Happy Saturday, everyone. Today is the second-to-last day of me vaping, I’m on my last pod so everything should work out perfectly. Starting with the next work week, I will be nicotine free forever! Scout’s honor. Also, it’s Fourth of July week, queue the Sufjan. I think I’ll head home for a bit sometime this week, hopefully some of my friends are free and don’t have plans already. I’d really like to grill up some dogs and swim or something, maybe go out to Bankhead and stargaze, go watch some fireworks and go to the fair at the big park, who knows.
Today was a really, really good day. Some friends were having an event of sorts, so I headed over to the apartment at like 11:00. We just hung out all day, drew some pictures with chalk, took a really long trip to Sonic, played with a kitten, capped it off with a movie. It was really nice, I haven’t spent that much time with people in one day in months.
I don’t have a lot to say about the day, though. It was just fun and when you’re having fun, you’re not really recording every detail of the day so you can repeat it on your blog. The movie we watched was Challengers, though, which was incredible. Horny and petty and so-so good. There’s a shitty review of it on my Letterboxd if that interests you.
Well, that’s all folks. Probably won’t write tomorrow, dependent on happenings, so next time you hear from me, I will be deep within withdrawals. Forgive me in advance if my mood is sour.
Night Update: I made a list of the most heartbreaking movies I’ve seen and have been working through them over the past week, y’know, leaning into the punch. Tonight was “Her”, which has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in theaters with a high school ex. It’s a decade old this year, which means I’m a decade older than I was when I went out on that date. It’s a really strange feeling, watching it now. When I first watched it and the dozen or so times since, it was sort of steady as just a really great movie about healing from a breakup with a good sci-fi bent and a beautiful soundtrack and set design and costume design. It was lots of vibes, I guess, plus the general gut-punch of a plot that adolescent me was addicted to. This time, it’s different, I guess. And it’s strange to feel that difference, to feel me differently. Because if the way I digest and contextualize art has changed, it means I’ve changed. I know I’ve changed over the past decade, over the past five years since I last saw this movie, but I haven’t really felt those differences. Imagine Narcissus left the water and came back five years later- he would know he’s older, but only when he saw the wrinkles under his eyes and the greying hair would he feel that difference. I guess this movie was my water, my mirror, today. Watching this movie, I didn’t feel the same heartstrings getting pulled as I used, certain lines of dialogue hurt more, certain scenes and arguments and situations had new parallels within my own life. I felt my age, my past, the ache of old hurts and the sharp pain of new ones. I’ve got new feelings about this movie now, y’know, took new things from it. It’s a breakup movie sure, but that’s just window-dressing. It’s a movie about compatibility, about change, about ennui, about love, about moving on. I mean, it’s always been those things, but those are the themes that resonate now. And that’s the great thing about art, just like anything else in life, it doesn’t exist independent of you. Engaging with it means entangling yourself with it, the thing viewed isn’t separate from the thing viewing. And that’s what I feel now, that the thing viewed hasn’t changed, but the thing viewing has. It’s just a strange feeling, to feel the changes within yourself, to feel the movement of new organs, the feelings and hurts you didn’t know you had. Now you know what they are, how they feel, the chambers and valves within the heart where they lie. It almost feels like I’m running, and I’m tripping, but instead of my ankle hurting, it’s some new place, a place I didn’t know was a part of me. It’s a familiar pain, but it hurts somewhere new. I know things have happened to me, but when I felt that first shock to these fledgling nerve-endings, I just felt it, I felt how my definitions have changed. “Don’t you know you can’t go home again?”
jeez, louise 