When the whole day is stretched out in front of you like an empty canvas (or maybe more like a big white duvet?), without responsibilities or commitments, it’s ok to relish the dull pulse of a headache.
When your bedroom is warm and just dark enough, and your hair still smells like an evening shampoo, it’s alright to enjoy the way it feels to quell the mild nausea with a glass of water.
When you’re curled in your bed with three pillows and a cookie, it’s nice to be reminded of childhood fevers and restful sick days. As with all memories, the discomfort is hazy, the pain less acute.
On occasion, I am fond of a minor hangover.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
— Oscar Wilde
I finally finished reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I wanted to like it more than I did. There were parts I enjoyed, but it didn’t really pull me in. I’d reread a good line here and there, but – and I say this fully recognizing that this is the winner of the national book award and I have no authority on the matter - it didn’t feel like there was enough of anything. As the story ambled in and out of each character’s life, it seemed to pause, briefly, on moments that could be touching, but weren’t. Not quite. As a whole, it was sort of blandly melancholy, but it didn’t wreck me the way I want a good book to do.
I felt about The Corrections the way I feel about most things these days: a sort of mild indifference. A shrug and an “ehh not bad.”
Like everything else, I like it better when I try to contextualize it within my own life. (Because, really, it’s all about me, isn’t it?) If I think of the book as a sort of study on the breakdown in communication between adults and their adult children, it all makes a bit more sense. That’s something I relate to - the struggle to be a Good Daughter and escape the judgment of the previous generation, without losing my sense of self. I guess The Corrections is a book about resentment, but also about confusion, but ALSO about hurt feelings. When I think of it that way, I can enjoy it. That is something I can work from. Hurt feelings are what I understand.
I really wasn’t cool in high school. I know, I know, everyone says that. It’s almost a prerequisite for being considered cool now. (“Oh I was such a nerd. Always had my nose in a book.” Fuck off.) But I wasn’t even nerd cool. I mean, I did a some nerdy things like write a lot of poetry and hang out with boys who watched too much Lord of the Rings, but I didn’t have enough of a niche carved out for myself to even be considered a true nerd.
I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t drink or smoke pot. I didn’t hang out with anyone who did. I didn’t lie to my parents (never wanted to) or flirt with boys (desperately wanted to). I didn’t even see my friends that often. I just sort of existed. I worked hard on my English papers and half-assed my math homework and thought a lot about that older guy with the hoodie and the lip ring. I spent my days being pissed that gym class was mandatory and my nights manically changing the lyrics in my AIM profile and wishing more people would talk to me.
I never did anything dangerous like cut class or sneak out or pierce my bellybutton without parental permission. Sometimes I wish I did. Well not the piercing part.
Last night I was out driving someplace and “Minority” by Green Day came up on the shuffle and I sang along loudly and thought about how, for me, in high school, this was rebellion. Playing this song in the car while my mom was driving, waiting for her reaction when Billie Joe gleefully barks “Fuck em all!” How it was all I could do to keep the corners of my mouth from curving up when she acted shocked. And driving along the highway in the dark last night, I felt oddly affectionate for my high school self, and proud of her, I guess. Looking back now, high school’s mostly a blur. I was so bored I was barely alive, but I was alive. And I had my tiny defiance.
