My friend died.

She just fucking died. There is nuance to it and more to the story… extenuating circumstances, etc. There always is. But she died, and I just…. I really don’t think she should have.

Not if we’re expected to believe in anything good.

Not if we’re operating under the illusion that there are ends and means and justification therein; or of fate or that good shall prevail.

•

•

•

I think you knew how hard I’d take this. I’m sorry to prove you right but this is just so fucked. I wasn’t ready. I don’t think you were, either, and that feels so much worse.

I told you it was okay for you to go but I might’ve been lying to the both of us.

This is so unfair.

It killed people; mowed them down. They clocked the 25 foot tall wave at 35 miles an hour, knocking trains off their tracks and buildings from their foundations.

Decades later people said it still smelled like molasses in the summer. A once in many lifetimes kind of event, I’d think

I am having a typical Molasses summer, however.

Time is moving so slowly, it’s difficult to qualify that just over a month ago I was in a hospital waiting room. Since then we’ve had baseball and swimming lessons and birthday parties and Toy Story 5 and the Fourth (consisting of hotdogs and sparklers and me sitting inside with my nervous dog) and a day trip to Seattle and a few days in Portland and the zoo. How has it not been a year? I’ve stayed at work so late that my employees locked me in the parking lot. Twice.

The world spins on, and I am here, evidently spinning with it, but I guess if we’re both spinning, that’s why it feels like I’m standing still.

I’m at a special point in my job that my calendar going forward is so busy (so busy) that I’m not really sure what to do. There’s so much that requires my attention, so I’m doing this very “Elizabeth” thing (if you knew me in real life this is when you’d nod at your screen and say “ah, yes, that”) and giving it none of it.

It is not a sustainable way to live, the Elizabeth-ing.

But I look at this calendar and I think in November I can take a breath. Cue Wyclef Jean.

I work in the alcohol industry, have I ever said that? It’s about to be a busy season- production wise, and then my area in particular has some once in a lifetime happenings (not one drop of molasses, however) that I need to pay attention to and devote a good deal of effort toward.

Years ago (and I mean that aggressively because it was almost decades ago) I was talking to a customer about joining our wine club. Okay, fine, I work for a winery, saying alcohol is far too damning and vague. I don’t fuck with seltzer or anything so egregious(!!); I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. Anyway, we have a wine club and I was asking a broad kind of question, like: “why does someone like you join a wine club”, and the answer I assumed, the one I had prepared for was, “the wine”.

To be fair, that was sometimes the answer, but not enough to make sense to me at the time. How could it not be about the wine- what the fuck else was there?

Well, turns out it could be about any number of things, including but not limited to: the space, the people, the activities, the drama, the reputation, the price, the cool factor… and wine, while near the top, was not always number one and this baffled me, especially at 22 years old.

I was working this job whilst writing a book that I finished, but never finished and as it goes, the job became more than the writing. My pesky need to have a home and health insurance and food won out over the aspirational lifestyle of “writer”. Somehow the Hemingway-deluxe dream that, honestly, even I felt (sometimes) was borne of a silly young person who didn’t know any better- never came to fruition.

Now I am working a job, this job, for all intents and purposes an important job (to me and a handful of others) and I’m writing when I have time.

The bell, it tolls, not in Cuba but usually in my bed, around 9:30 PM after everyone’s asleep. Maybe I get some words down, maybe I’m not exhausted… it feels like such an insignificant way to move toward something I’ve wanted my whole life, but it’s all I can do for now. Molasses.

It’s a strange exercise in hubris to come around to the idea that I’m pretty sure I’m good enough to be a writer- though “good enough” and “good” are very different and I am all too aware of such opposing sentiments. To be a writer requires you be a reader, two sides of the same coin, but being a reader sometimes breaks your heart. When people are able to write things you never could in a way you’ve never seen, it feels like a personal attack.

So when I’m not fantasizing about stepping into oncoming traffic because of someone else’s seemingly effortless turn of phrase- I think of what success looks like in this arena.

It probably looks different to different people, but I suppose for this exercise - what does it matter what it looks like to anyone else when this is me, my life, that I’m blathering on about? Which is to say - success, to me? I’d get to write every day, not just hidden away at night as I’m falling asleep, and that writing would afford me the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed- which is not a glamorous lifestyle, by any means. I covet expensive lip gloss, but my sugar and flour are generic. I buy coffees and I don’t take vacations (the Seattle and Portland jaunts mentioned 1000 words ago cannot be considered as such, trust me); such is the millennial plight.

I think I am a good enough writer to pen something that someone will read and say it was OK; and maybe they’ll recommend it to someone else, which is probably the most powerful thing I can imagine as far as success. Getting words out there and having them disseminate amongst those who are open to them.

But then I think back to people joining the wine club and how it’s not about the wine. There’s luck and timing and marketing and I do wonder that even if I have the writing part almost there, do I have the other things it takes?

I think I’ve wondered about it my whole life.

I guess we’ll see.

_ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ -

What I’ve been reading:

• Far too little.

What I’ve been watching:

• Again, nothing? Boo, hiss.

What I’ve been listening to:

• Boy, this is getting depressing.

