I can't sleep…
(He) has figured out what life is about. It’s not the money that makes him happy. I truly believe Alan has figured out where enough is at. He’s found enough and the strange thing about finding enough, you often end up with more than enough.
— Steve Hartman, on Allen McCloskey in “Local Hero” (CBS Sunday Morning, August 6, 2023)
A Tuesday, on the train, in the evening, after work. The train smells of: humans and ruin, bad breath, old sweat, rotten fruit. Through the dirty window, San Francisco in winter: cold sunset over glinting water, dark hills dusted with lights, the black silhouettes of palm fronds clawing at the fading pastel sky.
The train is full of Believers. I’m not one of them. The Believers have wan skin and glassy eyes. They wear: wind jackets with tech logos, raw denim, canvas sneakers, sustainable ballet flats. Their white plastic earbuds override the sound of real life, their faces buried in their screens. They do not speak or make eye contact. They aren’t really here. The train is full of husks.
I act like one of them. Slow, sad music plays through my earbuds. The song makes the commute feel like a movie. With each flash of scenery, the train carries me farther away from the office. Each day here presses the life out of me. On the way home, I am silent, flat, pulped.
— Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe: A Novel (Scribner, July 11, 2023)
Image & Book Review by Vivian Manning-Schaffel in Shondaland (July 11, 2023): In Her New Novel, ‘Ripe,’ Sarah Rose Etter Shows the Pitfalls of a Hyper-Capitalist System. Etter’s latest novel is a poignantly tragic, absurdist view of the “late-capitalist hellscape” that is grind culture.
The thing people don’t realize is that there is a cost to success and fame. There’s a story by Hans Christian Anderson. A young woman becomes enamored with these fabulous red shoes that are more attention-grabbing and exciting than the humble brown shoes she wears. In a moment of bad judgment, she succumbs to their charms and wears them to church. And lo and behold, her feet start moving and she is dancing, and she can’t stop. And she dances for hours and days and weeks until she is bloody and bruised from dancing like a whirling dervish through the countryside and towns unable to stop. She finally dances so much and so hard, faster and faster, that you know she’s going to bleed to death. So in a desperate attempt to stave off death, she finally implores a woodcutter to cut off her feet. And he does. Then she dies. Times were different back then. And I’m sure there’s some patriarchal message in this to women who wanted to step out of their role. However, I always took away from it as a kid — and it probably says something about me as a kid — is the idea that the world might have you running so hard that rather than running one step more, you would cut off your own feet. Never… And I never — I never forgot that image. I think success in the modern world demands a similar dance — soul sucking, grueling, never-ending. And I just wanted it to end. I wanted it to end so I could begin to live. I’ll let you know how it goes.
— Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), The Morning Show (S2:E1). “My Least Favorite Year.”
Notes:
Photo: Hello Magazine – Jennifer Aniston Wows In First Look at Series Two of the Morning Show
It was Sunday morning. 4:50 a.m. 68° F. Morning Walk @ Cove Island Park. 432 consecutive days, like in a row.
My “observations” from my Sunday walk led to yesterday’s Monday Morning Wake-Up Call post — a quote from Janwillem van de Wetering, about being proud of his awareness, proud of his awareness of his pride, being clever to know that he is stupid, etc. etc.
The quote landed. My cup of awareness (I thought) runneth over, and I have a vice grip on all that I don’t know. But this observation seemed to bottom out.
This spring, with the increase in seasonal park traffic, garbage cans were planted throughout the Park — electric pink — surely colored to encourage patrons to dump their sh*t in the can. I did notice the green cans, but they seemed fewer in number. And for 100 straight days, I walked by these cans, tossed trash in these same cans, and zero light bulbs turned on.
Until Sunday morning.
They were wearing headlamps, lights bobbing up and down as they approached.
Her head was down, averting contact.
His head turned to me in response to my “Good Morning”.
“Good Morning, Sir” in a Spanish accent. There we go again. Another human being calling me ‘Sir.’ Respect? Or do they see a Retiree? Either way, de-stabilizing.
They kept walking. I took a few steps in the opposite direction, stopped, and turned to look back. Continue reading “Walking. With Georgia.”
People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior. And this human truth has an especially grinding force here, where identity is almost impossible to achieve and people are perpetually attempting to find their feet on the shifting sands of status.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.