Today’s newsletter was an excuse to write about the weird experience of binge-watching Peep Show after watching and reading about 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Do you hear an internal monologue?”
April Showers (a mixtape)
After I started May’s mixtape, I remembered that I never posted April’s mix. I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.
This is another “sad dad bad had” mix for spring with a bunch of country weepers and other stuff I like.
It was originally going to be more tropical, starting with Michael Hurley’s “Polynesia.” (I listened to a bunch of his stuff after he died because so many people I know posted playlists and radio tributes to him.)
That Side B playlist betrays the fact that I originally had that side play out with Freddie McGregor’s cover of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” but I didn’t think it fit, somehow. (And I wanted to save it for a happy summer/pool playlist in June.)
You can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Filed under: mixtapes
Maycember rage
From a Parents.com article titled “Maycember’ Madness Is Real and Leaving Parents Even More Burned Out”:
Much like the month of December, my packed calendar at the end of the school year has left me feeling like there’s not so much joy, as obligation and overwhelm. Instead of cruising into summer with a sense of relief, I’m sweating my way to the finish line—and possibly crying and stress snacking at certain points, too.
Feeling that in our house. Once I heard the term “Maycember,” I knew I had to use it for Friday’s letter: “Maycember Rage.”
3 thoughts while pushing a wheelbarrow
In Tuesday’s letter, I tried to weave together some ideas about yard work, Larry McMurtry, and giving yourself time to feel things, and I managed to articulate something I hadn’t articulated before:
The computer used to mean the world to me. The computer was a portal to the world I wished to be in. Times change, and I no longer wish to be in contact with much of the world that’s in my computer. Yard work is a wonderful distraction.
I was pleased by how much this letter seemed to connect with folks.
Read the rest of it: “3 thoughts while pushing a wheelbarrow.”
We’ll see
Today’s letter is titled “We’ll see!”
“We’ll see” is the refrain in the Charlie Wilson’s War version of the 2000-year-old Chinese parable about the old man who lost his horse. (Bluey used the same refrain, while Alan Watts used “Maybe.”) It’s a favorite parable of mine and one I think about often.
Here’s how Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching puts it:
Alas! Misery lies under happiness,
and happiness sits on misery, alas!
Who knows where it will end?
Nothing is certain.The normal changes into the monstrous,
the fortunate into the unfortunate,
and our bewilderment goes on and on.(I am someone who believes in embracing bewilderment.)
Read the rest here.
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