reading

i feel a lot better today. my head is plugged but the itch in my chest and the futile cough are gone. this morning i read a model world; ryan got it for me for my birthday. i surprised myself by not liking it that much. the stories were all trying to be too real but i couldn’t bring myself to believe any of them or feel anything for them (and i’m usually one who’s pretty good at suspending disbelief). don’t be confused: this is not to say i must be in love with a character or “identify” with a character to appreciate a work of fiction (i hear nabokov thundering vague admonishments in my ear. i don’t move my lips when i read i swear), there was just a quality of… of… nakedness that ended up not being earnest despite trying to be or something. i felt the alienation but rejected it or something. i don’t like to not like things because i can never name the reasons why i don’t like something. part of it is wanting to keep my mouth shut for fear of sounding like boromir … i’ve run out of steam and can continue this paragraph no longer

i had really high expectations, i guess, having fallen deeply in love with kavalier and clay which i would read again right now if it weren’t collecting dust on my sister’s shelf along with like 5 other books i wanted her to read. i always do that–get too excited about a concept, and then in worried flailings fear that if i choose something my target won’t get the complete picture of something and so bombard them with such a burden that they toss it aside and never begin. i’d stumbled through summerland in a haze curled up between a couch and a stack of photo albums labelled 1982-1989, and blew through a final solution in the blazing white cacoon of ryan’s apartment, and contemplated asian-american anti-heroines and throwing plates with razor edges after this collation of short stories by other people. i’m tripping through a list of all the rooms i’ve ever lived in and ryan’s strange two-room layout had more natural light than all of them put together. if i’ve only read a book once i can recall it better if i pretend to occupy the space in which read it, usually on my side in some dark corner with my knees under my chin. k&c’s one of the only books that made me stand up and cry aloud in rage and joy. in antarctica i wanted to throw the book across the room. of course catch-22 was another. cat’s cradle? there must be more. i’m not a very well-read child. i nuked another grandma’s apple pie and hung my head in shame, oh no (arpeggio arpeggio arpeggio arpeggio arpeggio)

i’ve cultivated too many bad habits with this livejournal, the first of which is beginning every sentence with “i.”

HOLY CRAP this stuff is gingery. ai ai ai ai ai

i could migrate to vox and tailor my posts into works of erudition with complete sentences and editing and scrupulous tagging with the intent of getting them read. i write here mostly hoping that no one will read these things, pointlessly, complaining about how hard life is, daring myself to voice sillier and shallower thoughts not because i really think them so much as to test out how they sound, to see what a girl who says these things is like. which is pretty backwards but that’s why i never start anything; my only measure of a project is how it’ll be perceived, fully-formed, at its completion and middle steps are lost unseen in a windless tunnel. for example, i’m going to not only learn to play the electric guitar, but purchase a perfect one (which means get a job first) after conducting extensive research, and in addition somehow amass knowledge of effects and equipment to not only acquire the right ones but solder together my own fuzz pedal. they call these “delusions of grandeur” (for i don’t even know what “oscillation” and “delay” ARE) and i have them on a half-hourly basis. they shuffle in and out, an endless parade with horns and confetti and shame and are quickly forgotten. “what do you do all day?” a derisive sneer. when i say “nothing” it’s not the whine of affected boredom; it’s 100% true.

edited to add: i’ve been looking through his website. yay for unabashed adoration!