a stream

Trying something new today - a weekly post where I round up quick notes and links to things I read, watched, played, listened to, or otherwise engaged with in the past week.

Some links or ideas might also get their own posts, if I find I have more to write or share about them. Or if I decide I feel like spreading stuff out over days and giving things their own spaces.

Reading

• I read Me (Moth) by Amber McBride, a young adult novel in verse about a teen named Moth who has lost her family in an accident. Features root magic, song lyrics, dancing and not dancing, angst, first love, a road trip, and a plot twist.

• I read Beyond the Mapped Stars by Rosalyn Eves, a young adult historical fiction novel about a Mormon girl who wants to be an astronomer, but growing up in a polygamist family in 1870s Monroe, Utah, she doesn’t see a path to follow to that future. Features a realistic and diverse portrayal of Utah and Western U.S. life in the late 1800s, a train robbery, emergency midwifery, a near altercation between Thomas Edison and Texas Jack, a ball in a luxury hotel, a solar eclipse viewed from Pike’s Peak, faith, science, and again, first love.

• I’m still working my way through Investigations of a Dog and other creatures, short fiction by Franz Kafka in new translations by Michael Hofmann. Grabbed this impulsively from a Jewish Fiction display at the Holladay Library, but it has led me to plans to really dig into Kafka and read as much as I can of his work. I haven’t read Kafka since I was a teenager but what I did read then was extremely influential on my thoughts and tastes in literature and art, and its weird that I have forgotten that. So, library displays can be important.

• I’ve been subscribing to more and more newsletters lately, and since getting on top of my email inbox I’ve been able to keep up with them. Sharing links just to the things that I most liked that I read in the past week.

  • “The Year in Vibes” and its prequel “TikTok and the Vibes Revival”, both by Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker.

  • “Love in a Time of Climate Change”, poem by Craig Santos Perez shared in the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day newsletter.

  • “A Father’s Work is Never Done”, poem by Nathan Hoks also shared in the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day newsletter. (My exact initial response was “WITAF did I just read?")

Listening

Been clicking around Bandcamp a lot lately and these are albums I found there this past week that I liked - none of them are particularly new except for the Deerhoof, but oh well.

Giver Taker by Anjimile

Intuition by Kendra Amalie

Devil Kids by Deerhoof

Playing

• Finished Wandersong on the Nintendo Switch this week.

• Also watched an interesting talk from the creator of the game, Greg Lobanov - “Wandersong: A Game About Feelings”

• Played A Short Hike today, again on the Nintendo Switch. Fun little game.

Watching

Didn’t really watch anything, other than occasionally getting sucked into whatever my kids were watching, shows I don’t want to enumerate here this week.

I guess there was this TikTok user I got sucked into after my friend sent me one of the “cozy nintendo” videos:

Fritz and Donnybrook (@oldtimehawkey)

(Holy shit look at all that tracking junk on the original URL I followed:

 httpx://www.tiktok.com/@oldtimehawkey?_d=secCgYIASAHKAESPgo8tRvCShfQTSFOXpWMVc2%2F  
 CGmW%2BQZyHW62eLaXG85iVDpdvrAWKLp8R4K%2F%2B%2Bf2nW3hBJSZ6T2  
 c1g46JCPwGgA%3D&checksum=daabe076b9bef9aef0b47d138cc0cc154a  
 1d2466edad06d107f2351c7d1ecfaf&language=en&preview_pb=0&sec _user_id=MS4wLjABAAAAC  
 -Nor83oLDUTwTcpnj8QNBCO03Tvyzt89oSOMKbri-   
 aJUkR0d8qfphh3zWf923A5&share_app_id=1233&share_item_id=7008 004354242301189&share_link_id=20C2FD9B-4755-45B1-96A8-   
 FF181077CAF9&source=h5_m&timestamp=1640668684&tt_from=copy&   
 u_code=daabba7b8fm9ce&user_id=6781623360004031493  
 &utm_campaign=client_share&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=copy&_r=1

)

Clicking

Wado Sanzo’s Dictionary of Color Combinations, web edition: https://sanzo-wada.dmbk.io

Standalone post link: Links from Last Week (Dec 26, 2021 - Jan 2, 2022)

this winter break

I was going to
write a bunch
revamp my website
establish good
reading
writing
learning
sharing
habits
for the coming year

but I didn’t really do those things

and though I didn’t
do them I can’t seem to
let the idea of
still doing
those
things
just
go
away

so it may still happen
just not necessarily
in concert with
an arbitrary
Gregorian year change
or an extended time
off work

so what did I do?

