Good morning. Hello. How are you? #516
Jane had a lovely birthday, we have Simon Fuller to thank for Abba, Les Rallizes Dénudés, And Also the Trees, a rumination on hope.
Good morning, there, fair traveler. How goes the battle? Doing okay over here. Lesseeee… Jane’s birthday was lovely. I took a lot of photos. I haven’t looked at them yet. Guess I should do that. She liked my ugly flourless chocolate cake. She did not want to try the ice cream cake. This could have gone either way, this is why you gotta make two cakes for a picky eater, the first time they’re having a birthday as a human being who understands what’s going on.
Emma took apart Jane’s crib yesterday, so now she is sleeping in a big girl bed, and she says she’s going to start using the potty. She refused diapers last night. If she refuses diapers this morning, I will comply. And then I will be downstairs working, with her in no diaper, when the time for her morning poop comes. I will try and explain to her that she should let me know when she wants to use the potty. This may or may not work. WE’LL SEE. I’m down with trying this now, except for the part where it is during my work day. That is mildly stressful. But there’s no time like the present.
I still write her a letter every day on her birthday, so this one, being an even four years birthday, was an exciting one. It’ll make a nice book for her someday. It’s about 161 pages now, I assume I’ll do it till she’s 18, which would equate to just over 740 pages. Ha. Maybe I will get Lisa to edit that too. In the year 2035.
You've been very excited about your birthday for months, leading up to it. But so far today, you've been fairly subdued about it. I suppose that makes sense. We think these days are a big deal, but when we get to them, we realize that we feel mostly the same. I asked you if you felt older, you said no. I said that's okay, that's how I feel too, but it is still a big day. I asked if you remembered being born, and you said yes. I asked if you remembered being inside mommy, and you said yes, but you couldn't tell me anything about it. I asked if you remembered how you used to have red dragons on the ends of your Ajas, but you did not seem to remember that.
We had a nice breakfast, though.
Then we went downstairs and I stupidly didn't take the day off, so I had to do my wednesday morning meeting with my coworkers. You like that meeting, though. A big grid of faces on the computer screen, and I point to each one of them and say where they live: He lives in Brazil, she lives in Atlanta, he lives in New Jersey. They all sang happy birthday to you through the computer. It was pure cacophony but an identifiably cacophony of Happy Birthday, and you loved it. You said thank you.
It's been a good month, you've been mostly happy. A few tantrums here and there, one really rough day for poor mommy. You still shout sometimes when you want us to do something differently, but we are working on having you learn to just use your words and ask instead, and it is mostly working.
You finally worked up the gumption to go down the slide on your new playset and to climb up to the slide on the knobs, and now you are very, very into doing both. You're also into swinging. You get a good half hour of swinging in, at least, every day. That seems healthy.
I wish you could see friends more, but you saw a little two year-old girl this month and you had a nice time. You took the ball away from her at one point but we explained to you that was unkind so you gave the ball back, it was very heartwarming.
You have become a more picky eater over time it's really quite amazing. I was told kids did this but I didn't think it would happen to you because you ate so many exotic things back when you were younger. But I made a grilled cheese for you recently, which you used to love, and you wouldn't even touch it, nor do you like french fries. I mean, these aren't exactly the most healthy foods, so I guess it's fine, but it is surprising.
My sister wrote to me protesting my characterization of our family not having been big on birthdays. I should clarify that, unlike Emma, my sister and I did indeed have birthday parties when we were kids. Our family did a decent job at birthday parties as children. As we got older, the family became less birthday focused. But even those early birthdays were relatively modest affairs compared to certain quarters of the parental public in the lower 48 in the 21st century. But yes, we had birthday parties. I apologize for implying we did not. I misspoke myself.
TIL that we have Simon Fuller to thank for Abba’s reunion, though he is not, in the end, involved in the actual reunion. But he’s the one that got them all excited about the technological possibilites of doing a show using avatars, and he took Bjorn and Benny to some Michael Jackson hologram show in Las Vegas. ILM, who are producing the avatars for the show, insist they can do much better. Can you imagine going to Vegas, deciding to see a Michael Jackson avatar show, and there, next to you, are two of the most successful songwriters in the world? Would you even recognize them? They are handsome dudes! I hope I look that good when I’m in my 70’s.
I had so much work yesterday, and our fucking internet kept going out again, I just did not have a lot of free time. I did get my treadmill time in, though. That was good. It is really fucked up how much better you feel after physical exertion.