What I’ve been writing:

• Okay here’s where I win our money back. I have OPENED THE DOCUMENT of my current WIP and this is big progress, baby.

  • However, today I flirted with the idea of aging the characters up 10 years.

  • I also thought about reordering the entire thing; moving flashbacks into current, etc., etc.

What I’ve been eating:

• Just polished off a plastic clamshell filled with those green olive crackers from Trader Joe’s. Feeling like a winner.

  • There was also a brief interlude of gummy bears.

All’s well that ends well?

• E

PS - if you’re itching to commend my literary efforts thus far in the comments, I appreciate you - I love you, but you need not. My ego is the healthiest thing about me. If me saying such a thing has you instead wanting to knock me down a peg, again, no need- I also hate myself. The duality of man!

We found out it was something he would need earlier this year, he’s already had one small one, this was a big one, and thus this situation has served as my excuse to stick my head in the sand in regard to every other thing, since then.

• World? Still melting down but I don’t give a shit.

• Work? Well, I have to do that because have you heard about one of the bigger icks of our world - the American healthcare system (USA! USA!)?

• Writing? Who fucking needs it (me, I do, “People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.” - but who has the time, really).

And so last month I told you I might dip my toe back into the world - but I knew I had this, this event in my future, and I knew I couldn’t do anything until then. Then has passed, and here we are… now.

You see, I have this special gift called aNxIeTy in which I can worry about almost nothing and turn it into everything; and the really fun thing is that I can also turn something that is mostly everything (my child, for instance) into the all-consuming. The vantablack of mental foibles, absorbing all. Generally I prefer for such doom to hang over me, gnashing its teeth and dripping its drool-of-decay from over head (to the sound of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head by BJ Thomas because who doesn’t love a prosaic high-low moment) until I’m nearly dead. Why worry? Why not. Why would I do anything else.

I think I am a good writer because I worry about EVERY FUCKING THING and I create scenarios in my head for each and every situation in preparation for what, exactly, might go wrong (and sometimes, to spice it up, on what might never go right - but this is few and far between and is generally limited to maladaptive day dreaming about winning the Powerball). 10,000 hours and here we are; the drama, it just pours out. Relatedly, I write dialogue well because I rehearse and rehearse fake conversations until I have them perfect, and only then can I move on.

So you can see why I have such little free time, what with my propensity to filet my feelings (ad nauseam - and I mean this so literally) in the round of my own mind. It is my real hobby, the anxiety. And before you say to medicate… who’s to say I’m not. Who’s to say this isn't as good as it gets…

My husband does not worry. Nor do my children. I tell them that I will do it for them… sort of a, “I’m going to the store anyway, no need for you to make a trip” type of sitch. My son is okay. He’s better than okay, actually, his surgery went twice as long as it was supposed to (can I say, once again, how fun this was) but all will be well. I can step back into my life.

But what have I learned?

Um, well. If I had to sum it up… probably that something happening to your kid is worse than something happening to anything or anyone, including but not limited to: spouse, parent, world, self, friend. Not sure why this is, other than generally you like your kids (a biological imperative) more than most people or things. And it is probably your fault because… you brought them into this world.

[YIKES. Isn’t that a terrible way to position it? Yet somehow I can rewind everything back to that in my own mind, though I only do it with the bad or uncomfortable. If he does something good, if he experiences joy- that’s on him. He did that or brought that or created that. But if it’s something bad, it’s happening to him, and ultimately that’s on me. Because I created this mess.]

Things to fret upon whilst I pay someone $175 an hour aside… the other thing that was re-affirmed (I refuse to say “learned” because I’ve been a big proponent of it for a while) is the idea of community. The “collective” recognizing me and holding out their hand to either help or care or acknowledge. It came from everywhere, ants through a cracked foundation… but, you know. In a nice way.

People show up. Still. In this economy! And it’s baffling and wonderful and I have to just sit back and really ask myself… how is this not a great, big, beautiful life?

[That sometimes still feels like a mess.]

I’m working on it.

_ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ -

What I’ve been reading:

• “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” - and then I’ll probably dip into the show because why not.

What I’ve been watching:

• Just this morning, “Voicemails for Isabelle” or something to that effect. Not the worst rom-com I’ve seen of late (looking at you, J Lo) and I love a plot revolving around kumquats, obviously. A reasonable thing to watch whilst folding laundry.

What I’ve been listening to:

• Neil Young, country music that was released from the years 2001-2005 (when there were a bunch of Canadian boys at my high school who fancied themselves cowboys) and some 2pac to really round it out.

What I’ve been writing:

• Idk if you’ve noticed but I’ve been doing some regular ruminating here in the stacks.

  • Like this, about rom-coms

  • Or this, about one’s innards being hollow because of the abject and assumed loss of existence

• But then also nothing?

What I’ve been eating:

• A lot of tuna salad because I think deep down I’m itching to have a Jeremy Piven-esque mercury-laden meltdown sometime soon.

  • And yes I’m sorry, I liked Entourage, I know this disappoints you.

• Those Haribo twin snakes? Shiiiit.

Until next time, friends -

• E

Citations:

1. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre” - from W.B. Yeats in the poem, “The Second Coming” and other than The Lady of Shallot I think it might be the only poem I’ve ever gone out of my way to know… so. It pops up here and there.

