Rest days

Hello!

It is mid-July, and I still hate summer. My brain came to a screeching halt at the end of May, and I've watched enough hours of Dexter in the ensuing months that I feel like my head is going to fall off of my head. There is too much sun. The prospect of freedom is an illusion. I am biding my time until the clock turns back and I can be in bed at 7pm. In winter, the collective mood of the country will turn down to a more appropriate-for-the-end-times 3 out of 10. All will be (un)well.

For most of June and July I did not do much. I traveled to see family, I was trying to manage the chest pain/shortness of breath I've had on and off since getting covid for the second time last summer, and, also, I got covid for the third time. Israel is still slowly starving and quickly killing Palestinians. The US is still marching towards a quicker apocalypse, though it seems for the moment that we at least aren't running full-tilt. My chest hurts, and it hurts more when I read the news. I have been on one long rest day. It makes me feel like I am dying. But we are all dying, so it is good practice.

Sports on television

July is for the peloton. Not only did Tour de France: Unchained Season 2 drop on Netflix last month, but the actual Tour de France dropped in real life on July 1st. You can watch every stage (all 4 to 6 hours of them) live on Peacock, or just watch the end, or just watch the highlights. I won't spoil which one won on July 21st, but I will say that it was the one I wanted to win. Biniam Girmay became the first Black person to win a stage (and then he won two more and the green Sprinters jersey—given to the best sprinter of the Tour), and Richard Carapaz became the first Ecuadorian person to win the polka dotted King of the Mountains jersey—given to the Tour's best climber. So fun! There are limits to the big-picture joy and meaning we can ascribe to the first person of color, or person of nation, to win or do anything, since "first" and "only" are, you know, the exceptions that prove the rule, but there are not limits to how personally joyful and meaningful these events can be to you or me or anyone. I am happy for Girmay and Carapaz. Cycling is still a blindingly white sport, and like many elite endurance sports, may or may not be up to its aerodynamic eyeballs in performance enhancing drugs. But like all of us, the peloton contains multitudes, and it makes for great rest day viewing.

Once you run out of 6-hour bicycle stage races to watch, I recommend Sprint, another great sports docu-series, also on Netflix. And nary a white person in sight! Noah Lyles is so endearing! Sha'Carri Richardson makes me proud to be a Richardson, and an American! Yikes! Usain Bolt can make the world's dorkiest move look very cool! I have not yet watched the Simone Biles doc, but I sure will, and I am sure I will love it.

Books

While flying from Detroit to San Francisco with my love this month, we flew through between roughly forty-five minutes and seventy-eight hours of what I would personally call severe turbulence. It was not worse than the worst turbulence I've experienced, but it was at a level with the worst. The plane dipped and shook and swooped. I did box breathing for the first several hours, and then counted my breaths, and then I just gripped my love's arm, lest I accidentally run to the emergency exit and jump out of the plane (she did not notice; she was watching Finding Nemo; she would occasionally glance down with mild surprise at my sweaty little paws batting at her arm). Surprise! We landed, and everyone survived. You're welcome.

I am midway through Stephen King's latest collection, You Like it Darker. I recommend the whole thing (and while you're at it, go ahead and read his entire oeuvre), but I especially recommend the short story "The Turbulence Expert," especially for those uneasy fliers:

"The plane seemed to run into a brick wall, throwing them forward against their belts, and then heeled over to port: thirty degrees, forty, fifty. Just when Dixon was sure it was going to roll over completely, it righted itself. Dixon heard people yelling. The baby was wailing. A man was shouting, 'It's okay, Julie, it's normal, it's okay!'

Dixon shut his eyes again and let the terror fully take him. It was horrible; it was the only way."

In an interview with Dennis Miller in 2008, Stephen King said, "The flight you have to be afraid of is the flight where there’s nobody on who’s afraid of flying. Those are the flights that crash. Trust me on this. You have three or four people who are terrified right out of their minds…we hold it up.” He returned to this idea in "The Turbulence Expert," about a loosely organized conglomerate of psychics who, yes, use their terror of flying to keep planes from crashing. Did my terror and constant vigilance save our plane from crashing? We may never know. But intelligent minds can certainly speculate.

As a funny side note, Ross Gay also has a sweet essayette about flying in The Book of Delights, which I have been re-reading this summer, and is delightful:

"Before we took off I was running through my rituals, only today occurring to me as delightful (if a bit weird), that I am certain keep the airplane from falling out of the sky. First I picture a large glowing curtain of light the airplane rolls through (sometimes I imagine myself tossing the curtain over the plane, like a bedspread), emerging as a large glowing vessel of light. This glow means the plane's protected from harm."

The ritual also involves a hand carrying the plane safely homeward, paying close attention to the stewards, and reading through the safety pamphlets. I love Ross Gay and I love his rituals. I have even tried them. Unfortunately, I like it darker, and, also unfortunately, am soothed more by terror—vigilance, constant vigilance!—than hope, faith, or love in all things airplane, height, or risk related.

Words

The words of summer, of this particular time in summer are from Kiese Laymon, whose words I could quote, almost always, in their entirety:

"I am from Mississippi where they do everything to prevent us from organizing, unionizing, drinking clean water, living above the poverty. A vote here is literally a blow against premature death. In our tradition, the vote is heavy, but if some tells us that they aren't voting because they can't stomach voting for genocide, we might want to say I absolutely understand. And shut the fuck up."

The plane has been crashed a long time. I am tired of imagining catastrophes that have not yet touched me physically. And I am alive because they have not yet touched me physically. I won't jump. I am resting. Isn't it incredible to be able to rest?

Until next time,

Endria

P.S.

>> Narinda Heng's latest chapbb, gently, gently, is here. One of my favorites, "a counting," is photographed below:

>> A few newish short stories of mine are out in the world. You can read "A Pedra" in Lightspeed and "Elevation" in Fusion Fragment (you'll have to download a *free* PDF)