[personal] reading, lately
Jan. 7th, 2024 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
virgomoonthis has to be expanded properly later, as i keep saying of everything ever.
all i read this past year feels like the autism book, and earthsea. it may very well be thus. the truth is i read a lot of poetry, again, and a lot of text known as "children's books" broadly, and told anyone who would listen willingly or otherwise that both are the same thing. i annoyed the lead instructor on a course i was doing on picture books with this thesis of mine so much and so pompously that he refused to give me the course completion certificate.
but i digress.
the aftermath of a relationship is so fucking strange. i thought i'd had all the heteronormative fuckers right in their narrow-minded shitholes when i fell in love with anubhab and he quickly out of love with me - because hey, we're two normal people and we're going to be friends after this. because where else does the closeness go?
i underestimate other people's normalcy. or overestimate it, because he is too busy tending to his lover's wounds to even be a proper friend to me. life goes on, we can't go on pecking at our own wounds, we find others, but i feel so stuck and so small and dreamwidth is a convenient place to talk about the things we read and how we read them.
a. we read things as convenient to us.
very easy to blame him and "hold him accountable" and shake my fist at him and get offended at every little digression of what he said he would be like to me. startling to see how traditionally masculine, startling even more so to realise he will start a fight with me at this point, tell me i'm ascribing attribute to a trait which can be genderless. "not wanting to talk first/talk at all is not masculine, it's just a trait" well who's doing the emotional labour of carrying us both through uncharted territory then? why is it always the woman finding shore, you following along? getting grievously angry at her for purported wrongs.
b. we read things as they happen, as they come along.
three days after my grandmother dies i am finishing "tales of earthsea" and marveling all over again at ursula le guin's prose, how she writes people and things that happen to people or people that happen to things, and he texts me telling me how his lover has escaped death all over again - something he'd told me an year earlier again, how her weak heart worries him, how she keeps escaping death again and again. good for her, she's tough as bones. me, i'm finishing reading "tales of earthsea" and it's been three days since my grandmother has died. i was in a different city the day she dies, all tensile strength one moment, and sagging skin the next. i hear my uncle kept calling her name for 5 minutes, while holding her in his arms. i hear my sister watched the exact moment death came, watched closely like a hawk. his lover has escaped death and he asks me how i am and i tell him what has happened. he asks me if i want space, something he's been taking of his own accord anyway, i tell him i don't understand and that we can just continue our tango as it is, thank you. it continues. he only texts me next to revive our shared apple sub.
c. we read things as we want them to be.
people accuse me of lying when i say my grammar is horrible, but what i want to tell them in fact is that i wield language organically. it means whatever i want it to mean and if my force of emotion does not convey the exact semantics of what i'm trying to say, well, too bad. this is why i think i can't ever be an editor, though that remains the ultimate aim. a few days ago catrin and i surreptitiously bond in public over disliking the prose of an author - to me it's not functional and to her it is. for me, functional's always been about what works, and what works will work well - if you have conveyed something to me you're already exceptional. my brain shuts down in the face of boring prose. i forget that for the world what "works" is merely that - it is chugging along. that is not enough in itself. there needs to be something more.
too often just because something has worked i have felt a symphony in it. if the colour of the light bulb annoys me - it's not functional. if the things on my desk are not in the same chaotic order i left them in - it's not functional. if the pencil box i've been using for the past couple of months with the smooth and cool edges goes missing - it's not functional. these things defy logic - they don't have to be dysfunctional, but because they do not fit my internal logic and do not agree with me, they're not functional.
it does not matter to me what people say - if i feel it is right, it's functional. the first person to tell me they suspect i could be autistic is him, and i suspect the only reason he tells me this is because of how inconvenienced everyone was when i just would not take the hint. when i just would not let him and his lover be because he had not said anything verbally, not indicated that he did not want me any longer. so despite feeling like a cat on a hot tin roof i kept going on as before. i have never had difficulty shearing sheep, cutting corners, leaving abruptly - when something does not agree with me, does not feel "functional". when a person feels so startlingly "right" and your brain goes silent around them - what choice do you have but believe in the functional?
d. we read things to read things
i read linda gregg, frank o' hara, cameron awkward-rich, anne carson, so many, many more, throughout the year, obsessively, again and again. i listen to lover's spit by broken social scene. i watch documentaries and wes anderson movies and read ursula le guin and countless "children's books". i read the top of the himalayas and go down to the arabian sea, i see jinnah's portrait and the heart of many tombs. i read ancient stones, paleolithic remains. i read about the future - ai and algorithms and black boxes. i read lyrics. i read you. i read your tweets and the tweets you like and the books we talked of and the poems and the songs with the music and the images and the lyrics. i read football, i read sport. i read it all. i read prapti's words, i read pinya's. i read my sister's depression notes, i read hospital reports. i read a breathtaking article on florida flooding - i read about parataxis, what it means. i read and read and read.
one might read to think they are constructing something, or read to take something apart, but the truth is we just go on reading to read, reading to read. there's no end to it.
you brush death - so what? you go on reading. you have your heart broken again and again and again - no matter. we read. you have people echo words back at you about self-respect and honour and gender - it's all a dance. we just go on waltzing, go on reading.
the world's an open palm that can destroy you in seconds, render you afloat on unknown seas. what you choose to see and do and read - what saves you - is yours and yours alone.
for my part i often read yotsuba or about otters. in a 1990s national geographic essay, a scientist categorically wrote "no one, man or beast, can resist the charm of an otter".
we read to read, but our eyes rest on what we want to read. for my part, the small of a child's head. the curved hand. the fresh green thing at the pith of things.