2. “Fuck the lemons and bail” I believe is a line uttered by Paul Rudd’s character in… “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”? I’ll look it up right now. Yep.

   1. Phrases I also frequent from this movie-

      1. “Ohhhh the weather outside is weather.”

      2. “…but then I just went on living my life.”

      3. “You sound like you’re from London!

3. “People like you must create…” another quote from a book that ended up on my Pinterest long ago; from “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple. I am an actual menace, for sure. And I’m still obsessed with the cover of that book.

Having just finished the movie in the midst of an old romcom binge*, and now sitting more than 20 years later in the future… I have thoughts.

*Full disclosure, I’m watching The Wedding Planner as I write this to erase the taste of J.Lo’s newest foray into the genre out of my mouth, sorry to Roy Kent but it’s a NO.

First, the hair. I get it, the year was 2005 and natural hair texture could FUCK OFF; but she was already rocking it for Will and Grace. Why this flat-ironed monstrosity? And let us not discuss the orange highlights masterfully coupled with burgundy lowlights.

Also why is Michael Buble getting shoved down our throats at every other needledrop? What heavily-guarded information did he have over the production team? How was he able to exert his junior-rat pack vibe so incessantly?

These are but shallow things, in the end.

The real questions is: what of the romance?

First (the second first, naturally), Dermot Mulroney. Come on. Dermot Mulroney! I think Nick Miller sums it up, best.

What’s not to like about Dermot Mulroney?

His character is a high paid escort who’s featured in the NYT magazine, he’s on Kat’s side, he says dreamy (if not completely unwarranted) things like, “I think I’d miss you even if we’d never met…” which, incidentally, is what gives me pause.

Why?

Why would he miss this woman?

CHI fried hair aside, they have such little interaction that my thirty-something self is questioning the attraction much more than my teen self- who was sold by nothing more than fleeting eye contact.

She hires him, lays out her predicament (her ex is the best man, it’s her younger sister’s wedding, spinster connotations and a prolonged absence from home, etc.), and goes through the motions of a fairly rigid, particular, precise woman (a favorite of the would-be spinster set). She peppers him with questions, he flashes her his penis (it’s 2005!), he whispers seductively… she gets really drunk and drags him off to a boat…

He’d rather fight with her than make love with anyone else!

WHY, THOUGH.

#MAKE CHARACTERS INTERESTING AGAIN AND RELATIONSHIPS COMPLEX AGAIN AND SHOW RATHER THAN TELL AND ALL THAT JAZZ

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

What I’ve been reading:

• The plane scene of The Long Game because I was feeling like a good cry, I guess?

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar - which I bought long ago and am finally getting into, mostly reading on bleachers at volleyball practice… but then I got hit in the head by a ball!

What I’ve been watching:

• The Wedding Date and The Wedding Planner, if we’re just talking about today

  • And part of Office Romance in which the chemistry was even less believable than my scribbled attempts at answers on the midterm I failed in 10th grade… I still am unsure of covalent bonds?

    • And speaking of The Wedding Planner… which I’m half through, now. This guy is a dick? “Maybe… I was just being a guy, and an opportunity presented itself.” Boooooo. She should’ve gone with Alex Karev.

• Hoppers… which was more aggressive than I’d figured for.

What I’ve been listening to:

• Gracie Abrams and Everclear… quite a combination.

What I’ve been writing:

• Ugh. Another AU.

<3

• E

There wasn’t anyone coming to take his place.

Where there used to be space in my life for him, be it a phone call or voicemail or a visit, there was suddenly nothing. He held a spot for as long as I could remember and after death it was just… wide open. And I had this thought that as this continued, as the people who’d known me my whole life and loved me and rooted for me slowly disappeared, I would become the human equivalent of a honeycomb candy. Looks whole on the outside (smooth, abundant- even), but, chock-full of holes on the inside. Deep, cavernous pockets of the nothingness that remains when the source has flickered and burned out. Eventually I’ll be riddled with them, their edges serving as scaffolding; memories or morals or beliefs I still hold that brace for the pressure of continued existence.

More who I have loved have left, since. The structure holds, and only sometimes does it feel hollow.

Things fill it and life becomes bearable again.

But solid, I am not.

What I’ve been reading:

• The ever-present doomscroll - IS IT PERHAPS OBVIOUS TO YOU

What I’ve been listening to:

• Les Fleurs, by Minnie Riperton… which feels like an ending and beginning all at once

Good god, what phase of my monthly hormonal shift am I on - is this the luteal phase I’ve heard so much about?

Until next time, when hopefully whimsy has found me.

• E

I don’t remember the song and I hope you know it KILLS ME that I can’t recall it… whatever it was, was so terrifically Boomer that I had to have assumed I’d never be able to split the memory from its details, that it would exist intact in my mind forevermore and be there waiting for me when I needed it.

Tres tragic.

It is in my experience that when you tell yourself you’re going to be a writer, you file people away- their look or their face or the way they say certain things, the strange little bits they do… and you keep them with you until you can thread parts of them into someone or something else and enrich a world of your own making. I’ve been doing it as long as I can remember, it’s almost unconscious at this point. I am always watching- because when you treat everything as if it is of interest, everyone somehow proves to be interesting.

