having fun is cool: voided

or why I fell off but now am back on

Sep 16, 2024

listen, hey, listen, it happens to everyone: you go through a time where in the after work hours you can’t form a sentence because you used up all your words all day long,. and anytime you are invited to a social event, you have to say no because you know you will be an absolute flop of a gal in a room with anyone but yourself.

thus was my august.

but august is dead, long live september, baby !!

we are rounding into weather that makes me feel like a person again, someone who can appreciate a breeze again and feel something on the back of the bus watching the sun set orange and hot down over the piles of trash at the “recycling facility” at the end of washington avenue.

september makes me feel like i’ve been sweating caterpillar goo shut up in a chrysalis all summer long, and now I’ve reformed, limp wet wings popping out of a shell. my liquid stage is over, and it turns out that the cells that held my future form were in me the whole time.

talk about poetique of bug.

in conclusion, let’s get to the good stuff.

these two images represent all that I hope this missive feels like when you read it.

BOOK CIRCLE:

Blindness, Jose Saramago - I don’t often get into speculative fiction, but this one got me. the prose was straightforward, the plot moved, and the characters were de-vel-oped. what else could a girlie possibly want !! a sudden blindness pandemio takes over and it turns out humanity was always an angel dancing on the head of a pin (is the best synopsis I could possibly write).

Crush, Richard Siken - this man came to Oberlin and I have been slowly reading his work for 10 years, but I finally finished reading this collection. I need to read it again because the poems are thique. they are begging to be dug back into with a metaphorical mellon baller. can’t wait to revisit this one in a future bath.

Scaffolding, Lauren Elkin - I randomly requested this arc from netgalley (thanks netgalley and fsg) and at first I didn’t love, but after the first third the sentences seemed to get themselves together, and then I was down and tore right through her. desire, france, lacan, horniness. again, I don’t think I could write a better synopsis than that.

MOVIE POINT: La Haine, 1996.

ACAB but make it international. do you remember the love interest from Amelie? he directed this banger of a movie, starring vincent cassel. teens in France in the 1990s who are pissed because cops are horrible and beating their friends, so now the teens are beating back. it was simply a stunner.

GOOP DUO:

Skin1004 Sunscreen - what I like about this: it’s hydrating, it rubs in with no white cast (but also I’m white so take my rec with that knowledge) (but also it is a chemical sunscreen and it doesn’t have tinosorb m which is a filter in k-beauty sunscreens that can cause a white cast so I think you should be good), it doesn’t break me out, huuuuuge plus for my adult acne, and it makes my skin PLUMP.

Beauty of Joseon Gel - I have been on the hunt for another gel moisturizer to use with my tretinoin/clindamycin/spironolactone at night that is hydrating but not clogging, so I’m trying this guy out and so far so good. it feels cooling and like it leaves my skin not sticky. I’m not sure it will be moisturizing enough on its own in cooler dryer months, but I think if I pair it with snail goo and some other essences it could all work out for me.

up next: HaruHaru Wonder Sunscreen - I’ll let you know when I know!

MEME GALLERY: take from this what feels most pertinent to you in this exact moment