2022 Internal Monologue Roundup

This time of year wrap-up, best-of and top-ten lists are everywhere, tallying matters of importance from the past year. 

This is not one of those.

I keep a daily journal, comprised almost entirely of lists of things to do and random observations. 

Here's an incidental sampling of the latter: 

2 February

I’ve discovered a kind of Goodreads review where the writer writes a long, hostile treatise on a beloved work by an admired author. For example, I recently read a sarcastic treatment of Turtles all the Way Down, John Green’s popular young adult novel, ten years in print and soon to be a major motion picture. 

At an earlier point in my life I think I was this person – building myself up by pointing out the flaws in popular literature. If you can say something bad about someone famous, you are, in a way, more famous than them. At least in your own mind. 

20 March

I don’t learn from my own mistakes. How can you possibly expect me to learn from yours?

12 April 

I’m 65. If I'd felt at 25 the way I do now, I’d have called an ambulance. But, you adjust. 

14 April

I know the pandemic is over because I am showering every day, and no longer feel like it’s a good use of my time to spend the whole day looking at my iPad. 

17 April 

Room is the weirdest thing ever. It's a musical about the imprisonment and rape of a woman, who births a child in her rape chamber and uses the child as a way to manage her confinement. She teaches him that Room is his whole world. She makes sure he’s exercised and educated and entertained, while she is raped every other night for seven years. Just after the boy’s fifth birthday, she gets her son to pretend he's dead so he has to be taken away. Once escaped, the boy alerts the police who find and free the woman. Then the woman doesn’t know how to deal with how the world treats her story and her son longs to return to the simpler days of Room. She attempts suicide. He insists they go back to room so he can say goodbye.

And that’s the end. 

Room is a novel. And a movie. And now a stage play. Next, I guess, a ride at Disneyworld. 

11 May 

Got my 4th covid shot yesterday. I am so vaccinated it’s breathtaking. 

1 August

It seems the only reason people read the news anymore is so they can choose what to be outraged about.  

8 August 

Will venture out into the inferno in a couple of hours to donate blood. Haven’t done that in years (Donate blood I mean. I ventured out into the inferno as recently as yesterday.). Hope I don’t pass out in the street. 

29 September 

Bruce came home with a stranger’s wallet. He’d found it on the sidewalk at Prince Arthur and Avenue Road. Inside were a driver’s license, credit cards, health card, birth certificate. All the things you'd hate to lose. The owner lives in Moore Park, half an hour from here on foot. I walked up to her neck of the woods to return her wallet: my good deed for the day. There is no moral ambiguity in returning lost property. 

12 October 

One thing I’ll say about bureaucrats. They sure know how to fill out a form. 

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Karen