During Covid, my best friends and I got really into the app Marco Polo - which was just sending little videos back and forth in threads that stretched across months and states and oceans. One of them had another group chat with her older sisters, and complained once that in the middle of a video, her sister said, “Oh, my roomba”, and stopped talking… waiting out the robotic vacuum for about 45 seconds until it finally scurried out of frame.

She didn’t pause the video and come back. She just… waited; thus trapping her captive Marco Polo audience in this bizarre one woman play in which nothing happens save for the whir of the little wheels and her own face staring blankly out of the iPhone screen.

I became obsessed with this anecdote. It struck me as so fucking funny in a very callous, obtuse way. It wasn’t harmful or incendiary but it was… inconsiderate? Strange? God, I love it. It’s a piece of a character and it’s hard to dream up something that’s almost nothing but it’s something - but that’s okay - because it’s just sitting there, if you’re looking for it.

The caveat being that you have to be in a position to look for it.

My world has become small, of late. I’ve denied access, consenting to being seen by few, both online and in the flesh. It felt easier that way. To curl in on myself and focus. To reflect, to invest. There are so many layers of my life lending a hand to such isolation or necessitating it, for now.

Kids.

My real job.

The maintenance of the handful of relationships I refuse to let go of, the ones that are so intrinsic to who I am that long ago I consented to fan the embers until I die.

The ever flowing sands of time and the very real (yet very useless) march toward the age I knew I’d eventually be and the weight of all the things I thought I’d have before I got there.

The pressure of all this surrounds me and I am powerless to do anything but slip under; suddenly another birthday has come and gone, life is rolling by and that stupid, “the days are long but the years are short” saying is sounding a bit prophetic for my liking.

I’ve put my head down and I have nothing to show for it other than… no, honestly, nothing. My nervous system is still in the midst of dysfunction, I don’t eat enough fiber, my hair is graying at quite a clip, the shitty stuff is still shitty and it’s just shambles shambles shambles as far as the eye can see. It’s almost like I am the problem and ooooo hoooo do I hate it when that happens.

Not least of all, it’s rather boring… this existence as a recluse. Life is in the fucking around, I fear. The narratives in my head require such aimless wanderings. With no new Boomers or roombas to delight me I find myself repeating stories (a fate worse than death) and just generally becoming stale. A slow march toward obsolescence. The jettison of my own forced extroversion has stifled my tendency toward whimsy, and thus, rendered me moot.

All this to say I imagine I’ll soon have to come back, if you’ll have me. At least a monthly check in. Some proof of life, “Sanka, ya dead?”, sort of shit.

I am not yet dead, but I’ll make sure you’re au courant of any changes in that regard.

_ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ -

What I’ve been reading:

• Just finished, “Into the Blue” by Emma Brodie this afternoon, and there were a few threads that felt weirdly close to my WIP and as such I am now having a personal, unproductive meltdown of sorts, deep within the recesses of my ego/mind: ruminations of being an unoriginal hack, et cetera. The usual, really. I will get over this, I will persist, I will finish this fucking thing and then yeet it into the trash and start anew. BUT I WILL FINISH.

• Read “Beach Read” again, after the casting news, because hahhahahaahahhaahha.

  • Hahaahahahahahhhahahahaah

• Finally finished “Dungeon Crawler Carl” at the gentle (persistent) urging (begging) of my husband. I don’t think it’s for me, in the end, but I can see why it’s popular.

What I’ve been watching:

• Inhaled “Off-Campus” because of-fucking-course I did. On a writing break last year I read all of the source books in one very dark, bed rotty weekend… and I will certainly entertain the idea of an adaptation. Especially one rife with curly hair!

  • Naturally I have thoughts on said adaptation but suffice it to say I am struck by the idea that perpetually I yearn for well-written, realistic groups of friends and I don’t know why I haven’t taken on such a thing.

What I’ve been listening to:

• Noah Kahan and anything that played in the skating rink I frequented in 1995 (THIS IS THE RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT, THE NIGHT, OH YEAH).

What I’ve been writing:

• Jack shit. Don’t worry, next time I grace your screen, I’ll be prepared.

And above all else I hope you’re well, in this the spring of so much discontent <3

• E

I was trying to explain it to my husband and I told him it feels like I am coming out of my body, I’m not in control of it anymore, like I am in the twilight of consciousness and about to pass the fuck out. Face tingling, tongue going numb. Are these chest pains?

Is this death?

I will die here, won’t I?

I spent 45 minutes at the summit, watching people latch into their skis in search of pow pow that doesn’t exist (it was 65 degrees!), before my hands stopped shaking.

And I thought I was handling things so well.

I’ve been handed some stress, of late, and to be honest I already play fast and loose with mental health. I’ve worn thin, in spots. So to triage the rest of my life (family + friends, work, WIP… in that very particular order) - something had to go.

“Something”, in this case, being my presence online. Small as it is, I still trade my time and patience for it. I have neither to give, currently.

But there’s always tomorrow.

• E

(PS - 50% through the WIP now)

So now I have a WIP.

