the way that my mother and I do our mascara

Lately I am unexpectedly, maybe not newly but in a new way, drawn to 

lady singer songwriter discordant twang shifting register beat poetry meets the eerie 

kinda stuff: 

Rickie Lee Jones and the 2023 Feist album Multitudes are current repeat texts, and I think there's room for this same read in Beth Gibbons' (of Portishead) Out of Season and let me tell you all of these songs and albums are wonderful and beautiful, but, man: 

this is Adult Contemporary. 

Fuck, man.

And I am deep in it. 

And I just had to start wearing reading glasses. And I haven't had my period in six months. 

And the (honestly, very good--but with all the caveats about these evil eyes all up in my shit) youtube algorithm just transmitted to me the information that John Cale (beloved to me, probably even more beloved-er to Phil) has a new album and I popped into this song first and it just couldn't get more Adult Contemporary than that, though I love its friendly wisdom and soft alienation. Oh well. His other new one is better for feelings of doom and rage (honestly, that's my favorite emotion-space for music--just on a different kick tonight). And while you're at it, Mitski's new one is good, too, for some soft rage.

And I am thinking about how whenever my mom does eye makeup, her bottom lid's eyelashes have a little clump or a smudge. The effect is Twiggy-ish. The same thing happens to me. Always? Just lately? I usually have a choice wherein I could clean it up and make the mascara more invisible. But I almost never do. Is that how it is for my mom? Did she leave it like that on purpose, all this time? And do we do that to buck against something? The way that we scowl, like it--in and of itself--is an act of nonconformism. Sometimes, we just hate them all. I hunted down and read this line aloud to Phil a few weeks back, two glasses of wine in, to juxtapose with my never-ending hatred of these assholes in our neighborhood, the "moms" who run the show at Loulou's school, anyone in a luxury vehicle, anyone who isn't naturally drawn to incessant doom: "We live here because we hate the rest of you" (Samantha Hunt, The Seas).

So many feelings! 

I am utterly shocked to find out that memory and experience really do bring some kinda knowledge. 

I wrote this in the afternoon while listening to that Beth Gibbons album:

Come to find out

that the way that an awfully good joke and an awfully good scare are the same

is the way.

LOL.