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Trying to read each Manbooker in reverse order, and then maybe the International Manbooker. Avoiding writing anything or working on the dissertation. Engaging in cycles of self destruction, primarily out of curiosity. Feeling Cioranesque lately hahah¬—please, please shut up. The more I engage with this weirdo content that, for example, casually incorporates political philosophers into their writings as though they are close personal acquaintances, the more I understand shows like Love Island. I also yearn for the mindless slop. It is starting to feel as though it is worth more than all of the “serious” content, so melancholic and reeking of “I’m a nightmare of a party guest.”
I mean this with love, after all, I engage and write like this. But in a world eating itself, I feel like this kind of discourse will be the first to go. Maybe the frat boys with the kegs and golf club memberships have unlocked some kind of esoteric state only dreamed of by academics and service workers pondering existentialism. Maybe it’s all just cope. Or burnout. Or both.
My writing is getting sloppier. I’ve been reading about five books a week. Thinking a lot about the Victorian practice of going to the sea for the cure. Did it, and did feel better. I’ll write about that later. All this leading to thoughts about access to natural spaces and colonial resource extraction vs recreational extraction, because I too can’t ever just have fun. Summer always feels like the in-between time. It is like life is a sitcom, the simulacra proceeding the real and all that, and summer is the off season. I’m floating, quite literally all day in water, and then later on in the extreme humidity that keeps the fatigue gnawing.
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