Hello! Good morning. How are you doing? Ready to deal with this stupid-ass war? I am not doing especially well about it. Cold war baby and all that. Wasn’t super psyched about the Crimea invasion. It’s so crazy how different this is, how different the world is reacting. It gives on… a small amount of hope? What can humanity do about a bully with nukes? It is not a situation we, as a species, have a lot of experience with. It is terrifying on every level. You can let them keep being a bully, or you can stand up to them. Either decision is a moral nightmare, an ethical morass. Every move could potentially lead to a tantrum of apocalyptic scale. Has Putin ever even considered he might fail at something? How would he react? Who knows.
I was sitting there last night, thinking about my life, my projects, my poor daughter who fell flat on her face on the pavement yesterday, scraping her noce and getting a cut lip. She did not like that at all. But she eventually calmed down and even fell asleep in Emma’s arms which is something she never does, so that was kind of cute. But she has a cut on her lip and a big scrape on her nose.
I was thinking about my daughter, my wife, my projects, my book that I finished that I’m really quite proud of. I was thinking about how this war will make those early pandemic days seem even more far away, even more lost to the past. And so it’s a good thing that this book exists, even if we all forget about it for a while, so we don’t forget about it forever. I was thinking about the flu of 1918, and how we all forgot about that giant flu, because the events of the world kept on going and there wasn’t ever really a time to process it, and that is what is happening right now. We forget, we forget. I was wondering how bad this stupid war is going to be, how much it is will or won’t become a defining event in humanity, or in a generation. I was wondering, selfishly, how that would feel when someone was reading my book in ten years would know the war is coming, giving the book a continual sense of impending doom. How reality can color a work of literature and how that coloring can change over time.
(I am sorry, the books arrived on my doorstep like an hour before the war started. I was so excited. But now there’s a war and it all seems dumb and that really makes me sad.)
I was thinking about how I was not especially emotionally or logistically prepared for WWIII, and then…
Then I thought to myself that I was thinking about myself too much, and how people are getting killed, people are getting bombed and taken prisoner for no actual reason. I thought I was making this too much about myself, as is our natural inclination and my bad habit.
As an aside, I’m still blown away by Luke O’Neil’s piece yesterday about Mark Lanegan, it was just so moving, so amazing. Such phenomenal writing. And a case study in a tribute where you can bring yourself into the tragedy without it being about you. A perfect encapsulation of the art of the personal essay, documenting our feelings about a tragedy without smothering the tragedy. Mixing the personal and the emotional and the documentarian and the facts and the universal. I am just in awe.
I thought to myself “sure I’m thinking about myself too much, but at least I’m not one of those assholes who is blaming this war on people who didn’t do exactly the right thing to stop the tyrant from being a tyrant, instead of, you know, actually blaming the tyrant.
It’s your fault I’m hitting you. You made me do this.
Also, as someone who grew up, in America, a few hundred miles from the Soviet Union, I always find it hilarious when people are like “well America would never tolerate Russia being on its borders.” Russia is on our borders, people. It always has been. The countries are less than 2 miles apart. And we never invaded them.
Anyway, this is all horrible, just awful. I’ll spare you the most catastrophizing thoughts spinning around in my head. But this is not going to end well.
Some other items, trying to perpetuate a semblance of normality here:
My dirt comes today. Four cubic yards of 50-50 garden soil/compost. And the big bags of soil ammendments have all arrived. Gonna be a lot of dirt. Hopefully a weekend in the garden aids my war jitters. I am not emotionally well about this at the moment.
I knew this, but of course phrased it poorly. Apologies for the proud Scot Eve Muirhead for insinuiating she was English. And thank you, Dan, for pointing this error out. Also, shes’s a fantastic bagpiper.
Emma and I were talking, pre-war two days ago, and I said “remember how I randomly got vertigo for three days at the beginning of the pandemic? That was weird.” And that was weird! I had completely forgotten about it. Emma suggested it might have been a covid symptom — did you know that vertigo is a covid symptom? I did not, until some friends up in Boston got veritgo with their covid. But I looked up the dates in my master GMMHAY archive, and I got an antibody test a week after the vertigo, so probably no covid. But I feel like ever since I got that vertigo, I get motion sickness a lot more easily. Maybe the two are unrelated. Still. I used to have an iron constitution. I once read The Economist the entire way to Portsmouth on the catamaran through super choppy water while everyone around me was sick and a dozen passengers were puking. Not a problem at all. But now? Jane bumps me weird and I get motion sick. I wonder what happened.
OKay well here’s today’s mix, it’s too dude-heavy, but at least it’s a little anti-fascist? It was the only playlist near completion. Feels appropriate.
Okay, well, today is going to be a struggle to do anything other than doomscroll, and I am not in the best of headspaces to write this today. We shall just wrap this up here. Until tomorrow. A tout a l’heure.
maybe you still have some stuff left over, knocking around in your inner ear, from the vertigo