April

Earlier this week I went on a walk to the yarn store, and all of the flowers blooming made me happy happy happy.

Even though it was rainy, and borderline humid, it really was quite nice. I live in the PNW, and I always feel such superiority this time of year.

“Look at me! Look how lucky I am to live in this eden on earth! God couldn’t have created a more beautiful city to live in even if he tried!” All of the suffering that comes with the lack of sunlight during winter is worth it.

Anyways, walking to the yarn store is nice because it takes me 40-50 minutes and I can walk through my favorite park near me.

Now the stressful part starts - making the sweater. I have 3 weeks and I just started last night. It’s a gift for my boyfriend’s sister, who just got her PhD. Well, it WILL be a gift for her once I finish it, but 3 weeks is not much time. I fear I’ve underestimated how fast I can pull this off, but I can always abuse my Adderall prescription (KIDDING!!!).

Unfortunately, finishing this sweater in 21 days will likely require 80-90% of my free time to be spent knitting, so less time for working on this website and reading books, a re-ignited hobby.

Like MANY, I was a precocious, high-achieving child who could read wicked fast. I devoured books (though in retrospect this was more a symptom of undiagnosed ADHD than any particular gifts or talents). I like to be occupied, and before phones existed there were books.

During COVID, my reading habits really dried up. It’s been one of my new years resolutions the past few years, and FINALLY this year I seem to be making headway. This year the goal is to 12 books, one for each month.

In January I read “It’s Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk’s Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time" by Jikisai Minami.

The title pulled me in immediately, because wouldn’t it be nice to not be consumed with the angst I feel about WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?

Unfortunately I don’t think I really walked away with much. Turns out me and a 68 year old monk don’t have a ton in common. Then I read Project Hail Mary for my boyfriend’s book club (that never actually got off the ground.)

Now I’ve been working through two books, the first of which is Famesick by Lena Dunham. I swear I was actually going to buy or rent it, but a free epub file popped up on my twitter feed and I couldn’t say no.

Famesick is a very fun read, especially if you were a teenager/20s something during her pop culture zeitgeist of 2012-2017.

It’s totally a different world now, and even though I don’t necessarily want to relate to her, I find myself nodding along in agreement when she spills out her neuroses for us.

Reddit user MarsupialJazzlike469 spells it out well:

“Honestly, I think people are losing the focus with Famesick. They're missing the fact that it’s a brutal analysis of Fame as a goddess that eventually devours you. While I’ve always thought her screenwriting is far superior to her books, her talent for capturing human complexity without a filter is undeniable. She sees the "ugly" parts of people, and that lack of a filter is exactly why she stays so misunderstood.”

The other book I’m working on is “Walking through clear water in a pool painted black” by Cookie Mueller.

I only learned who Cookie Mueller was this year when I watched my first John Waters movie, Pink Flamingos.

(As a side note, I did not enjoy this movie very much. Admitting this feels like I lose every bit of whatever indie cred I’ve amassed over the years since it’s a beloved cult classic, but truthfully I didn’t find it very compelling and I hated that chicken scene. I suppose I’m a normie at my core.)

Cookie Mueller was a very very interesting person, who lived an insane life, though she counters ”Why does everybody think I’m so wild? I’m not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.”

I think I might make a whole page devoted to her… she’s a fantastic writer I wish she had stayed on this earth a little bit longer.

This line from the foreword, written by Olivia Laing has been sticking with me all week.

“It strikes me too that Cookie’s world of happenstance and chance encounter has been obliterated by the internet, gone without trace. She never seems to pack a suitcase, let alone book a ticket or plan an itinerary. Her life is wide open, reveling in unscripted, unscreened contact and surprise. It’s high risk, high reward. Getting a ride with a stranger might result in a gunpoint abduction, but her idiosyncratic approach to travel also generates new friends, lovers, parties to attend, places to stay. I used to know a lot of people like that, in my own dropout days, but I can’t think of anyone now who doesn’t use Google as a prophylactic against the unexpected, a charm against getting lost that comes at a higher price than might have been predicted.”

I wonder what Cookie would think of everything we’ve lost becoming so online.

I have more thoughts about this, especially when reflecting the things I don’t like about my life, the connection I desire but struggle to find in my late 20s in a big city. I don’t know yet how to verbalize them, but I’ll try eventually. Maybe I will save that for the Cookie page I’ll make once I finish her book :)