Hello! Welcome to Because I Have the Time, an experiment of sorts—letters, prose, solicited advice, bookthoughts, and weekly dives into things I’ve consumed—written by Aimee Ortega. Today’s post is about things I’ve ‘Consumed This Week’. If you like it, you can subscribe here. As always, feel free to share it with whoever you think might enjoy it. Older posts can be found on my page archive.
This was a particularly grievous week. If you’ve been able to savor any small, or large, non-terrible things I hope you have. In case no one has said this to you, it’s normal if positivity, joy, or hope feel inacessible at the moment. There are many ways to be in the world, may you meet yourself where you are in this moment with as much tenderness as you need to get you to the next.
Read/Reading
This collective poem about Adam Toledo from a class of 6th graders in Chicago
As someone who has had to relearn how to feel safe when experiencing feelings of joy (a long story for a different day), I enjoyed Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown quite a bit. I think many of the sentiments and frameworks expressed in the book can be applied to healing, relationships, and life in general
The personal essay “On shame” by Mary Retta
I enjoyed Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters quite a bit. You can tell that it wasn’t written for a cis/straight audience. While the main characters acknowledge the privileges of their whitness, it is still a white trans story
I stumbled onto the How to Cure a Ghost newsletter by way of Mary Retta’s newsletter two bullets up. She had cited the post “Embracing the Paradox”, which was about trauma, healing, love, shame, and trying to live your way through those things. Relevant.
The book flap sold Ashley Audrain’s The Push as an unreliable narrator story, the type where we’re meant to doubt the story the woman narrator is telling, about a mother who’s failing to connect with her daughter, who also may or may not be a sociopath. I didn’t really buy it. Flashbacks are used to illustrate a generational history of parental abuse and tee up doubt about the narrator’s mothering skills, and it felt heavy handed. I considered this a mindlessly entertaining read
I just started A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende and also starting to work my way through Heal Your PTSD: Dynamic Strategies that Work by Michele Rosenthal. If I finish them by the end of next week, I’ll let you know what I think
Watched/Watching
Last week when I mentioned the lack of tv shows, I forgot to mention how much Snowfall has simultaneously been annoying me while keeping me tuned in this past season. Franklin Saint has been in a mess of his own making for the majority of this season, and this weeks episode was a tiny redemptive arc
Shiva Baby ! This combination of the tight shots, the soundtrack (one of the tracks is called anxiety attack lol) includes a lot of perfectly paced claustrophobially frantic violin, and the gratingly layered dialogue perfectly captured the feelings of anxiety, stress, and insecurity the main character experiences
On a whim, but also prompted by seeing people discuss the 9th Fast and the Furious movie that’s coming out this summer, I decided to embark on a sequential watch of the Fast and the Furious series. I thought I had seen a few of the movies in the series, but quickly realized I had certainly never seen the first one.
[SPOILER ahead in case you’re like me] I wish I could tell you how surprised I was when it was revealed that Brian was a cop! I sat up in bed and said, “this man’s a cop?,” and then rolled over in annoyance and turned my projector off. After finishing the first movie today I’m left with many questions. Namely, are the rest of the movies about cop Brian trying to track down Dom? Does cop Brian stop being a cop? Is this shit copaganda? Is this why people keep watching? Feel free to comment below
Listened
I started listening to Young Thug and Gunna’s Slime Language 2 but felt bored 10 songs in. Will I listen to the remaining 13?! Mehhhhh (probably though)
The migrating birds outside my window lol. Writing this is making me reflect on, and feel self-conscous about, my media consumption habits