A few months ago, as I was making breakfast in our unairconditioned kitchen and sweating through my XXL Zabar’s sleep shirt1, I was listening Berlant & Novak2 (neé Poog) when I was struck by the cohosts’ epiphany: linearity is a superimposed masculine mode of thought, and if we let it go and adhere to our own rhythms, things cede more naturally to cycles.
This might seem obvious. What wasn’t obvious (at least to me) was in how many different ambits this applies. Friends know I like to drop acid once or twice a year and then talk in circles (cycles?) about how time isn’t linear, but I’ve been feeling this more acutely lately, watching as the homies and I navigate relationships, elections, seasons and aging and working as we inch incrementally closer to the midpoint on the journey of our lives. Which are of course 100% cyclical; what is old age but a return to the hapless helplessness of childhood?
One of my tutoring students is super passionate about physics, and also suffering the morass of existential despair that comes with adolescence, so we’ve been talking about his “constants”—in physics, these are known entities that don’t change, like the speed of light or Avogadro’s number3. You rely on them or navigate around them, but either way they aren’t going anywhere. There is comfort in the limits they provide, especially as things shift and change and cycle around them. Which made me think about my own cycles and constants:
I’m sure there are more but I am having trouble adding a row to this chart without fucking up the formatting (the things I manage to Not Know by not having an office job…).
Hilariously, I’ve also been handed a literature course on Utopia/Dystopia for next semester in the slapdash way of course assignments for adjuncts everywhere (some other professor fucked off or retired or went to meet the big HR officer in the sky). Bleak? Yeah. But alas, here I am thinking about how utopia devolves into dystopia, strong ideals into stringent fascism, imposed order into sprawling decay…and then we run it back and the cycle begins anew. The semester starts in a month and a half, which means I have a month and a half to enjoy my life. But again, more than other people, my work operates on semester and academic year -long cycles…and I’m grateful for that.
Finally, this is random but why is it that we only ever hear about the Ides of March, when it feels as though the Ides of July are hitting in a big way right now?
It turns out that only the Ides of March were globally significant4, which is why they’re a cultural touchpoint. Also Shakespeare. But must Caesar be assassinated for us to take note? If each month is a cycle (which lets be real they are), and the ides happen around the middle, then July is ovulating—a moment of restless and sweaty potential. All one has to do is step outside to feel it.
Not angry enough? Try Jonathan Blitzer’s deeply researched, deeply personal compendium of the last four decades of U.S. immigration policy. Other than that, I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, but after tearing through Flashlight (Susan Choi’s latest), I decided to re-read Trust Exercise. It gave me heart palpitations. Who else writes about teenagedom like that? I’ll tell you who: no one except for maybe Wendy C. Ortiz in her memoir Excavations. I would love to pair these two books in a class one day.
On the Calculation of Volume…I don’t get it, did I miss something? This novel takes a boring premise and proceeds to do nothing with it. Unless I am stupid and missed the point, in which case never mind and also I was just kidding.
Medicine for Melancholy—written and directed by Barry Jenkins of Moonlight fame—boasts two killer performances from the leads and some mesmerizing early aughts cinematography of San Francisco, which I loved.
I struggle with media about abjectly annoying individuals; if I wanted to encounter annoying people I would go out more. But I did love Amalia Ulman’s Magic Farm—some of the most hilariously spoiled and inept people make their way to Latin America to film an exploitative peak-Vice-era show about “weird subcultures” and chaos ensues.
I also loved Faces Places, and if this post gets three likes I’ll cut and dye my hair like that.
As usual, this has been an internet newsletter by a disgruntled woman. Until next time.
BOOKS READ
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis - Jonathan Blitzer
Flashlight - Susan Choi
Clam Down - Anelise Chen
On The Calculation Of Volume - Solvej Batlle (trans. Barbara J. Haveland)
Trust Exercise (Susan Choi)
MOVIES WATCHED
The Encampments (Workman, Pritsker)
Sorry, Baby (Victor)
Sinners (Coogler)
The Stepford Wives (Oz)
Medicine for Melancholy (Jenkins)
Magic Farm (Ulman)
Faces Places (Vardà, JR)
SHOWS ~EXPERIENCED~
Overcompensating
Too Much
not to get caught trying but I want to be a Zabar’s influencer so bad I’ve invented the category of “Zabar’s influencer”
if you don’t know, it’s a podcast that brilliantly toes the lines between absurdist comedy/earnest friendship and mockery/mimicry of the wellness world
do not ask me to elaborate I noped out of high school physics so I could spend my free period shuttling people to in n out in my dad’s truck
albeit for the denizens of 44 BCE
I'm the #3 like 👍🏻. But don't cut your hair! Deep thoughts 🤔 here. Love the spread sheet of cycles. Beware the idea of July 💥
“I struggle with media about abjectly annoying individuals; if I wanted to encounter annoying people I would go out more.” I would like this on a shirt