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Please Excuse Me While I Hide Away

I’m reminded of that adage about most plans not surviving first contact with the enemy, except that, in this case — as in most, let’s be honest — the enemy in question happens to be reality. So it goes.

Thanks to the suggestion of podcast partner and all-round good egg Jeff Lester, I decided at the start of the year to keep track of what I’ve been reading. He’s been doing this for some time, and I was, if not jealous of his organizational skills, at least curious to see if I could do something similar given (a) how much I read, and (b) how casually (read, “chaotic”) said reading tends to be. If nothing else, I thought, it’ll be an interesting exercise.

Within a week, I’d lost track of the whole thing.

The trick, I realized fairly early, was that I needed to update pretty immediately; trying to reconstruct after a week, going on my digital footprint and a pile of things by my bed wasn’t going to cut it, as much as I still hoped otherwise. If nothing else, that ignored the random comic issues that would accompany me into the bathroom in the middle of the day, or the glance-throughs first thing in the morning or last thing at night that turn into reading binges.

(And that’s ignoring the things I end up reading for work that I always fail to remember, because they are for work; if you knew how many issues of Birds of Prey and related comics I’ve read in the last month…!)

Instead, my list for January is… simultaneously lengthy and threadbare, missing all manner of things that I’ve simply forgotten. Not the finest start to the experiment, but then, January wasn’t the finest start to the year in general. This month, I’ve been better about things (I think), and the picture it’s painting is… pretty much what I’d expected, in terms of how uneven and random my reading has turned out.

I think, in a strange way, that’s a plus. I’m a flighty reader, curious and unable to sit still for too long, and this is definitely reflected in my lists, but that hummingbird nature fits my work, and lets me turn away towards something fun when necessary. If I keep this up, it’ll be interesting to see what trends emerge over the year as a whole.

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Hidden in Plain Sight

The most surprising thing about the dream, really, may be that it happened at all. I generally don’t remember dreams these days — something I put down to sleeping well, although perhaps it’s just being forgetful — so to have this as fresh in my mind as it was when I woke up was entirely unexpected. (That I awoke at 4:30am with it in my head, equally so.)

Earlier in the week,  my therapist had asked about the most recent act of cruelty by my ex-wife, and said essentially, why aren’t you more angry? There was a reason of sorts, I told her; the very day after I’d found out about it, my health nosedived for a week and that acted as a pretty effective distraction from everything else — I was too busy feeling worried about how sick I was, and being kind of delirious in the process. I didn’t have a chance to get beyond being sad, I explained, and by now it felt as if I’d had the opportunity to talk myself out of being mad.

My dream suggests otherwise. I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s enough to say that it was a dream in which I visited the old house again as she was in the process of moving out, and got to see her express the latent cruelty of her actions in full flame, like some melodramatic movie villain.

The overall effect of it was… disturbing, I guess, would be the right word. Not because of anything this dream manifestation said or did, because she was cartoonishly drawn and more than slightly pitiful in just how callous she came across; instead, I’m shaken because the dream made it clear to me just how much pain and anger is in my head about her behavior.

It’s not unwarranted, I should add; I don’t feel shaken because that attitude feels unreasonable or too much on my part. Rather, I’m disturbed because it came out in that manner as opposed to any other way, and I don’t like the idea that my subconscious has this trapped inside it, while the rest of me can’t quite access it or process it properly. I’d say I need therapy, but even my therapist is probably wondering about this one.

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And Tell Him Twice

The first THR newsletter graphics of the year have finally arrived! I’m amused that there was so many similar subjects being covered. (There’s 2 — technically 3 — graphics for the movie version of Ex Machina being planned, and 2 for the new Bad Boys movie.)

And then, two variations on the same graphic, because no-one could work out which headline they wanted…

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You Can’t Go Home Again

I expected to have a stronger, more visceral, response to Brexit Day than I actually did, when it happened.

Part of that underperformance came, I admit, from the fact that there were other things happening in my life that required more immediate attention at the time; another part is that my existential horror allowance was already used up paying attention to the shitshow that was the impeachment trial in the Senate. Brexit? That’s old news.

I read reports about how the day played out in the UK itself: a mix of funereal feelings from some, and apparently parties and celebrations from others. The latter, especially, felt like an overreaction considering that “Brexit Day” was really just the next step on a massive journey, and that little will actually change on a global scale in the immediate aftermath.

The immediate change had happened already, more than once. Three times, in fact: with the vote to leave Europe, and each of the two successive general elections, in 2017 and 2019, when the country (countries, plural) doubled down en masses and refused to step in to stop the madness. Full steam ahead, seemed to be the order. Man the ramparts and damn everyone and everything in our way.

Each of those days provoked a visceral reaction, a deep sadness and disbelief that it was actually happening. A hope, perpetually shrinking, that something would happen to shock some common sense into people and turn everything around before it was too late.

But January 31, the day it actually was too late…? That just kind of… happened. Perhaps it was because there was such an inevitability to it. Perhaps it seemed like the necessary, unsurprising next step into whatever this brave new world is we’re about to live in. Perhaps I was just too beaten down by everything else to do anything but watch from afar and think, sure, that seems about right. Who can tell?

I am, I think/expect/hope, going back to the UK this year, at the end of the year.  My first time there in what’ll be eight years, by that point. When I was there last time, I was continually surprised by how different everything felt. I can only imagine how much more true that’s going to be the next time I step foot on my homeland.