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Sad Girl Novel
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25.08
Monday
I read a headline that says even if you are not on your phone, but it is physically within your reach and/or you can see it, then it negatively affects your ability to concentrate. I have known this for a while, which is why I hide my phone in purposefully awkward places while I write. It doesn’t have a specific place it goes, because then I will know that it is there in my mind’s eye, which is the same thing as seeing it, when having an imagination and flexing it like a muscle is my one exact talent, and also what I am doing a university degree in (poetry). Before I start writing, I skim the small machine awkwardly across my carpet in slightly different directions each time, turning away before I can see which piece of furniture it lands softly under. Sometimes I shove it beneath a seat cushion while trying to pretend I’m super chill and that’s a normal thing to have to do. It works very well and then I can’t find it for hours, even when I am trying to. Sometimes, while ransacking my bedroom, I find an old vape instead and suckle on it before I know what’s happening. The headline, which I am probably only seeing in the first place because of the software’s ability to breadcrumb me news that confirms opinions I already have, prompts me to pat myself on the back for this elaborate game I play with a piece of metal and glass, a small machine that happens to be a portal to everything that ever has happened or will. The headline emboldens me to go to a social engagement with a classmate completely sans phone. If I’m being honest, the other person likely sees me as a date, and I them as an acquaintance and a lesser poet than me. Perhaps because I’m looking for an out, I recount the headline to my acquaintance-date while looking disdainfully at their phone, which they’ve placed screen down on the table next to their fork, bestowing it a place in the table setting. Not getting the hint, they reach out every now and again to stroke the back of it with their pointer and middle finger, like someone would finger a pendant on a necklace or yoke around their neck. Then they flip it over to light up the screen. I smile primly at this, and, in an effort to distance myself from this era of normalised addiction, leave. How boring that I only get to live through this era, when others got opium dens and methamphetamines rattling like Tic Tacs in their pockets. The next morning at brunch, I recount this story to my friends, and when I get to the part about the phone as a piece of cutlery, I gesture emphatically to the spot-in-question on the table, and my phone is already there. I grab it and say ‘oh’, scoff nervously, and my friends make side-eye contact with each other in a way that makes me think they are mutually agreeing on how annoying I am. But then I am wrong, they are pausing before they decide to tell me they are both self-diagnosing (ADHD) and self-medicating (focus drugs) and, long story short, there’s a girl called Val who can hook you up, she’s the girl about campus, and Joy, we think you gotta call her.
Done reading
Attention Pays
26.08
Tuesday
Valentina’s new friends thought she was some sort of science major because she ‘studied drugs at university’. They never asked any follow-up questions, on account of them all being arts/humanities majors and deeply uninterested in anything so bold and plucky as to think it was above narrative, dealing only in the world of facts, like science. If Val and Baz had been in a quieter pub when they had met, or if he was simply better at paying attention, he would have heard that what she actually said was, ‘I sell study drugs,’ then after a pause, ‘mostly at the university, to students.’ But he had been cocking his ear towards her to indicate he was listening, while his eyes looked beyond her, through to the other side of the honey-coloured wooden bar, following the back of a young man. A young man whose lateral muscles somehow cut perfectly through the drape of his fine merino sweater as he cracked billiards balls around the table with a cue stick like they owed him money. Baz’s attention was thus waylaid, so in a neat spiral of aural miscomprehension, like a seashell or some sort of scientific spiral that Val ironically knew nothing of (Fibonacci … was that anything?), Baz twisted her words to mean that she was one of those rare beasts: a woman in STEM. Val only realised this error when the billiards boy came over and she was introduced as such. She did not fancy making the correction. Not yet. Val recognised the billiards boy—after a life growing up in this university suburb without any prospects of going to university herself—as the type who got around in a rugby shirt three quarters of the year while the main sport he engaged in was getting as perilously close to the edge of political correctness as he could. As the rest of Baz’s friends blew in with the odd Autumn leaf at their heel (pretty girls, emptying their coat pockets of paperbacks and dirty white corded headphones as they rummaged desperately for their vapes), Val went with the flow, hoping that none of her clients would turn up and blow her cover. She needn’t have worried too much, the lack of ketamine and other party drugs on her menu had so far kept her in the clear of this pub’s specific echelon. One thing led to another, and she let herself be ensconced by this crew of increasingly affable rich kids, until she found herself sitting on the floor of a dorm room on campus, accepting a red plastic cup full of ambiguous brown liquor, thinking to herself: ‘I don’t even go here,’ but not daring to say it. In theory, a supply issue had brought her here to scout for deeper pockets. In practice, and much to her surprise, she was having fun cosplaying as a different person, as Valentina. Pretending life was this easy. Demand for study drugs dexamfetamine, methylphenidate and especially lisdexamfetamine (as a woman in STEM, Val translates, that’s Dexies, Ritalin, and Vyvanse) was increasing by over 100% month on month. Her costs were going up. Way up. She sipped her strong brown drink and saw a new referral light up her phone. She could usually predict the whole transaction from the student’s chosen Signal username and this one was no different: Joy-cean Love Letters 2 Ur Mum.
Hey, can you deliver?
