The past year has caused me to stop following the news with such voracious interest. I learn about things piecemeal; I look further into them if I am interested. But I no longer try to read everything that is happening. I am over hot takes; I am over the outrage machine. I have books to read and dogs to walk and friends to eat with. And, in spite of it all, the earth melting and the bombs falling, I am happier than I was a year ago.
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The weather has been in that unspeakably gorgeous middle ground lately: the humidity is fading away and the air feels light, burnished, sweet.
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Ah, how much easier my life would be without these two German shepherds, and also how much sadder.
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“To notice is to rescue, to redeem; to save life from itself.” — James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life
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Currently reading: The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (which inspired me to start trying to read short stories in Japanese again; it is taking me an embarrassingly long time and yet I feel uplifted and exhausted by it); Sanctuary, William Faulkner; A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin.
“The outrage machine” is a great sum up of sooooo much of what’s out there- good for you for finding some space away from it.