THE FEELING: What?

An update, the "craft" of hard times, and some Feeling Operations

Pals,

How it do?

Here’s my update: My dog, Jem, died in May, two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. One of my Specials spent a week in the “Oh, fuck” part of the hospital, where friends aren’t allowed, even the Special-ests, even the ones with MDs from Google University. Another Special experienced another kind of medical hell at the same time, and I was working the phones (and that Google MD) and sitting in nearby chairs pretty much full-time. What else. My first book has a title, but I don’t know if I can tell you what it is yet. (I’m excited to tell you, but I’m not… presuming that you’re excited, so the inclusion of “if I can tell you” reflects not a projected or assumed excitement but my own, actual, real-deal excitement.) Strawberry, who is now mostly “Snowy” (or, inexplicably, per her request, “Gwenny”) turned five. My mom has now been dead for two years.

I don’t know if it’s the phytoncides, because the trees in my neighborhood have been really partying lately, but I’ve descended from a lot of anxiety, beginning with the first of these swift kicks to the nuts (I got babyishly scared of my own sadness, when I realized Jem was going to die, and so suddenly), into a mostly attentive calm that has simply not been possible in/around a hard, sad era before. It doesn’t feel like defeat or repression (and it doesn’t feel like cool release, either), just, a kind of workmanlike, here-we-go, pass-me-that-pipe-wrench doing, a kind of craft.

(A genuinely “NEW FEELING” is always a frisson, even in the middle of some shit.)

That said: I have definitely not absorbed or grieved Sweet Jem’s death yet, and yesterday, arriving home from dinner — seltzer-drunk on long-distance-best-friendship resuming in real life and real time — I threw my bag down and went to pet her, and remembered again.

Anyway, how are you?

So, okay. At the risk of fucking with my truly exceptional “open rate,” here is some pure administrata:

Long, long ago, I paused the paid subscriptions to The Feeling (the paid version has, historically, been a weekly “Diary” edition of the “This isn’t really the internet, is it?” variety) so the paying subscribers wouldn’t be charged for what I knew would be a long era of nothing. I was working on my book, and working in advertising; there was no mental nutrition left for Substack, the shiny hair and strong nails of the KC Inc. organization.

I don’t know if the “Indefinitely” option was available then, as it is now, but I chose to pause for a period of months and then forgot/didn’t re-pause, and when I was alerted to this reality by a subscriber who was infinite-percent fairly wondering why they were paying for… nothing, I reimbursed and re-paused, and that pause re-expired, and once again, I didn’t realize until later.

So: we are now “indefinitely” paused, on paid subscriptions. (If anyone was forgotten in the “Paid For… Nothing” reimbursement blitz, please fucking email me; the idea of owing anyone anything makes me shiver.) When paid subs open up again — because, twist, I very much like writing the weekly “Diary” special/secret editions; they’re as close as I get to a full-body exhale as a writer and... experiencer — anyone who has ever subscribed can have a free/comped year or whatever, if they want it.

What else, what else. I just finished Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick, even though I bought it right when it came out, because it was a slow and heavy read, leaden with recognition. (I have also gotten a pop of frisson with this new Jack Antonoff gossip, obviously!) Oh, and I did go see Maddie’s Secret, John Early’s movie, and was horrified and disgusted and liked it, Kate Berlant espesh.

I think that’s it.

I love you.

xx

Kate