march notes
camping, media, slugs
After setting the intention for nearly five years, I finally went camping this month. Just one night near Point Reyes, for my friend Chyna’s birthday. I used the same tent that I slept in at Girl Scout camp when I was ten. It felt just as enormous as it did during those nights I shared with girls I don’t really speak to anymore, enormous because this time I slept there alone. It rained at some point in the early morning, so I woke up to sweet dew on my tent and soaked-through sneakers.
Driving to Olema with no cell service, I was struck by the beauty of California – the verdant hills, the sheep and goats. I feel so lucky that I get to experience Awe, that the beauty of the natural world, a delicious meal, and the funny things my friends say still have the power to move me. Awe is a very human emotion. How inhuman is it to look at something that should bring about humbling awe and think instead of how you might monetize or optimize the situation? (something something about AI slop something something about defunding national parks and all the rest of it)
Sometimes when I talk about loving this part of California it feels like stolen valor: I am not from the rolling hills, but ten-lane freeways. I am from endless-strip-mall California, church-in-a-business-park California, policed suburbs and a Yogurtland parking lot. Even the aforementioned Girl Scout trips took place in fenced parks or the grassy backyard of an event center. All this to say, I had a very indoor childhood. So when I do anything outdoorsy such as camping, I do so from an outside perspective, a bit of granola cosplay. But just because I grew up as an indoor sort of person doesn’t mean I have to stay that way forever.
During our camping trip we plunged into the freezing cold bay. As I first waded into the water, my feet throbbed, but I still eventually forced myself to run in and dip my hair under the surface, shrieking in equal parts shock and delight. Sometimes I feel that the project of my adult life is to say yes, to push through my uptight energy and be the sort of person I fantasized about becoming when I was younger.
general notes from March:
I have not hated a song as much as I hate “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone maybe in my entire life. A chill runs down my spine when I hear it, which is during every other car commercial. If I was a superhero, hearing this song would drain my body of its powers and life force.
I can’t stop watching clips of live-action Stitch wreaking havoc with a huge smile on my face. Sometimes I feel like a full-blown Facebook mom, laughing my ass off at Minions clips, crying at the movie theater and commenting on commercials. Maybe this is what it means to have a tender heart.
Went to The Cheesecake Factory for the first time since my 19th birthday to eat cheesecake on the rooftop patio. It was a transcendent experience until it began to rain on our Godiva chocolate slice. Only to lead into another transcendent experience: running with friends through the rain :)
I watched Adolescence on Netflix this month. I thought it was generally quite good, though maybe not as flawless as critics are making it out to be. This substack post really articulated what exactly missed the mark for me. I must note that while searching for this post after reading it a few days ago, I had to wade through countless other think pieces arguing the show was woke propaganda, just another entry into the war against white boys (yawn).
The character Katie is murdered in retaliation for her bullying a classmate; specifically, she calls her classmate an incel after rejecting his advances. I’m open to things being more complicated than this, but in my experience, it is usually incels themselves that are likely to actually claim this language. An innocuous romantic rejection free of any malice, much less bullying is oftentimes enough of an inciting incident for this sort of violence. That’s the most chilling part. But perhaps I’m doing something that I loathe to see in a letterboxd review: judging storytelling based on what moral message I think it should be responsible for depicting. Although this might tie into my larger critique of the show – the message is the story.
Of course, any show that attempts to reveal the depth and danger of incel rhetoric and online radicalization is probably a net good for society, especially if it is the kind of show that my 65-year-old parents and aunt are watching and discussing, which I heard them doing at my cousin’s birthday party last week. My little cousin who is a wonderful, hilarious young boy growing up with the internet.
A few days ago, I opened all the locked documents on my laptop (fanfiction I wrote in middle school) for inspiration. I was shocked by the word counts. Full novellas that I wrote in the dark. I was the most prolific and confident version of myself at age fourteen. Chasing down this former productivity, I recently bought a digital word processor off of Facebook marketplace. I’ve been struggling to write lately because the writing machine and the doom machine are the same machine. The woman who sold it to me shared that she had also acquired the typewriter while trying to write a novel. “I found out the tool wasn’t the problem.”
Just yesterday on a hike I shrieked at the sight of each banana slug I came across along the trail. I don’t encounter slugs often, so I forget how badly they scare me. It reminded me of a horrible fear from my childhood that I would accidentally step on a snail after it rained, and another horrible fear that I would accidentally eat a slug. Every time I stepped over a slug yesterday, I imagined involuntarily that it had accidentally slithered into my mouth, filling my cheeks with its plump slimy body. Anyone else?
thank you for reading <3 i realized that i have been writing silly blog posts for over two years now and feel so grateful!
happy trans day of visibility and shame on spineless institutions failing everyone
recommended reading
on incels:
Shy Boys documentary
Season 4 of Degrassi: The Next Generation (I’m being so serious)
generally:
Yes Man (2008) if the project of your adult life is to say yes, be earnest and love it
“Does anyone have the right to sex?” by Amia Srinivasan, which starts off being about incels but ends up in some interesting places. The essay, along with others, comprises The Right to Sex, which is a pretty good read.
The perfect email notification to see b4 sleepsies