2022.08.DisappearingMoment
August is birthday month in our household. About half of the family birthdays we celebrate occur in August. A new niece expanded our collection this month: Welcome to the family, Vivian.
This year’s big birthdays belong to Beth and another niece, Joni, whose birthday is September 1. We began celebrating her this past weekend.
Joni graduated from college in North Carolina in May. A Waldorf and home school alumna, she tends to pace herself. Joni was 24 when she graduated and didn’t have anything lined up until 2023. With no competing commitments, she decided to spend the summer and fall in Cincinnati. It’s been a good fit for her, and satisfying for us to see her growing sense of autonomy. Our many conversations about what she wants 25 to bring have me thinking about Beth’s 25th birthday.
A couple of months before Beth turned 25, she broke up with her live in, de facto fiancé. That year, she celebrated a birthday month. I was one of a handful of people who took her on dinner dates to celebrate. I was not someone she considered a prospect. We had known each other for five years and I was someone she liked, not someone she liked. (Say it like it’s 1995.)
It seems I cut an unexpected figure that night. The year before, I’d played the game of squash for the first time and fell in love. In the months leading up to our dinner, I had played at least five games every week. Off the court, I ran and lifted weights to build my strength and endurance. While my game never developed, I approximated the build and demeanor of the players I admired. Lissome. Kinetic. Inexhaustible. Surefooted.
That night, at Il Ghiottone in Old City, in place of a crush, there was a spark. What Beth recognizes as Shaktipat. Within a couple of months, Beth and I were exclusive. Soon after that, we created a map for our lives together.
August is my favorite month. It exceeds my expectations almost every year, including this one. I wish you and everyone you love a lifetime of Augusts.
Welcome to August 2022’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of my experiences. I hope you enjoy it.
Podcasts
- Do You Know Mordechai? (I Liked It): Do not mess with Jewish-Canadian women.
- Heidiworld (I Loved It): The glorious Molly Lambert on Heidi Fleiss, LA, and sexual hypocrisy. It’s time to decriminalize sex work.
- Truthers: Tiffany Dover Is Dead* (Worth My Time): Mainstream journalists vs. anti-vaxxers: scavengers vs. the credulous. (The victims of pornography are the cast and the audience.)
- Will Be Wild (I Loved It): If we tolerate bullying and cynicism, it infects everything. January 6 was an apotheosis, not an anomaly. I cried a few times while listening.
Nerdy Software
I’m loyal to iPhones because of Overcast, a podcast player. Unlike everything else I buy, I like it enough that I don’t investigate its competition.
Bougie Products
My favorite solo runs: SportHill running shorts and nothing else. No shoes, shirt, watch, hat, or sunglasses. The same pair has lasted over 11 years.
Personal Finance and Investing
Understanding spreadsheets is the difference between confidence and terror. Diana Vilató , Bill White, and Regina Krahenbuhl changed my life. I try to pay it forward.
Reading
- Andy Baio, Opening the Pandora’s Box of AI Art (I Liked It): Andy is creative, daring, exacting. For decades, he’s skated to where the puck is going. This essay got my attention.
- Adrienne Miller, In the Land of Men (2020) (I Loved It): Half memoir, half 360 review of David Foster Wallace as a writer, lover, and friend. All men are disappointments, especially those of us with self-awareness.
- Susan Fowler Rigetti, Getting Words on the Page (I Liked It): “I get the words on the page by describing the vision in my head in the most basic terms possible. Extremely basic. Like, painfully basic.”
Never Marry Someone Who (1995)
The first list that ever did me any good. It will forever be my best.
- Tries to fool people into thinking that she is blond
- Drives when she can walk
- Eats fewer than three meals a day
- (Redacted. Beth doesn’t like it when I share this one.)
- Smokes
- Wants children
- Won’t dance
- Doesn’t laugh at my jokes
- Wants to get married
- Would consider taking my surname
Thanks for spending a few moments with me. I look forward to corresponding again next month.
Brett
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