What I Learned This Weekend: There Is Either Not Enough Time, or I am Only Wasteful

 Friday, I talked to MW but not the attorney on Dad's case.

I came home around three, loafed a bit, and then found the energy to run out to Payless. I got back home around 7 pm.

The rest of the night I spent downloading music and working on "Love Stinks." That manuscript is such a mess - missing pieces and a shaky memory. Which is why I go up early on Saturday.

Saturday, I did my laundry, did more work on "Love Stinks", went to see a movie, and bought some books.

I went to see Oppenheimer. A quick review: a bit too long, very much a Christopher Novlan in that it defies genre (biopic, thriller, whodunit, psychological study, morality play - they all come to mind as descriptions), and Robert Downey, Jr is brilliant.

The closest used bookstore is moving after 47 years. I spent $26 and saved $28, there being a 50% off sale. I still have too many books to read!

I spent the rest of the night working on "Love Stinks", and a little on this blog.

Today, I woke up late. I left for church at 8:30 and was back a little after 1 pm. I tarted up my leftovers, ate an early dinner, took a walk to MClure's - it being too cold for a longer journey, and worked on "Love Stinks" and my email.

Speaking of too many books and too little time for reading:

A Year in Reading: 2023

The best books of 2023

Bookforum Fall 2023

One thing I did take the time to read was Kedrick Nettleton's Let Me Take Him from Good River Review; Issue 6. This one sentence hit home for me:

Things don’t fit the way they should, and sometimes all you can do is point it out.

I skimmed ‘Spirits dancing in private rapture’: the best descriptions of joy in literature because it is short and it was a joyful read.

I read most of Jean Cocteau, The Art of Fiction No. 34, but for me, this was the prize:

COCTEAU

Without resistance you can do nothing.  

Judge finds primary law unconstitutional; grants Rust injunction by Whitney Downard left me wondering how long before Indiana goes to a system like Alaska or California - drop primaries as such and have everyone run at the same time. My answer: not so long as the Republicans control Indiana.

“‘Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision,’” the court ruling from Marion County Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Dietrick reads, quoting Indiana-raised attorney and former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. “It is with this purpose in mind that the court renders its decision.”

John Rust, running to succeed U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, currently can’t appear on the Republican ballot because of a law prohibiting candidates whose last two primary votes don’t match the party they wish to represent.  

Rust sued to gain access to the Republican ballot, saying the measure barred the vast majority of Hoosiers from running under their preferred party — an argument that seemed to sway the court.

“This is a victory for the 80% who are banned from running for political office, and I know they don’t like me saying that, but it’s the absolute truth,” Rust told the Indiana Capital Chronicle, citing a Pew Research Center analysis of Indiana’s party affiliation. 

I tried reading Why Dostoevsky Loved Humanity and Hated the Jews only to get a blank white screen. I got the same thing when I was still trying to read The Scotsman. I suspect my monitoring software is keeping me from the essay. So much for the First Amendment.

From Pitchfork, when Rod Stewart was not a bozo: Every Picture Tells a Story.

And leaves me here at 9:47 pm

I quickly read Get Gone by Charlie Napolitano from The Rumpus. The purpose was to compare it to my own writing. Written in the first-person, its theme is gender identity, confessional, and characters beyond my ken at this point in my life. Where I find money/class more of an identity than gender, and I do not handle first-person all that well. Much food for thought was brought on by this very good story.

Bedtime is coming on, and another week of work lying ahead as I look at “Speculative Fiction as a Survival Tool:” A Conversation with C Pam Zhang, also from The Rumpus.

I would also say that, I think, the definition of speculative fiction is changing every day, as our reality becomes increasingly unreal. In the world of Land of Milk and Honey, food is replaced with this monk soybean protein. In the real world, we have a meal replacement called Soylent, based off a product in an old science-fiction movie. In the book I wrote about smog, and this summer there was a cloud of wildfire smog covering New York.

I also think of speculative fiction as a survival tool. It gives us the ability to look at the real world and ask, “What if?” We live in a climate of information overload. Speculative fiction allows our imaginations to stay limber and step out of the suffocating doom scroll of a news cycle, where the future can feel preordained that it will only become worse.

I do believe I have found another book that I lack the time to read. 

An email still needs to go out, and I may feel I have accomplished something this weekend.

A song I heard from Philly:

sch 10:09 PM