#2 about grief
any excuse to mention Andrew Garfield, amirite?
this week I finished reading Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. overall, a great book that’s about human relations and about grief. I loved that even though the book is about grief, grief is always in the background. We know that characters are acting in some way because of it (in part), but it’s not always explicitly said. I found it really beautiful because that’s precisely how grief works.
in his conversation with Elmo, Andrew Garfield says that being sad about missing someone is ok, it actually means that you really loved them. also, I didn’t have it in my Bingo Card of this year to write a sentence including Elmo and Andrew Garfield but the PR team of We Live in Time is working really hard to have Andrew out there being all likable and cute.
now that I’m meeting a bunch of new people, it’s always an awkward moment to say that yeah, my parents are back in Mexico and yeah, my mom has visited and yeah, my dad was an architect and yeah, he died when I was eighteen. people’s faces immediately change and they always say sorry to which I always answer, oh, it’s ok, it happened such a long time ago, almost as if trying to make them feel better about asking about it. funny how humans work.
and sometimes, it’s also crazy to think that even though it happened so long ago, he keeps coming back. listening to a random song, saying something he used to say, seeing a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, you know… random stuff.
it doesn’t hurt anymore, it actually makes me happy to think about him but sometimes, just sometimes, it also makes me sad that he will never get to know who I became (or am becoming, since life is a never-ending process of becoming).
grief, transformed, is still there.
but what’s beautiful about human nature is that grief, as Andrew Garfield said, helps you feel closer to the people you’ve lost. the sadness, the grief, the feelings, they’re all good. it’s all good and I hope I’ll never be far enough from grief that playing Scrabble won’t remind me of my dad.
other thoughts on grief
✷ another reason grief was in my mind is because of the passing of Liam Payne. I was never a big fan of One Direction, I think I was too old to care about them, but that didn't stop me from singing out loud during the medley of 1D during Harry Styles' concert two years ago. on that note, I've been reading some pieces about grief, parasocial relations, and why it's ok to feel sad about the passing of someone you never met. especially good is this piece from Shit You Should Care About, that talks about how personal this loss feels and how it isn't embarrassing and we all deserve to have feelings about it, whichever they are. I also found another great piece by Katharine Viner from The Guardian super endearing, this quote stuck with me for a long time:
This is the loss of someone many women once loved – as with my Take That experience, that love was not synthetic or simulated, but embodied and real. |
currently reading
✷ el viernes pasado fui otra vez a un concierto de Granada y me recordó que hace dos años escribí sobre mi experiencia. ¿lo mejor? aún sigo impresionada de que los austriacos parecen no emocionarse. lean este blast from the past aquí →
✷ todavía estoy leyendo Long Island y Pedro Páramo pero me tomé una pequeña pausa para leer Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? de Linda Nochlin. la verdad de por qué lo leí es porque un día no quise llevar una bolsa grande a la oficina y es un libro chiquito y era el único que me cabía jaja. peeeeero, ¡me gustó! habla sobre cómo las estructuras dentro de las que el arte se crea no favorecen minorías (mujeres incluídas) y cómo la misma pregunta de la que parte este libro está mal planteada. si les gusta el arte y el feminismo, recomendado.
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eso es todo por esta vez y nos vemos el próximo domingo, ¡eso espero!
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Justine
CEO of liking all tweets that include Andrew Garfield
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