Short Story - Separation by Clare Sestanovich
Clare Sestanovich’s New Yorker story is as disarming as it is subtle. She takes the idea that a short story should hinge on a particular moment in time, an incident and weaves a narrative around it, and turns it on its head. Her story leaps, crossing timelines, decades; less of a crescendo, more of an interlude. It gave me the sense that I was living across from Kate and observing her grow through life. The third person narration creates just the right kind of distance that skirts between voyeurism and observation. I’m usually not a fan of clipped sentences but her monotony is intended, on purpose; it takes you to a new place only to leave you there. Sometimes, her admissions are biting. He had been afraid—when he admitted to being afraid—of the size of the future, of his own desperate predictions, of the simple question that only time would tell, but not to him: Now what? Sometimes, they fall flat. Kate lingered like that, her eyelids erupting with morning color. Sometimes, totally and entirely captivating.
“I don’t sound like myself,” Leah said. There were too many hard, clean surfaces. Kate looked from the phone to Felix. Leah’s gray eyes and yellow eyelashes. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Eggs? she mouthed.
“I’m hearing my own echo.”
The fridge was still in plastic, silver and unsmudged. There was a sink-shaped hole in the counter.
“I’ll take you to a different room,” Felix said. “With softer things.”
He carried the phone into the hall, the voice coming out of his palm, tinny and getting quieter, then gone. ♦ I’ve returned to this story for the last two years and you may too.
Essay - The Crack Up, F.Scott Fitzgerald
This essay is a crossroads every artist, of any medium and kind, arrives several times in their life (if they’re lucky). It’s about a man, an artist, living every kind of life, meeting all sorts of people, only to ultimately run into himself. It’s a man’s reflection on his need for success and where does that arise from. It’s highly relatable since it’s often borne from the pits of depression– the feeling that the life you’re living belongs to somebody else, that your passions are borrowed and your anger manufactured. Writer in Esquire in 1936, this essay speaks to me deeply in the gilded age of social media and performance.
A parasocial relationship is defined as a “one-sided relationship, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence. Parasocial relationships are most common with celebrities, organizations (such as sports teams) or television stars.” How many of us have such relationships with the people on our endless feeds? This lack of reciprocity can cause a fragmented psyche, a removal from the self, and for an artist, that can be both a curse and a blessing. There’s a passage in the essay that makes some very distasteful racist remarks but try to move beyond, beyond the helpless rage of political correctness, to delve into the heart of the essay; how his personal reflects the larger political.
In the 1920s, at the peak of his career, he wrote about the “roaring ‘20s”. Flapper dresses, Gatsby-like parties, florid, luxurious prose had disappeared into the miserable ‘30s. An ordinary recession became The Great Depression, unemployed workers filled the streets; his indulgent lifestyle untenable.
A clean break is something you cannot come back from; that is irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist, he says. I’ve never really been a fan of his novels but this essay is something else– at the heart of it lies pain and a compounded disintegration of a man, against that of America.
Playlist 01
Moody, ethereal; close your eyes and astral project with this playlist
Weekly Energy Reading
Is doing everything by yourself your default? Even when it’s too much for you? Is fulfilling duties and obligations— to your workplace, your partner, your friends, the domestic demands, to the vicious cycle of saying yes when what you meant was ‘no?’ It’s one thing to be a stand-up human being and fulfill all your duties and obligations, it’s another to continue doing so at the cost of your own mental health and well-being. Feeling overwhelmed by the demands of daily life is common, natural and if anything, dictated by the many systems we operate in.
Chances are you may be pushing away those who’d like to help, because often the other side of guilt associated with not carrying out your duties, is shame. Share your responsibilities with those who don’t mind helpful but be mindful of where, and with who, you spend your energy. Your first responsibility lies towards yourself. The energy is heavy in this reading but the future seems bright with the King of Pentacles. Security and abundance is promised but at a time where the material seems to have failed us, the question to ask is what can be defined as security or abundance. How much do we need versus what we want? What are our coping mechanisms when we’re feeling insecure or unsafe or unable to face what we must?
A question to reflect on is; what does a spiritually successful life look like, as opposed to a materially successful one? With this week’s new moon, what are the seeds you’d like to plant within your closest relationships? How would you like these goals to grow over the next 6 months?
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