my depressing fucking love life, K-Ming Chang (again) + other observations

Babes and bots, 

Would it be sad if I told you this blog gave me a sense of purpose in life? The answer is yes. And here I am telling you because what else am I going to do on a Sunday with no grocery list besides weed the garden and cry because there's no school today? I've gone from Radical Traveling Nomad to Suburban Housewife in four short weeks! Now if that's not a career turnaround I don't know what is. 

the key to success

My #1 fan informed me that my content has been quite sad recently, so in an attempt to brighten your days, I will now involve you in the derangement of my mind. 

I am currently contemplating two things: 1) how much money should I be saving for retirement and 2) where's my sugar daddy? Speaking of rich partners, has anyone been on Tinder lately? Your answer should be no and you should also pay me because I'm out here doing the leg work for you. By this, I mean that I matched with someone with a burger for their profile picture. And also someone with a wedgie kink. Am I consistently surprised by the fact that I am alone? Yes. 

Let's review the facts: 13% of dating app users find a partner and I would have better luck finding a rich husband, or any husband for that matter, in the South. So, if you combine that with the fact that I have been using Tinder off and on since 2016, we can easily figure that I am statistically unlikely to find love (online). But, listen, when I drink five cups of coffee in the morning and still feel sleepy, I try again the next day. When my heart and soul are crushed by the rejection of my top choice graduate program, I try again next year. When I apply to over 50 jobs and receive one offer, I keep grinding. When successful people explain the definition of insanity, I forget what they said. So, what's the key to my mountain of success you might ask? Salad & a lot of crying. 

Instead of that depression, allow me to introduce you to Wassily Kandinsky, an abstract painter of salad among other things:

Wassily Kandinsky, Painting #201, 1914

K-Ming Chang makes yet another appearance 

You know, when life gets tough, the bibliophiles of the world tell us to stick our noses in books. And because I'm so good at listening to advice, that's precisely what I did. Well, thank the gods because K-Ming Chang never disappoints. If you didn't read my Oct. 24 post, let me summarize my findings. 

- K-Ming Chang is a 23-year-old genius. 

And if you don't believe me, look no farther...
I knew a man like that back on the island. He had a fish-penis and had to live waist-down in the water. If he waded onto land, it'd breathe the air and die. All the other fishermen held their breath to blow him. His fish penis shot eggs down their throats, and they gave birth out of their mouths a month later. You were concieved in a mouth, too. Your mother spoke you in her sleep, during some dream about drowning. Don't believe when she says you've got a father. 

Bestiary might be described as a majestic string of origin stories. As in, what has already happened to the body? If you lose track, you will be just as satisfied. What comes back, again and again, is motherhood, or The Mother, a figure studied often in feminist criticism as an origin story of its own. Chang's own work insists on the perpetuity of mothers, or her mother, as a constant source of life and pain and absence. And what comes from the mother is an epic, grossly disturbing, incandescent story of the narrator and her family--throughout the novel, Chang remains a living part of her mother's body. 

Motherhood interests me for much the same reason. I recently saw a series of photos of my own mother pregnant with me while sifting through my grandmamas boxes. The love I feel for these photos is strange and new to me, and may perhaps simply be a healthy curiosity of the body's magic. But I also feel conflicted when discussing myself as a fully-fledged person before I was born because, you know, abortion rights. But I was born, and I did leave the womb, and I did live, and it's wild to think of the way a fetus grows into a baby! Equally wild, of course, are mothers. 

That's all for now, folx. I'll leave you with Picasso's only competition, my sister. 

Mary Tabb, Portrait of Becca, 2021

Thanks for taking a bite out of the sandwich with me. 

xoxo BLT 

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