It started by “re-orienting” something I wrote 10 years ago when I’d ducked out of my life and took up the mantle of a traveling woman, going from H&M to H&M in between the Uffizi (I didn’t go in, the line was too long) and the McCafe (I did go in because the line was so long) - before stumbling home to my 15-person coed bunk situation.

I never finished it, because the girl in the story left her life and her job and her boyfriend… and the girl writing the story decided to go back to those very things, with a nice Mediterranean tan. Life? Right on track. Job? Got it back, then a promotion! Boyfriend? Married him! Had three kids! Still quite happy with him and them and it all!

How trite. I had this reset and it cHaNgEd My LiFe.

My problems went away, somehow. Everything got better.

Honestly, ick. Who wants to read that?

So, in the spirit of not sounding like an Eat, Pray, Love knock off… the girl that was me that I used to make her, needed to have a different experience. And she needed to not be so… me.

I don’t know about everyone else - but a lot of ME goes into the stuff I write. I think I saw that one Arthur Miller quote when I was 22 and never recovered.

(Here it is for those who weren’t trolling Pinterest for inspiration in early teens):

Most of you (all of you) know me from a duo of stories I wrote concerning a bitchy blonde man and some of you have (rightly) guessed that pieces of me were there, just under the surface, filling out his general (insane) form. But the tics and neuroses I levied upon him were nothing compared to this girl I wrote in my original draft of this WIP.

She had my face and my fears and my anger and melancholy and was crippled by my lack of perspective at that time and place in my life. Unappealing to anyone, other than maybe a therapist I overpaid.

I have outgrown her; this version I reside within now has been updated and rebuilt and has shades of her but only in the way that we are who we’ve been though that’s not necessarily who we will be.

She embarrassed me- but not in the way Arthur intended. I just feel sorry for her now that I live in the part of her life she wasn’t sure would come. Her worst offense, however, was lacking context. I hadn’t figured out her why.

Because I hadn’t figured out my own.

All this to say - I am 20% through my WIP and we shall see what it might be, I let this sentence loose on IG the other day, I have this superstition that if you can’t say the plot in the sentence you have problems:

Alex comes home for a wedding after almost two years abroad only to be faced with the ex she left behind… who in her absence, wrote a Grammy winning album all about her.

More to come, permitted now I understand this character better than I understand myself.

We shall see.

• E

Pulitzer printed on the cover, please and thank you.

I really did intend to read them all… and, I’ll quote myself here:

But I think, for now at least, I’m here for a bad time. And by that, I mean I want to be haunted. I want a new epitaph. I want tried and true litch-rich-yure.

What a precious person I was, back then. Maybe we all were. So much can change in a month.

Elizabeth of January 4th, YOU KNEW NOT WHAT YOU WISHED FOR.

I read one, and started another, and then the wheels came off and I didn’t want to read another damn word that might make me feel anything other than incandescently DREAMY and WISTFUL.

Enter: First Time Caller, by B.K. Borison.*

Because why would we put ourselves through all this shit in real life, only to relive it on the page? It’s that age-old quandary (if you took it completely out of context): who would bear the whips and scorns of time, or the oppressor’s wrong? The proud man’s contumely?! Or the pangs of despised love… the law’s delay, the insolence of office!

Why would we do all this and then ask for more?

(In case you weren’t an English major and/or a nerd, above is in part, the Hamlet ‘to be or not to be’ speech. In those particular lines he is complaining about all the terrible and weary bits of life. He posits that we wouldn’t go through all that, unless we were terrified of what comes next. Death might not be the relief we hope for, and the reason people aren’t offing themselves left and right is not because they think that life is worth it, but because they think something might be worse, next. If you haven’t gleaned it by now, Hamlet is sort of the bitch/fuck boi of the Shakespeare set and though I love him, it is against my better judgement, and I certainly don’t feel good about it.)

Life is hard. Even an out of touch Danish prince sussed out that much.

As such, why not reach for a little joy?

First Time Caller is a story akin to those of Nora Ephron, a writer dear to many of us. It’s a vaguely sunshine/grump situation, in which two people find where they fit in another and things just click into place. It’s cute, it’s sweet, it’s fun.

It’s a reasonable thing to think that if you’re reaching for a book with a pastel cartoon cover, you’re down for a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks situation. Or at least, that’s the hope. With this one, you get it.

I did not procure an epitaph with this read, rather just a dozen spans of time in which I was holding a shirt over my mouth as I grinned into the page. Several hours were spent in which life did not exist beyond Baltimore’s cute guy answer to Delilah and the girl who falls for him. What a gift reading is, when life has its claws embedded in your back.

Any respite, these days, is welcome.

Now, onto the next-

• E

*It was as I was writing that declaration, the public admittance that I’d only read 2.5 books since we last spoke, that I realized I’d also, via Kindle, read: The Ex Hex, Game Changers, Heated Rivalry, The Long Game, and one called Holiday Ever After… but books on my Kindle, and especially Kindle Unlimited, exist in some sort of liminal space in between reading and remembering and probably I can’t be held accountable for it. So we will just move on, yes? Yes.

It is at 9am that I will log into a website and sit in a queue. Not for Harry Styles tickets, no. For placement in next year’s morning Pre-K. Somewhere in, or around, there, I’ll also have to convince the powers that be that my youngest is tracking at least 6 weeks ahead of her true age- because she must, should she be granted a place in the class I desire for her.

