursed image" and a random number take what would be strange but banal images and charge them with something otherworldly and dangerous. i'm thankful for barthes' concept of the studium and the punctum. i'm thankful for the weirdness of this final line in that wikipedia entry: "Barthes died in an automobile accident soon after the publication of Camera Lucida, and many have read the book as Barthes' eulogy for himself." i'm thankful for the episode of you made it weird where pete holmes and chelsea peretti listen to clips of all the times that he or a guest has referred to her and she, at one point, says she now knows what it's like to be dead and hear people eulogizing you at your own funeral.

i'm thankful for this series of images depicting "when u want affection but u don't like to ask for it but they should be able to tell that u want it bc u really, really want it" and this one of "when the kush hit." i'm thankful that death's end is going to some CRAZY places that i really like—i'm thankful that it is the rare third book in a trilogy that may be my favorite (as opposed to this one (first book is best) or this one (second book is best)). i'm thankful for the hypothesis that "all of history is actually a FMV cutscene for a really complicated jrpg on a cosmic PlayStation." i'm thankful to have learned that australians call movers "removalists."