May the Ninth, 2022

The World At Large

Elon owns Twitter. Was this the case last week? Either way I think this is really funny and I get that maybe this has free speech implications, but Twitter is the closest thing I can think of to hell, so I’m sorry, but I’m currently not all that torn up. I think the biggest takeaway here is that we should stop treating Twitter like anything more than a message forum.

I read the Ed Koch piece in the Times that came out this week and I found it to be very interesting and compelling although sometimes I forgot I was reading about Ed Koch and I caught myself thinking of him as a sweet old man. Which is to say that of course the New York Times went too easy on Ed Koch. I’ve seen some outrage and some real finger-wagging about the outing business, but really I’m with Larry Kramer on this one (“I am sick of closeted gays. It’s 1983 already, guys, when are you going to come out? By 1984 you could be dead”). It was an open secret already, why not put it in writing that Koch was gay?

The piece also takes this weird angle where it suggests that today politicians have no reason to be in the closet. This will look stupid in a few years if the Supreme Court continues to pretend that its job is to read the constitution. It already looks weird next to the recent Madison Cawthorne news.

I am tired of being told to vote. The Democrats have two branches of government. What else do you want from the electorate, really?

Thoughts and Feelings

Reached peak melodrama the other night–writing a final paper and listening to a playlist I found on the internet called “unrequited love” which includes Ani DiFranco’s “Untouchable Face” and James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” among other terrible/wonderful tracks. Probably the most pathetic I’ve ever been. Which is saying something.

I’ve been watching Severance instead of doing work, which I think serves as some sort of meta-commentary/praxis, really. But anywho, sitting here, typing away, headphones on and 8 different monitors in front of me, I feel a bit like those employees. If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise is that a company has a floor where all of the employees have severed their memories–when they’re at work they remember nothing from outside, and vice versa. And anyways, I’d like to throw my laptop in the ocean. I’m going off the grid a little, this summer. I’m not going to let myself go on the computer for more than an hour a day–enough to check and send emails, and to read one really deserving article, and nothing else. And I’m not reading emails on the weekend. I’m serious. I’m going to delete twitter and Facebook again. I’m going to really think about what it’s all doing to me. Or try to. I’ve still got to listen to music

The boy is going through some changes. None of which have anything to do with me but all of which are affecting me. This is vague on purpose.

I sent my friend this Instagram post recently because I think it is one of the greatest posts ever posted. “Your birthday feels like my birthday!” That is a genuinely insane thing to feel for another person and honestly, I would do a lot of things I would not otherwise do for a taste of such sweet and dear feelings. Sorry, not sorry. I want someone to feel like my birthday is their birthday. And I want to get married and have three chubby babies. And I want to never have to go to class again.

The upcoming week is my last ever week of freshman year. Which is absolutely nuts, dear reader. I have been a freshman in college for 20 years and I expected at least a good five more. And yet, here we are, a few papers away from being 25% done with college. Do not freak out. Sure, I only have two semesters left on campus with half of what will be the student body this fall. And sure, a quarter of the rest of them are people I have not met. But really, why freak out? It’s been a great year. With some terrible moments sprinkled in there, of course.

I made some wonderful friends and great memories this year. I drove up and down the east coast. I started a blog. I had a full emotional crisis of epic proportions. I wrote a lot of melodramatic poetry and read a lot of good poetry. Etc.

I still feel like I’m pretending to go to college a little. Even as I sit here typing away in the wee hours of the morning in the office of the literary magazine I edit for, I feel like this is a game I’m playing. I went into the only building on campus I’d never been in before today. And it was very old-school/lecture hall/small hallways/dusty tile and it felt for the first time like I went to real college. Other than the time they put banners on the light posts. I want to get less caught up in the image of things I get stuck in my head.

I wish I had prettier things to say this week, but I’m all out. Next week I’m going to include the link to my big end-of-year portfolio which will have some better, prettier writing and will explain my inability to put all that much into this week’s blog.

It was Mickey’s birthday today (Sunday), so happy birthday again to my gorgeous and wonderful Mickey!

Bye for now,

xoxoxoxo,

Abby