interlexionality

Help me not be such an ass; help me also be this ass I am right now, right where I am.

This one is SO SHORT. You really won’t even believe it. Are you someone who is generally like “thanks, Sarah, for these too too many things. Now I can’t bear to look at any of them!”? Well, here are just four things.

I am beyond certain that more than four things have helped in the last two months, but these are the ones that I offer you today, this first of July, because they are ones that have mostly come to me since June 21–the day we moved, and also the day we got married two years ago. Our move is finally complete, and I have a sense of “well here we go…slowly, lots more slowly than usual, but here we really go.” So here are four things from what feels like the future, since Living in Asheville was “The Future” for so long.*

1. Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound. It came out TODAY so it IS from the future, almost. It’s so good. Dev Hynes! If you have Spotify you can go listen to it for free, then realize the wisdom of giving him your money if you have some.
2. The Arrangements: A Work of Fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. First of all, start by reading everything else she’s ever written in case you haven’t yet. But this one is a short story in the New York Times: nice and short and so cuckoo and delightful and right on and queasy-making.
3. Also in the Times: Charter schools in Detroit. There’s lots of commentary since about what’s wrong with this, so read that too.
4. Maria Bamford’s Lady Dynamite (Netflix). Listen: I can watch the shit out of some TV. I can mara-binge, episode after episode. But this show I can only watch maybe two of in a row because even though I am in love with it, and with Maria Bamford (watch this too, you’ll just explode), and it’s only 20 minutes or something, it is so fucking weird that after two I can’t really understand what’s happening inside or outside my body anymore. It’s SO GOOD!

So that’s it for now. I think I’m also able to get my mind together enough to write one of these today because it occurred to me that with the end of June, the year is now half over. This goddamn year of everything! I mean it’s not necessarily helpful because half of infinity is still infinity, but oof, I still welcome you, second half of everything. I’m going to go nice and slow, and not try to do all that much, and eat healthy food and take walks by my new river, and see how that is.

Love,

Sarah

PS if you sent a candle, it’s in our new house, making it home. Thank you more than anything.

Notes:

*This presently-living-in-my-own-future reminds me of two things:

1. Living in Palau for the 2004 Summer Olympic games, which were broadcast one week late but otherwise live-feeling, as in on 24 hours a day, so that it felt like they were being beamed to us from the future, or we had slipped in space-time.

2. This part of Spaceballs.