Observables #20
on cat bellies, Jason Mott and never solving my mother angst
Violet opening the front door and proclaiming to the snowy landscape, “It’s wet as white!” She makes these sorts of pronouncements regularly. Half well- worn saying, half whatever word combinations come to mind. I like this one. I’m intermittently yelling it while Simon’s at the dentist. When I have the house to myself I can be more weird than my usual level. (I asked Simon to confirm and he’s skeptical.)
My cat whenever possible.
We follow her around and then just when she’s achieved this state of relaxation one of us picks her up. Because how could you not with that belly?
Also, Bergman Island by filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve. I mentioned it here and then finally finished it this week. Sometimes I only have the attention span of a squirrel so I watch things for ten minutes and then put it away. I know. So…did I like this film?
I’m not sure. A woman and her partner go to the Baltic island of Fårö, where the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman did much of his work, to do an artist residency. His work is going better than hers. Then the movie gets meta and we start to see the scenario that the woman is writing play out. Not surprisingly, she can’t find an ending. Her real world and the world of the film start to intermingle. There’s a fling with another artist. Then her young daughter shows up. The end.
The trailer set me up to believe it was going to help me process my artist/mother angst, which I’m always looking to solve. But instead I got more bike riding through beautiful scenery, and waify white privileged people talking about art, which I didn’t not like. But I’m not sure if that’s enough.
Equally meta but with much higher stakes is Hell Of A Book by Jason Mott, winner of the National Book Award. The protagonist is a nameless author who has just written a book called Hell Of A Book. (See, so meta!)
Now he’s being sent around the country on a book tour where he’s often asked to be the spokesperson for how dangerous it is to be a Black man in America. Throughout the tour he's also visited regularly by an invisible boy who looks exactly like a Black boy recently shot dead. By the end of the tour and the book, the identity of the protagonist merges with the boy, and in some senses the identity of all Black boys who endure the same scrutiny and often tragic fate at the hands of white people and a society built on anti-Black racism.
With such weighty themes you wouldn’t expect to laugh in this book, but I laughed so much and tried to convey what I was reading by reciting long sections to each member of my family at inopportune moments.
I’m sitting in the luster and glow of pale sunlight funneled in by the faux open-air design of the Denver International Airport and, thanks to a credit card that my publisher hasn’t had a chance to deactivate yet, I’m well on my way to a good, self-flagellating drunk. The kind of bender we all deserve when our lives have come crumbling down around our ankles.
The satirical nature of his writing is not just LOL funny, but obligates a lot of thought. Did you laugh? Do you feel connected? I did. Just read it, then we’ll have a book club in the comments.
Sister On! news: we have a new problem to reframe from a listener. I’m this kind of serious face when it comes to reframing all the problems. Yours. Mine. Let’s go. Join us for a listen!
