010: Residual Self Image

First, COMPILATION.
Alright time to go out and be social! *checks weather* Haha nope just kidding. *turns on all the A/C*

It's been a while since I've wished I had earplugs for sleeping. Sounds like some drunk dude with a karaoke machine out there. I'm sure he'll get bored and move on, but it's four in the morning, yo.

Saw a coyote at Graceland Cemetery today. Hims had a very fashionable tracking collar.

Happy Labor Day to everyone who isn't a manager, banking executive, or stockbroker. (I'd say stock owner, too, but a lot of us working class goobers own stock in the form of 401k because thaaaaaats capitalism!) Enjoy your day off. You deserve it. (And a lot more like it, but that's for another day's discussion.) People died to get it for you.

I'm glad I'm not famous so I can walk around in sweatpants and not have someone follow me around into a parking garage, take my picture, sell that picture for thousands to a tabloid, and then have millions of people speculating whether or not my drug-addict boyfriend a) got me pregnant, and b) might not be my boyfriend anymore??? as just a normal part of my day.

Took some mail across the hall because we got it on accident. I gotta remember not to lead with "HI ARE YOU MIKE" because boy was he confused with this very trans person he sorta recognized stood there knowing his name.

I think my very least favorite thing about having a body is the back/neck/shoulder Venn overlap. Because that is, I'm pretty sure, where the largest knot always is. The traps, rhomboids, SCM, and scalenes are absolute horsefuckers and I hate them. Robot body when.

Second, DODGE THIS.
Just a quick note from a short conversation about The Matrix from this morning:

I forgot how specifically coded the weaponry in that movie was. Neo uses lots of small, agile guns that require many strappy harnesses. Trinity mostly uses what she finds or repurposes. Mouse overcompensates with massive weaponry that compliments his hypersexualized character. Switch uses a neutral-sized but very hard and powerful pistol. When Morpheus does finally get a major scene with weaponry in Reloaded, that weapon is a samurai sword--an archaic and solitary weapon.

Arguably, a lot of this is tropey, with all of these things being well established in the cyberpunk genre. But you can tell that the Wachowskis spent a lot of time creating the characters' not just personality, but presentation. None of the weaponry is chosen because it looks badass (though that is also true) but because that's what the character would use. Gender is coded throughout this movie in almost every detail.

Third, CONSUMPTION.
- this awesome cover of the Twin Peaks theme, "Falling," as performed by Sarah Lipstate
- CHVRCHES new album, Screen Violence, is fucking amazing. There's something that always gets me about Lauren Mayberry's voice being so pure while singing some of the most painful and angry lyrics.
- playing so much Gran Turismo Sport has gotten this stuck in my head. I think it's the primary motivator of buying a Fiero.
- have you seen the new Matrix trailer? WHY NOT. GO. NOW.
- probably the most incredible cover I've seen of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, by bluegrass musician Molly Tuttle

Fourth, PROMOTION.
New work out this week! "after Hallie" is up at Allium, the new journal from my grad alma mater, Columbia College Chicago. The unfortunate part is that the formatting is jacked up, so it doesn't look right at all on mobile, and the justification is wrong on desktop, but whatever. It's up and I'm really proud of this one.

My book, A Void and Cloudless Sky, can be ordered from the publisher, Amazon, and BN.com, as well as possibly your local bookstore! I finally got my own copy recently, and I absolutely love the finish of it. Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!

And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!

If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
I've spent a lot of the last two weeks mostly at war with myself to do just about anything, and this newsletter is no exception. It's been long enough since the last one that the notes I took for it are either indecipherable now or plain irrelevant. (See also: bits of the COMPILATION section above.)

Part of the problem is the untreated ADHD. Part of it is book release hangover (it just barely broke even from a purely monetary standpoint; see last week for more.) Part of it is the weather being fucking interminably hot. However, I finally made a therapist appointment, and a doctor's appointment, and I'm spending next week in Lexington and basically trying to reset my brain. And I now have a car to bring back to life (yeah, I got a Fiero.) So I don't know if things are turning a corner or just sort of rising with a tide or what, but some of the fog seems to be clearing, the monotony getting mixed up.

Talking to friends, it seems a lot of us are sort of in this same boat. If you are, I see you, and I hope that time gets you to a place where you can start to see the corner, or the rise, or the clearing, or whatever this is. We all need each other in this universe, because without us all, everyone falls apart.