Hey June Bug
Photo by Jiroe on Unsplash
June is Pride month! My life is deliciously non-traditional and I’m proud to always be in a state of flux, questioning what I’ve been taught to believe is “normal” or “natural,” and to embrace queerness as a verb: to queer. To question, to be open-minded, to vex, to ask what really serves me versus what I’ve been taught to expect or taught to desire. It means always feeling a bit off center, to be honest—I take nothing for granted, and I’m always poking at definitions and limits and sitting just on the edge of discomfort, poking at it with a toe.
But what I’ve gotten from living like this is, strangely, a sense of peace. I have no idea what I’m doing at any given moment, and I have no scripts and very few examples, and yet in letting myself be super open to love in whatever form it takes, I’m surrounded by love all the time. I see all of my close relationships as precious—whether they’re with friends, lovers, or with myself. But not with that dickhead squirrel that keeps coming up on my deck and digging up my pots. Fuck that guy. No love for him.
And that’s the great thing about being queer. You get to live on a spectrum and you get to navigate yourself along that spectrum—forward, backward, up, down. Which I guess makes it a matrix? I dunno. Just take the red pill.
So shout out to all of you questioning your bizness. It doesn’t have to be sexually! But questioning what makes you tick. What you assume about yourself and others. What you assume will make you happy, and what you assume you should value, and whether that has anything to do with real happiness or your true values.
Now, here’s some things I’ve liked recently:
To watch!
Minx! OMG! Lotta peen. It does nothing expected with the romantic tropes it teases, in the most refreshing way. It also has a really great message about the importance of trickle down intellectualism, the way I think about how we need those people who translate high falutin’ ideas from the Ivory Tower into something interesting and approachable for everyone.
Weirdly similarly to that last theme, I loved Julia, also on HBO. Both shows are about feminism and women and women’s changing roles, and both are a love story to offering accessibility to new ideas through popular media (be it to french cooking or birth control).
To read!
Hamnet! So beautiful. So sad. So beautiful and sad.
Also this (true) story about a family of 12, in which 6 sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
To listen!
Can’t stop listening to this song, by Jenny Lewis, or to Florence and the Machine’s new album, where she just went full coven leader, fuck ya’ll.
This episode of Dr. Alexandra Solomon’s podcast, Reimagining Love, was amaaaaazing.
Finally, this episode of Hidden Brain about conversations, conversation styles and culture, and listening really blew my mind.