I finished reading Solenoid
and I've been sick all month
I finished reading Solenoid a few weeks ago and am experiencing mild anhedonia alongside extreme allergies.
A reduced amount of oxygen to my brain has caused some difficulties in reaching my art and literature goals this month. I fear I am too sensitive to really succeed in a polluted city that rewards performers.
Thankfully I was well enough to still do something to celebrate my birthday, narrowly avoiding the birthday sadness. I am grateful to have spent time with new friends and old friends on a day spotted with sunshowers : )
Back to Solenoid: Everything reminds me of her. I read Solenoid on and off for two years, the full time (until now) that I have lived in New York. The book became a source of comfort. A constant companion. At the end, I read her on the Kindle (via Libby app) because shlepping a 600 page book around started hurting my shoulder/neck. At times I was eager for it to end. At other times I was desperate for it to never end. This book is unlike anything I have ever read before. Moments of the purest fantasy shine like a sun beam reaching into the depths of a dirty lake to illuminate a diamond ring that has been lost for fifty years. Other moments feel like slogging through the most tiresome, banal, soul-crushing minutiae of navigating a broken social services system in a dwindling economy. I felt like I quantum leapt while reading through the six or so pages that just say “Help! Help! Help! Help!” while on and off the train, while hearing actual people around me talking to the air or to God to help them, spiraling out in their reality separate to mine, occupying the same limited space of the sidewalk. Was everyone around me including myself silently from an interior mouth screaming for help? In my mucousy delirium I thought yes, yes. Everyone in the world.
I hear of someone’s project involving ants and machines: Solenoid. I get a pap smear : Solenoid. I visit Esther Art Fair and see an art installation of a dentists chair displayed with rocks and silver shapes and flossing tools: Solenoid. Anything I see that says something along the lines of death being enemy number one, or even the new Horse Lords album called “Demand to be Taken to Heaven Alive” reminds me of the Picketists in Solenoid: a radical group intent on rioting against death, dying, and aging, who carry signs with similar slogans.
No one I know has read it. No one has time for reading. I make time for reading because it is the one thing I have been enjoying, consistently, lately.
Maybe I will act on my desire to start a Book Club that meets at Burp Castle. Build community. Interested? We could read books under 300 pages. It could be called B.C. (Build Community through Book Club at Burp Castle)
In an interview with the author of Solenoid, Mircea Cărtărescu, he says he wrote the novel in a stream of consciousness with no looking back or editing. He became a channel to write the book. I am looking forward to reading his other books, but first, I must finish the books I have in front of me now. Cărtărescu also said he was a poet before he was a novelist, which definitely tracks with the novel. Highly recommend this book. Translated by Sean Cotter from Romanian btw.
In other news.. in a recent dream I found myself walking in an environment that felt very Mall World. An apartment complex within a massive parking lot with a beach on the side. I walked past a large window with two oversized orange leather chairs with a table between them. I took a picture on my phone (in my dream) and sent it to S (in my dream) with the message: i’m in Mall World lol. He did not respond. No one responds to my texts in dreams and it’s starting to piss me off. I told too many people I was writing an essay on Mall World and I never wrote it. Actually I never wrote it because a subreddit was my main source, which is not really enough for me. A new source of conflict on the subreddit is about using AI generated images to illustrate locations in Mall World. Users are worried that exposure to such images (& there are a LOT of them) is becoming too influential, potentially reducing the purity of shared locations through so much pre exposure to images.
I saw on some Instagram news page a link to a study done by a French sleep science team. The term “hyperonirism” or “epic dreaming disorder” found fatigue and distress in patients who suffer from nights of vivid dreams. Every week I use Spiritual Response Therapy to dial down my active dreaming. It is the only thing that has ever worked, and requires at least biweekly upkeep or else I become super tired and spaced out from living full days and nights in my dreams. It can get out of balance, as I become more social in my dreams than in my waking life.
While suffering from severe congestion, I listened to a YouTube guided meditation and hypnosis for allergies and it actually worked really well. I fell asleep breathing through my nose (!). For anyone interested, it’s called Pollen and Dust Allergies Healing Hypnosis and Guided Meditation by Unlock Your Life.
Love,
Kodi