passed Wandersong

read some YA fiction

and read some Franz Kafka, which feels a little bit like YA fiction to me but only because the last time I read Kafka was when I was myself in the “teen/young adult” demographic

took the kids sledding

made masaman curry

made french toast

made sweet pork barbacoa for in-laws’ Christmas taco party (recipe pending here in these URLs because I’ve made it too much my own to link to where I started from)

engaged in various obligatory Christmas preparations and celebrations

shoveled actual snow (I don’t remember if that ever even had to happen even once last winter)

read from an ever increasing number of newsletters (reading links forthcoming)

doomscrolled
(even though I’ve deleted my Facebook account and logged out of my personal Instagram and Twitter accounts on my phone I still somehow managed this – my persistent traps / points of weakness are the Apple News app and the notifications I still get for work social media accounts)

and then there’s bandcamp exploration, which I don’t quite consider doom scrolling, though at times there I do scroll through actual doom

So I guess I actually did
do a few things that might be
worth sharing and linking
or potentially expounding upon

but I’ve limited
myself to this
platform
with no audience
and haven’t
sorted that
out yet

instead of waiting

or deleting

or further retreating

or plotting out
some clear future
for this website
and my writing
and my social
media participation

I will just try
by improvising
as I go
with whatever form
feels right
or useful
or interesting
in the moment

Saturday, January 1, 2022
Millcreek, Utah

Standalone post link: this winter break

I really did that.

Somehow it became super important for me to clear out over 20 months' worth of emails from my personal email account this weekend. I did it, though, by letting myself let go of some things (like all the poem-a-days that I had never read.) Weird trip back through the history of the pandemic as portrayed mainly through brand and organizational emails.

Standalone post link: Daily Picture- Nothing Inbox

Just a December Sunday desk scene.

Standalone post link: Daily Picture- December Sunday Desk

Used my favorite spatula to make eggs with onions and peppers for me, and plain for a breakfast burrito for my son.

This spatula, in addition to being a great spatula, always makes me think about Malla, Chewbacca’s wife, cooking the Life Day meal in the Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ll admit, it’s something that’s far more fun to just think about for a minute than it is to actually watch, but I feel everyone should watch it at least once.

And I just learned from the Wookieepedia that her full name is Mallatobuck.

Standalone post link: Daily Picture- Cooking with Malla

The things you don’t say accumulate.

The things you don’t buy don’t accumulate.

Standalone post link: Accumulation

Transcription, but with some misspellings corrected: (not ‘moomlight’ because I like that too much)

‘Friday, November 19, 2021
5:10 am at my desk
in the cloud-obscured
moomlight (and
maybe earth-shadow
obscured moonlight of
the eclipse still, but
I can’t tell.) And I
can’t really see what
I am writing now
so this is an
experiment.

‘I can’t fall back
asleep and I can’t
really see the eclipse
so I figured I would
try this.

‘I just took some
pictures / video
that I hope are
eerie but either
way I think I will
like them.’

Standalone post link: moomlight notes and pics

This site now aims to be the contemporary equivalent of enigmatic handmade publications hoarded in a drawer.

Standalone post link: On Some Emily Dickinson Shit (Fascicles in a Drawer 2022)

I’m curious how Mormons¹ who play Animal Crossing: New Horizons are responding to the new café.

• Does anyone refrain from having their character drink coffee in Animal Crossing, so as to avoid even the very appearance of evil?

• Have kids been caught by their parents drinking coffee in the game and had the game confiscated or banned?

• Are any Mormons going bonkers drinking cup after cup of coffee in Animal Crossing because it’s “just a game” or “doesn’t count?”

• How does someone’s stance on coffee in Animal Crossing compare to their stance on violence and gore in other video games?

• Is drinking coffee in Animal Crossing ‘Word of Wisdom pornography?’

• Am I overthinking this, or at least thinking more about it than I ever would have back when I was a Mormon?²

I was always jealous when one of the island residents would be walking around the island with a cup of coffee or hot cocoa.

But it turns out that now that I can, drinking coffee in Animal Crossing is not all that satisfying. Doing almost anything in Animal Crossing is not all that satisfying for very long, to be honest.

Drinking real coffee in real life is generally satisfying, though.

Standalone post link: On Virtual Coffee and Mormons Who Play Animal Crossing

Your art is more important than your audience.

– so says my A.I. / algorithmically generated horoscope today, the notification popping up while I was mid-contemplating just how to curate collections and microthoughts such as these on this website, and whether to continue to do it just for myself or reconnect somehow with a social media network for the possible benefit or irritation of unknown others.

I still haven’t decided.

Standalone post link: Your art is more important than your audience