The Middle Ages: Ashes to Ashes, Where Cardboard Goes to Die, Too Many Books
Happy Ash Wednesday! So far, I haven’t seen anyone with smudges on their forehead. Then again, I haven’t left the house today. I had never ever seen such a religious display until I moved to NYC. Was I once ever so young?
First off, I have absolutely no opinion on Luke Perry, in life or death.
Well, except for this shared sentiment. (MonaLiz can go to hell.)
It turns out that I have a thing for so-so, full-of-intrigue Amazon series set in foreign countries, starring British actors. Last time it was White Dragon, which involved avenging a wife’s death in Hong Kong. Now it’s The Widow featuring a wife looking for answers in her husband’s death in the Congo. I honestly started watching it only because the image of Kate Beckinsale in the banner ad made her look like she is 22 while I know she’s around my age. (Huh, exactly 364 days younger than me.) Then after I started watching, she scandalized the world due to making out with Pete Davidson, age 25. She has a 20-year-old daughter with Michael Sheen (who was dating age-appropriate Sarah Silverman, but no more) so I’m fascinated and not creeped out like I would be if the genders were reversed. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
I know I said in my last missive that I’m not spending any money on non-necessities. All it took was a scheduled phone interview for a job I’m not dreading to loosen my purse strings a little. Phone interviews are nothing but screeners, no guarantee of anything, and yet in a superstitious way, I feel like if I start spending like an employed person, I’ll get the job. Interestingly (to me), this is a company that emails me my credit score weekly and this week my score went up. “You’ve been using less credit lately. Kudos! Keeping your credit usage under 30% is an A+ move.” (My credit utilization is only 4% and I’ve had good credit for over a decade so this is kind of bullshit.)
So, I bought a Ring doorbell because Costco had a sale. My doorbell doesn’t work and delivery people get annoyed when I don’t answer because I don’t hear them push it, so they start knocking aggressively and scare the shit out of me. Do I really need to see who comes to my door and capture it on low-resolution video, especially since I’m home most days? Probably not. Now I’m thinking about burr grinders and a chef’s knife I’ve been eyeing for over a year.
Speaking of Costco, it brings me great joy that I can drive to the only Portland location in the time it takes for a not-long song to play. I realized this yesterday when it took only 4 minutes, 21 seconds, the length of The Wedding Present's "Kennedy," which randomly came up on Spotify.
In the past seven months, I’ve generated an obscene amount of cardboard waste, even after giving my sister tons of moving boxes. There are piles and piles in the garage, so much that it would probably take a year of Sundays to get rid of it if I were to make tidy bundles wrapped with string and put one a week out front for recycling. (And I’m still steamed I have to pay for garbage service, which I guess isn’t that unusual but new to me.) F.Y.I. this isn’t all a result of online shopping--I also had a lot of hard-won moving boxes scavenged from Queens businesses. I was also brought great joy to discover a dump/recycler just down the street from my house. That's what is in the photo, not my garage.
I’ve vowed to read more--especially fiction--and I’ve practically doubled my output over last year already. The only book I recall reading the whole way through last year was The Lathe of Heaven, right after Ursula K. LeGuin died because I realized I had never ever read anything by her and she was a Portland author. I dug the ‘70s alternate reality that included very specific Portland references. I guess now that I'm a Portland resident, I should link to Powell's not Amzon (though, honestly I'm not anti-Amazon in the least).
So far, the only book I’ve finished this year is Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, coincidentally another Portland author and also subtly dystopic. I’ve started many more but the issue is that I can never finish them because they are ebooks “borrowed” from the library and I put a bunch on hold, then forget about them and then all of a sudden like three become available at once and I can’t read that much in 20 days so they expire. Despite my buying a treadmill (I guess I was really lying when I said I wasn’t buying anything until I got a new job) and reading on an iPad for 60 minutes straight and occasionally before bed.
Books I started but was unable to finish in 2019 because I’m too scattered to read a whole book in the 20-days allotted by the library and it seems like all my ebook holds become available at once:
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong. More charming than I had expected.
The Mars Room. Smart and funny in sly ways, but not sure if I feel compelled to check it out again. I liked it more before I remembered anything about Rachel Kushner’s background.
Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis. I was charmed by this description but I've only read a few pages. "Pulsing to the soundtrack of Joy Division, Nick Cave, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, an intoxicating portrait of Mexico in the late 1980." I'm not sure if it was magic realist or I was just tired.
The Recovering: Intoxication & Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison. I became intrigued after reading a piece on how different author approach research. It was only after I checked it out, that I realized I’d already read an excerpt somewhere (maybe the NYT?). The author writes like this very mature person, though she can't be that old based on her college tales. I’ve been interested in alcoholism lately. Not because I think I have a drinking problem but because I get upset irrationally when I hear about anyone vaguely in my universe stopping drinking (even strangers!) and I’m not completely sure what that’s about. I think it might stem from the same place as when I see 30somethings acting like they are old and bragging that they don’t go out. I know, it makes no sense. I’ll have to think on this more.
I also had a physical copy of Summer of Hate by Chris Kraus of I Love Dick fame put on hold and transferred to my branch, Gregory Heights, but waited a week (I thought it was only 5 or 6 days) and missed it by 3 hours. It was sent back to the St. Johns branch the morning of the day I showed up.
I've been ignoring the hold alert for Attention Dispatches from a Land of Distraction by Joshua Cohen because I don't have time to read it and the 20-day clock starts ticking as soon as I download it. Also, I don't even remember what it's about or why I was into it.
Signing off from a land of distraction...