Welcome back! It is saturday evening and I'm looking back at a week that went way better than I had expected. While there was an ominous feeling at the beginning of the week that told me i was perhaps going to fall deeper into isolation, the week opened up in ways I didn't expect.
Here's what I knew: a colleague was taking vacation so I had to take some of her workload, and I felt lonely and without energy.
What ended up happening was that taking that load led me to speak and work with other people on the office and thus feeling more connected to my environment. It also reminded me of more people in my life that I perhaps wasn't paying attention to, so I decided to call up my baby cousin. Now, he isn't a baby of course, but he's the youngest of us and recently started his semester here. He isn't from here initially and I live in a university city, so I do feel responsible for making him feel and remember that we're here for him even if his hometown is only an hour away. We had a very nice conversation that reminded me of how smart he is while also reaffirming that I do have a role in his life. When we had conversations about reading, he puts himself down that he still can't read so often as I do (still recognizing that he has a lot of responsabilities in university) and I push him to, if he wants to read in his free time, perhaps start with reads that he can enjoy rather than more difficult stuff if he doesn't feel is inviting.
From Camus I've only read The Stranger and I actually struggled to understand absurdism from it. My cousin has read The myth of Sysyphus and he wanted to talk about it a few years ago since he knows I'm into reading. Then I heard something about it referencing that the philosophy recognizes the meaninglessness of life and just takes it and decides to still live (reminds me a bit of what I said last week about liking running because it's something I can start and then it's just about keeping going). Is that the actual philosophy? God knows, maybe now I'll follow the rabbithole and find out. I mentioned this to my cousin and he said that, what he interpreted (as a 17 year old who read it in a rush before being tested on it) was that regardless of the meaning of life, you keep living the cycle and maybe you can find happiness in the little things that stand out. Is this absurdism? Again, I have no clue. Then he mentioned this little hang out as a happy diversion from usual life and I felt happy that he felt that way.
Lately I've been craving dessert after lunch everyday. It started as anxiety eating a couple of weeks ago but now it has kind of become a part of my routine, so I go to the supermarket next to the office like half an hour after lunch and buy a chocolate mousse. On tuesday I wanted to see if the supermarket crossing the street could've had a better deal, and I'm stopped at the entry, I look up from my phone (shame on me) and it's this lady with a cart that's having fun dancing and doing foot work as You make my dreams by Hall & Oates. Quickly who I assume is her husband tells her "Darling, we can dance later, someone's trying to go through" or something like that. It definitely made my afternoon. Music does have that influence on me, but as I used to be a dancer, I may go to far with my moves when dancing in public, but I do love dancing while I cook, do chores, or even before I sleep (perfect moment to polish my Martha Graham moves).
Something else I wanted to share this week came to me because of tiktok.
User Hallie Odellie does a series called "Modern Art for haters" where she gives some food for thought when it comes to analyzing art and specifically modern art, before accusing it of being money laundering. I had grown an appreciation for art and also the difficult job of innovating after some of my reads last year, namely Les yeux de Mona by Thomas Schlesser and See what you're missing by Will Gompertz. The first one is fiction but so focused on art that it comes with the images, and the second one looks deeply into some artists' work to see how it reveals aspects of life they care, see, or feel more intensely about. Lately I've been interested in buying another book of his, What are you looking at?, that specifically covers modern art. So I've been a defender.
The tiktok series I'm talking about though, talked this week about the paradox "if everything can be art then nothing is art". Does having art be more experimental make grandiose rennaisance paintings less valuable? (Do we have to appreciate things only because they're better than others? Like movies making a male character fall in love with a girl because she's not like other girls, we've all heard of that one).
Then she mentioned "The hidden museum" by Erin Dorney and Tyler Barton, where they, in an existing museum, wrote placards for different common things in the museum as if it was artwork in the museum. And it makes you question whether your disposition can attribute value to things that are daily life, and perhaps if we had that disposition more often we might be able to enjoy the beauty of the world, and find messages in little things. Now, I know that a lot of this is my own interpretation, and art as a concept and how people understand it is a complex thing, but as this blog is meant to do, I'm trying to take a joyful lesson out of this thing I discovered.
Lastly, I'd like to mention that I have finished reading The story of the new name and will be reviewing it next week. I read the bulk of it in the past four days and a book hadn't pull me in like that in awhile, I had read books faster but lately I'd been struggling to read and I just let myself because I've left behind the mentality of forcing myself to read faster (even if it means reading less tha usual) so being pulled in by a book again felt good and exciting.
Once again, thank you for reading my thoughts this week, and brace yourself for next because exciting things are happening! The Figure Skating World Championships are happening since wednesday and I'll be tuning in, so if you're a new, post-olympic fan, perhaps it will be fun for you to read my comments. Also, I saved a typewriter from my grandfather's house after he died almost two years ago, but due to lack of space I left it at my dad's and never brought it home. My dad had threatened to just throw it away after some time but I verified this week with the intention of brining it home finally and it still exists! So I'll be attempting to make it work and maybe put it to use? We'll see.
Goodbye and see you!
Violet