Temptation
I have a reticence about writing about my life these days and it does mean that sometimes I come to blank documents and leave them blank. I’ve been investing energy into fiction writing - that recent issue of Banshee which carried my short story ‘Minor Complications’ sold out btw, very cool, I’m sure it was completely down to me - so to return to straightforward truth and solid real life is a bit scratchy. I am working on a piece of non-fiction, a sort of journalism feature on romance novels, and an article for a book that’s out late next year. However, both pieces have very little to nothing about me in them. Their intentions are clear and outward looking. I am a machine version of myself writing the initial shape of them.
I’m also increasingly of the ‘never complain, never explain’ philosophy. The former because I’m very blessed to have been born into this part of the word, the latter because what’s the point? If I lay out my troubles in black and white, the response could reasonably be ‘well, choice x you made led to situation y’. These days, I find myself easily annoyed when people who are, by all measures, fortunate and comfortable try to claim some sort of systemic victimhood. But I suppose people always want more. I was reading about bacteria grown in a glue substance and trained to eat only that glue. The plan was to unleash them on an artwork to restore it. Risky, I thought, but also, I know nothing. You’d need a gun to make me take an IQ test after 15 years of social media and phones. Anyway, maybe we’re the bacteria but we can only survive on greed.
Still, saying all that, last week I wasn’t well for two days and in very bad pain for about 24 hours. I got through the few days, tummy hot with a heat pack, but I think I’ve had a delayed emotional reaction and most of me just wants to stew in that. I want the space to mope and tell myself that it wasn’t fair, that it sucked, fuck everything. I want the mental, and probably physical, equivalent of a small cabin the woods, but not a creepy Scandinavian trees woods, more of a Disney princess cottage vibe. I want a rest. I want sympathy. But the pain did fade, I must tell myself that. It is gone. I am very lucky. Of all the cards to draw in life, I got one of the best. I don’t go to sleep in fear. I go to sleep.
I have a week away in November booked and I am excited to visit a local grocery shop and stock up on salty crisps and different types of Fanta. What a wonderful, horribly unfair world.
Reading material
“I have to admit to regularly feeling overwhelmed reading about the horrors of Gaza and elsewhere day in, day out, but how much more overwhelming must it be to live it?” As we watch world leaders allow a fascist ethnostate murder and plunder and set humanity back, it’s worth listening to and amplifying the voices of principled people like Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh.
“I thank the gods – in whom I no longer believe – that he is a man who still trusts the opinion of experts.” Read the essay ‘In the Shadow of the Trees’ by Catherine Dunne. It made me cry.
From 2022: Sally Rooney, Jane Austen, sexual tension and the 'grand philosophical project'. Now, there is a mention of the Troubles in this essay that had me doing a double take, but I liked this article. I remember reading Beautiful World, Where Are You and thinking, ‘oh this is Jane Austen’. Do you think the person who coined ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’ boasts about it in a WhatsApp group, or do they reflect on what they did in silence?
“Together they looked like different stages of a bruise.” Maybe it’s because I’m reading a lot of short fiction, but I got excited reading that sentence. A story by Laura Whitmer on The Rumpus. Quick, pacey.
“I have absolutely no doubt, having lived, at times, tormented by the perceived notion that being gay is both sinful and evil, that my God is a forgiving loving God. And when I arrive at those gates, I will be embraced warmly and taken through and I will meet my beloved family and friends again. And it will be a place of immense peace and contentment. I will walk in a beautiful garden.” I found this interview with Noel Cunningham very moving. Some stop-your-heart observations.