#90 The Offcuts
Crying over hot cross buns
The best thing to happen last week was surely the return of MAFS Australia. Dating shows in the UK never quite live up to their international counterparts. Love Is Blind is another great example of British people being too coy, reserved, and leaning on that stiff upper lip to compete with the kind of drama Americans and Australians bring.
Last week I read The Crying Book, by Heather Christle. Supposedly, crying a lot is good for you. There is nothing like a big, bubbling, heaving cry every now and then. Good for the soul to get it all out. I enjoyed the book and the layers of science, history, memory, and prose, but it felt severely underdeveloped. Some ‘sections’ were two sentences long, and then we’d jump into the next idea, and then the next. It read like a chaotic journal at times, which, although I didn’t dislike it, I much preferred reading the passages that were longer, as they conveyed depth. My current read is I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman. I downloaded the Kindle version released in 2019 with an introduction from Sophie Mackintosh, translated by Ros Schwartz, though the science fiction novel was first published in 1995. We follow a young female narrator who is trapped inside a kind of cage or prison along with 39 other women. She is the youngest, and she cannot remember what ‘normal’ life used to be like, so her perspective differs from that of the other women around her. The story begins perhaps 10 to 15 years after their imprisonment, though it’s unclear because the women’s ability to tell time has been warped. It’s a fascinating dystopia so far. I am continuing to make my way through my audiobook, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li, too. I am not as good at listening to podcasts or audiobooks recently, but I am determined not to leave this book gathering dust, as it rightly deserves due consideration.
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Last week, I saw the trailer for Lady, a mockumentary film starring Sian Clifford due to be released in July. It will be Director Samuel Abrahams’ debut feature film, and I cannot wait to see it. It is absurdist, novel, and darkly funny. I couldn’t think of a more Sian Clifford role than this one. Hopefully, she returns to Substack soon to bless us with more writing as well.
The Oscars took place last night, and while I am not someone who tunes in to watch or cares that much about the outfits, I was thrilled to see that Timothee Chalamet didn’t win best actor. If you were thinking of heading to The Seattle Opera to see Carmen, you can, however, thank Chalamet for a 14% discount when using the code “TIMOTHEE” to book seats. Long live ballet and opera.
Easter chocolate is my favourite out of all the seasonal chocolates. But the other snackies are pretty good too. I bought a packet of mini hot cross buns from Marks & Spencer because they are the perfect little morsel and you can keep going back for more if you wish. As I have written this, I have had to shower another one in the toaster.
One particularly fascinating fact I took from The Crying Book was that there is a term for “drinking tears”. Lachryphagy comes from the Latin for tear, lacrima, and the Greek for one that eats, phagos. As well as inspiring some incredibly whimsical, magical, perhaps even disturbing imagery, there are actually insects that exist that engage in the act of drinking tears. The idea pervades its way into literature, too. The first line of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 119 uses the metaphor for a toxic relationship:
What potions have I drunk of siren tears
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