No delivery. Pick up on campus
I live out in the burbs. I’m still on my L plates.
Okay?
I’ve got a poem due on Friday. I haven’t started.
A poem?
WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WAS AN EMERGENCY?
I’m on my way.
Really?
No. It’s called rhetoric babe. Look it up.
That was unnecessary but made Val smile to herself as she sent through the new hiked price list. In the long silence that followed, she felt Joy baulking. Val turned her attention back to those who could afford it. Valentina’s new friends.
Done reading
27.08
Wednesday
His favourite time of day was getting home from work and becoming, once again, the father of Joy. Arthur, the girl’s twin, had long since had the means to move out, working as he did with computers. The aspiring poet, thankfully, would be with him for some time still. His daughter seemed to stay in her room longer and longer each day, producing shorter and shorter lines of text for classes that were becoming more and more expensive. He’d been on an installation job across town, so it was later than usual when he pulled into the drive and leant on the horn. When she didn’t appear immediately at her window to signal she was coming down, he figured he had time to go inside for a refreshment. Standing at the open fridge, he weighed up the idea of cracking a beer while taking his daughter for a driving lesson, and decided instead a few slugs of Tropicana juice could be consumed straight from the carton quickly and privately. The drink spilled onto the logo of his navy and yellow work shirt—three lowercase letters and a halo of dots in the shape of the country, intended to signify connection. He called out her name. On the counter he noticed a book, open, face down, cracked at the spine. As he wiped his mouth, he read a line, both highlighted and underlined by Joy. As he heard her coming down the stairs, he read it again, this time out loud, as he often read street signs out to her, for no reason other than to annoy, and this, like drinking from the carton, was a small privilege he thought he should be eternally allowed.
‘Currently, we are headed towards extinction in a shiny, driverless car and the question is, how do we exit this car?’ She smiled wanly, rounding the banister at the bottom of the stairs. He smiled back. Her pants had gotten somehow larger. He hoped this car ride would be like others of late, where Joy, usually so succinct and impenetrable, would start monologuing, almost as if she couldn’t help it when distracted by the task, so new to her, of steering them into their very near future. A few minutes in, she rolled down her window and began to vape and he consequently pulled out one of his tailored cigarettes. She changed lanes unnecessarily, he observed silently. A few more minutes, then she said, ‘It’s funny, that Rachel Kushner line. I went looking for it, because I saw this video, of this Waymo—that’s like a robotaxi, a driverless car—that went rogue today, in San Francisco, it took a passenger on an unplanned detour into a closed in parking lot full of other robotaxis, just this underground garage of autonomous vehicles. He was the only human in there, and he didn’t know how to get out. He was just taken to robot land, without any say in the matter. Eventually he got out, and they offered him like, two free rides, so.’
She read his mind in the pause that followed. ‘Yeah, they’re already a thing. People use them all the time. I guess it’s easier, they prefer not to have to talk to the driver, not to talk to anyone in real life. The same reason everyone uses all technology I guess. People keep rushing towards it. With gay abandon. They’re even outsourcing thinking to it now. Like thinking isn’t the best part of being alive, so.’
He tried to prepare some I think therefore I am pun (I don’t have time to think, therefore I don’t have time to … am?), but Joy spoke again. ‘Well, it’s not true there’s no resistance. There’s also protests, right now, in another city, to try and stop Waymo from going there. But in general, they seem dangerous, and people use them anyway, so. It seems that people want danger, maybe? Like the first tool that humans ever commandeered was fire, which separated us from primates, forked us off into neanderthals. And on that same page of Creation Lake, where you read that quote, she also says that the first man to discover fire was likely also the first man to use it to smoke tobacco. So like, from the moment we discovered a tool, we immediately figured out how to kill ourselves with it too. Whether it be slowly or not.’ He made a thinking noise, impressed. He was looking for a gap to appear between her speeding thoughts, into which he could merge, and offer something helpful. But she moved too fast, spoke again. ‘And I guess the tech industry is a lot like the tobacco industry, in that, they know they’re killing people, and they’ll be happy to do it as long as they can get away with it. Until someone steps in and regulates.’ He made a different thinking noise, saddened. They were stopped at a light. She hadn’t noticed it turning green. He wanted to blow out his chestful of smoke and tell her to fang it. Just go somewhere, anywhere. Don’t overthink it. But then she flicked the radio on, pre-emptively shushing him. It was on the hour. The news was starting.
Done reading
28.08
Thursday
You’re listening to the evening news update with Arthur. The latest headlines in one minute. Some good news for humanity at the top of the hour, we are running ahead of schedule and it seems the end of times will be happening a lot sooner than we thought, and in quite an unexpected manner. Here’s what I would say as your twin brother, if I was asked to make a statement earlier today:
‘We’ve always been silly by nature (humans), but never before had constant affirmation that others want us to be silly (the internet), and now things are getting quite out of hand. Who would have thought that the end of times would be so utterly silly. A ridiculous game of distraction, monstrous in its simplicity and effectiveness. If we had ever convinced ourselves that progress/time was linear … now we’ve gone and made it fractal. Progress sounds good, but also means wherever the endpoint is, we’re getting there infinitely faster. Why is everyone in such a rush to end it all?’