It will cost more than the $1000 nosebleeds, but it is still a bargain. These women do something I cannot. They teach my children without (I assume) wanting to die whilst doing it. I can do a lot of things, I won’t list them here but just look around. I’ve spelled almost all these words right. That has to count for something?

Yet it would seem that I cannot pass such skills to my children. I am but a child myself (emotionally), and when I can’t explain myself properly (in the one, single way I know how) frustration rears its ugly head and no one learns anything. Other than maybe their mother is… addled.

I have a great respect for teachers. I am thrilled I never thought such a vocation suited me. Even in youth, I saw myself for what I really was: abstruse.

Generally when I have these spells of time, I don’t do anything good with them. Typically I take the five minutes here, the fifteen there, and do what many of us have taken up as a hobby of late: the doom scroll.

The thumb of said doom is pinning us down, prying our eyes open and leaving our jaw slack with horror. I could write about it forever (I couldn’t, it’s too much) but I won’t. We know. We all know.

I’ve been scrolling incessantly for a month now, it feels. One book into my, “I’m going to read books and muse about them, at length!” declaration, and the idea is stale, already. The news cycle never stops, it never lets up, there is no time for a breath or a step back to think and process. It just keeps going.

I don’t know what to do with it all and then more appears, as if from nowhere. It spawns anew, dandelions blowing in the breeze- if dandelions were evil people, doing evil things.

Self-preservation eludes me. Retreat, retreat- into yourself, into your mind… it’s not safe out there. But I’m not sure it’s safe in here, either.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” - Robert Frost

The sun will rise again tomorrow and what good am I to anyone if I see all this shit and think… hmm. Maybe it shouldn’t?

Retreat.

I’ve grown grim around the mouth. I want to knock people’s hats off. I can’t get to the sea. Another balm exists for such things and I have to believe it hasn’t gone stale after all.

READING. WRITING. LISTENING.

A little rom-com book to suspend reality. A line from Derek and the Dominos to set the “I Should Be Writing and Maybe If I Find the Right Songs I Will” playlist in the right direction. Then another line from a rap (I’m your motherfucking conscience) that my mother was right to not let me listen to in 8th grade (but I did anyway) to pivot an idea out of my head and onto the page.

And, last but not least, a message in this Substack bottle.

Henceforth - for as long as we both shall life - in lieu of the doom scroll, I will arm myself with books and fully charged AirPods for when a spot of extra time presents itself. Maybe even sprints of time to write a little ditty, just like this. Literature and music! A veritable spiritual reset! Who knew?!

As always, the best to you and yours in this the winter of our discontent -

• E

I’ve enclosed a picture I carelessly snapped the other night, as I was crossing a road, to illustrate such a statement with visual confirmation.

Maybe it’s a stupid statement. Aren’t all sunsets good? It’s a sunset, not a root canal. They are inherently viewed as beautiful- and significant, even though they happen every damn day.

We get a lot of bright orange that goes fiery at the edges. The sky is peach then pink then purple, then blue. My iPhone 14, or whatever the hell it is (still on the old plug in, guys, might as well use a pay phone- should they still exist), does not to it justice.

If I think about it hard, or at all, I start to second guess myself. Everyone’s town has beautiful sunsets. Full stop. (?)

But my town’s really are good. The kind that make you stop and stare and lose space and time. A little part of you feels grateful to have witnessed it, just like this- and you wonder how many sunsets like this existed, before now. When they (the ancients, I suppose, or really anyone who came before) saw them, did they stop, too?

In fact, anytime I see a particularly gorgeous natural phenomenon (including but not limited to the sun rising or falling, an eclipse, the bloom of a garden, the ocean at large) I think about what it might have been like to be seeing it 2000 years ago, with little idea of how things came to be, just the willingness to accept them as they were: acknowledgements from a god.

When thunder was obviously the sound of one who was angry and vengeful. When tsunamis were that same god (or perhaps, his brother), cleansing the beach and beyond of its sins. Lightning strikes, god again. Earthquakes? Forget about it. We all knew who that was.

Did life feel different when things were always happening for you, or to you, rather than just happening in your midst regardless of you?

I think it must have.

Even now, with most of the world accepting this gorgeous thing we call “science”, cold fronts and jet streams and magma, oh my- we still assign meaning to things that don’t require such a whimsical framework.

For instance, I have a little too much faith in the idea of ‘fate’. I use it conveniently, and inconsistently. When I’m fully in control, I am the driver of my own destiny and if it does not come to me easily I will make it. Then other times, something accosts me and I could blow it off, but instead, I think it is meant to be. Why did this crow swoop by me just now, if not to warn me of impending doom?

Why did I see this advertisement for CPR classes if it is not to mean that someone in my vicinity in the near future will DIE if I don’t pay attention?

Why did I notice this sunset, in particular, if it is not to be my last? (Okay, getting dark; metaphorically and otherwise- also you don’t need to diagnose me, promise… been there done that.)

I am not sure why this very sunset accosted me in such a fond way.

