009 ❖ malicious compliance

every week there are things I’ve noticed and want to hold on to at least for another week, and this week it’s…

◆ mounting evidence that it’s safe to let go of objects that I know won’t come back: a crate full of 45s adorned with nearly two decades of inter-state dust, books I’ve never read but worry about being found out in an imagined scenario by a person who gave them to me that I’ve now not-known for longer than I’ve known, and for that matter anything that makes me worry more about what someone else may think than what it means for me, with the notable exception of “NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, GOODBYE” which I borrowed from a squatter-turned-roommate when it was very much in print 20 years ago and is now very much out of print, but not for their sake, for mine because I never actually read it…

…and for all the physical things I know won’t come back, mounting evidence that I’m also safe to let go of non-physical things, and find myself delighted when they come back: that locked-in 19 y/o (which I’m only now realizing describes both the age of locking-in but also now how many years I am now from that locking-in) musical taste and desire if less frequently, to experience that loud, sweaty, throat-shredding and tinnitus-extending feeling right up in my face once a year-ish after giving it up for nearly a decade, the very necessary pairing down and dilating of identity that happens when I chose and then really for real chose a life outside myself more, first with a partner, and then with each of our successive kids, all of whom bring back pieces of identities I’ve left behind if by accident or fate or the fact that there’s no new IP under the sun so aligning selves can seem like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Ninja Turtles and all.

either way, so much more letting go than taking on, and breathing seems easier.

◆ Flickers of resistance, malicious compliance, and the many small ways where very brave people deliver some small part of the F.O. in the F.A.F.O equation.

◆ W (7), having lost three teeth inside two weeks, telling me about the Thonic LEGOth and Minecraft modpackth he wants to buy with his well-earned tooth fairy money, and what may or may not be the same 10-spot used three times because what Tooth Fairy has that much cash on hand, ever.

◆ A confluence of circumstances where W (still 7) picks out an Australian female voice for Siri on my phone, and then when I ask it to play “Angel Du$t” says, “nowr playing angel-dü-dollahsign on Sputtify.”

◆ observations on kids’ media that only happen when you watch something again and again and again, like how Mickey’s ears always face perfectly forward regardless of the tilt or angle or how characters that are in frame but aren’t speaking are generally frozen in time, only blinking through what appears to either be a frightening degree of attention or alarming state of dissociation.

◆ Forgetting to put my window up after a pickup order and not realizing it until I’m home, an unbothered accidental beneficiary of a bunch of fresh air.

◆ so, more breathing then.

progressions

in the race of “zine vs website,” the website made some headway this week as I could deploy a version of it somewhere. now that they’re both in the refinement stage, one will either inch forward or I will leave them be and find an entirely new project! stay tuned.

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