As everyone knows, the enemy of progress is regulation, and the Australian government this week is facing extensive criticism for bringing in a social media ban for children, a world first, and everyone is fucking complaining about it. The US companies have finally responded to calls to take some responsibility for eroding global democracy and quality of life, seeming a bit annoyed, ‘We’re really never going to do anything about it, we thought that was obvious. Stop asking us.’
You’re still listening to the evening news update with Arthur when you look out the window and decide it looks like rain. A statement from the Department of Reality today: more things are now officially a scam than not a scam. Quite the tipping point! Quite the time to be alive. After handing down the relatively uncontroversial decision last week that skincare and the entire beauty industry is a scam (‘there is no goo in a jar that can make you hotter’) this week the Department added the following scams for women: heterosexuality, traditional romance narratives, and the concept of becoming irrelevant as you age. Most are welcoming the verdict, although many are calling for clarification as to whether childbirth and childrearing belong in those categories. As for men, they still mainly have Joe Rogan. In related news, further cuts to the Department’s workforce are expected to dissolve it imminently. Bye reality, it’s been fun.
You’re still listening to me, your brother, when Dad leans over and turns on the windscreen wipers for you. Another huge tipping point expected tomorrow when the extremist horseshoe—that’s the political phenomenon of the far right and the far out left reaching out to hold hands behind everyone else’s back—will officially close and become one infinite loophole of fascist rhetoric.
Millennials are now officially nostalgic for what they, at the time, thought were the darkest years of their life: the mid-2010s. What was once hoped to be a dip in the economy and quality of life (post-2008), is now actually perceived as an upwards inflection point before things got really bad. Oh brother!
And don’t forget, Joyriders, that people are still inherently good, despite all this. When things fall apart, change is possible. That’s it for the news update. You need to go home and finish that poem now. Today was a rough one, so here’s Björk with ‘Big Time Sensuality’ to take us out. It takes courage to enjoy it, sis.
Done reading
(Joy’s Poem)
29.08
Friday
When I was a lanky little girl, that is to say a teenager (three long years ago), I won a scholarship to France for a half year, any incidentals to be covered by my grandmother—she of the egg slicer, the eponymous egg slicer—with the notion to improve my French. I found myself on many wrong sides of many escalators, and heard again and again, Attention, meant to shock me out of my reverie, make me hop to the left or the right (I still refuse to remember the correct side). I found myself shrinking at the word, jolting at it, even. It meant I was in the wrong place. The ridges on the escalator brought to mind the wires of the kitchen utensil. I still try to do as the French do, and faire attention.
One translates faire as to make or to do, interchangeably, and so I make it and I do it (attention) in much the same way: interchangeably. Then it is an infinite and regenerative thing. I try not to pay it (attention). Or even worse, split it, as a bill. I try.
At first it’s just in two it splits, like a wire through clay. Imagine there are two wooden blocks knotted at the end of this wire, to be cupped in palms for leverage, as fingers grasp and pull tighter against the heft of wet clay. Imagine a spy movie, a wire around a neck from behind, yanked for the requisite amount of time. But it is just in two it is split. One time, down the middle. And you think, this might be okay. I can focus on two things at once. But people are wont to hone their tools, and so we progress. A grandmother, specifically mine, has a device to slice a hardboiled egg. It’s made of cheap plastic, with rows of wires you press over and through the round egg to split it into a half-dozen 2D versions of yourself. Itself, I mean. Itself. Sometimes I give up. I lay and imagine myself sliced this way, as an egg. And then we make more progress, and so, if we are to continue with items found in a grandparent’s house, then I think of a silver machine that a cut of red meat goes into and comes out pink, as a mince.
I used to think to feel like this was to be young, this pain of fragmenting. But year on year, the fragmentation steadily rises, like the price of eggs, as mentioned on the internet on too many consecutive days. (I pause, briefly consider titling this poem The Slice of Eggs These Days then don’t. Why?)
A call to attention
I’m calling you now
Not on the phone
Off your phone (imperative)
It’s cacophonous now
I know
Of all the tools you are offered in life, which ones will you pick up and use? My grandmother gave me the one that could take me apart (egg slicer), but also the one that could make me whole again (poetry). She often gifted my mother—and downstream from her, me—the work of her favourite poet Mary Oliver (‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one and precious life?’ / ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion’) and I believe I was named Joy so I would write like her, O, joy! O, joyous experience of being alive! Am I being sarcastic right now? Surprisingly no. I love her. I’m not sure if it’s cool to like a poet after someone makes merch out of their most famous line, or uses it as fodder for a LinkedIn post. But I don’t care! I do! And always will. Love her and the way she pays attention, to the streams and the bulrushes and other things I don’t care about. Maybe it’s because of a lifetime of reading her I want to faire attention, as the French do, make it whole, as a round hard egg, sitting on a thatch of grass in a beam of sunlight that has broken miraculously through dense treetops. Ready to be picked up and offered to the world, as one complete thing. The only way I know how to say I still love you (world), and I always will.
Done reading