For several weeks I have been collecting links for a blog/newsletter on “our current catastrophe.” Once again it’s Friday and I don’t feel up to touching any of that! In a word: yikes!
I spent the day cleaning and watching Rally Mexico. I handwashed a bunch of sweaters, and rearranged our little office, and further broke a dresser that used to belong to one of my great grandparents. When I was a child my mother painted the matching dresser, bookshelf, and bed pale pink, which I enjoyed very much as a three year old. My grandmother told my mother she would never forgive her for painting such nice hardwood. When I was a teenager I hated that it was pink, and my mother painted it with teal and purple stars and spirals. I like this much better. My mother thinks she’s going to spend her summer stripping the paint and fixing the hardware.
That’s great, but where am I going to put my collection of paper and blank notebooks? When people know you write they love to give you notebooks, which is very sweet, but I mostly type. I like writing handwriting poems, but I’m very particular about the kind of notebook that’s best for that — no lines, a binding that won’t get caught on things in my bag, pages large enough that I can trace my hand but small enough that I don’t feel wasteful only writing a few lines on a page. Occasionally I’ll handwrite fiction, in which case I want the cheapest plainest college ruled school notebook possible. I have a notebook full of lined black school paper that I swear I must have owned since middle school. Why have I held onto this thing? Who knows. I doubt I’ll ever use it. But it’s paper, yeah? Don’t get rid of paper, it might be useful later.
The drawer full of printer paper and various cardstocks that I hoard for winemaking… We don’t have time to get into that. Let alone the collection of scrapbook paper and scrap material in the basement.
This dresser went from my childhood bedroom to my parents garage, where it spent at least half a decade holding gardening supplies. It wound up in the garage of the new house, and when I needed a place to put art supplies I convinced my dad to help me carry it around the house and up our front stairs. I had to bang it back together and glue a few things then. I need to decide if I want to attempt another stop-gap fix now or send it back to the garage until my mother gets around to fixing it. I could find another piece of furniture that probably better serves my needs for twenty bucks on craigslist. Or I could stop keeping an unreasonable amount of paper, but that’s never going to happen.
ZINE CLUB UPDATE
I don’t have an update, but having my paper drawer out of the dresser will make it easier for me to decide what I’m going to print the next zine on. Join zine club now to get the March zine sent to you soon.
PICTURE OF THE CAT
he was alarmed by my cleaning.
WHAT I WATCHED
I had really good intentions of watching an interesting movie to tell you about. Alas. The Oscars were pretty fun. I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once in theaters last spring, and it was great. I’m not sure if it was my favorite film of the year, because like, Tár is two and a half hours of Cate Blanchett wearing suits and being mean, which is obviously very important to me. Watching EEAO was a joy. It’s such a weird movie, seeing in succeed in what can be a very conservative awards show was so cool. All of the people involved in making it seem like wonderful people who are easy to root for. A lot of my life as a film nerd grew out of being a kid who cared a lot about the Oscars, and kids today are going to see EEAO and grow up to be film nerds, and grow up to make weird movies, and that makes me really excited and full of hope for the universe.
Should I recap the first full day of Rally Mexico? Essapekka Lappi is leading Seb Ogier by just under six seconds. EP has some very comical new facial hair, but I think it suits him, and clearly something is working.
SONG OF THE DAY
This week I have really enjoyed Fontaines D.C.’s cover of this Nick Drake song.
Lovely!