january 13 fka
I like reading about history. Now. I like it now. Now, at 47, I find it interesting, fascinating, illuminating. As a high-school student... not so much.
One of the worst grades I ever got was in Grade 10. A teacher named Ms. Spyropolous (or something like that) made history the dullest and most boring subject imaginable riiiiiiiight around when my issues with focus and concentration (and "he's really good at math!" and "you ever notice he has a thing about textures?") started simmering. She gave me an embarrassingly low grade (something like a 36) one time and that was it. After I took a beating I became one of those kids who said things like "what the fuck do I care about what some dusty old crackers said and did after they genocided everyone?" for a few years.
Eventually I got back to it. I liked figuring things out and figuring things out usually meant going back, back, back. Eventually it wasn't as much about figuring things out as much as it was about understanding context and interrelation, about what time is, about what life might yet be.
Also, fun fact: I have an encyclopedia memory for names and dates and statistics in re: sports, but I was never a names/dates guy in re: history. Some names and dates are up there, obv, but they're subordinate to the context and not the thing and and of itself. Even then I understood that memorizing and regurgitating the year some battle happened didn't mean you understood the battle, and I wanted to understand the battle.
Sidebar:
Isn't it weird that they never taught history as a "how did we get here?" Isn't it weird it was always "remember this date and two causes of that war" and, not something more like, "so, this is a class that you should take and a subject you should develop an interest in if you want to have a more holistic understanding of the present moment and, moreover, a better chance of surviving the world you're about to have credit card debt in."
Anyway, blah blah blah. I got a bad grade in history. Then I started getting into history. And if you don't learn from history you're condemned to repeat it. And Rust Cohle said "time is a flat circle." And Eugene O'Neill wrote "There is no present or future —— only the past, happening over and over again —— now.”
#Also also also:
In the New York Times on September 12, 1938 there's an interesting item I think Americans would do well to read/reread.
#Also also:
Bari Weiss and her partner would be part of my nightmare blunt rotation. There's zero way I'd get out of that situation without faking my own death.
#Also:
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch watch the end
🌳 grass of Hawks/Lakers
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below the tags to help it rank in Bear's Discovery feed and maybe consider sharing it with a friend or on your socials.