all i read this past year feels like the autism book, and earthsea. it may very well be thus. the truth is i read a lot of poetry, again, and a lot of text known as "children's books" broadly, and told anyone who would listen willingly or otherwise that both are the same thing. i annoyed the lead instructor on a course i was doing on picture books with this thesis of mine so much and so pompously that he refused to give me the course completion certificate.
but i digress.
the aftermath of a relationship is so fucking strange. i thought i'd had all the heteronormative fuckers right in their narrow-minded shitholes when i fell in love with anubhab and he quickly out of love with me - because hey, we're two normal people and we're going to be friends after this. because where else does the closeness go?
i underestimate other people's normalcy. or overestimate it, because he is too busy tending to his lover's wounds to even be a proper friend to me. life goes on, we can't go on pecking at our own wounds, we find others, but i feel so stuck and so small and dreamwidth is a convenient place to talk about the things we read and how we read them.
a. we read things as convenient to us.
very easy to blame him and "hold him accountable" and shake my fist at him and get offended at every little digression of what he said he would be like to me. startling to see how traditionally masculine, startling even more so to realise he will start a fight with me at this point, tell me i'm ascribing attribute to a trait which can be genderless. "not wanting to talk first/talk at all is not masculine, it's just a trait" well who's doing the emotional labour of carrying us both through uncharted territory then? why is it always the woman finding shore, you following along? getting grievously angry at her for purported wrongs.
b. we read things as they happen, as they come along.
three days after my grandmother dies i am finishing "tales of earthsea" and marveling all over again at ursula le guin's prose, how she writes people and things that happen to people or people that happen to things, and he texts me telling me how his lover has escaped death all over again - something he'd told me an year earlier again, how her weak heart worries him, how she keeps escaping death again and again. good for her, she's tough as bones. me, i'm finishing reading "tales of earthsea" and it's been three days since my grandmother has died. i was in a different city the day she dies, all tensile strength one moment, and sagging skin the next. i hear my uncle kept calling her name for 5 minutes, while holding her in his arms. i hear my sister watched the exact moment death came, watched closely like a hawk. his lover has escaped death and he asks me how i am and i tell him what has happened. he asks me if i want space, something he's been taking of his own accord anyway, i tell him i don't understand and that we can just continue our tango as it is, thank you. it continues. he only texts me next to revive our shared apple sub.
c. we read things as we want them to be.
people accuse me of lying when i say my grammar is horrible, but what i want to tell them in fact is that i wield language organically. it means whatever i want it to mean and if my force of emotion does not convey the exact semantics of what i'm trying to say, well, too bad. this is why i think i can't ever be an editor, though that remains the ultimate aim. a few days ago catrin and i surreptitiously bond in public over disliking the prose of an author - to me it's not functional and to her it is. for me, functional's always been about what works, and what works will work well - if you have conveyed something to me you're already exceptional. my brain shuts down in the face of boring prose. i forget that for the world what "works" is merely that - it is chugging along. that is not enough in itself. there needs to be something more.
too often just because something has worked i have felt a symphony in it. if the colour of the light bulb annoys me - it's not functional. if the things on my desk are not in the same chaotic order i left them in - it's not functional. if the pencil box i've been using for the past couple of months with the smooth and cool edges goes missing - it's not functional. these things defy logic - they don't have to be dysfunctional, but because they do not fit my internal logic and do not agree with me, they're not functional.
it does not matter to me what people say - if i feel it is right, it's functional. the first person to tell me they suspect i could be autistic is him, and i suspect the only reason he tells me this is because of how inconvenienced everyone was when i just would not take the hint. when i just would not let him and his lover be because he had not said anything verbally, not indicated that he did not want me any longer. so despite feeling like a cat on a hot tin roof i kept going on as before. i have never had difficulty shearing sheep, cutting corners, leaving abruptly - when something does not agree with me, does not feel "functional". when a person feels so startlingly "right" and your brain goes silent around them - what choice do you have but believe in the functional?
d. we read things to read things
i read linda gregg, frank o' hara, cameron awkward-rich, anne carson, so many, many more, throughout the year, obsessively, again and again. i listen to lover's spit by broken social scene. i watch documentaries and wes anderson movies and read ursula le guin and countless "children's books". i read the top of the himalayas and go down to the arabian sea, i see jinnah's portrait and the heart of many tombs. i read ancient stones, paleolithic remains. i read about the future - ai and algorithms and black boxes. i read lyrics. i read you. i read your tweets and the tweets you like and the books we talked of and the poems and the songs with the music and the images and the lyrics. i read football, i read sport. i read it all. i read prapti's words, i read pinya's. i read my sister's depression notes, i read hospital reports. i read a breathtaking article on florida flooding - i read about parataxis, what it means. i read and read and read.
one might read to think they are constructing something, or read to take something apart, but the truth is we just go on reading to read, reading to read. there's no end to it.
you brush death - so what? you go on reading. you have your heart broken again and again and again - no matter. we read. you have people echo words back at you about self-respect and honour and gender - it's all a dance. we just go on waltzing, go on reading.
the world's an open palm that can destroy you in seconds, render you afloat on unknown seas. what you choose to see and do and read - what saves you - is yours and yours alone.
for my part i often read yotsuba or about otters. in a 1990s national geographic essay, a scientist categorically wrote "no one, man or beast, can resist the charm of an otter".
we read to read, but our eyes rest on what we want to read. for my part, the small of a child's head. the curved hand. the fresh green thing at the pith of things.
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Date: 2024-01-06 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-08 03:17 am (UTC)