Superficial Relating

1.

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.” 

Daniel Handler, Adverbs (recommended if you like quirky fiction)

2.

I'm in the middle of it - my life's accumulations are haphazardly packed into boxes and squirreled away at my parent's house.

Almost every part of life has changed. I had to buy a new car. I can't find anything. I've worn the same shoes every day for a week.

The six or seven houseplants I had in my apartment are now all in the east-facing dormer of my childhood bedroom. I don't know the right way to care for any of them but hooray they seem to be surviving.

Next month, I'll move into the spare bedroom at a good friend's house.

What I really want to do is forget everything, get into that car, turn the music up, and go somewhere dumb and exciting.

But I guess that's what everyone wants?

3.

4.

Recommended reading

This is just to say that Dept. of Speculation was my favorite book of 2015.

“My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.” 

Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

Monday

Good good.

He Knows the Why

 A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Space Debris

Dating is tricky business.

You meet someone who is a complete stranger. You get a drink. You eat a meal. You have a series of little interviews in disguise and out of context. And you try to gauge how much you want to kiss them or whether it really matters that they listen to top-40 music, talk openly about their depression, like german shepherds, or are slightly shorter than you.

Then, inevitably, when you decide you are NOT into it, they will be feeling VERY into it.
Or, when you decide you are into it, they will disappear.

And these decisions usually happen when you both know enough about each other to not know each other at all.

It's exhausting.

So you try to name the problem: Maybe it's timing. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's them. Maybe it's geography. Maybe you're waiting to meet someone who could like you as much as you could like them. At the same time. In the same room. Naturally. Genuinely.

Or ... maybe we're all just space debris accidentally colliding and then noiselessly floating away. Am I overthinking it?

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."
JRR Tolkien