Un-Quitting

i've been adding some things back to my life and it's mostly art and love and oceans

It is now time to add things back in life, I have decided. So far I’ve been adding books, plays, and museums. Which is a great start and I am very lucky. I am currently reading The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Figuring by Maria Popova, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald. I’m resisting the urge to pick up World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil because that is a lot of worlds to keep track of. I wonder how many books I’ll read when I’m actually retired.

Speaking of retired, I recently listened to a Ezra Klein podcast called The Case Against Loving Your Job (highly recommend) and there was a part where they were talking about the word retired vs. unemployed. “People” don’t like when you are unemployed. It’s seen as lazy. But retired? That is okay. The part about words and their meaning really struck me. I’ve been thinking about that with the whole “beginning of the year” "& “January 1” thing. The truth is that my favorite day of the year is January 1st because I love that the world allows me a restart. But I’ve realized that I rely heavily on the world’s allowances for me. I’ve been trying this new thing where I think back to a feeling and I try to feel it again, in a different place. For example, the air smelled really nice on the first day of this year—let me know if you thought that too. And the birds sounded more lovely and the rain wasn’t a nuisance. But when I get back to the Willamette valley this weekend I am probably going to curse the rain as my car’s windshield wipers frantically try to do their job. So I’m going to try to take that first feeling and put it in the future feeling. Ah, nice rain, I love you.

Ok, back to what I’ve been un-quitting. While in New York City I was able to see an exhibit of Joseph E. Yoakum’s work. Pictured below:

All of his drawings of mountains and rivers and swirl sloped caves made me long for the West Coast, which is the next thing I’m going to add back into my life. Rain, rain, I miss you (I’m telling myself).

I also recently got to see the Laurie Anderson exhibit in DC. She is really fucking cool, guys. She plays the violin at concerts while wearing ice-blocks on her feet and waits until they’re melted. Then the concert is done. Really cool. It made me want to quit social media so that my brain gets even weirder, maybe like Laurie’s, and I start making funky things with all of that time. I want to create instead of share. It’s a hard feeling to chase and reach, but I’m getting there. Maybe more on that another time.

I also went to see a musical. It was about a Black queer man writing a play with disapproving family members. So it was a play about a play. And it was very good. It’s called A Strange Loop and you can read more about it here: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/11/1061797615/pulitzer-prize-musical-a-strange-loop-broadway.

Art really saves us. Thank you art, thank you rain. (Rain can save too, for example the vegetables and trees and a Little Spider if a Big Spider is attacking the Little Spider but the rain comes and it, just by chance, washes the big spider away.) Thank you Laurie Anderson and Joseph E. Yoakum and playwright Michael R. Jackson and also Yebba for creating the album Dawn. Thank you to a lot of artists I don’t even know about yet.

Love,

Jo