october 2 etc
I've been a professional writer for 20+ years which means that people have paid me to write things for 20+ years. This does not mean I'm a good writer. Some people think I am but most people don't think of me at all, a fact which used to frustrate me but which now makes me quite happy. I used to want fame and book deals and my name in lights but the idea of having those things now fills me with dread. People whose names are in lights are that much more visible to those who hunt them, and it is always hunting season now.
That I can say things like this and still remain generally hopeful about the world puzzles (some) people for reasons including that I can do the doom and gloom thing with the best of them and have an actual talent for being a bummer without meaning to be. The other side of that coin is that I also have a massive, massive capacity for joy and optimism, and my nearest and dearest can confirm that over the past few years I have found it much easier to locate and articulate those things no matter what else is going on.
It occurs to me that we exist in other people's lives and those people exist in other people's lives (and so on, and so on, and so on) and that as a result, we spend at least part of every day navigating, negotiating, and dialoguing with the abstracted versions of ourselves that exist outside of our subjective realities and control. Coming face to face with yourself after your you-ness has been reflected and refracted and chopped and screwed can be pretty traumatizing if you're not ready for it, which is why a lot of people avoid doing so.
When I meet up with my abstracted self these days I find that I am bored but that the boredom feels like a hard-won reward. For most of my life I could only see boredom as failure because our culture is obsessed with efficiency and optimization and because a TA I had at McGill once announced to us in his Stephin Merritt voice that if we were bored it was because we were boring. (Years later that same TA was expelled from Thailand or Vietnam or some other country in the region for reasons I can't quite remember but which likely boiled down to him being a pedantic dick.)
You and I in a new and unique moment right now. The things we are experiencing, right now, right here, in this moment, have never existed in this way before and will never exist in this way ever again. I don't know what you are going to do with this moment but if you want my advice, treat it like it's important but don't treat it like it's precious.
On y va!
🦍🦧 Jane Goodall died yesterday and this collection of tributes from the BBC is as good as any to peruse as it includes that "as a child growing up in London, Jane Goodall said she became fascinated by animals after reading Dr Doolittle.". (BBC)
🦧🦍 Goodall had a sense of humour but the chimps were loyal to her certainly didn't. (Twitter/quinoa_biryani)
✍️⚰️ Kaleb Horton died when I was in Montreal and I didn't know what to write about it so it's a good thing that Luke O'Neil did. If you didn't know who Horton was, go and read some of his stuff. It's very, very good. (Welcome To Hell World)
✍️⚰️For what it's worth, Matt Pearce also had a go at it. (Substack)
🧱🧱 In our household, we believe in glass brick supremacy. (Instagram/jc____b/)
🎵🎵 If you don't remember when Violent Femmes covered Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" here is a reminder. (Spotify)
🎵🎵 From the Wikipedia page for "Crazy", a crazy good read in its own right: "Musically, "Crazy" was inspired by film scores of Spaghetti Westerns, in particular by the works of Ennio Morricone, and the song "Last Men Standing" by Gian Piero Reverberi and Gian Franco Reverberi from the 1968 Spaghetti Western Django, Prepare a Coffin, an unofficial prequel to Django." (Wikipedia, IMDB.com)
🤖☎️ Using one of my NYT gift links to share that the anti-robocall "call-screening tool for iPhones that is included with Apple’s iOS 26" apparently works. (NYT)
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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