tyn 1/9/17
i'm thankful that we put in an application for a house to rent next year. i'm thankful for the conversation d and i had where we talked about our feelings about finding a house to live in the next year, in particular my negative feelings about the house search and d's interest in it and my fear that in her desire for maximization she will be disappointed. i'm thankful that though usually when d feels unhappy or stressed about a thing she doesn't want to talk right away about it she still came in the living room and sat on the couch and talked to me about it. i'm thankful for our conversation, the flow of which helped me understand my negative feelings about the house search process and understand how constructed/projected they were, how i didn't have to feel them if i chose not to.
i'm thankful to have taken them off like a superfluous layer of clothing in an already warm house (i'm thankful that it wasn't quite as easy as that makes it sound, but was easier than i could have imagined in the midst of the feelings, before we talked). i'm thankful to have been freed of those and i'm thankful for d's labors (emotional and mental) and attention to detail and desire for us to have a better life. i'm thankful to remember our first apartment together, which i lived in for two years despite the fact that certain countertops in the kitchen weren't directly attached to the cabinets between them and so would slide around if you didn't take great care. i'm thankful to still have lots of wonderful memories about living in that place, even if it wasn't that great of a place to live. i'm thankful to know that wherever we move, i will have lots of wonderful memories about living in that place.
i'm thankful, when our washing machine's pipes froze in the midst of a cycle yesterday, to have sat on top of the washing machine for fifteen minutes holding d's hair dryer to the pipes. i'm thankful that this was enough to get things moving again, which i'm thankful for because i was running low on clean clothes and needed to do that load of wash (and the one after it). i'm thankful that i made soup for the week ahead of time yesterday, since i was already in the kitchen making dinner (pork chops with roasted sweet potato and brussels sprouts). i'm thankful that it isn't supposed to rain today, which means that yesterday i could pack up the trash and recycling for pickup tomorrow instead of having to do it at the end of the day today when i am tired from work. i'm thankful, since i always get the kitchen floor dirty while doing this and have to sweep and vacuum anyway, to have just brought the recycling bins into the warmth of the kitchen and packed them there rather than ferrying things out into the cold.
i'm thankful for emily witt's future sex, which is so interesting and good. i'm thankful for the words i've learned from it. i'm thankful for her dark dry humor and incisive, aphoristic prose and command of the didion- or delillo-esque detail. i'm thankful for this passage: "The care my friends took to separate their marriages from the history of marriage tacitly acknowledged a recently agreed-upon truth: marriage should not mean one person losing her independence, her name, and her autonomy to another. Having sought to eliminate this subjugation, we now tried to convince ourselves that marriage between men and women could carry the nice parts of its history without its gendered roles. Its mystique survived its reformation, and its well-documented downsides would still ennoble us: even my most sexually adventurous friends remained willing to risk the hypocrisy, dishonesty, diminished sexual desire, or mute unhappiness of many marriages." i'm thankful to try to catch myself in moments when i find myself unconsciously enacting the caricatured genre role associated with my position as "husband," even though i don't always catch myself or only do so after i've already done or said something that if i had thought about it i wouldn't want to have done or said.
i'm thankful for the trailer for the new handmaid's tale series, i'm thankful for this shared facebook post about abortion. i'm thankful for abortion. i'm thankful that abortion is "legal, culturally necessary, and good for humanity." i'm thankful that planned parenthood provides abortion services in addition to other important public and individual health services. i'm thankful that if d were to get pregnant and didn't want to be pregnant, she could choose to have an abortion or buy plan b. i'm thankful for the contraceptive implant she has and am thankful for what her insurance was forced by law to pay toward it. i'm thankful to know that worrying about the people that might have eventually been if they hadn't been aborted, which is what one of the things that people who believe abortion should be illegal like to talk about, seems so beside the point in a world of so many people who are, who are and will be. i'm thankful that i have friends who i love and care for who believe abortion should be illegal and i'm thankful to be able to stuff my disagreement with them far enough back in my mind that we can still be good to each other, but i'm thankful to never let that extend to expressing anything other than the knowledge that abortion is not wrong and must be legal, available, and affordable.
"I'M THANKFUL FOR WRITING IN ALL CAPS." i'm thankful for david bowie. i'm thankful for lacrimosa. i'm thankful for "plays john cassavetes 2" by
ekkehard ehlers, which will lift your spirits (spotify, youtube). i'm thankful for "solipsism" by joseph beving, which is not as buoyant but is still quite entrancing in a satie/debussy vein (spotify, youtube)(i'm thankful for the tone of the piano, the roundness, which is very well produced and recorded). i'm thankful that d got a tinyletter for her comics (subscribe!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to thank you notes: