Uffda.  it just hit me out of the blue over these last several hours how much it's bothering me and upsets me to have mentally put Eric into the "not an option this life" category.  Just out of nowhere gave me a sudden sad over it.... Wasn't expecting that.  Gonna have to push that mess of emotions back down force me to accept the choices he has made as his choices and then distract myself again until the sadness sinks back below the surface. I mean,  what else is a girl to do? 

I blame it on the intense cold.  Everything feels more intense when you're constantly chilled and the forecast just promises more unrelenting cold.  (Now lows of -16F is back on the table for Friday and lows of -19F for Saturday....)

So what else is on my mind? This morning I read/finished the novel Lovecraft Country (yes all of it - it's only 372 pages) and I really enjoyed it.  There were some very interesting departures the series took (this being a rare case of me watching a show/film before reading the book)  but I thought they made the series stronger.  I think some of these differences are because the book was written by a white man whereas the writers and producers of the series were Black which gave authenticity in their tweaks of Jim Crow era living while Black dangers. Not to diminish what's in the book just that some experiences must be lived to convey no matter how strong one's empathy is.   I do think that in addition to the meticulous research he did it takes a strong empathy to even try to imagine yourself into living that situation - same as the empathy of imagining yourself back into a racist cruelty you hadn't experienced in the writing of the Rhiannon Giddens song At The Purchaser's Option which was written after she read an ad for a young slave whose baby was available at the purchaser's option.  (it's a harrowing song,  but beautiful and important.  While she's more bluegrass roots americana and doesn't sing with a country twang,  she's one of the few artists pigeon-holed into country with music I not only can listen to but can love.  Mostly because there is 0% twanging offkey in her vocals.  Any vocalist with a twang in their vocals is going to be painful to my synesthesia and no amount of songwriting skills or what they stand for outside their songs will make their music palatable.  And that includes "trying to be woke" LGBTQ friendly white country artists like Dixie Chicks and Kacey Musgraves and Brothers Osborne - the moment they open their mouths to sing and a twang comes out I have to turn the music off or leave because the twangs are too painful to my synesthia. Anything else in their music is lost on me due to the intense pain their twanging vocals cause.  But, Rhiannon Giddens I adore - even if she gets classed as country instead of roots-americana and was the only Black person at CMAs the year her album was nominated for bluegrass album of the year.) Anyway, there are definitely moments in the writing you can tell it's a white person trying to imagine receiving end of racism who has only observed it from the outside, never the inside.  It's something as a Jew I can recognize that difference. Since I don't look stereotypical Jewish and don't have an obviously Jewish last name, I can choose not to out myself. I can be a closeted minority in a way that Blacks cannot - but when I do wear my star visibly or out myself as a Jew, the change in some people is immediate and palpable. I genuinely think that for whites who have never experienced being on the receiving end of racism, having to wear a star or yarmulke in public for a week would be eye opening to them how much it can change the way certain people treat you or look at you or react to you.  I tend to only wear my star for High Holy Days and Passover week or after a high profile anti-Semitic event - but when I do wear it I notice the differences in how I'm treated, especially in smaller towns or rural areas and the further south I go.  Though that said,  one of the most virulent anti-Semitic verbal attacks I've ever endured, including being told to my face I couldn't be Jewish because I'm too pretty to be a Jew, happened in downtown Madison on campus at a coffeeshop...  But my optional outing vs. closeting myself from racism is an act of white privilege and I know that.  What I deal with when I out my identity as being Jewish is like that for Blacks all the time,  they can't choose to take off or hide their skintone. (There's actually a section of the book and series that explores Ruby, a Black woman,  being able to don the body of a white woman via an elixir and thus feel the freedoms of existing in 1950s Chicago as a white lady.) I still think the threats of casual racism were the most horrific aspects of both the book and the TV series, the times I felt the most fear for the safety of the characters -  more so than the actual supernatural and horror elements. Which I found a powerful achievement. 

This is the first book I've read by Matt Ruff and I have no idea what his other books are about,  but I like him as an author well enough I want to pick up the rest of his works now.  

Anyway,  I'm gonna go make me some tea.  Also going to prep some fish marinating for dinner so when I take the dog out I can take the fish packaging out with the rest of the garbage to the dumpster so it won't smell up my flat.  Trying to take the dog out at the warmest part of the day today (it got down to -13F this morning, was -6F when I last took her out,  around 1am.)  And by warmest part of the day, I mean in an hour or so when it will be all of 5F and sunny, lol.  Then I'll make some more tea when I get back inside before choosing another book. 

(I don't intend to watch the Super Bowl this year since I want both teams to lose.  I fucking can't stand MAGA loving Tom Brady so I don't want the Buccaneers to win, but now that the Washington football team FINALLY changed their name/logo it makes the KC Chiefs with their "tomahawk" crowd cheer the most overtly racist team in the NFL.  So I quite intensely loathe both of them and want both teams to lose the Super Bowl this year - and thus I have no fucking desire to watch it.  At all.)

P. S.  On the subject of American football!  Did you see Aaron Rodgers let slip during his MVP acceptance speech that he got engaged this year?!  I mean his relationship with Shailene has been an open secret in Wisconsin all year, especially once she quietly moved to Green Bay,  but the scandal of how they hooked up via his ex-girlfriend and her ex-friend Danica (the race car driver) introducing them while he and Danica were still together made that relationship a bit of a non-publicized thing.  But now that the news is out, the frozen tundra can officially claim her as one of ours now! And I like Shailene from what I know of her - for all that I'm pretty "meh" about cult of celebrity because they're just people,  I admired the way she used her presence to boost the signal and try to protect the water protectors at Standing Rock. While I liked what I'd seen of her personality, it was seeing her go out in the bitter cold in solidarity with other water protectors that earned her my stamp of approval before she and Rodgers ever even met each other.