my april favorites
trying something out to keep track and make sense of the months.
“The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.” -WW
April was less than pleasant. I began the month dealing with an illness that had bled over from March. I spend the first couple of weeks regaining my strength; eating, walking, laying in bed without feeling like death. I picked up where I left off with myself, tried to be ruthlessly introspective, tried to reach for some strings that had gone loose since last year. April was a pressure cooker. These are what cheered me up during the blunt edge of April. Links provided so you can take a look <3
Books
✧ Song of The Captive Bird - Jasmin Darznik
✧ Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
Pg. 88 “And the pleasure was never real or deep, though Giovanni smiled his humble, grateful smile and told me in as many ways as he could find how wonderful it was to have me there, how I stood, with my love and my ingenuity, between him and the dark. Each day he invited me to witness how he had changed, how love had changed him, how he worked and sang and cherished me. I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loved me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then , when he touched me, i thought, it doesn't matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.”
Poems
✧ Song of Myself, 2 - Walt Whitman (the quote in the beginning is from this poem)
✧ April Morning - Jonathan Wells
Podcasts
✧ “Where should we begin? with Esther Perel” - Ep: Esther Calling - Am I Just Your Placeholder?
Youtube
✧ Christine Sun Kim’s TED talk: The enchanting music of sign language
“There’s a massive culture around spoken language, and just because I don’t use my literal voice to communicate, in society’s eyes it’s as if I don’t have a voice at all, so I need to work with individuals who can support me as an equal and become my voice and that way, I’m able to maintain relevance in society today. So at school, at work and institutions, I work with many different ASL interpreters and their voice becomes my voice and identity; they help me to be heard, and their voices hold value and currency. Ironically, by borrowing their voices, I’m able to maintain a temporary form of currency, kind of like taking out a loan with a very high interest rate.”
Sound as social currency.
“... the distance from your body can express changes in time … present tense happens closest and in front of the body, future is in front of the body and the past is to your back.”
Music
✧ Me, Myself, and I - Beyoncé
✧ Four Door Aventador - Nicki Minaj
✧ Wait On Me - KAI
✧ In A Row - Perfume Genius
TV Shows
✧ The Pitt - ★★★★★
✧ Grey’s Anatomy - ★★
S2E8: Cristina: “I could do hot in my sleep. I look hot in scrubs. I’m a hot person.”
Movies
✧ Sinners - Ryan Coogler
✧ The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls In Love - Maria Maggenti (rewatch)
Wendy: “Look, you just have fun going to the movies and holding hands with that new girlfriend of yours, and sipping through straws together making googly eyes!”
Wendy’s inflection in this quote scratched an itch in my brain.
ALSO, Wendy is 27 and Randy is 17?!
Miscellaneous
Stumbled upon pictures of this exhibition, And Your Flesh Is My Greatest Poem, while researching the artist Shuang Li. Breathtaking work and also discovered my new favorite word:
CORPOREALITY: relating to a person’s body, especially as opposed to their spirit.
It was refreshing to see a show reference the body, its fluids and insides and the obscure and absent idea of the human back, without an homage to X-Ray. My favorite work was Hana Miletić’s weavings which had me fooled at first, I thought they were gauze!