supposed to be writing (#38)
summer '24
3. Mud and a stray blade of hay were still stuck to the bottom of their foot by the time they entered the yoga class. The morning had started at once too early and too late; the crows had taken the day off in honor of the holiday. Or maybe they had simply decided to go out of town to avoid the noise and the crowds that gathered to watch the night sky explode. The soil had been in the same place since yesterday, even though they had put on shoes to climb into the car, covered in stickers and self-affirmations: I am worthy, thought the scarecrow on their way to the yoga class. Or really, I am worthy, scrawled the post-it note that clung to the beads of perspiration on the scarecrow’s morning coffee. If the car had had a voice in this matter, which is absurd because cars as a rule refuse to speak, he might have complained about hauling the extra weight of the soil that refused to release from the bottoms of the driver’s feet.
4. I’m staring at the future. She’s doing yoga next to me, and her hair is still cropped. She’s chosen a yellow t-shirt, that she removes for the sweatier part of class, but I’d never choose that color. Not yet, I suppose. I’m listening to the future, and I hear M getting a dog biscuit once his coffee’s ready at the bar. The barista tells him (he is a regular) to say hello to me from her. I am probably still sleeping, or I decided to avoid the crowd that gathers on Saturday mornings in front of the bakery. In a different moment, we would have biked there, but I can tell from his clothes and sun-beaten cheeks that those days are not for now.
6. The lady promises, or asks, to keep in touch with the stranger who she talked to over a glass of mediocre wine at the airport. It was impossible to tell the difference between something happening over a phone call, and the conversation between the two women brought together over the new trend of reading romance novels in public. She left a voicemail, or maybe it was just a short call, to sing someone happy birthday. They must have been in a different and distant time zone. Although I guess the night was young, and it didn’t matter really that she wished him a good day even though it was already 6 at night. How close could they have been? Was it a nephew, a colleague? Her voice sounds younger than she looks, and her hair matches the metropolitan city she is flying from more than the desert she is flying to. “All guys just want to have their bases taken care of.” She pays in cash.
7. A series of interactions in cars. Who is Jeff Dale ? or Jeff Braun? John Davis ? I wondered why you were asking me, instead of googling. Razorbacks, he turns the corner but we end up in a face off in a different intersection anyway. The loud CEO, baron overlord of a small operation on the Mississippi gets into the car after a successful interview—“I’ll tell your grandfather what a charming young lady you are when we golf on Thursday”—but when he looks up, he has put on a baseball cap, and when he takes it off, all his hair has fallen out. Or she shaved it off, to put off the trauma of watching each strand loosen itself with the treatment. Maybe there are only a few weeks left. Maybe she won’t survive. There’s a mode on the electric vehicle that confuses internal combustion engines. Three assholes in a row try to fuck with us: two good-for-nothing trucks and a Mercedes sedan. Who is more surprised, that tailgating this little car has forced them to pay attention to how they drive?
read me, aka the books hanging out in my backpack
agatha christie: the mysterious affair at styles; the murder of roger ackroyd; etc.
ursula le guin: i started reading a little collection of her first three novels in search of (her article on) utopia. both are excellent, and worth searching for yourself
thomas more, utopia
universalisme, julien suaudeau and mame fatou niang
I also picked up nefando, mónica ojeda, a “techno-horror portrait” of six lives upended by a video game; seems awesome
see me
vhs at a bar with cold soba noodles
fitzcarraldo at the theatre where they got lee harvey
the stranger Miyazakis that you haven’t seen yet
live music, in a variety of places, with a ranchwater
bunch of metal hanging out in someone’s finger (truly, astonishingly, not mine!)
c u next time :)