Hitting "shuffle"
A random collections of thoughts as I try not to miss this week's self-imposed deadline
I’ve spent the past few days trying to find a good topic for this week’s Substack. I’m running late, it is now Monday evening, and I’m still running around in mental circles, unsure of what to tackle and how. My mom used to say that I was a quiet thinker, taking my time—however long that was—processing whatever it was to myself before trying to articulate anything. I think I still do this—enough to cause me some discomfort (and some trouble with others) on occasion. But I’m not sure if this is the case or it’s simply that this exercise is now coming to what feels like an inevitable lull.
Still, let’s push forward, play some music, and see what comes out in the next few minutes.
I wasn’t much of a sports-inclined child. I practiced rhythmic gymnastics in elementary school (I used to love the ribbon so much), and I liked playing handball and football1 in P.E. Besides that, nothing much. But I’ve been watching the Panamerican games for the past week, catching occasional matches and performances. It’s been fun, especially as you can catch so many different events throughout one day.
I think it appeals to my every-so-mercurial mind.2
Speaking of hopping around, last weekend I went bookstore-hopping with Life Associate and a friend. We hit four different stores, I saw more than a couple of cute puppies, we got what looks like some cool stuff, and I came home exhausted but happy.
Before my research year in Paris, we gave away most of our (admittedly, by then, small) library as that sounded like a good idea (hindsight is twenty-twenty, etc). Since the fall of 2021, we have been rebuilding and expanding our collection, with a mix of recent releases (ideally, after they’ve come out as paperbacks), classics, in-between titles, and some funky-looking mass-market paperbacks.
One of the most dopamine-inducing moments for me is to sit on our couch, look around our shelves, and see the heterogeneous library we have put together in the past two years.
Heterogeneous, but organized alphabetically by author’s last name.
I’m thinking of spacing out these newsletters a little bit more. Make it bi-weekly. Give my ideas some room to breathe and myself some extra time to make them a little more cohesive, a little more thought out, a little less random.
On the other hand, it is precisely this randomness that has first drawn me to create this space. After all, in my first post here, I said the title of this space was inspired by a common Brazilian literary genre, the crônica: “They are short, informal pieces of writing, about daily observations and topics.”
Maybe I just need to remember that it’s okay for these not to be always cogent, fully developed, entirely coherent. That it’s okay for this space to be, like me, a little bit mercurial.
October round-up:
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Fever Dream, by Samanta Schweblin (trans. Megan McDowell)
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923 (ed. Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger)
The Employees, by Olga Ravn (trans. Martin Aitken)
As in, the sport you use your foot to kick a ball.
Literally, I’m a Gemini.
Hi Juliana, I always enjoy your random thoughts and happenings!! So I would say don't worry too much about not feeling you have enough to say. But if bi-weekly sits better with you, then try that out. It's all about experimentation, I think. I wake up some days with these (seemingly) brilliant ideas to develop my work here, and by lunchtime have scrapped them altogether! If it is of any consolation, I love the mercurial nature of your letters :)
Also...I have never read Olga Ravn but heard about her latest book, 'My Work', which I really want to get my hands on, particularly when I saw an article mentioning her in the same breath as Danish author Helle Helle, who's book 'This should be written in the present tense' I loved, and highly recommend if you haven't already read it!