UGH. SO MUCH UGH.
guess who caught covid from her cousin! :| altho so far it mostly feels like the beginning of a head cold, so at least i'm not flattened like she was. i have to isolate for five days and if you live with someone else the suggestion is to even use different bathrooms, which, ha. very funny. (we have one. which is pretty standard around here for not-renovated two-bedrooms.) i called in - well, emailed in - sick to work because i woke up in the middle of the night and felt TERRIBLE, altho i went back to sleep and actually felt better by the time i'd normally get up. but still kind of meh. everyone was very nice about it. i got a covid test - and a flu test and a strep test, to cover my bases - i haven't had strep since i was probably in middle school but i have kind of a sore throat so why not - which is a rapid test combined with the flu test, and... you know the rest. the doctor was pretty gentle about it, but still. UGH. i may or may not have swung by work to get my laptop but don't tell anyone. i was in the building maybe five minutes.
i also have a runny nose and have been going through kleenex like they grow on trees. which i guess they do, kind of. my roommate's dad came over to bring her some food and she asked if i needed anything and i said "more kleenex".
last night i finally watched the series finale of killing eve and i'm not sure i totally get the ending. did carolyn basically wait for eve and villanelle (mostly villanelle) to get rid of the twelve for her, and then had villanelle shot because... why? tying up loose ends? getting back at villanelle for trying to kill her? villanelle's too much of a loose cannon without a handler or a boss? it's a lesson for eve? what? i felt like there was something i was missing. also, carolyn seemed to have betrayed every country at least once. she was everyone's traitor. also also, i was a little weirded out (altho in retrospect i shouldn't have been surprised) that the show seemed to go straight up romancey about eve and villanelle's relationship. it was never anything other than utterly unhealthy and toxic and weird, and suddenly they're going to run off together like two girls in love? really?
i was wondering why they introduced pam - other than to get some fresh blood, i guess - but maybe she was supposed to be a kind of proto villanelle who instead of embracing the sociopathic assassin life looked at her future and went "no, you know, i don't want to do this" and walked away. like, proof that not all of the twelve's recruits go on to kill people for a living. she just seemed so sad and genuinely regretful about the two people she killed - i mean, she left konstantin on the bed with his hands folded over his chest holding a flower like you might pose someone in a casket for a viewing, and she thanked her first target for being so nice to her - that i couldn't buy her as a cold-blooded killer for hire, and i was actually kind of glad she turned it down. maybe she went back to slicing meat for sandwiches with that cute boy on the boardwalk.
it might be one of those shows that was only ever worth one or two seasons, and it just never should have lasted for four.
I’m climbing out of this season, fingernails ragged, belly soft. I tuck a stem of dried mint behind my ear to remind myself.
Once, I bared my shoulders. The bottom of my feet roughed up the dirt with their hard calluses. When I harvested arugula, it smelled of green spice-alchemical veins pulsing sun and dirt and water. I do remember this. I pinned summer light up in my hair and made no apologies for the space I took up-barely clothed and sun-bound.
Now, a ball of twine in the grey sky. The sun rolls low on the horizon. Hangs. Then dips back down again, wind howling us into night.
Inside the erratic rhythm of this wavering flame, I conjure the potent sky of the longest day. Seeds with a whole galaxy inside them. Cicadas vibrating in the alders.
But the sensation of joy slips too quickly into simulacra. Song on repeat. I never meant to find myself in such a cold place, my hair thinning against winter.
Once, red clover grew thick where today’s rabbit tracks pattern the snow. Clover said flow, clover said nourish, clover said we’ve got this.
I reel the memory out, let it linger on the horizon, then reel it back in. I play it out and reel it back in. Some kind of fishing, some kind of flying-again and again. I loosen the buckles of my mind. I take up space in the precision of my breath. I call us all back in.
--"February", Tamiko Beyer
i also have a runny nose and have been going through kleenex like they grow on trees. which i guess they do, kind of. my roommate's dad came over to bring her some food and she asked if i needed anything and i said "more kleenex".
last night i finally watched the series finale of killing eve and i'm not sure i totally get the ending. did carolyn basically wait for eve and villanelle (mostly villanelle) to get rid of the twelve for her, and then had villanelle shot because... why? tying up loose ends? getting back at villanelle for trying to kill her? villanelle's too much of a loose cannon without a handler or a boss? it's a lesson for eve? what? i felt like there was something i was missing. also, carolyn seemed to have betrayed every country at least once. she was everyone's traitor. also also, i was a little weirded out (altho in retrospect i shouldn't have been surprised) that the show seemed to go straight up romancey about eve and villanelle's relationship. it was never anything other than utterly unhealthy and toxic and weird, and suddenly they're going to run off together like two girls in love? really?
i was wondering why they introduced pam - other than to get some fresh blood, i guess - but maybe she was supposed to be a kind of proto villanelle who instead of embracing the sociopathic assassin life looked at her future and went "no, you know, i don't want to do this" and walked away. like, proof that not all of the twelve's recruits go on to kill people for a living. she just seemed so sad and genuinely regretful about the two people she killed - i mean, she left konstantin on the bed with his hands folded over his chest holding a flower like you might pose someone in a casket for a viewing, and she thanked her first target for being so nice to her - that i couldn't buy her as a cold-blooded killer for hire, and i was actually kind of glad she turned it down. maybe she went back to slicing meat for sandwiches with that cute boy on the boardwalk.
it might be one of those shows that was only ever worth one or two seasons, and it just never should have lasted for four.
I’m climbing out of this season, fingernails ragged, belly soft. I tuck a stem of dried mint behind my ear to remind myself.
Once, I bared my shoulders. The bottom of my feet roughed up the dirt with their hard calluses. When I harvested arugula, it smelled of green spice-alchemical veins pulsing sun and dirt and water. I do remember this. I pinned summer light up in my hair and made no apologies for the space I took up-barely clothed and sun-bound.
Now, a ball of twine in the grey sky. The sun rolls low on the horizon. Hangs. Then dips back down again, wind howling us into night.
Inside the erratic rhythm of this wavering flame, I conjure the potent sky of the longest day. Seeds with a whole galaxy inside them. Cicadas vibrating in the alders.
But the sensation of joy slips too quickly into simulacra. Song on repeat. I never meant to find myself in such a cold place, my hair thinning against winter.
Once, red clover grew thick where today’s rabbit tracks pattern the snow. Clover said flow, clover said nourish, clover said we’ve got this.
I reel the memory out, let it linger on the horizon, then reel it back in. I play it out and reel it back in. Some kind of fishing, some kind of flying-again and again. I loosen the buckles of my mind. I take up space in the precision of my breath. I call us all back in.
--"February", Tamiko Beyer