'I LIKE MYSELF'

Just now, after finishing work, I lay back on my bed (not the side I sleep on) and grabbed a book I'd stopped reading months ago. It's sitting in the stack of novels that acts as a sort of bedside table for my small green lamp. Note to anyone reading: parking books by the bed (especially in a stack under a lamp) is a surefire way to stop reading them all together. Total loss of accessibility. Active reading books must be placed at the top of a stack on the coffee table or directly on the couch, in my house. 

Anyway, I pulled out this book from the stack, Like Streams to the Ocean. It's not very good, frankly. That's why I stopped reading it initially and how it ended up relegated to the sub-lamp pile. But looking at it in the stack, I remembered reading something about the author on the inside flap of the jacket when I had picked the book up in the bookstore. I can't remember what exactly, but something about this book really struck me as being written by a normal person. Like not a vaunted "author" but just some guy who got a book deal. 

So I saw this book in the stack today, and I think the Sally Rooney interview I mentioned yesterday was still on my mind, because suddenly I had a rush of compassion for this writer. I could be him one day, with a book that's mediocre and languishing half-read in someone's bedside pile. 

As I pulled the book out then, I had a sudden thought: "I like myself." It made me smile. 

That "I like myself" was brought on by a fleeting recognition of all the books that I have around, or how much time I'm spending reading, which I think has increased recently. In a rush, as I pulled this sort of bad book out from the stack, I think I felt the approximate landscape of my intellectual life and my internal life. And it gave me a nice little sense of satisfaction with myself as I am today, or as I was in that instant. 

Sensation and recognition of oneself (specifically, myself) is totally inconstant. It's surprising to me that I just felt this "I like myself" with so much clarity, and even more surprising that it was triggered by pulling a book out of a stack. As I wrote before, I've felt recently that the ways that I recognize and evaluate myself have been shifting substantially. But I suppose it should make sense that in the largely internal world I occupy now, it's my internal pursuits that shape my own relationship with my self. 

ROONEY ON WRITING

I've just been watching a video interview with Sally Rooney. In it, she speaks about the process of writing a novel, saying "When I'm writing something new, that's all I want to be doing." She later talks about the process of writing her first and second novels both being "so enjoyable." 

From a young age, I've always felt that I struggled writing narratives, particularly dialogue. I always find it easier to imagine and describe what a scene looks and feels like, but writing the character interaction or plot movement feels really unnatural to me.

But hearing this description of working on a writing project being the only thing that you want to be doing, for it to be so enjoyable, sounds so deliciously compelling. Cozy, satisfying, and self-sustained. 

I've always thought of the writing process as a somewhat frustrated one of placing words next to each other, then reworking those word to word relationships to eviscerate corniness or awkwardness. But the way Rooney talks about it sounds more like exploring a deep cave with warm water. Not so tortured. Not so pressured as to have every plot point outlined or predetermined. 

I think I'm craving this kind of self-possessed and self-directed occupation. After years pushing myself to use my energy and my brain on work that wasn't my own and felt antagonistic to my very spirit, nothing sounds better than delving into a realm entirely of my own creation. 

But also, I desire to be wrapped up in something. To be pulled in and delight in that thing's unfolding until I've had my fill. What might that feel like? Wonderful, I imagine. This is a craving to inhabit a space only I have access to. It makes me think of waking up from a good dream and trying to fall back asleep to re-enter the action. Warm, precious, sacred.

YESTERDAY

 

 

These days, feeling like myself comes in fleeting moments, few and far between. How do I articulate the gradual creep of the loss of taste? I find that I'm unsure of how to dress myself, as myself, for the first time in my life. At once inundated with the trends via TikTok, and totally out of place in the spaces that hawk those trends (see Urban Outfitters, Depop, etc.). I feel as though I've gone to sleep and woken back up, out of place and out of time. 

Life feels upside down at the minute. Yesterday, I was excited to drive up to Oakland and Berkeley. Less of a homecoming, more of a reminder of an anchor point. A place with real humanity. And I felt like myself in my outfit. Not just like me but the feeling that makes me feel excited to be me. 

At the Berkeley Flea, I found this jacket. A good thrift find is one that fits perfectly, as this jacket did. It felt destined to sit on my shoulders. I like the embroidery especially, which feels like a nod to toreador flair. 

At Mars, I found this embroidered peasant-style blouse, which is quite voluminous and somewhat see-through. I like the slouchiness of this top, which is a style I long to wear but find difficult to achieve on my body. I felt the wrists were cinched just right and hit at a nice place on my arm to give the perfect billow. With the kerchief I wore throughout the day, this whole ensemble felt very swashbuckling as I stood in the mirror of the fitting rooms. 

The trees on Sproul Plaza are beginning to turn yellow, the first hint of fall. The change in color isn't exactly perceptible in person, even. It comes out more in photos, where the warm light of the sun setting in the late afternoon picks up the changing tones in the leaves. There's a coziness and an anticipation in these images, of something slightly magical just around the corner.