greatest hits
Welcome to the Sunday post.
I've just returned from a road trip up and down the California coast. Here are some links to the archives you might find interesting. Back to the metaphorical road next Sunday.
"A few days before my self-imposed deadline of Labor Day, as I was blocking out space on my calendar for the final two days of work on the proposal before I would send it to my agent, she texted me with some personal news. Events followed that made me question my own and others’ professional boundaries, and eventually made me have to make a difficult decision."
One of those questions has been: what is my ambition? What is this ambition composed of? I don’t have definitive answers, but here’s a beginning.
I read an essay by X and I remembered that she provokes in me feelings of deep unease, I feel I can’t trust her—and I really need to pay attention to that feeling. Especially because in the essay she writes about a surface-y friendship she had with Y and she kind of takes apart what she knows about Y. Which reminds me I no longer want to befriend writers. Hahaha. And/or I only want to befriend writers who are vetted by people I already know, who are already working on their shit. They’ve gotta inspire trust immediately. Makes me think of Z. I trust her.
"I want you to stun me"--the first mini-interview of the ongoing series, with Corinne Manning:
I’m working on a memoir that examines my relationship to desire and longing throughout my life. Much of it is framed around a year where a thirteen year relationship ended, which also resulted in splitting from the friends we were co-parenting with, and no longer co-habitating with my kid. Amidst this loss also included a dog (I know!) and job and housing precarity. This really shifted my relationship to both desire and loss and how shallow my views on these states of being were earlier in my life.
"rejected: 10k copies sold anyway":
“Thanks so much for sending me Wendy Ortiz’s memoir, which I read with interest. I remember her Modern Love column well—it’s one of their most recent standouts—and I found some very powerful moments in this book. That said, as much as the author’s self-realizations and candor impressed me, I wasn’t sure that they’d be quite enough to sell the book. It’s such a tough topic, and as interested as I was, I couldn’t see saying ‘you must read this’ to colleagues, booksellers, and more. With this in mind, I’m going to be passing, but I wish you and the author much success with it.”
"what's the point of trying/writing aka WHY THE FUCK AM I DOING THIS AGAIN":
Sometimes I don’t know. Sometimes the point is that I want to be a part of “the conversation” because of a book I happen to read, and then once I have a foot in, I want to stick around. I always seem to come in through some side door to be in the conversation, or someone left the door ajar so I stepped inside and sat on the couch and found my way into the conversation.
"EXIT INTERVIEW #1, part 1: Katie and Sonia":
After a year of silence, she called. I was really angry at her for the unexplained and sudden distance. She admitted to some intense anxiety she’d been having, and we got off abruptly. We didn't talk for years after that, during which time, she got married, I came out, she had a baby, a pandemic happened, I fell in love with my partner, and my mom committed suicide. My mom’s death brought us back in touch, and we wanted to peacefully discuss “what happened there.”
Now my face is down, in the water, counting breaths, arms straight with slight bend, my feet fluttering, pulling an arm to propel, turning over and breathing then turning back down towards the water, accepting that I will be submerged, all wet, a student, forever practicing.
See you next Sunday.