But it’s sort of cool to think that I am standing here, looking at this sunset. So are untold others. We all live here (on Earth), together, seeing the same sun and the same moon and we walk the paths of one another without knowing, exactly, who stepped along this same trajectory just before us.

We are more similar than almost anything in the world, we are more alike than we are different. We are essentially the same exact thing, almost 8 billion times over, living amongst each other but somehow never in quite the same way.

And I just feel within my bones that no one, not one of the billions, would refuse to look at a particularly perfect sunset.

For when everything is shit, lesson one, condensed:

We are all the same. We are all deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of whether or not our country’s founding document explicitly says so. It is about human rights.

Sunsets are for everyone.

First off, I think I probably listened to too much Dirt Nasty/Mickey Avalon in youth to ever be taken seriously.

I was all set to tuck into a Sally Rooney book next (it happened to be the only one downstairs when I finished So Big, and… well) - but today’s MURDER in Minneapolis brought up an old standby Orwellian quote:

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final and most essential command.”

I liked it better when I sought dystopian fiction to escape the humdrum, rather than waking every day unto a brand new, is-this-real-life-? norm.

I think I was assigned this book in school, which is to say I read enough of it to take a test, or write a paper, or what have you.

Also, Candice was revisiting it, so I’m revisiting it.

Let’s discuss, soon.

• E

I’m one of those people who really, ultimately, at the end of the day—- wants to procrastinate. See, I even did it with that sentence.

Some have called this tendency a whole host of things, and many a person (qualified or otherwise) has told me exactly what it is; but what the fuck does that have to do with anything, really?

I received this book (So Big by Edna Ferber) 16 years ago, gifted to me by my beloved grandfather. A year later, he died, and I am so lucky to tell you it was the worst day of my life. How privileged is that? At the time it felt awful, and still if anyone asks me if I could have dinner with anyone in the world, living or dead, it would be him. I don’t even have to think about it… but I’m older now and I can honestly say that if the first, worst thing, is your grandpa dying; well. You’ve led a charmed life, friend.

He knew I wanted to be a writer (he was, as well) and thus him pointing me in this direction was well-warranted. And yet. AND YET- still, it took me 16 years to read a book that was recommended to me by someone I deeply loved.

Procrastination, man. It took me less than a day to read, too.

THE BOOK -

(Spoilers below)

Ultimately, maybe, the whole crux of any piece of writing is what the reader divines from it. What did it mean, to you. What about it will you carry with you, either in your thoughts or actions or laments? Will anything about it stick?

So Big refers to the nickname of Dirk Dejong; given to him by his mother… who used to call him Sobig instead of his name. When he was a baby his was so big (his father was a large man) and the name stuck.

His mother, Selina, is really the protagonist. It is her story, her legacy she gives to him and he figures out that he doesn’t really know what to do with it all… all this BIGNESS his mother puts upon him.

Selina is a curious woman who wants to extract all she can from the life she’s living. She is taught to live this way by her father, who was a notorious gambler in Chicago in the aughts and teens of the 20th century. He tells her that’s the game of it- you have to watch it and live it at the same time with the knowledge (the belief) that it is all just a beautiful show.

Due to a number of reasons, Selina ends up alone at 19 and goes off to get a job, in which she moves away from the city and into a small Dutch farming community in Illinois. She’s well-educated, she’s worldly- she knows things many women were never able to hear about let alone study. She believes what her father tells her; that life is to be lived and enjoyed and wrung out until there’s nothing left.

With the job comes a man, with the man a marriage and a baby and life as a farmer’s wife. Farming in a time of horse drawn carriages (there were cars but only the rich had them), as some of you may have assumed, was difficult. Suddenly this beautiful life was reduced to mending her husband’s clothing after he worked 18 hours a day outside- on land he owned but that wasn’t particularly bountiful, making sure they were fed, trying but failing to update their home…

She became bogged down with survival, something that deeply resonates with me.

Her life, her goals, everything pivots. She believes, for all intents and purposes, her life is over. Selina Dejong is done, at 29, and her remaining time and energy is focused on Sobig. Making sure he can go to school. Making sure he doesn’t have to be a farmer, if he doesn’t want it. Making sure that his life doesn’t begin and end on the singular road that weaves through their little town.

So she works herself to the bone. The fine hands she’d started the story with become gnarled as she ekes every, single drop out of her life. She has superhuman resilience- she knows no one is going to save her, so she digs in, and she still watches the show as she lives it. She makes conversation with anyone, she takes people in and cares for them if they need it… the careful touch of Selina is all over their land, the people who walk upon it, everyone who has met her and beyond.

She just is. It is her way, and for Sobig, she’s his mom. It’s how she’s always been, and it isn’t until he leaves- until he sees that other people don’t extract the zest of life from their every encounter like her, that he realizes what she really is.

It isn’t until he has all the money he wants but becomes bored with everything and everyone around him, it isn’t until he meets a woman with the same energy and wants to have her… only for her to be uninterested due to the milquetoast way he’d curated his life… that he understands just what his mother had wanted for him. What she’d tried to give him and he veered off on his own. An obstacle was put in his path and rather than hurdle it- the threat of his legs becoming tangled and his face hitting the track… he just left it all together. Wandered off the field and through the stands and found himself on the outside of the stadium of life, looking in. Wanting to be part of the race, again.

