✨ Smattering 07: No, Thank You
Eclectic collections of fragments, quotes, and anecdotes from our on/offline lives.
😑 No, Thank You
‘I don’t do social media. For somebody who might have a reputation as a “look, I’ll let it all hang out” writer, I’m actually not a “look, I’ll let it all hang out” person (or writer, for that matter)… it would be a nightmare, to me, to have that kind of steady, real-time drip.
As much as I like certain manifestations of the avant-garde tradition of a life/art bleed, for me personally, I don’t think of what you’re describing—blogging or posting or tweeting all day or whatever—as an art practice. It can be for some people, but for me, it wouldn’t be.
…People often say they feel like they know me, but I know they don’t—they’re just responding to an effect created by artifice.’
– Maggie Nelson
🤷🏽♀️ How Do We Write Now?
The alternate title of this, of course, is how the fuck do we write now.
Just as the customary greeting of hello has been replaced with what the fuck is going on, and you grab your friend’s arm almost against your will and shake her a little bit and say no seriously, what the fuck is happening.
That we live in a time where people pay to be locked in a room together and have to find a way out. That this is fun to us now.
That if you’re trying to write through a wall you’re not alone.
That if you’re drinking more you’re definitely not alone.
That if you feel like you’re being slowly digested by a sarlacc pit you’re not alone.
That if your deodorant doesn’t seem to be working anymore you’re not alone. We stink together.
– by Patricia Lockwood
🏠Coping with Being Housebound Zine
“Finally: expect this to hurt. Being shut-in like this is not a good lifestyle for a human being, and the coping strategies are there to soften the worse parts of it. There is no sustainable long-term way to do this…
Depression
Firstly, most importantly: if you have been told to stay indoors in isolation, what you are being asked to do is to adopt the lifestyle of a severely depressed person. Because of that you are going to start experiencing symptoms of depression…
Time
Time is going to get weird. Days are going to blend into each other. Your body-clock is going to be deprived of a lot of the physiological cues you get from going outside and having a routine.”
– Full zine available here.
🥱 Boredom = Life’s Medium
‘Joseph Brodsky compared the feeling of boredom to the psychological Sahara (talk of mental travel). In his In Praise of Boredom, a text both poetic and informative, which I would advise you to read fully, boredom is described as a product of repetition which he sees as the life’s main medium. Boredom is a window on the properties of time and ‘the lesson of your utter insignificance’:
“You are insignificant because you are finite. Yet infinity is not terribly lively, not terribly emotional. Your boredom, at least, tells you that much. And the more finite a thing is, the more it is charged with life, emotions, joy, fears, compassion.”’
– by Ksenia Galiaeva
🍇 An individual becomes truly aware of their potential through the experience of anxiety.
– Søren Kierkegaard
💉 I like writing that puts the needle right into the vein.
– Maggie Nelson