January, Recapped

January was a tough month to reflect on. The back end of the month could be summarized by my screaming into a pillow. The front half feels almost severed off completely.

This was also a month where I read more than I…ever have? Sixteen books! For just one month!

My partner and I went to book events, I connected with people in new ways, I read, I got excited about things to come—all of it smashed up between Big and Difficult Feelings about the world, like a shitty, brilliant sandwich.

I loved this month. Despite everything. Or, not despite; I just loved it.

I recently read a poem by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. It’s called Praise House: The New Economy. I was moved by it, and have found myself thinking of it every time that I question my exhaustion, my heartbreak, the desire to give up.

The rosemary bush blooming

its unabashed blue. Also dumplings

filled with steam and soup

so my mouth fills and I bubble

over with laughter. Little things.

People kissing on bicycles.

Being able to walk up the stairs

and run back down.

The poem continues on like this, stating both concrete and abstract reasons to praise being alive, during a time when the economy thrives on our despair. How rebellious, then, to cherish the things which make life worth living.

I’m not trying to simplify anything. Not trying to reduce, either. I have bad days, where I forget about things like dumplings and books and red wine, and it feels impossible to peel myself out of bed and force myself into the world. But I am reminding myself, and reminding you, that it’s important we try. To have the experiences and remember them.

Reading:

It was difficult for me to choose only a few books to single out this month.

When pressed, I realized my two “standout” books this month were both ones I loved, though originally did not. Let me explain.

Good Girl by Aria Aber is a book which called to me, immediately. I love books about women during a strange time in their lives. I can recall my own; that weird liminal space I existed in until I was shoved out, never to be allowed to return. It’s the girlhood version of Neverland.

Reading books like these is the closest that I get to having a crumb of it back; my girlhood, the version of myself who lived through it.

In Good Girl, a young Afghan woman named Nila is living in Berlin, slipping in and out of the underground nightclub scene. She has recently lost her mother and doesn’t know how to cope, nor does she feel she can turn to her father. And so she turns to strangers and drugs, pushing up against the boundaries of her own limits.

There is shame, too. In a post- 9/11 world, Nila doesn’t feel comfortable telling the people in her life that she is Afghan. Instead she lies—tells them she is Greek, maybe. A little bit of anything else.

When she meets Marlowe, a much older man, (and an American writer) she tells him that she thinks he is going to change her life. She isn’t wrong, but it isn’t because he is that important.

No, Good Girl is about discovering you are the most important person in your life.
It’s brilliantly executed, with prose which often felt like a dagger to the heart. Sharp, poetic daggers.

But, truth be told, I DNFd it the first time that I picked it up. It was finals week, I was cranky, I shouldn’t have been trying to read anything. It was the right book but the wrong time.

I’m glad something in my gut compelled me to try again, as it is now an all-time favorite.

Playworld by Adam Ross is another book that I thought I had all figured out, but didn’t.

It’s a coming-of-age story, set in New York during the 80’s, around a 14 year-old boy named Griffin. We spend exactly a year with him.

This was another case of the right book finding me at the wrong time. The first time I picked it up, I was…bored? And the pacing is slow. I didn’t get that wrong!

But it’s slow because it’s careful. Each chunk of time we spend with Griffin, whether it’s wrestling season or Christmas break, is handed to the reader bit by bit. Slowly. Deliberately.

In this way, you feel every life event with him: both the experience and the impact.

Griffin is young, but he is enamored with the world of adulthood. He is welcomed in by every central adult in his life because they, in one way or another, are taking advantage of him.

It’s difficult to see him accumulate things which will someday flip into fully-realized trauma. I say this as an adult who experienced many things before I was ready, and didn’t understand the ramifications of this until it was hurting me much later in life.

We pay for our crimes, certainly, but we pay for what others have done to us, more so.

Watching:

Of everything that I watched this month, the two things which stand out are both re-watches.

I binged the show One Day the day after New Years Day. I had the day off, and spent all of it with my partner. We got coffee, went on a long walk, made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. And then I watched the entirety of this perfect, heart-breaking show, and I sobbed. I already want to watch it a third time.

I also watched Little Women (You know the edition I’m talking about). About ten minutes in my partner, who had been making dinner, ended up sitting next to me and we watched it together. A perfect movie, which has somehow managed to remain relevant with every generation, every retelling. It’ll outlive us all.

Listening:

The last week of January, I unexpectedly had a Friday and Saturday off. As someone who is both in school and working in the service industry, I normally only have slices of time to myself here and there. Never a whole weekend. Especially not a Saturday. It felt holy.

And so, Saturday morning: after drinking coffee and finishing the book I was reading, I worked on my own novel, while listening to a record I love very much.

It felt both like a slice of my life returned to me, as well as a glimpse of the future—one in which I might always have Saturdays off.

Recommending:

We Do Not Part is the newest release from Han Kang, a true legend. A beautiful copy of it sits on my shelf, and I’d love to return here this time next month to sing its praises.

A novel about dreams, time, unbreakable bonds, and reckoning with history. It sounds gorgeous.

I hope you’re all out there taking care of yourself, and that the good days, however impossible it may seem, outshine the bad ones. Until next time!