From the dead!

She lives!!

Hello Substack friends! First of all, I just want to apologize for not posting for 9 straight months— it’s been a busy time! My writing energy had to go so many other places with a higher priority. All jokes and deep thoughts had to be put through the poetry machine, and all intelligent and insightful thoughts had to go toward papers and classes. It’s a new Holly! PhD Holly! Blond Holly! Blolly! I am still getting to know her (she lives in TX?? Wild), but she is still obsessed with the book of Job and Paradise Lost, so that’s good. Now she finally has a room full of people 4 times a week required to listen to her— a dream come true for a girl who loves to hear herself talk.

Anyway, get ready for lil’ bite sized posts with (I promise!) more frequency (and more spelling errors probably <3). For those of you who have paid subscriptions, I have them paused. As I didn’t do a big round up of all the books I read last here, here is a quick review of maybe the longest book (and best??) I have ever read.

A Book

Last year I read The Power Broker, and I regret to inform you that this mammoth 1,000-page brick is an astonishingly great piece of nonfiction— maybe the best?? It is a biography of Robert Moses, the parks commissioner in NYC, and chronicles how an unelected official became the most powerful man in the city. He couldn’t be fired; he built and destroyed things at whim, and he had his own source of revenue from the tolls that he had total control over. It’s hard for me to write about this book because it took me 11 months to read and is staggeringly comprehensive. There are no time jumps or shortcuts in the narrative: every episode and its significance is described thoroughly and carefully so that you can see not only the incident in itself but also how it is in conversation with everything else— you know, like life. Robert Moses feels more real and intimate to me than some people I know. There is a really great Goodreads review of this book where they say that reading this book felt like becoming an adult for real, that understanding this microcosm of power and the man at its helm helped the whole world feel more legible, and I have to say, I agree. This book also made me realize that most (if not all) of the stopgaps in our system of government have to do with policing elected officials and those interested in accumulating wealth. A person uninterested in those things and instead trying to accumulate power for its own sake was basically free to do as he liked— there were (nor are!) no institutional checks to that kind of power. There were parts of this book that gripped me and there were stretches where I was bored, but I always came back to it. It was so well written, and even when I was bored, I respected the process. I came away from this book with a real sense of awe— not just for Robert Moses but for the book worthy of him.

This week

I am getting ready for the end of the semester and doing my very best to get ahead, which is not one of my specialties. I am taking a class on pandemics and writing a paper about Angels in America, a play about America, gay men, Mormons, and AIDS. I have spent a lot of time this week reading about disgust and the borders it maintains. And Mormons! What a bunch of weirdos. Have you heard about these guys?? I have really enjoyed the class, being sick is wild and thinking seriously about the narratives that develop around pandemics when we all have first-hand experience has been facinating. I got about 30% of what I had planned one done which is pretty much a normal week for me.

I spent three of the days this week with suprisingly intense back pain before remembering that fertility comes cursed, ibupropon is a god ,and a hot water bottle is salvation. I kept forgetting! You would think that 30 years in this same body would invite a kind of consistencey but no, monthly I am fighting with this many headed mutating hydra, enraged at my childlessness. Join the club! My grandmothers have been praying for years! You think you are SPECIAL??

Recently saw The Drama and for better or for worse, I found it to be unbelievably romantic, do with that what you will. This week I am getting the final papers from my students so pray for those poor SOBs. It is also my last week of Seminary before I take a two week break for finals (a gift I have given to myself). I am watching Mad Men and guys, the before times were NOT good for women, not sure if you knew but seriously, it was BUMMERTIME to be a girl in the 60’s. It rains every weekend. It makes the green trees across the street turn technocolor. My hair curls in the humidity and it reminds me of my mom and her sisters.

Love you all,

Blolly

This is the first picture I have taken of myself in, I kid you not, a month. I have forgotten what I look like and I live on Throat Coat Tea with honey. I bleed tea. I lick my sweat off my top lip and it tastes like licorce, marshmellow. You cut me open and my organs have liquified: its just tea.