wow so good
1. the fight between shiv and tom on succession season 4, episode 7. so often my reaction during and after experiencing a prestige cultural product amounts to some flavor of "wow that was so good" (to be fair, i try to only consume things that i believe will be at the very least wow good) rather than, say, "wow that really triggered a sudden deep sharp recognition of something fucked up about me and how i structure my interactions with someone in my life that i have been feeling particularly sad about the last few days" 💀 and i'm thankful for the power of that catharsis which helped me loosen the ties binding me to a version of myself i don't want to be even if i'm also still thankful for work that is wow so good, which is sometimes all one (especially this one) can hope for or bear.
2. "farewell poem" by eugene ostashevsky in the new york review of books (thankful also for d letting me know i can use libby to check out issues of that), all of its fragments shored up against the ruins but especially the line "What an artificial word is beautiful, how moving it is in its awkwardness, in its etymological reflection of violence and occupation" and the idea of the poem, which the dead man cannot read, being something to take down the river ("Please you put this poem in your bag also. Maybe you can read it later") and the slippage between the addressee and the reader implied in the "you". i'm thankful for the way that (in whatever form they take) poems can be totems that store up the necessary intangible.
3. "summer girl" by HAIM, which is a b-side several summers old and like most HAIM songs is not like a lyrical masterpiece but who gives a shit about lyrics i just still so deeply love the bass line and the way the saxophone dances in and out of the empty streets the way the band does in the video. it is now officially summer here, my favorite of the seasons (i'm thankful also for "the fairest of the seasons"), and also miso's favorite season. i'm thankful that these days when i manage to unglue my eyes from the code in my monitor and look out the back window to find her lying on her side on the steps in the sun, gently panting (which i think in dogs is also a way of smiling, they look the same and can that mean they mean the same?) i think of her as my summer girl and in my mind the saxophone sways in again and carries us away.
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