092: play-by-play

THIS WEEK: a (bog standard) week in my life

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I couldn’t figure out what I consumed this week that I really wanted to write about so I did a straight up diary instead. Enjoy!

Monday, January 22

I had some friends over last night so I wake up with a slight headache. We drank lots of Lambrusco which felt inoffensive at the time, but my grogginess says different. I wake up early but I give myself quite a bit of time to get out of bed. I make myself tea (Yorkshire Gold w/ brown sugar and whole milk), watch a YouTube video, and read a short story from my current bed book, Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac. The story is interesting but I don’t find myself drawn in.

It is my first day back in classes but I don’t have class till 4:55. I head to campus at 9 anyway because I’m slightly behind on my reading for a class later in the week. I’m taking a class on (Michel) Foucault and (Gilles) Deleuze—their work, their friendship, their eventual falling out. I have ten more pages of Foucault’s “Theatrum Philosophicum” to read. It’s a review of two of Deleuze’s books but I haven’t read either of the books so I don’t really know what’s going on. Something about “the event” and “the phantasm.”

Finally, it’s time for class. It’s a history class, 20th Century History. I realize in the first ten minutes that I’m going to have to drop the class. Thankfully I suspected I’d want to and have a backup plan.

First day outfit (everyone loves this coat)

Tuesday, January 23

Today was supposed to be the day that I finished my Deleuze readings before class on Wednesday. But the class I’m planning on switching into is on Tuesdays at 2, and I want to sit in before I commit. I get some Deleuze in but not as much as I was hoping. I like the Deleuze I’ve read before but still he makes me dizzy.

My back up class is—wait for it—Gender, Race, and Finance in the Early Modern Atlantic. (What a mouthful!) It’s also a history course but seems a bit more rigorous than the other one. The early modern Atlantic is not my period but the readings look interesting and I like the professor’s vibe.

Wednesday, January 24

I still have to finish my readings before class. Thankfully, the last thing I have to read is a short interview between Deleuze and Foucault titled “Intellectuals and Power.” Foucault says, “theory is a toolbox.”¹ Deleuze says that Proust, “a pure intellectual,” understood his books to be “a pair of glasses directed to the outside world.”

Class starts at 3:45 and I get there 15 minutes early, but there’s already a ton of people. One of the professors, Andre, comes in at 3:43 and says we’ll get started when our second professor, Ann, arrives. We all sit there for ten minutes before Ann pops their head in and tells us that we’ve switched classrooms because so many people are enrolled in the course. We herd into the other room which feels more clinical than the first one and I start to feel sleepy. The class: Ann says that their two boyfriends are Freud and Foucault. Almost everyone in the class, including myself, says that they enrolled because they feel like they know how ubiquitous F&D are but don’t feel like they’ve read enough (if any). Andre says that reading these texts will feel like delirium and we should embrace that.

After class I go to the Angelika to see American Fiction (dir. Cord Jefferson) with a friend. A girl behind us in the concession line asks us why she can’t seem to buy tickets for the next showing of Origin (dir. Ava Duvernay) on the kiosk. I tell her maybe it’s sold out and she replies, with an arched brow, “in this area?”

About one minute into the movie, I wonder if it was a mistake to see this with a white friend. But I don’t linger on it too much. The movie is fine but kind of all over the place. Nobody’s laughing at the jokes I’m laughing at. The Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively plantation wedding joke goes largely unappreciated. I’m not sure when I start to get antsy—I’m kind of bored and wish something big would happen or the movie would end. Someone keeps clapping every time they laugh. The movie is really not that funny.

Thursday, January 25

Just schoolwork on the docket today. I stay at home because it’s raining. I was supposed to watch The Favourite (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) tonight with some friends but they cancelled because they’re sick. I spend time working on an application that’s due next week and then start my history reading. The first book we’re reading is New World Gold by Elvira Vilches, which is about how Spanish conquest in the Americas changed European notions of (monetary, social, cultural) value. The topic is interesting but I don’t find the writing to be engaging.

I’m supposed to have a Zoom meeting with my friend to finalize some things for an event we’re hosting at school next week. While I wait for her to log on, I watch the trailer for the new Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie, Tuesday (A24). It seems to be about a woman grieving the loss of her daughter. But there’s a huge, shape-shifting British bird (ominous) involved and I get confused. I am over these movies that don’t trust that stories can be emotionally effective without some kind of gimmick or complex conceit (I’m looking at you, Foe).

I finish my work and eat leftover butter noodles with spring mix and chicken for dinner. While I eat, I watch The Gilded Age, a show I’ve technically been watching for like two months. It took me an entire month to watch the first three episodes because I got caught up in Mad Men rewatch. But I managed to get through most of the season this week and watch the season one finale before I go to bed. It is somehow incredibly dramatic and incredibly anti-climatic at the same time, which sums up the entire show.²

I still feel wide awake so I figure I will watch something short on YouTube before trying to fall asleep. (I never said I was healthy!) I see that they’re re-releasing Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and I watch the trailer despite finding that movie to be excruciatingly boring. Before I know it, I am texting RAFTM (and

Boy Movies

CEO) Allison Picurro³ to ask if she wants to see it with me. Within minutes we’ve bought our tickets.

Friday, January 26

Contrary to my plans, I have to go to campus to print my readings before the weekend. The train is packed and a little too hot so I don’t feel like reading on my phone. Instead, I attempt to read the copy of The New Yorker the man across from me is reading. He’s reading the new Sofia Coppola profile⁴ and I catch a few sentences about not putting Black people in The Beguiled that make me roll my eyes. I start to feel dizzy so I stop trying to read.

I read on campus for an hour and then go to catch the train to meet RAFTM Terry Nguyen. On the train, I read Daisy Alioto’s interview with Kate Zambreno, and I send a few screenshots to RAFTM Jess Kasiama. In the interview, Daisy and Kate talk about how much they hate the term “art monster” and the work of being a full-time artist/writer. Kate mentions that no matter how much she works, she still lives paycheck to paycheck. It’s somehow both disheartening and fortifying.

I meet Terry at Molasses Books, a cafe-bookstore in B*shw*ck that turns into a bar at night (after 8 I guess because that’s when the laptop ban starts). We catch up on the books we’ve been reading and the writing we’ve been working on. I’m always in awe of how much writing she juggles and her sharp ideas. We have an early dinner (late lunch?) around 4:30 and then go our separate ways.

At home, I finish a chapter in New World Gold and journal for a bit. My roommate gets home and we chat for a bit, before I start getting ready for bed. It’s only 8 but I like to go to bed early and watch something until I get sleepy. Still, I don’t feel like I did enough “work” today so I take my computer into bed to work on my application, but I end up working on the draft of this newsletter instead. I start the second season of The Gilded Age and fall asleep halfway into the second episode.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Coming soon…a new segment on rewatching and rereading.

1. Ed. note from 3 days later — Foucault is NAWT the one who said theory is a toolbox, it was Deleuze and I didn’t double check: “Yes, that’s what a theory is, exactly like a tool box.”

2. I can’t even great gowns, beautiful gowns this show because the literal gowns are quite ugly

3. RAFTM = Reader and Friend to Me; props to Rachel Tashjian

4. I haven’t read this in full but maybe I will today