identity

the first time I encountered death, I was in middle school. there was an almond roca in my mouth and I was watching an episode of phineas and ferb when the phone call came. my aunt or uncle went through to voicemail, and in a broken voice they addressed my dad, "hey... dad passed away last night." my grandpa. I broke down in tears. a short time later, my dad came home from work and he was crying too. it was the first time I had seen my dad cry. I didn't eat almond roca or watch phineas and ferb for a year after that.

in college, an former high school classmate passed away. he had beat leukemia in high school, but it came back for him. we shared a birthday, but we weren't friends, and he had been annoying in elementary school. still, this was a same aged peer.

in 2021, cassidy passed away. she had been driving home for the holidays when she got into a car accident, and her sister was in the car as well. we were in the same house in college, we had talked a few times, and she had been good friends with sheila. before sheila would call me for hours, she would call cassidy for hours. cassidy and I could very well have been friends.

michelle's dad was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. he passed away in 2024, just a few hours after michelle, louise, and I met up for yoga.

but certainly this is your closest strike yet.

when I got david's message on sunday night, on my way back from picking up dinner, my stomach turned. but I didn't suspect. "hi are you free? urgent" it said. I knew it was about angela. I thought perhaps she was in a crisis and they needed my input. or maybe it was good news, they'd gotten engaged? unlikely though, it seemed negative. I responded, and david tried to call me, but I declined and wanted to wait until I was back in my apartment. the anxiety built, but still —

I called david on my laptop. he answered, and he said, "there's no easy way to say this... angela passed away yesterday."

I thought it would be bad, but not this. I keep replaying the tape back and forth over those words, and it's like running my finger along a blunt, jagged knife edge. to me, her death happened in the span of three words.

I started crying. quietly. david wasn't crying when he called, but he cried through the rest of the call too. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," he kept saying.

my mind ran the rest of the night, until I finally fell asleep at 4am.

the day after, the image that settled upon me was a light winking out. instantaneously and forever. it's like someone reached out and pinched it, and that's it. in a night sky of stars, just one blinked out. we are so small. so fragile. so temporary.

the pacing and writing style were engaging. the rhythm, the cadence of dialogue without quotations melding into exposition.

the story wove back and forth in time, constantly. it was really a series of scenes. at the beginning of each chapter we would jump forward a few months, but when the scene was over, we would skip backward a few days or weeks to a moment that related to the opening scene we just finished. it was hard to follow exactly the chronology, but that also didn't matter very much.

to be blunt, the plot was mediocre. it was a story about lovers, almost a love story. it could have been written very different, with the same plot, and been a love story. but as it was, it was more a "character study" I suppose.

sometimes there were scenes or passages dropped in that weren't super relevant, but revealed an interesting perspective or observation from the author. surprisingly, I enjoyed them, and didn't find them too preachy. 

I enjoyed the vignettes through which sally rooney described complex interpersonal relationships. one relationship was marianne and peggy's close yet slightly toxic friendship. peggy squirreled her way into marianne's life, staying late, taking up her time. and then when they were with other friends, she would say things that felt like bullying. everyone could see this, which is why their friends would laugh a little extra at marianne's jokes. afterwards, peggy would sidle up to marianne and say she didn't mean anything by it. and it would happen all over again. again, it wasn't about what happened between them, but about the small actions by peggy that would evoke certain feelings from marianne. rooney' writing strayed closer to "tell" than to "show," and yet painted the scene beautifully.

and truly, this book made me crave a "normal" relationship. except, is anyone really "normal"? marianne was devastated because she thought she was so damaged, and at one point connell avoided her because he believed himself to be undamaged. but in the end, their most harmonious state was to love each other in the ways they needed, trauma and baggage be damned.

some passages I highlighted:

"This quality of discernment, she has realized, does not make Lukas a good person. He has managed to nurture a fine artistic sensitivity without ever developing any real sense of right and wrong. The fact that this is even possible unsettles Marianne, and makes art seem pointless suddenly."

I love the distinction between having an opinion, and the implications of that opinion. this particular character's opinions had zero beneficial implications.

"It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared at these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything."

I don't think I've ever seen this type of cynical take on art. I've seen it dismissed as useless, but never as exploitative. ok, so I think it's definitely over dramatic to think of my own personal reading as exploitative — I don't think I'm even close to that point — but this is such a fascinating take that I want to revisit.

"Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget."

I agree with the first sentence, and with the second. being bullied builds resilience and can reveal to you your strength, your truths. not that I condone bullying. hardship builds character, so we shouldn't avoid or try to erase all challenges in life. but bullying is a particular hardship that we should stamp out — why? perhaps because it's harmful to all parties? so what kind of hardship are acceptable?

(aside and some extra context for this entry: two days ago, brian and I were talking about andrey after I'd met him earlier that day. I asked brian what advice he would give andrey (obviously, having zero primary source exposure) and he asked me how I recommend a person "build depth." I said read, write, talk, repeat. talk is optional. so here's my "write" portion of the cycle, I guess.

I think I want to add "travel" too. you can start as a tourist, there's no shame in it; even seeing new things is good. and then talk to locals. live their lives. do this in your own neighborhood as well. start with wherever excites you.)