thank you notes 5/9
i'm thankful to recognize the german word feeling of being near the end of a book i'm enjoying when i have a bunch of other new books that i'm excited to read waiting for me and how, in this position, i have a tendency to let my excitement about the possible pleasure of reading those other books in the near future overshadow the pleasure of reading the book i'm currently reading, so that (especially if the book i'm reading is a long book, which it often is in my case), as i continue "trying to get to the end," i can start to resent the book i'm reading, even if i think i really like it, because it feels like it's holding me back. i'm thankful, i suppose, for the power of my imagination, for the way that my fantasies of novel pleasures can seem so tangible that they feel as real as the real, but i'm also thankful to remind myself of the importance of staying in the present and enjoying what's right in front of me while it's in front of me.
i'm thankful, also, to reminder that when i finally do finish the book i'm reading and get to all the other books available to me, i often find myself overwhelmed with the scope of the possibilities and/or the book i was most excited about turns out to not work for me for whatever reason and/or i try several different things and can't get into any of them for whatever reason and, in all of these cases, often end up looking back nostalgically on the book i was just reading and wanting to be done with, wishing that i could still be reading it rather than be forced to do the hard work of connecting with something new. i
i'm thankful, still, that i finished the latest volume of my struggle yesterday afternoon. i'm thankful for the bizarre descriptions of knausgaard's discovery, as a man in his twenties, of masturbation, and how for some reason it feels too dirty or wrong for him to masturbate in his own apartment so instead he goes down to the shared bathroom in his apartment building with a book of nude "fine art photos." i'm thankful that while doing his norwegian national service as a conscientious objector, he gets obsessed with playing wolfenstein 3d, which he affectionately calls "wolf." i'm thankful for this anecdote about him vomiting in bjork's toilet while living in iceland:
"I stayed close to him amid the crowd of musicians and artists walking through the town, down to the harbor, where Bjork had her apartment. It was on two floors with a broad staircase in the middle and was soon full. Bjork herself sat on the floor by a ghetto blaster, surrounded by CDs, playing one song after the other. I was so tired that I could hardly stand. I slumped at the top of the staircase, leaned my head against the balusters, and closed my eyes. But I didn't sleep, something was rising from within, from my stomach and up through my chest, soon it would be in my throat. I jumped to my feet, took the steps to the first floor, ran to the bathroom, opened the door, bent down over the toilet bowl, and spewed up a magnificent yellow and orange cascade that splashed everywhere."
i'm thankful for the novels surveys and hystopia, both of which i was fantasizing about reading next while finishing the latest volume of my struggle and both of which are supposed to be great books, but neither of which i could really get into yesterday for some reason. i'm thankful to imagine how difficult it must be to be a professional critic, since it seems to me that whether i enjoy a particular thing is usually so unstable and mutable, so shaped by where i am (physically / temporally / emotionally / intellectually / socially / etc.) at the particular moment when i try to experience it, rather than my feelings about it reflecting some sense of value that is part of/connected to the thing itself. i'm thankful for at the existentialist cafe, which i'm still reading on the side nd enjoying, and thankful that eventually i settled into the sci-fi novel sleeping giants, which is kind of like a cross between world war z (in its form, though without the overwrought voicey-ness that kept me from getting very far into that book) and pacific rim (w/r/t the presence of giant human-piloted robots) and is quite fun so far.
i'm thankful that i'm getting slightly better at running intervals, even though i still don't really like it and don't know that i'll stick with it. i'm thankful that i finally bought a broom and dustpan for our house and that hopefully they will help me keep our kitchen floor cleaner. i'm thankful for the good sushi and sashimi we bought with the cash i found in my backpack. i'm thankful that to go with our pork chops and green beans last night, i gave us each half a baked potato rather than a whole one, even though i bought enough potatoes so we could have a whole one each night, because we don't need a whole one. i'm thankful for the feeling of forcing pieces of butter into the crevices of a just-baked potato, for the way it melts against the heat and runs in veins out and down through the flesh. i'm thankful my doctor's office was able to get me in for an earlier appointment and that she agreed with my requests for medication dosage changes. i'm thankful that the nurse and i had a convo about how we used to see each other all the time and how my appointment was like a reunion of old friends. i'm thankful my blood pressure was normal when i measured it at home. i'm thankful for our new pepper grinder, which i did not think we needed and which doesn't really grind differently than any other pepper grinder but which because of the design is really easy to refill, which is helpful. i'm thankful that the doctoral student who is the best baker in the department brought in frosted chocolate cupcakes filled with raspberry jam and chunks of dark chocolate.
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