i dream of real life summer
in which i try really really hard not to write criticism about it it girl criticism, and then i talk about the fourth dimension for a bit
hot girls who can read have saddled their silken ponies for the culture wars. there is an abundance—an embarrassment?—of compelling and compulsively readable discourse right now that asks what a literary it girl is and who deserves the title; discourse that pushes back and interrogates the inherent sexism in “girl” discourse; and discourse about how all we’re writing about is girl discourse:
many years ago, i ate acid and at some point—after playing hide-and-seek with god and spinning shapes in my mind—i decided to make spaghetti sauce. at first, cooking was comforting; it was a familiar task, an arrow shooting through the dark night of my soul toward solid ground. as i chopped onions, however, a nauseating anxiety overtook me. the world slowly contracted to the tight and sharp dimensions of the assignment: the onion, acidic and unpleasant; the knife; my hands on the knife, which would pixelate and float away if i didn’t pay attention. i had to get it right, and i hated that i had to get it right, and i couldn’t stop. i was trapped. and then i took a breath and stepped back and realized that i was using my tiniest cutting board—the kind for cutting limes—and i’d positioned it at the very very edge of my kitchen table. i’d brought myself to tears over my internment in an arbitrary prison that i hadn’t even noticed i’d built. the essays i’ve referenced above are thoughtful, provocative, and deserve as much recognition as any cultural or creative conversation—but this whole line of inquiry makes me feel like i’m back in spaghetti jail.
as helena aeberli puts it in “in search of cool” (also linked above):
There is no stable footing in the discourse. It is the morass which is left after a flood, a volatile landscape in constant flux, punctuated only by a few stable landmarks which we cling to. We try to grasp these trends whilst they are still above water and find ourselves in search of virality whether we want it or not, rehashing the same tired topics. Forgive me, I am doing it now!
i know this is a newsletter about the internet, and i am writing a book about the internet,* but i think i’d kind of like to try something new for the summer. i’d like to bring you more stories from offscreen. shall we touch grass together?
i’ve been thinking a lot about time. i got back from my silent ecclesiastical retreat a couple weeks ago; this isn’t the right letter to dive into all that, but in short, i thought i was going to live with some french benedictine nuns—i packed nail polish, deludedly, in case it was a slumber party vibe—but due to a translation error on my part i ended up in a carthusian monastery instead, which is like 10 times more intense. i spent ~14 hours a day alone in a stone cell and 3-4 hours a day chanting french psalms and the remaining hours i performed chores or built fires or wandered the forest. i had many delusions and anxieties and moments of unadulterated wonder. if the experience could be likened to a game with god, the game would be chubby bunny.
any new age or wellness guru, and many ancient gurus too, will tell you that the key to happiness is living in the present. we spend so much of our time in the past, and so much in the future, and so little in the now. apparently, this is where sorrow comes from. since i’ve been back, i feel especially sensitive to the strange and singular way that time works on the internet—i’ve written before about the collapse of time online, and have you ever noticed how some apps occlude your phone clock entirely, so you literally can’t see what time it is while you’re using them? when i scroll, i feel like i’ve slipped into something that is neither past, nor present, nor future. i lose hours like you lose a day flying to australia, like it never happened at all except the body is exhausted. i float above the world, dissatisfied and disoriented in the plasma of this secret fourth thing, this internet time.
i’ve been thinking about how i can give myself more time, and also—because i just had an immersive catholic experience, probably—how i can not waste yours. i want to send you letters that feel expansive rather than recursive or like you’re cutting onions on a tiny table forever and you don’t know where your hands are. did you know that jasmine season has melted into rose season? did you know that most library cards offer free or discounted museum tickets? (here is the LAPL website, but you can google your local branch and there’s a good chance they have a program like this, too.) did you know that tomorrow my husband and i are going to a rescue ranch for either traumatized people or traumatized horses, the website is unclear? there is so much out there! i want a summer break. i want to send you horse pics.
anyway, here are some things i’ve read online recently that haven’t induced hallucinogenic panic:
this essay by celine nguyen on agnes callard and the humiliation and utter necessity of aspiring:
There’s something uncomfortable about people who are trying too hard. We judge them for their pretensions; we feel embarrassed at the nakedness of their effort. The embarrassment is often a projection of our own insecurities about striving. If we managed, with heroic unselfconsciousness, to really commit to becoming a writer, an artist, a better person—then we would have to acknowledge that we aren’t that person yet. More than that: Striving means we aren’t that person yet—and we might never become that person. It’s easier to not try—and indulge in the subtle, self-lacerating logic of I can’t believe that person is trying so hard! I would never.
and this piece on rewilding the internet, by maria farrell and robin berjon:
Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within… But what if we thought of the internet not as a doomsday “hyperobject,” but as a damaged and struggling ecosystem facing destruction? What if we looked at it not with helpless horror at the eldritch encroachment of its current controllers, but with compassion, constructiveness and hope?
and one IRL recommendation: because there were no phones in the cloisters but you still need to make it to morning prayers, i bought an alarm clock. it’s sleek and simple and ticks soothingly; because it’s analogue, you can’t really set the alarm to an exact minute. you live by approximation. (i thought this would make me feel less in control, in a bad way, but i like it.) at home, i’m trying to give myself more time by putting my phone in another room at night and using the analogue alarm clock to get up in the morning. i know it might not be feasible for everyone, but so much “log off” advice feels impossible (“just look at your phone less”) and the alarm clock is an affordable way to physically remove my phone so i can’t lose hours in bed on it. i recommend!
x aiden
*and girlhood! oops! although, okay, i have to say that to zoom out and work on a project that will (ideally) feel relevant and special in a year/five years/a decade has reframed a lot of the ways i think and write about the internet. writing in this deep, sustained way has its own stressors, for sure, but it’s also felt surprisingly healthy and exciting. i truly cannot wait to share this project with you.