Room in Brooklyn

This
slow
day
moves
Along the room
I
hear
its
axles
go
A gradual dazzle
upon
the ceiling
Gives me that
racy
bluishyellow
feeling
As hours
blow
the wide
way
Down my afternoon.

Anne Carson (2000)

Things I’ve been loving:

• A song: The Fields by Nourishing by Time

• Anything Catherine Liu says. I’m hoping to read her book, Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class, before the end of the year.

• It has been a while since a book has really impressed me. Maybe because I’m in school, maybe because I’m depressed. But last week I picked up Susie Boyt’s Loved and Missed and… oh my god… each sentence is such a pleasure. I might be getting ahead of myself—I’ve only read a third of it so far—but it may be the most lovely book I’ve read in a while. Reading it, indulging in Boyt’s prose, reminds me of my first year in New York, which was also the first year of the pandemic, when I would spend all my time reading and discovering some of my favorite books: Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, Amina Cain’s Indelicacy, Clarice Lispector’s An Apprenticeship, Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye, etc. Oh! I didn’t even mention what the book’s about… It centers around a woman named Ruth who is raising her granddaughter because her own daughter is addicted to drugs. A simple premise, but Boyt takes it on with such elegance and poetry. Reading it, I feel like I am at the center of paternal psychology. Ok, I’ll stop gushing! Here’s an excerpt: