thank you notes 1/27
i'm thankful that i immediately regretted flipping off the driver of the red trans am that blew through the intersection of the bike path rather than yielding to me like the signs indicate that drivers should. i'm thankful that i was paying attention and was able to stop in time on the concrete island in between lanes and not get hit by the red trans am. i'm thankful that even if on the knife's edge of anger, blood flooded with fight or flight, it felt darkly good to raise my hand and snap out my middle finger at the driver (i'm thankful for how the fluidity of the motion reminded me of being in tae kwan do as a kid and learning to corkscrew punch), as soon as the red trans am had passed and i had crossed the intersection, i felt bad about doing it, wished i hadn't. i'm thankful for the ache of that regret, thankful to know in my heart that it's not a good thing to introduce bad energy into my ecosystem, even if i feel i've been wronged, thankful to remind myself that i don't know what was going on in the mind or the life or the moment of the driver of the red trans am to cause the driver to act as the driver did, and thankful for the idea that writing about this experience will help me avoid reflexive aggression the next time. i'm thankful to remember walking home from my third high school in the dense florida afternoon heat and having my peers drive by in their cars and yell slurs at me and one time throw big gulp sodas in styrofoam cups (i'm thankful that the sodas didn't hit me physically, even though symbolically i still felt soaked in their sticky residue). i'm thankful to always have the perspective of knowing that when things in my life feel suboptimal, at least i'm not in high school, that nothing again can ever be like that. i'm thankful to remember one summer in grad school when i was walking along the edge of the park with my friend ic talking about octavia butler and a group of bros drove by in a pickup and, maybe because of the tiny burgundy american apparel shorts i was wearing (i'm thankful for all my past fashion mistakes) or maybe just because they were assholes, yelled "fuck you f________" and hooted and chugged off down a side street. i'm thankful that i flipped them off (i'm thankful to posit that some actions do deserve a reaction, even if it introduces additional instability into the system) and then continued talking and smiling and laughing through a beautiful day, untouched by anger.
i'm thankful that i peed at the urinal next to one of the visiting lecturers from taiwan yesterday. i'm thankful that the visiting lecturers have given me a chinese nickname (which is pronounced, roughly, "jah-kah," but which i have been assured is a term of endearment and not a low key way to call me a jackoff) and that they call me it now in the hallways and from their offices and when we run into each other outside. i'm thankful for the affection that nicknames can represent (i'm thankful for the first nickname i can remember, which was in kindergarten when my favorite t-shirt had a picture of a tree frog on it and my teacher called me "frog man"). i'm thankful that earlier in the day, i had seen a meme jenny zhang posted about the new president of taiwan in which she was quoted as saying, in response to a question about why she had never been married, that "i won't buy the pig just for the sausage." i'm thankful that i asked the visiting lecturer about this, he confirmed that it was basically true, though as he remembered it the analogy featured another kind of animal. i'm thankful that i, in a very shallow american way, talked briefly about how "awesome" i thought the new president seemed and i'm thankful, as i continued to pee and he washed and dried his hands, that i asked him what he thought of her. i'm thankful for the thoughtfulness of his answer, that he said that he liked her personally and thought that she would be better than the current president, but that her lack of specific policy prescriptions about taiwan's relationship with china made him uneasy. i'm thankful that he said that in the election, because of the emptiness of a lot of the rhetoric, it basically came down to who people liked more, which he found depressing, and i'm thankful to have told him that maybe our elections weren't that different in that way.
i'm thankful for this enormous animated visualization of the earth from space, which is worth the time it takes to load and then some.
i'm thankful that blanching soybean sprouts does in fact significantly improve their taste. i'm thankful that to blanch them quickly, because i was hungry, i did something i've seen people in other countries do in videos but have never done myself, which is to boil water in a kettle for a task other than brewing tea. i'm thankful that even though they aren't her favorite cookie, d made oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert this week. i'm thankful for the cookies, which she was worried about, but which were delicious—golden and crunchy on the outside, but with a perfectly soft raisin-y center. i'm thankful for how impressed she was with the depth of the flavor given the minimal spicing. i'm thankful i ate four cookies and then thankful that i couldn't resist going back for one more. i'm thankful i bought a bottle of fin du monde from the grocery store, which i had never drunk before but which i once heard someone order in a very pretentious voice at a bar which impressed me (i'm thankful it was tasty and thankful for its strange pale color). i'm thankful for pork floss.
i'm thankful for how happy people (students especially, but also faculty from other departments and office staff) are when you remember their names and when you use those names in conversation. i'm happy to observe how they look appreciably happier when i use their names to greet them, thankful that i imagine like tiny happiness status bars in the computers of their bodies going up 3-5%. i'm thankful for in the past when on twitter, a person i read used to get very upset about bad things in the world and another person, his friend, would with teasing affection constantly tweet @ him and ask "where are your levels at?" w/r/t the levels of his rage. i'm thankful that person doesn't need level checks anymore because he's changed his life and seems to be radiantly happy. i'm thankful for aimee bender's first novel, an invisible sign of my own making, which features a character who wears wax numbers around his neck to indicate to everyone around him how he's feeling. i'm thankful to think that this could inspire a beneficial strand of thought our inevitable augmented reality future, that there could be visual cues attached to us that would show people, even if our facial expressions or voices don't show them, when we are having a bad time (though i guess, on the other hand, it's distressing to think of how trolls could take advantage of this information to abuse people). i'm thankful to imagine the way numbers fly off of characters to represent violence being done to them in role playing games and to imagine a future where the numbers work a different way.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to thank you notes: