thank you notes 3/10

i'm thankful for the new dana spiotta novel, which is very good and interesting so far. i'm thankful for her descriptions of being partially blind and for the information about the magic of phone phreaking. i'm thankful, in the spirit of literary snackwave vibe that often colors these notes, to share a character's description of the mysteries of diet dr. pepper: "I was addicted to the slightly cooked peppermint-chemical taste of Diet Dr. Pepper. The flavor had a wave of sweet followed by something bitter and then something metal; it was close to repulsive, and yet I had grown to crave it. I tried to figure it out nearly every time I drank it. Is it marshmallow or peppermint? Is it a cola with a fruit flavor? With an undertaste of saccharin? Perhaps the blatant artificiality of it pleased me--it wasn't trying to taste like anything real, the way diet Fanta or diet Fresca attempted to have "fruit" flavors. I drank it constantly. Sip, sip." i'm thankful for the brief period where i was addicted to diet cherry coke before i realized that its contributions to my productivity were not worth its wrench tightening of my nerves. i'm thankful for lana's "diet mountain dew" and for when she sang "my pussy tastes like pepsi cola."

i'm thankful for this passage about "uh": "She rarely used "uh," but it was an important wordish sound that introduced a powerful unconscious transaction. Used correctly, not as a habit or a rhythmic tic, it invited another to complete the sentence. An intricate conjoining, it was an opening without content, just the pull of syntax and the human need to complete." i'm thankful for the phrase "wordish sound" and for the human need to complete, which is so much of a better need than the human need to compete. i'm thankful for this passage about listening to music: "Jelly closed her eyes again and leaned back. She called this body listening. It was when you surrendered to a piece of music or a story. By reclining and closing your eyes, you could respond without tracking your response. You listened. The opposite were the people who started to speak the second someone finished talking or playing or singing. They practically overlapped the person because they were so excited to render their thoughts into speech. They couldn't wait to get their words into it and make it theirs. They couldn't stand the idea of not having a part in it. They spent the whole experience formulating their response, because their response is the only thing they value. It was a way of consuming the experience or the work. Jelly had a different person in listening to anything or anyone. It had something to do with submission, and it had something to do with sympathy. She would like back and cut off all distraction. The phone was built for this. It had no visual component, no tactile component, no person with hopeful or embarrassed face to read, no cent wafting, no acid collection in the mouth. Just vibrations, long and short waves, and to clutch at them with your own thoughts was just wrong. A distinct resistance to potential. A lack of love, really. Because what is love, if not listening, as uninflected—as uncontained—as possible." 

i'm thankful that i am often one of the opposite people she describes, who starts a response so soon they don't even let the other person finish, who doesn't "body listen," but that i am working actively to try not to be. i'm thankful to remember how for a brief period a few years ago, reading, which has always been one of my greatest joys in life, became unpleasant for me, something i dreaded. i'm thankful that i eventually realized it was because at that time i was always thinking of what i read as needing to be instrumental, as something that had to have a use value (research/inspiration/influence) for whatever writing i myself wanted to do, rather than experiencing it for the experience of it alone, in a more pure and simple way. i'm thankful for the line about submission and sympathy; i'm thankful when overlaps of sound highlight overlaps in sense. 

i'm thankful to remember one of my most powerful body listening experiences, which occurred when i was living in a seaside city in south korea. i'm thankful that during that period, i taught english in the evenings after the kids got out of school, so i always had the days free, and when it was warm out that spring and summer, nearly every morning i would walk from my apartment out of my neighborhood and over a hill overlooking a small harbor and up a short mountain covered in trees and then down the other side to a small seaside town which was almost always completely empty (because koreans in general don't like sun exposure and only go to the beach as a social event one or two weekends a year). i'm thankful for how happy these trips made me and how grateful i was for all the beauty all around me, which was almost overwhelming. i'm thankful that because of the korean dislike of tanning, i almost always had the whole little beach to myself, the town like a beautiful sunny ghost town. i'm thankful for one gray day when it was threatening to storm but i decided to make the trek anyway and i laid on my back on the cool dano sand listening to grizzly bear's first album on headphones. i'm thankful to have listened to the music while feeling the wind wash over me and hearing distant rumbling and seeing the color on the inside of my eyelids darken as the storm got deeper. i'm thankful that i heard a loud  sound during a quiet part of a song, which i thought was more thunder, and that when i opened my eyes and looked off to the north to check how far away the storms were,  i saw that a few hundred yards down the beach, a military unit, probably a hundred men, was doing drills in full dress. i'm thankful i watched them for a few minutes while listening to the music and then headed back up the mountain.

i'm thankful to force myself to be thankful even when i don't feel thankful. i'm thankful that earlier when i was presenting a course proposal at the faculty meeting, two faculty members contradicted information i relayed in a way that felt condescending to me, though maybe i was just being overly sensitive or defensive. i'm thankful that in the moment, i was polite and smiley and deferential and that the proposal passed despite the "wrong information" i had given. i'm thankful that i was able to take my lunch break right after the meeting and spent it running hard on the track while listening to heavy music and feeling irritated and like there was nothing to be thankful for in the world (even though at the very least i should have been thankful for "lithium" and spotify and my cardiovascular fitness and my headphones not dying because of excess sweat and having a track to run on even though it was storming outside and being granted a daily lunch break that i can work out during). 

i'm thankful that when i got back to the office, i listened to a recording of an earlier meeting, from which i had gotten the "wrong information," and heard one of the faculty members saying exactly the "wrong information" i had relayed in the meeting, which he said he hadn't said. i'm thankful that i transcribed the relevant exchange and sent it to the two faculty members in a very friendly and professional email asking to clarify the discrepancy in the hopes that their policy intentions could be put into action correctly by our academic advisors. i'm thankful for how happy i felt to send the message, how vindicated, even though none of it really matters. i'm thankful that the conclusion of this story wasn't particularly exciting or dramatic (the faculty member acknowledged had said what i'd said he'd said in the meeting, but then he had changed his mind after the meeting and expressed it in an email thread i wasn't CCed on by mistake) and that now i feel better and okay and able to be thankful for things again.

i'm thankful that none of this really matters, and that was what i was trying to tell myself that earlier when i was irritated but wasn't listening to myself because i was irritated, which is an annoying thing. i'm thankful that i was also harboring a chronic irritation at the faculty member who promised me venison the other week and who then never brought the venison, and who gave me another long manuscript to edit immediately after offering to give me the venison in a way that felt nakedly transactional except even worse because he then didn't fulfill his side of the transaction. i'm thankful that this morning, the irritation ended because he brought in the venison and said that he had put his keys in the freezer the previous night so he would remember them. i'm thankful, even if that story wasn't true, that he felt the need to say it to atone for having not brought the venison for so long. i'm thankful that i'm almost done editing his manuscript. i'm thankful for his tendency to use "amongst" instead of "among." i'm thankful for the names of the statistical instruments in his manuscripts, which always make me laugh internally: i'm thankful for my two favorites, which are "eigenvalues" (which make me think of chris eigemann) and "scree plots" (which make me think of squeeing). i'm thankful for track changes, which provide a colorful record of my labor.