RE:

It’s so easy to disappear into an existence, no matter if you sought it out in the first place or fell into it due to circumstance or a singular choice. It happened to both of them, Selina into a life that felt lesser that she made more, and Sobig into a life that seemed grand but was hollow.

We push forward and sometimes we look up and we don’t recognize where we are- how we got there, how much time has passed.

It’s not easy in motherhood to pull your children along with you through this grand existence you thought you’d have. You have different needs, and at a certain point it feels like it would all just work out better if you were their bridge across the water rather than swimming alongside.

We’re all out here just doing the best we can (well, some of us), and it’s hard to qualify the life you want with the life you have… with the life you can get. It’s all a balance. You win some, you lose some. You can’t just think of yourself- no man is an island.

But when do you stop? When is it over? Do you ever know? Or do you just hit pause to divert your attention for a little while. Or are you supposed to do it all- are you supposed to reach for fulfillment and success at the same time as nurturing and teaching and caring?

What am I doing, here? I’ve got this dream, this thing I’ve wanted my whole life but I’ve got people that depend on me for literally every, single, thing. The air they breathe, the food they eat, their entire existence is because of me. Am I selfish? Should I have hit pause the moment the second line showed up?

Because this is all I get, too.

So yeah, anyway. This book threw me for a fucking loop.

Thanks, Grandpa.

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I have hundreds of books.

I haven’t actually counted - and to be very honest I am pretty bad with spatial reasoning… but I think we can all safely assume that I own hundreds of books. Yeah. I can see 60 from where I’m sitting right now, and… sure. Hundreds.

Not thousands, probably.

BUT I DIGRESS - hic svnt librī and all that.

Now, don’t be fooled. I have the books. This does not mean I read the books. Why read the books I went out of my way to buy when I can house Kindle Unlimited sagas like a parched person who wakes up in the middle of the night and shuffles to the kitchen to asphyxiate themselves with ice cold water by the light of the fridge?

It’s because all these books I buy (or ones friends are kind enough to give me) are books I should read. I’ve heard something good about it, or I’ve liked things by the author in the past. Maybe I saw it recommended by a person or periodical I respect (the former still happens but the latter is getting harder and harder to come by). So I buy the book and it becomes a really gorgeous book-shaped knick knack.

They’re just decor, at this point.

Pretentious, mocking decor.

And the funny thing is, it’s not that I don’t read. I think I read somewhere (see, proof) that the average American reads 12 books a year. Girl. I read that many in September about the same group of hockey players—

AH. There’s the rub.

There’s something to say for a book that doesn’t take a thesaurus or a decent grasp on 19th century British English to get through. An easy read. I have nothing against an easy read anymore, but at one time I did.

The bookshelf that belonged to 19 year old me definitely had a copy of Twilight hidden behind Infinite Jest. Because I was an English Major, and English Majors read Penguin Classics, thank you very much.

I am no longer 19. I have a career. I have a husband and children and a home and when I’m not dealing with all that comes with all of that, when I’m not deleting braincells by doom scrolling or watching Gilmore Girls for the 29th time, I just want to have a good time.

There’s nothing wrong with this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this reading behavior.

But I think, for now at least, I’m here for a bad time. And by that, I mean I want to be haunted. I want a new epitaph. I want tried and true litch-rich-yure. I want to read the things that past versions of me thought were important enough to spend money on and carry around for 15 years. The stuff she bought at Hastings when she was having a shitty day and it was too early for vodka sodas at the club (a girl of many tastes, was she).

SO.

First up, is a book I have had since my birthday in 2010. It looks like it has been well-loved; but it has been opened hundreds of times and never read.

My grandfather (God, I loved that man) gave it to me, and it was the only thing I can remember he wrote in/on. My grandmother had beautiful penmanship, so she was the default card signer. I would always get birthday cards from them, but Valentine cards and Halloween and Easter, too. The first Valentine’s Day after he died, I didn’t get a card from my grandma, and she apologized. “Your grandpa would always buy those for you girls.” I had assumed they were signed for him, unbeknownst to him, because… well. That’s life.

I have read the inscription hundreds of times, but never the book.

So Big - by Edna Ferber

I’ll let you know how it goes.

•E

I have this habit, instead of starting something organically and just doing what I want to do - I zoom out to this vantage point of “what would perfection be, in this instance?”

It goes something like this:

I want to write a book while I read books.

• I would like to also be part of a community in and around the writing and reading of said book AND others.

  • I will create an Instagram for this new purpose, and I will have a Substack (whatever the fuck that is).

    • I will need a pen name* for this endeavor.

      • I need an aesthetic path for these accounts, and a posting schedule.

        • I will have this type of content here, and this content there… in three months it will look this way.

And then I get it all set up… and disappear.

Without reading or writing a goddamn thing.

So I’m going to acknowledge that yeah, this is how I usually go about things. I get off on the planning and fussing and dreaming but I cannot be compelled to even blink at the “doing”.

I think for now, I’m just going to “do”.

ἀνερῥίφθω κύβος

(let a die be cast)

• E

*tried out three separate pen names and ended up going with my actual name, so just overall, doing really well, right out the gate.