(See a description of the #433rds project here.)

April 3

em-endations

I finish a good book coasting on a triad of virtue: relieved and exultant and—because most endings tilt down in an elegant droop—sad. When a good show ends I’m just embarrassed. I get goosebumps. It’s involuntary like a blush, and I do tamp them down, but there’s a cost to that, a long flatness of response that needs time to rise more sensibly, like dough.

Then come the giant notions, ungainly as jet-sized grasshoppers: Is Doll and Em the Key to Friendship? I’ve never liked Amish friendship bread very much: too saccharine an offer, too broad and glad a hope. But there goes my brain, haplessly baking, hunting and pecking. I’ve spent today wanting to tear off pieces of this show and mail it to people in plastic bags for them to ferment in their kitchen corners. (With a note: Grow it into Dolls of your own!) It’s so weak, isn’t it, to feel passionately about a tv show? Weaker still when you’re forced to say. Explaining why without explaining why (oh my Doll) means tailoring the chills out, and that’s delicate mathematical business and my feelings are more like wasps hurling themselves at the front window. Hard to coax a swarm like that.

Populate your life with scenes from a show: at night you write about this show instead of your day because you spent it panicking quietly because good shows bleach out their borders until they get translucent and bleed through because they give rise to fantasies (did I tell you I got a digital pen?) like maybe, if I write exactly the right thing, I can punch through, put the cold shoulder on ice, make an offer. Hard to see Caliban liking Miranda, but let’s drink in a hot tub wearing old photos, see if the thing develops.