Hey — and fall goes by! Winter gets cold but not so cold. Where I live a main topic of conversation tends toward how warm this winter has been, but how next week will be much colder, and and how the warmth, nice as it is, is a harbinger of some bigger, scarier thing, usually expressed as, it’s nice out and we’re fucked.
I spent a couple weeks listening to the audiobook of Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, which I think was best listened to, because it was as if she was sitting next to me on the couch and talking. I think I connected with it in ways I was expecting, and didn’t connect with it in ways I was not expecting. Next, a quick jaunt with Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man. Then, Oculus by Sally Wen Mao, the majority of which I read at a Thai restaurant waiting for two friends to arrive — both came late, but that was okay, because it gave me more time to read. Afterwards, we took digital camera pictures against the fence tucked around the restaurant. The light coming from the evening and the buildings bleached everything gold.
Then, a difficult period for reading, which means comics: Yokai Cats by PANDANIA, which was given to me last year for my birthday by my friend Y, who shares the same birthday as me, and which I read exclusively in bed. Winter break - J drives me to the station and I squeeze onto the train home with 3 minutes to spare and more sweaty than I have ever been in my life: Briefly, A Delicious Life, which is my first novel in a while, and I even enjoy it, so I milk it as a conversation starter with everyone in my book club for two weeks. Then, A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s an Alcoholic by Mariko Kikuchi, X-Gender (Volumes 1 and 2) by Asuka Miyazaki. Followed by some volumes of Berserk by Kentaro Miura, described as foundational reading by J, the rest of which I am still slowly working through and enjoying a lot. The art is maybe some of the most consistently involved art I have seen in comics. Then, Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto, which I had read once, but this time tried to read in French, and that was okay. Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression by Teresa Wong, which I liked alright, and In by Will McPhail, which I really liked, and which got me started on reading comics on Libby, which feels so convenient it seems illegal.
On multiple subway rides, Civil Service by Claire Schwartz, which I enjoyed but occasionally had trouble with. Some poems I really liked, including Lecture on Loneliness. Shortly after, my roommate C, whose usual fare is longform nonfiction, read it, found it interesting, and then not.
Was foggy today — saw a ton of birds on power lines while biking through an intersection. Felt like something to note.