A Grand Quiet

I haven’t written at all this week. I’m trash, I know. I got that review of Beast published but that was a product of sheer laziness over the four days the document sat gathering dust on my desktop. It’s not like I’ve even been doing anything near productive with my time. I haven’t been liking myself too much, been being unhealthy, listening to music that helps me feel sorry for myself, getting pissed and reading Shakespeare monologues at midnight.

Thankfully work has finally slowed down from the busy period that we were in a few weeks ago, these past few days have felt like the first in a while that haven’t felt like we was putting out fires constantly and could get ahead of the game a little. I need to find a way of pivoting towards something that don’t mean I’m working purely reactively. I find myself in creation, to some extent we all do I think. Spending most of my life divorced from the materiality of my labour is somewhat destructive to my soul.

I know the solution of course, literally everyone at my current employer is looking for new jobs, it comes up in casual conversation all the time. Even the managers have given up caring, they’re on their own grind too. My email inbox is full of alerts from Mandy and Spotlight, might as well add a few of more to the list. Get my fill on the straight scene.

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The UK had it’s royal wedding yesterday, it’s been kinda hard to avoid. I’m not a huge fan of the dress to be honest, I trust the gal’s taste and all but if I ever were to marry someday it wouldn’t be looking like someone casually draped 100 kilos of fruitcake icing over me. Though that sounds like a dope as fuck early 10s Lady Gaga outfit. Too puffy, nice veil though, 3/10.

But as much as I dislike the dress I kinda real fucking hate the monarchy. Like, I can understand being uninterested in them but the sorta rank fervour they inspire in some is literally insane. It’s alright when they’re most creeping in the background hiding behind those big palace walls but they are figuratively being protected too by the enormous weight of their inheritance.

Like, think about these two princes, they could have done literally anything with their lives and yet, nah. They’re just about nothing. And yet they get to have their weddings televised, the two failsons of our sad country having lavish expensive parties, attended by our country’s ruling class for their own edification.

Their inherited wealth should be stripped from them and distributed among the countries that they exploited to gain it as the first step of the global reparations process. Think about it, it would be so easy, one extraordinarily privileged family reduced and a massive statement made in the favour of global justice.

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I just wanna take a brief moment to praise the best nut. Pistachios. I ate like a whole bag of them in a single session earlier this week. Every part of the experience is absolutely perfect. prising open that shell, peeling off that flaky brown layer that is on the inside, the eating is like the least interesting part.

I’m currently in the wondrous afterglow of the pistachio eating process. I have a desk full of shells to pick up, chew on and suck the salt off of. It’s probably all sorts of unsightly and gross but fuck you, I love it and my body craves as much salt as I can put in it without physically killing myself. No other nut can compare to their majesty

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Our local running club have started again their annual spring/summer beginners running program. It’s basically a couch to 5k program that you do with a whole bunch of other people. I run a fair amount, it’s the little I can do to protect my body from the destructive habits I keep, but some friends of mine have started on it and I went along to encourage them.

I didn’t really have any conception of running as a social thing, but like actually doing it made the experience so much more pleasurable. Usually I’ll do it in the gym because I combine it with a little weights work for that well rounded workout. That means the treadmill. I’ll be listening to a podcast, there’ll usually be a television playing the news, another with some quiz show on it, and somehow, even with all that stimulation I loathe just about every second.

Yet, running like this, a chill pack, a measured pace, loose conversations that weave in and out. A half hour’s work felt momentary, I even got myself to the gym afterwards, ran a few more miles there and did my weight work. It was real nice, and honestly if there’s something like it in your area and you feel like getting healthier goddamn go do it, it’s great.

Also I got to feel smug about rolling with my aching and tired friends. I have never been the fit one before, suddenly there it is, it’s happened. Next people will be thinking I’m adult too.

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Now that I’m like three paragraphs in I’m gonna admit that getting no work done has also been a lot of my conscious mind’s fault too. After a discussion with a work colleague at the beginning of the week I downloaded and started playing Lego Star Wars.

It’s not great. I’ll start with that, but it is sorta great adjacent. It’s one of those cleaning up games. Each level presents you with a very busy environment that you have to tear apart and collect every token that falls out. It’s mindless in its own way, repetitive. In the later instalments they figured out how to make the puzzling complicated enough to be satisfying but here the barriers are transparent, sullen time gates that let you know that completing the level simply isn’t going to happen this time, sorry.

There’s honesty in its simplicity. Frankness in its intent, so long as you are approaching it on its own level it’s gonna give you what you need. I’m probably only going to play the prequel levels, I never played the sequel as a kid so don’t have the same connection to the original trilogy ones. It’s a remarkable match of subject and theming that I don’t think was achieved with any of the other Lego games, except maybe the Harry Potter one.

The prequels are so weird and formless and shaggy that the levels all kinda make sense in their own nonsensical way. I just played the level where you’re Obi-Wan strolling around Kamino. It’s ridiculous, a video game level constructed out of a five minute dialogue scene.

Or how about the one in Episode 1 which is based on thirty seconds of the characters running through a forest and meeting Jar Jar. These things are ridiculous and stupid. But so are the films, everything has its place. The Harry Potter ones are based on the books, and because those have like 30 chapters or whatever, there’s always enough incident to draw upon. The Batman and Indiana Jones ones, which I have only played briefly, just felt bad to me.

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Had brunch with friends earlier, one of them is getting into tarot and offered to do some readings for us. I drew Mind, Body and Spirit. The Knight of Cups, the name of a recent Terrence Malick joint, also apparently the most feminine of the knights, very on brand. The Lovers and the Seven of Swords. All inverted.

Some thoughts: You are reading the cards, the cards ain’t reading you. You won’t find anything on the table that you are prepared to confront yourself. It was nice being read by someone who was figuring it out for themselves, each draw is a new question, and an answer to be unearthed in collaboration. I don’t really hold no secrets from my friends, and it helped that the questions asked were nothing too invasive, but it helped me put voice to my doubts, flaws, confront what the reality of what being a better person entails.

Upright cards are generally asking ‘Is it?’ Inverted cards are asking ‘Are you?’ That’s an interesting dynamic. We were all a little fuzzy on how the individual cards were supposed to relate to each other but that’s just part of the fun isn’t it? Trying to make these disparate things work together.

Just because magical thinking ain’t real don’t mean it’s not worthwhile. Sometimes you just need a context to place things in. Like, these weekend blogs are the closest I really come to self-reflection, I don’t meditate, don’t keep no diary, don’t pray. I haven’t found what works for me yet, this was the realest I’ve gotten with myself in a while. Might just start doing it for myself, I’m sure the novelty would run out pretty quick but it would be a fun experiment.

First D&D, now tarot, I’m becoming the poster child of the 1980s satanic panic. Where’s that Ouija board?

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Imma get back to writing about film now, get off the dumb shit, back on my grind. There’ll be reviews coming soon of Deadpool 2, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and Redoubtable (Godard Mon Amour) and hopefully I’ll be able to catch something in the week to pad that out. I know On Chesil Beach is out this week but screenings are being super awkward, the industryis just waiting for Solo to drop anyway. All quiet out here right now.

That’s me for the week then, sorry there ain’t been more. Y’all look after yourselves now, even if it feels unproductive. Things will start to make sense of themselves eventually.

Essie
xxx