Figs + Films
Media and fruit I've been consuming the past week.
The figs are coming in! Every year around this time, I think, Why aren’t they ripening? Then I’ll wake up a couple of days later, and there are twenty, thirty ripe figs. We have a nice agreement with the birds. They take a few, leave the rest.
I’ve been frustrated with the horror story I’m trying to write this week. I keep finding myself going back to the beginning to get it right. I am told that this is a very bad idea, so the next time I sit down I’m going to just ignore this and write the thing. This has happened a few times now: I get to a few thousands words and bam, a wall. I stop to rethink. Whether out of frustration or just needing a reframe, instead of writing last week, I’ve been imbibing, so here’s a little rundown.
I’ve watched two movies this week. First, Andrea Arnold’s 2024 film, Bird, which is this sad and beautiful urban folktale / coming-of-age story following a girl named Bailey through the chaos of her family life and her chance (and life affirming) meeting with a character named Bird. I don’t want to say too much because I feel like it’s a film best experienced without too much foreknowledge. It was shot beautifully, lots of scuzzy interior spaces and this field and the sea and seaside towns.
Yesterday, I really needed to cry, so I watched Our Friend, a 2019 film based on a true story from this essay in Esquire. It’s one of those “star-studded” movies, but it’s quiet. It’s a cancer story and it’s a story about friendship. Jason Segel, who can be larger-than-life, was pretty understated as the friend who drops everything to help his friends, and ends up moving in for two years as a caregiver. Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson played a couple navigating kids, an affair, and then terminal cancer. Affleck’s exhaustion was palpable. Johnson doing end-of-life psychosis was so gut-wrenching. I cried twice, so mission accomplished.
I read Ramona Emerson’s Shutter, which is a crime thriller with ghosts set in Albuquerque and Navajo Nation. The book follows Rita Todacheene, a Diné forensic photographer who has seen and interacted with ghosts since she was a kid. After photographing a particularly gruesome crime scene, Rita encounters the dead woman’s ghost, who basically compels her by screaming a lot and bringing hoards of other ghosts to her door to get to the bottom of the crime, which unravels a series of crimes committed by a dirty cop. My favorite parts were the flashbacks of her growing up, with her grandmother on the reservation and, later, with her mom in the city. I loved her relationship with her grandma but also the elders’ fear of Rita’s abilities and how they navigate this.
This book is billed as horror, but I wouldn’t put it there. There was nothing scary about the ghosts. In fact, they were just part of the fabric of the world Emerson created. Some of the crimes were horrific, I guess, but I still wouldn’t call it horror. Definitely more crime thriller. It was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2022, which is cool for a crime novel! I’ll be starting on Book 2, Exposure, next. I liked Rita, I like the camera angle (lol), and I like that she sees ghosts, of course.
Oh, and we watched the first season of Killing Eve finally. It was good! Villanelle is such a poetic (and funny) villain (psychopath), as her name implies, and Eve is…what is Eve? A born detective, really. Someone who has maybe an unhealthy interest in female assassins, who finds herself the object of Villanelle’s desire, who is tough as nails but also in totally unfamiliar territory. I can see why this show was so popular when it came out. It’s fun, quirky, sometimes poignant.
Finally, I’ve decided to take the next couple of weeks off from the newsletter for a little end-of-summer vacay. Happy August to you! See you on the flip side, right on the verge of 49. Whoa.
Have you tried DARK WINDS (currently on Netflix)? I've read a couple of the original Hillerman books, but this series is a little less Scooby-Doo, I think.
Have a great vacation!