I also played my video game — it was Emma’s night for Jane bedtime. Finished up the main storyline, rebooted the universe, went to a new one, all very exciting. Now I’m on the Atlas Path, except I already did about 3/4 of the Atlas Path prior to this, so I should finish that up pretty quickly, so I can get my Heart of the Sun and build a Remembrance, but honestly, I don’t care about any of this nonsense, I just want to build a farm and adopt a town and a pet and chill out and be a gentleman farmer-slash-mayor in space. It’s gonna be great.
I still read every day about Joe Manchin and Kristen Synema and their idiocy and it upsets me greatly. Looks like this stupid bill is “coming together.” I am trying to maintain some sense of optimism. They killed family leave yesterday. People are upset, but I guess I never believed any of this was going to really happen. I’m still amazed that, despite Joe Manchin’s prickery, there’s still $500 billion for climate mitigation — the largest amount anyone on the planet has ever committed to the problem. That’s not nothing, and to think that this is going to happen because of the efforts of Stacey Abrams and everyone else in Georgia and what a fucking fluke it is that we captured the senate even for a hot second, well, I can feel a shred of hope, thank you wife. I’ve been trying to come back round to the whole concept of hope being a thing to work for, worth it on its own in the face of adversity. I academically believe it, but it’s so hard for me. Gen X cynicism runs strong.
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have. But I have it.
I always thought that song should have flowed into a second part where she sand the words “I have it” repeatedly for five minutes or so, as the music built up more and more and crescendoed into madness and noise and post rock and insanity and she just kept singing “I have it” over and over, like a mantra through a storm.
Also, Blue Bannisters is so good. Lana Del Rey, man, who saw that coming. I mean, obviously we’ve all seen it coming for a while now. But I mean, back at the beginning, when SNL got shit for putting her on the air too early. Huh actually I should go re-watch that, I barely remember it. I barely remember “Video Games,” I don’t even think I could hum it for you.
I’m listening to my new vinyl copy of Virus Meadow by And Also the Trees. It was one of those records, you may recall, I ordered from some unknown, potentially dodgy, retailer in the UK, where you really are rolling the dice when you buy from them. “Here goes,” I thought. “Might never see this record or this money again.” But nope, this time the record seems to have shipped almost immediately, and it was here in less than two weeks. Really fantastic. And I forgot how good this early era of And Also the Trees were. Don’t get enough credit, that band. Virus Meadow the album is not on Spotify, but the song is.
Oh and I have been listening to, like, four hours of live bootlegs of Les Rallizes Dénudés, thanks to Galaxie 500/Damon & Naomi/Magic Hour drummer Damon Krukowski’s email newsletter. I had listened to them before, but didn’t really now their history, how long they’ve been around. Although there was one guy on Discogs who commented he’s convinced the whole thing is a hoax and they’re actually a modern Japanese psych rock band, more of the Acid Mothers Temple era. I believe it. They are too good to be from the 60’s. Like the Silver Apples. Out of place in Time.
Also I went deep on Wikipedia about the original bassist from Les Rallizes Dénudés, who took part in the hijacking of a Japanese airliner and defected to North Korea in the 60’s and has been living there ever since with his hijacking buddies, stuck in a compound together for fifty years. They’ve been begging to come home and face charges, and in 2002 there are a few articles stating it was about to happen, like it was definite. But I can find no English language news since then, so I assume he did, in fact, make it home, but they just kept it quiet. I wonder if he’s just chilling in Japan now. I wonder if he’s secretly behind the supposedly-offical Les Rallizes Dénudés website that popped up last year.
Fuckin internet went out again. Twice already and I’ve not even been up an hour. Gonna be a long day.
Playlist time. Got a rawwwwk playlist for you. I kinda cheated this time. I mean, it’s all still rock but it might not all be rawwwk. Still, though, I like it. It’s maybe a tad more on the oldie side than I would have liked, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I have been listening to so much new music, but not enough of it is rawwwk. Maybe that’s why I love that new Ministry album so much. It really is shockingly good.
Okay, over and out. Happy birthday, Simon LeBon. Happy birthday, Gramma Florence. Happy birthday Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas… oh crap. Uh oh.
your letter to jane made me dead (in a heartwarming way). it's such a great concept to begin with, but to know the content really brought home how beautiful and how much she's sure to treasure it when she reads them all. xo